Fic: Low Spark of High Heeled Boys
Title: Low Spark of High Heeled Boys.
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Men in heels.
Summary: Eames finds a pair of shoes that remind him so strongly of Arthur he has to buy them. It's a pair of knock-off Louboutins, and it turns out they're just the right size.
Author's Notes: Written for the i_reversebang challenge, inspired by androidiordna 's gorgeous art. Thanks to sorrynotsorry & gelbwax for being lovely and patient betas. Sorry it's a little late, but...you know, history.
Eames makes no secret of it -- he’s an admirer and collector of beautiful things. Of pretty things, even. It’s one of the reasons he turned to forgery.
He likes things that are elaborate and he likes things that are simple, because both can be fascinating and beautiful in their own way. Arthur is complex in the sense than he often frustrates Eames, is simple in the way he’s predictable.
Arthur is not what anyone would describe as ‘pretty.’
He is handsome, and well-dressed when he wants to be, and sometimes he is even beautiful. Eames can, and in fact does often, appreciate the aesthetics of Arthur’s tailored trousers, slim-fitting waistcoats, and well-polished shoes.
Eames thinks mostly about the aesthetics of Arthur when Arthur is in his bed, arching up in pleasure. Thinks he’s beautiful when his cheeks flush pink, when his hair tumbles into his eyes when Eames works to unravel him.
He thinks Arthur’s beautiful when there’s a glint in his dark eyes as he shoots off projections, when he grabs Eames by the elbow with zero hesitation and pulls him out of the line of fire. The way he’s full of a serene joy when they complete a job and it’s a success.
Sometimes there’s an ache in Eames’ hands when Arthur is near, a deep rooted desire to claim him for his own, to put him in a collection with small priceless paintings and decadent gems.
-
It’s in Rome, down some side streets off the Cavour stop, that Eames finds the boutique. It’s the shoes that catch his eyes, sitting subtly in a less-than-subtle display of flimsy lingerie on busty and smirking mannequins.
They’re bright red fuck-me pumps, and they’re just large enough that he decides to go inside.
Heels in men’s sizes aren’t the most outlandish thing he’s ever purchased, really, and the boutique owner just gives him an appraising look as he wanders to the side of the shop, where single shoes are all laid out in shelves. He’s sure he’s not the only rakish gentleman she’s served before, and he feels he’s past feeling self conscious about it.
The place has black walls and bright displays, a chandelier made up of empty lighters hanging from the ceiling. There are extravagant shoes, of course, but many look perfect for everyday wear. He starts pairing them up to his different personas. Those polka-dot espadrilles are perfect for a sun-dappled red head he calls Betsy. The kitten heels for a high schooler named May-Ying.
“Would you like to try anything on, sir?” the owner asks in English, smiling. He likes the Bettie Page look she’s got going on and makes a note to try it out for himself.
“I’ll let you know when I’ve found it, love,” he says. He can walk in heels in dreams, he knows, but he likes to perfect his craft. When his hips sway in the dream it’s all fabricated feelings, guesswork really, as to how his muscles would move, the way his feet would feel. A minute in a woman’s borrowed shoes probably isn’t the same as two hours on his feet in the things.
There’s a wide selection to choose from even without the most costumey, and he picks up a few low-heeled, sensible slingbacks to look at. But he’s not here to learn how to walk like a consummate professional. When he forges business women, most walk purposefully, with an intent to intimidate, not to seduce. That he can manage without the practice.
He picks out a pair of peep-toe heels, a rich chocolate brown color with about three inches of lift, and he appreciates their quality -- tiny seams, lovely fabric, solid sole. He’s seen oversized ones before, but most were suited to drag shows: plastic heels and little resemblance to shoes that live in a department store display.
He’s looking around for anything else he might like when a heel catches his eye. It’s not quite his taste -- a little too simple, and the red sole implies a price tag that he wouldn’t bother with just for forging practise.
But.
They’re classic. Black patent, slim heel, pointed toe, and Eames thinks of Arthur and his sleek frame, edges blurred with the curves of muscle. His sharp mind and sharp tongue and pink, bowed mouth.
“It’s good quality, yes?” asks the sales woman. “Not quite authentic, but,” and she shrugs, waving a hand. Eames wouldn’t have believed for a second they were authentic Louboutins, so he appreciates her candor. “For you, or for a friend?”
Eames thinks about the shoes he’s seen Arthur wear. Most are practical, dress boots with soft leather. He has some high-priced pairs that he pulls out when he needs to intimidate or he needs to blend in with a group of rich businessmen. He normally stays away from anything too shiny or eye-catching.
“A friend,” he says after the pause. “He’s a size 45.”
“A man, then. These run a bit small,” she says, “get him the size 46.”
He nods and sits down on the bench provided for customers.
“But,” she says as she moves from behind the counter, “you can’t simply buy just the shoes. That’s like giving half a gift.” She’s turning out the wall of the display to reveal piles of boxes marked in different sizes.
“What do you mean? And I’d like to try on these, in 48,” he says, lifting the brown peep-toes.
She nods, hunting through the boxes. “Does he have the right outfit for them? The right accessories? Are you planning to make an evening out of it?” Her smile is just teasing enough that he doesn’t feel ridiculous.
“I suppose he doesn’t have much to wear with them. That’s rather the point though,” he says and grins back.
She laughs and hands him two boxes. “It’s an art though, to wear those shoes. You seem like you’d know.”
He shrugs so she continues, walking through the stores to pull things off of shelves and racks. “I don’t mean a dress, alright? The art of wearing clothes like wearing nothing is what I mean.”
Eames is standing in his heels and it’s a small revelation, the way walking is different. They’re neither comfortable nor uncomfortable, but he can’t forget that he’s wearing them like he does in a dream.
The salewoman moves in front of him with an armful of silky looking black everything.
“I’ll take all of it,” he says, and she beams.
-
Sometimes Eames imagines what Arthur was like before he ever walked a dream. What they’d be like in a different life, if they’d met in a different way. If Eames had simply stumbled on Arthur like a treasure in a coffee shop or a college course, instead of learning about him in bits and pieces.
Eames, after all, is a different person quite regularly.
He’s seen a few pictures, because Cobb is a sentimental sap above all else and still keeps fading snapshots in his wallet. Arthur is smiling with his whole face instead of the sharp set of his teeth, an arm around Cobb’s now-dead wife.
Arthur in the photo is gorgeous in the way that only a young man can be, longish hair and not an expanse of muscle put on out of necessity, just his natural form taking bloom. Mals’ eyes are crinkled in mirth. Sometimes Eames thinks it’s a fake.
Eames met him years after that photo was taken, after the military that changed them both in ways that Eames hasn’t been able to tease out yet. Arthur, by then, was a man streamlined, all his gentleness eroded away by sand and wind and guns.
When they fell together, it wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t a hardship.
-
Eames knew Mal first, because she was in charge of the project he’d ended up assigned to, out of the army but still employed by the British government.
“I’m starting to really hate this boys’ club,” Mal said to him after their team ended a discussion meeting dissatisfied. They needed three women in the dream, and they only had two.
Eames shrugged. “You know I do what I can,” and she laughed at him.
“I know someone, but I don’t think he’ll be happy about it,” she said and pulled out her phone.
“Another forger?” Eames asked. He was curious -- he had yet to meet another person with his skill set, but everything was so new and exciting in the world of dreamshare he knew he couldn’t be the only one.
“He is a friend of my-- Of Dom’s. One of his students.”
Eames let it go, but the mysterious Dom had yet to make an appearance. From how Mal talked about him, he’d gathered that Mal and he were in some kind of relationship, and he had a protege who entered university on the GI Bill after several impressive tours overseas in special ops. He’d heard more about Arthur than he’d ever heard about any of Mal’s other paramours -- for a while he’d been convinced that Dom and Arthur were one miraculous person.
“Dom ‘Arthur’ Cobb?” Eames had asked, “what kind of man are you dating?” Mal had frowned and swatted at his arm, but didn’t correct him til later.
Eames will grow to appreciate Arthur’s bullish resolve, but his inability to be anyone but himself was grating at first. It’s something Eames will love, really, the immutable core of Arthur that made even his forges practically dressed and serious while at work.
He came into their office prepared with intel and spent a few minutes tearing down their supervisor’s plan bit by bit until the professor (one of Mal’s contacts, through her father) held up his hands. “You’re just here to forge, not retool the whole operation.”
“Well,” Arthur said, “I’m not going under until you can produce a plan that’s better than whatever the fuck you have now.”
The first time they went under, Eames just knew that Arthur had a stiff left arm and maybe a limp from an old injury, that he had a nice but forced smile. That he got his off-the-rack suits tailored. And that Mal treated him with a warmness that didn’t seem particularly deserved.
“So, let’s see the ladies,” the supervisor of the project said. In a few months the role will be redesignated to ‘extractor,’ but they were still on government money then. Nothing was standard.
Mal rolled her eyes and Eames let himself fall into the body of their subject’s sister, a leggy blonde with a penchant for astrophysics and a nose for trouble. He liked being her, feeling her curiosity and the energy that springs in her step, and was thankful she had a penchant for flats.
Arthur shifted in a way that Eames had never considered before, his form expanding out in a blur of halftone dots and then reassembling into a woman. She was shorter than Arthur by a few inches, and a tad slimmer. Less powerfully built, but she didn’t strike Eames as a pushover. Her hair was pulled back into a high bun, a sensible pinstripe skirt and a black blazer rounded out the look. Arthur’s face was fuller, but still a little recognizable until he blinked a few times, shifting his eyes to blue.
Maybe a sister. Maybe she was no one but Arthur. The woman Eames was becoming felt a little intimidated and didn’t like the look of Arthur, didn’t think they’d get along. Eames, though, felt a little fond of him at this new reveal.
The supervisor laughed at Arthur’s forge but Eames, already fading at the edges, really couldn’t imagine why. Arthur colored and looked away, annoyed.
“Where’d you find this stick in the mud, Mal?” the supervisor asked, and she scowled.
“He lived in the town we summered in,” she told Eames later, much later, and Eames laughed because no one in the business didn’t know Mal in some way.
“I thought I was dreaming when I saw him in Dom’s lab, all serious faces and stuffy clothes,” she continued. “He’s so different than the boy I knew, but he was still so Arthur.”
Later, much later, Eames would understand what she meant.
-
Eames moves after the Inception job, the job Arthur told him not to fucking take, because I don’t want you getting all caught up in Cobb’s bullshit as though getting tangled up with Arthur didn’t automatically mean that by default.
They all move, really -- it seems wise. As he packs up his flat in Mombasa, the one Arthur visits the most, he finds the dusty shoebox. Under it, the soft drawsting bag of accommodating hosiery and the hard lines of a waist cincher. The impractical, dark silk panties are there and he runs then through his hands before pulling the bag closed.
Looking at the shoes he at first feels foolish, thinking that the whole thing was a waste of money. His own pair proved quite helpful in numerous jobs; his walk is perfect now.
Then he thinks of how long Arthur’s thighs had been the last time they’d slept together, Arthur riding him, head thrown back, and the feeling of his waist under Eames’ broad palm. He thinks of what those legs would look like in the four inch heels, muscle firm, and how his waist would curve just enough for the roundness of his hips to feel flush in his hands. How Arthur moves when he walks, with purpose and stride, and how the heels would mold it into something new but equally as dangerous.
He takes the box with him.
-
They worked well together, Mal said, and she sent them off into the world of dreamshare with a mile-long list of contacts while she and Dom tried on new identities, lovers and parents.
“It’s very different,” she told Eames, “being a wife. I don’t know how it will change me to be a mother.”
Eames wasn’t sure what to say, because change to him was a natural thing, not a struggle.
The jobs were good; technology was getting better all the time. New Somnacin blends left fewer aftereffects, and Eames didn’t miss the days-long hangovers or the synesthesia which made everything bright and loud.
Spending time with Arthur was just as much of a rush, and he loved the nights after the high crest of successful extraction, when he and Arthur would tumble into a hotel room with adreline spiking through their veins.
It was during those days that Eames started reconciling the heavy feeling in his chest when he thought of Arthur, immovable, stalwart Arthur, and how he could want Arthur with a fierce rush of possessiveness.
He had Arthur in his room, once, and was overcome with it, with the need to spread his affection until Arthur was glowing with it. Arthur was sprawling on his belly, Eames bracketed over him, hands pressing up against his skin between the bed and his hips.
“God,” Eames said as he let his hands slip up the sides of Arthur's glutes, squeezing lightly, “I fucking love your arse.”
Arthur laughed and wriggled his hips a little. “You charmer.”
Eames grinned and flipped him -- well, Arthur let himself be flipped by Eames -- and kissed him on the hip.
“I also love your belly,” he said and dipped a tongue into Arthur’s navel, making the man arch up and groan.
“Your knobby knees,” he said as he lifted one of Arthur’s legs and left a kiss on the inside of the joint.
Eames’ fingers caught on the hair on Arthur’s shins as he ran his hands up from Arthur’s ankle, and he leaned lower to nip at his Achille’s tendon.
“Your lovely ankles.”
He pressed a kiss to the arch of Arthur’s foot
“And I love your feet as well.”
Arthur was flushed by this point, cheeks pink, and he was smiling.
“You’re a big fuckin’ sap, you know that, right?” Arthur said, but he reached out and pulled Eames toward him.-
The front door opens wide and Eames’ hand is on his gun before he can see who the fuck just broke into his house. They’ve disabled the alarm system, he can tell, but --
“Eames, it’s me,” says a rough voice, deep, American accent.
“There’s something called a phone. I know you own at least three.”
Arthur steps into the living room and smiles a little weakly. His shirt is ripped and there’s a long stretch of abrasion on his side -- road rash, from being pushed out of a car or from jumping out of one.
He sways a little on his feet.
“Are they coming here?” Eames asks, getting up off the couch but not putting down the gun.
“No,” Arthur says, “I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t bring anyone here, wouldn’t come here if they were still.” His eyes squeeze shut and his mouth thins to a grimace.
Eames frowns as he considers that maybe Arthur’s lost more blood than it seems and steers him into the bathroom. He carefully pulls away Arthur’s shirt and works on getting his belt and trousers off.
“What happened?”
“I’m not doing shit inside a kid’s brain; that wasn’t in the description when I took the job.”
Eames gets Arthur to step out of his shoes and he pulls down his trousers. “I see. And?” He gently leads Arthur into the tub and picks up the handheld showerhead.
“His parents were less than pleased, and also owned a fucking security team.”
“This is going to hurt,” Eames says as he gets the water running to cool, and Arthur rolls his eyes. He hisses though, when Eames works to rinse out the mud and asphalt sticking to Arthur’s torn skin.
“Jesus, Eames,” he says when it’s over, when there’s just scraped raw skin and some stubborn pieces of rock left.
Arthur sinks down onto the closed toilet and Eames settles in on the edge of the tub with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a set of tweezers. He thinks of the long silver scar that runs over his left shoulder, the steadiness of Arthur’s hands when he field stitched him up.
This could be a favor, his debt absolved. If he wanted it to be. He starts slowly picking out gravel.
Arthur grits his teeth and doesn’t move.
-
Arthur sleeps for twenty hours and doesn’t leave.
It’s been two weeks and Arthur still hasn’t left. Eames doesn’t mind -- he’s happy to have Arthur sleeping, still and warm and a heavy weight next to him in his ludicrous bed. Arthur in the kitchen in the mornings, or watching television while he stays off his bad side.
When they fuck, it’s slow and languid and Arthur seems like he’s trying to draw as much of Eames inside himself as possible, curling around him and under him and kissing until they’re both breathless.
It’s everything that didn’t happen the last time Arthur had shown up at his doorstep.
-
Eames and Arthur don’t trade stories, but Eames isn’t sure why that is.
He thinks there’s a lot he could learn about Arthur, but Arthur doesn’t want to tell, and he isn’t sure if Arthur would trust anything Eames said about his past.
The third job together had been tense, snapping in the workspace and then fucking in the hotel, snarling and fighting and never being gentle.
It went well enough, except the building’s security had noticed intruders at the tailend, so they had to scatter. Eames found Arthur in the hotel room gathering up his laptop and his spare suit, and he pulled Arthur close and kissed him deep before heading out to the airport.
Then it was radio silence for three weeks.
Eames was upset, obviously. He’d liked, did like Arthur, liked the way he swore and the way he canted his hips when he was frustrated. But he chalked it up to something inscrutable about the other man; maybe Eames couldn’t read him after all.
So Eames was a little surprised to see Arthur at his door at the beginning of week four, face slightly reddened by the summer sun of Thessaloniki.
“Why didn’t you tell me where you were going.” Arthur says, arms crossed, face tight.
Eames let his posture relax in the door frame. “I would have if you’d called.”
Arthur frowned, the tense line of his body radiating anger. “If I’d called. What the hell are you playing at.”
Eames was a little confused and let it show on his face. “You seem to have found me all on your own, darling. I thought you’d call if you were interested, not barge in furious.”
Arthur tilted his head, frown still in place. “So are you interested then, Eames?”
Eames grabbed his face and pulled him for a kiss, swallowing a protesting noise and scraping his teeth over Arthur’s bottom lip. “Of course.”
Arthur trembled a little and said. “Okay. Don’t fuck with me like this again.”-
Four weeks in, it’s strangely domestic.
Eames comes home and starts depositing groceries into the fridge methodically. They cook routinely now, and it’s nice in a way eating take-out in a hotel suite isn’t. He’s expecting something to go wrong soon, a blow up or an argument over something bigger than whether or not Jonkers is reputable enough to take another job with.
There’s a note on the fridge in dry-erase marker telling Eames that Arthur should be home in a few hours, so Eames sneaks a cigarette in the kitchen. Arthur doesn’t like him smoking inside, but it is his house.
Then he hears a noise coming from the bedroom and he pulls out a gun from the silverware drawer.
He’s expecting maybe a burglar or someone he’s worked with come to seek him out for an unsundry purpose -- the noise isn’t loud enough to warrant more than one person.
What he doesn’t expect is a decidedly not naked Arthur standing in front of his lavish bedroom mirror -- and from the startled look on Arthur’s face he wasn’t expecting him home either.
“Darling?” he asks, and fumbles with the cigarette that almost slid out of his mouth.
So, the heels fit perfectly, as it turns out, and he drags his eyes up Arthur’s firm legs, encased in a dark hose, up to the dark and shiny panties, to the garter belt that rests on his hipbones.
“Do you like what you see, Mr. Eames?” Arthur asks, but he laughs when he says it and a blush curls up his cheeks.
When he bought the shoes, the appeal was the softening of Arthur, of bringing the boyish beauty to the surface. And he’s unbound here by the masculine, careful lines of his suit and even his hair is wavy and damp from a shower, not slicked back and controlled.
Eames realizes that’s not the appeal at all, at least not anymore.
It’s that Arthur’s wearing these things because he thinks -- he knows -- Eames wants him to. The thought makes his dick stir, that Arthur’s willing to do even this ridiculous thing.
And it’s the contrast -- the flat planes of Arthur’s pectorals and abs above the garterbelt. Solid thighs encased in sheer hose. Eames wants to bite at the pale strip of skin right above the stay-ups.
It’s not that Arthur’s legs now look like a woman’s, because they don’t in any kind of socially acceptable way, and his feet look too broad at the end of his ankles, but it’s the fact that they belong to Arthur that does it. That Eames didn’t even need to ask for this and yet receives it, that the legs belong to Arthur, a man who could be almost anything.
And right now, he is Eames’, to touch and pamper and pretty up, his beauty just there in the opulent decor of his apartment alone.
“You’re not quite finished,” Eames says and his voice is rough when he walks up and picks the waist cincher off the bed.
“I think I could get this tighter than you could on your own,” he says and Arthur ducks his head, smiling, and lets Eames splay a hand across his flat abdomen before slipping the black leather and metal over his skin.
Eames’ bed is heavy, ornate, with plliars of dark wood at all four corners and a rather nice footboard. Arthur’s hands are gripping the wood and Eames runs his own from the wings of Arthur’s shoulderblades to where the laces of the half-corset need to be done up. Eames does it carefully and thinks of stitches, of closing things.
Arthur lets out a little gasp as Eames pulls, tight, and he strokes, gentling, down his spine. “Breathe out, love,” he says and Arthur does and he pulls, pulls the cincher until the dark material has no gaps showing Arthur’s pale back. Holding all of Arthur in place for him. The swell of his ass is rounder now, and Eames places his hands over where his hips now flare.
“Eames,” Arthur says, breathy.
He turns Arthur around, hands on hips leading him, and crowds him against the bedframe. “Arthur,” he says against his mouth between kisses, “What do you want?”
Arthur bites at his own lip and looks up at him from under long lashes. His mouth is red, maybe he smeared some make up on before slipping into the shoes and the thought makes Eames groan and nuzzle at his neck.
“You’re the one who bought these shoes,” Arthur says, “so what do you want?” and Eames needs to be naked as soon as possible, so he lets go of Arthur a little reluctantly.
“Get up on the bed,” Eames says and he doesn’t bother unbuttoning his shirt before pulling it over his head.
-
Eames doesn’t often want sex in dreams, but when he does it’s with the crushing need to escape his own skin, to inhabit someone else for a while.
The first time they did this, Arthur found him in his own hotel room, PASIV on the bed and wild eyed.
“Please,” Eames said, “I need.” But he didn’t know.
He didn’t know if Arthur ever needed to crawl out of his own skin, to hide in someone else, to be someone else just for a respite. To get out of his own mind and into another.
“Okay,” Arthur said, “it’s okay.”
When they were under, Eames could tell Arthur was confused, but he dealt with it, held Eames’ new body and kissed his new lips anyway, a comforting solid presence wrapped around him.
Arthur never changed, though Eames knew he could.
-
Arthur tugs at Eames’ arm from where he’s settled on the bed, but Eames just wants to look at him some more. He’s standing on the side of the bed, and he can’t help running his hands up and down Arthur’s legs where they’re now smooth and silken and dark. The wanton eroticism of the stockings that end in the pointed toes of Arthur’s shoes, resting on Eames’ white sheets goes straight to his dick.
He gives in to his early urge and runs his tongue over the elastic tops of Arthur’s tights, and Arthur groans and lets his legs fall open. The silk of the underwear is another sensuous touch under his hand, and Arthur’s hips move encouragingly as he slides his hang over Arthur’s budding erection.
“So, you like this then?” he asks, making his voice a low rumble as he teases the crease of thigh and hip, running fingers under the elastic of his panties.
“I didn’t know you like this,” Arthur says, squirming on the sheets.
“How could I not?” And he won’t stop, can’t stop touching Arthur’s waist and hips and all the little new patches of skin that are suddenly extra sensitive
“You’re so beautiful like this,” he breathes over Arthur’s chest, watching his nipples stiffen. Eames reaches up and pinches one and watches Arthur move, arching his back. He likes watching Arthur catalogue all the ways his body moves differently, constricted.
“Eames,” Arthur says, and it’s a bit of a whine, “Please. Get on the bed.”
He palms over Arthur’s erection again and Arthur gasps. “Shit.”
“It’s nice, right?” Eames asks, and he leans over Arthur to run his tongue over the fabric covering his dick. “Something a little tawdry.”
Arthur grabs a handful of Eames’ hair and tugs in warning. “Get the fuck on the bed.”
Eames smiles and grabs Arthur’s wrist, presses it toward the bed, and then grabs the other, pulling his arms above his head.
“Now, now,” he starts, keeping his weight on Arthur’s wrists as he gets up on the bed, throwing a leg over him and caging him in with his thighs. “Where’s that nice, pretty Arthur who was here just a moment ago?”
Arthur doesn’t have any leverage, but he bucks enough to rub against Eames’ cock. The heat of Arthur’s thighs and the smooth tights under his ass are making him feel heady, an overload of textures. Arthur must be dying with it, his skin already sensitive.
“I don’t want to be nice,” Arthur says, eyes closing when Eames starts to rock against him.
He lets go of Arthur’s wrists gently and presses his own hands on either side of Arthur’s head, leaning close. “But you do want to be pretty, don’t you?”
Arthur’s cheeks go flush and he bites his lip to stifle a moan. Eames drags the backs of his fingers across Arthur’s warm face, runs a thumb over his lip.
“Tell me,” he says, and it comes out a rushed whisper.
Arthur bites, gentle, on his thumb and looks up at him. “I do like the shoes,” he says shyly, then kisses him. “They make me feel...pretty, I guess.”
Eames has never been more turned on in his life, ever. The blush on Arthur’s face, his little smile, the way he’s so unknowable and yet is still here, wrapped up in black silk and leather that Eames bought. Just for him. It’s a vision that he’ll never forget, and it’s so much better than how he imagined it. Here Arthur isn’t fighting it, is letting Eames take and have.
Eames reaches back and unsnaps the garters and settles himself between Arthur’s legs. He lifts one and kisses Arthur’s ankle, lips gliding across the thigh-highs. He then leans up, licking along the heavy weight of Arthur’s cock in those panties in earnest this time, sucking the head through the fabric and getting it wet.
“Christ,” Arthur says and props himself on his elbows to watch.
He curls his fingers along the top band of the panties and Arthur shivers, and that’s new and exciting. He slowly draws them down, sliding them over his cock and then down his legs until they’re off. Arthur is watching him, eyes dark and framed by long lashes and the tendrils of hair falling into his face.
Eames carefully snaps his garters back together. “Don’t want these to fall down,” he says and then licks up his thighs back to his cock.
“Eames,” Arthur groans and grabs fistfuls of the sheets.
“So pretty,” Eames says. “Did you know how pretty you could be?”
And the blush returns in full force as Arthur shakes his head, biting his lip. “I don’t. I’m not.”
“You are,” Eames growls and runs his fingers through Arthur’s hair, moving up the bed to press Arthur down with the weight of his body as they kiss.
Arthur is pliant and warm underneath him -- Eames moves his hands from shoulders to graze over nipples to rest at his newly slimmed waist. He loves it, this look on Arthur -- Arthur is built for this kind of treatment, to be made into something impossibly lovely.
Eames bites at his collarbone and Arthur whimpers. He’s uncharacteristically falling into the role, and Eames loves this new turn. He sits back again to gaze down at Arthur’s cock, bumping into the garterbelt, framed by black stockings and the black waist cincher. The feminine curve of his waist just makes it stand out more, dripping red and hot and hard.
He reaches out to find the lube, some condoms, in his bedside table and then settles in between Arthur’s legs again, running hands across the insides of his thighs to rest at the naked skin on top.
He slicks up two fingers and starts with that, letting Arthur’s legs fall open when he presses in. Arthur is an easy slide -- this is the normal part, the part that doesn’t make Eames shiver with newness.
But the way Arthur moans and shimmies his hips is a little new -- it has an edge that Eames wasn’t expecting. Arthur’s heeled left foot nudges up against Eames’ thigh and Eames slides in another finger, just because.
“Can’t wait to get fucked, can you? Must be why you’re all tarted up like that,” Eames says, and immediately expects Arthur to laugh or try to shrug it off. Arthur just rolls his hips and squeezes, making Eames’ breath catch in his throat.
“Dressed up like this, you’re just waiting for this, aren’t you?” He slips his fingers out and slides on the condom, slicking himself up and then sliding his cock into the cleft of Arthur’s ass, back and forth.
“Please, Eames,” Arthur says, grabbing at Eames’ arms. Eames grips Arthur’s impossibly thin waist .
“Just a pretty little slut for me,” Eames says and then he lines himself up and pushes in, slowly, teasing, until Arthur makes a broken, wordless noise. Eames shoves his cock, balls deep, and Arthur writhes.
Eames grabs Arthur under the knees and lifts his legs, and Arthur wraps them around Eames’ waist and digs his heels into Eames’ back.
“Fuck,” Eames says, “those shoes.” He’s still not moving, just enjoying the tight clutch of Arthur’s body and the feeling of stockings on his skin, leather under his hands.
Arthur presses them harder. “Exactly,” he grits out, “I want you to fuck,” and on that word his heels dig in sharp, “me. While I wear these fucking shoes.”
Eames can’t help but comply with that, and he pulls out as much as Arthur allows, rolling his own hips in circles until Arthur’s thighs are trembling and one of his own hands moves from Eames' bicep to his own cock, desperate and fast.
“Eames, c’mon, c’mon,” Arthur is begging, now, pleases and fucks and Eames’ name falling out of his red mouth and Eames hauls Arthur’s legs even higher, feeling the slide of Arthur’s stockings against his shoulders. A heel catches him once but it doesn’t register as pain, just bright feeling against his skin.
The callouses of his fingers catch in the hosiery as he folds Arthur in half and gives him what he wants, a punishing rhythm that has the blood roaring in his ears and blocks out the wonderful little noises Arthur makes at each thrust.
Eames barely registers the shudder through Arthur’s body when he hits orgasm because he wants Arthur to know how deep Eames can drive into him. He wants Arthur marked with his hands, and Arthur groans and pulls himself up to kiss Eames again.
It’s the rough hit of lips and teeth that it does it -- Eames’ hips snap twice and then he’s coming, hand squeezing Arthur’s right thigh and other hand cradling his waist.
When his vision snaps back into focus he sees Arthur smiling a little dazedly up at him and he slowly pulls out, lowers his legs.
“Pretty,” Eames says and runs a finger from Arthur’s temple to his chin, and then he hits the bed with a thump next to Arthur.
“Okay,” says Arthur. “How long --”
Eames cuts him off. “It doesn’t matter, now,” he says and then nuzzles Arthur’s neck, slotting fingers into the laces of the half corset around his waist.
“How long have you had these shoes?” Arthur finishes, but he smiles like he knows all of Eames’ secrets anyway.
He does.
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Men in heels.
Summary: Eames finds a pair of shoes that remind him so strongly of Arthur he has to buy them. It's a pair of knock-off Louboutins, and it turns out they're just the right size.
Author's Notes: Written for the i_reversebang challenge, inspired by androidiordna 's gorgeous art. Thanks to sorrynotsorry & gelbwax for being lovely and patient betas. Sorry it's a little late, but...you know, history.
Eames makes no secret of it -- he’s an admirer and collector of beautiful things. Of pretty things, even. It’s one of the reasons he turned to forgery.
He likes things that are elaborate and he likes things that are simple, because both can be fascinating and beautiful in their own way. Arthur is complex in the sense than he often frustrates Eames, is simple in the way he’s predictable.
Arthur is not what anyone would describe as ‘pretty.’
He is handsome, and well-dressed when he wants to be, and sometimes he is even beautiful. Eames can, and in fact does often, appreciate the aesthetics of Arthur’s tailored trousers, slim-fitting waistcoats, and well-polished shoes.
Eames thinks mostly about the aesthetics of Arthur when Arthur is in his bed, arching up in pleasure. Thinks he’s beautiful when his cheeks flush pink, when his hair tumbles into his eyes when Eames works to unravel him.
He thinks Arthur’s beautiful when there’s a glint in his dark eyes as he shoots off projections, when he grabs Eames by the elbow with zero hesitation and pulls him out of the line of fire. The way he’s full of a serene joy when they complete a job and it’s a success.
Sometimes there’s an ache in Eames’ hands when Arthur is near, a deep rooted desire to claim him for his own, to put him in a collection with small priceless paintings and decadent gems.
-
It’s in Rome, down some side streets off the Cavour stop, that Eames finds the boutique. It’s the shoes that catch his eyes, sitting subtly in a less-than-subtle display of flimsy lingerie on busty and smirking mannequins.
They’re bright red fuck-me pumps, and they’re just large enough that he decides to go inside.
Heels in men’s sizes aren’t the most outlandish thing he’s ever purchased, really, and the boutique owner just gives him an appraising look as he wanders to the side of the shop, where single shoes are all laid out in shelves. He’s sure he’s not the only rakish gentleman she’s served before, and he feels he’s past feeling self conscious about it.
The place has black walls and bright displays, a chandelier made up of empty lighters hanging from the ceiling. There are extravagant shoes, of course, but many look perfect for everyday wear. He starts pairing them up to his different personas. Those polka-dot espadrilles are perfect for a sun-dappled red head he calls Betsy. The kitten heels for a high schooler named May-Ying.
“Would you like to try anything on, sir?” the owner asks in English, smiling. He likes the Bettie Page look she’s got going on and makes a note to try it out for himself.
“I’ll let you know when I’ve found it, love,” he says. He can walk in heels in dreams, he knows, but he likes to perfect his craft. When his hips sway in the dream it’s all fabricated feelings, guesswork really, as to how his muscles would move, the way his feet would feel. A minute in a woman’s borrowed shoes probably isn’t the same as two hours on his feet in the things.
There’s a wide selection to choose from even without the most costumey, and he picks up a few low-heeled, sensible slingbacks to look at. But he’s not here to learn how to walk like a consummate professional. When he forges business women, most walk purposefully, with an intent to intimidate, not to seduce. That he can manage without the practice.
He picks out a pair of peep-toe heels, a rich chocolate brown color with about three inches of lift, and he appreciates their quality -- tiny seams, lovely fabric, solid sole. He’s seen oversized ones before, but most were suited to drag shows: plastic heels and little resemblance to shoes that live in a department store display.
He’s looking around for anything else he might like when a heel catches his eye. It’s not quite his taste -- a little too simple, and the red sole implies a price tag that he wouldn’t bother with just for forging practise.
But.
They’re classic. Black patent, slim heel, pointed toe, and Eames thinks of Arthur and his sleek frame, edges blurred with the curves of muscle. His sharp mind and sharp tongue and pink, bowed mouth.
“It’s good quality, yes?” asks the sales woman. “Not quite authentic, but,” and she shrugs, waving a hand. Eames wouldn’t have believed for a second they were authentic Louboutins, so he appreciates her candor. “For you, or for a friend?”
Eames thinks about the shoes he’s seen Arthur wear. Most are practical, dress boots with soft leather. He has some high-priced pairs that he pulls out when he needs to intimidate or he needs to blend in with a group of rich businessmen. He normally stays away from anything too shiny or eye-catching.
“A friend,” he says after the pause. “He’s a size 45.”
“A man, then. These run a bit small,” she says, “get him the size 46.”
He nods and sits down on the bench provided for customers.
“But,” she says as she moves from behind the counter, “you can’t simply buy just the shoes. That’s like giving half a gift.” She’s turning out the wall of the display to reveal piles of boxes marked in different sizes.
“What do you mean? And I’d like to try on these, in 48,” he says, lifting the brown peep-toes.
She nods, hunting through the boxes. “Does he have the right outfit for them? The right accessories? Are you planning to make an evening out of it?” Her smile is just teasing enough that he doesn’t feel ridiculous.
“I suppose he doesn’t have much to wear with them. That’s rather the point though,” he says and grins back.
She laughs and hands him two boxes. “It’s an art though, to wear those shoes. You seem like you’d know.”
He shrugs so she continues, walking through the stores to pull things off of shelves and racks. “I don’t mean a dress, alright? The art of wearing clothes like wearing nothing is what I mean.”
Eames is standing in his heels and it’s a small revelation, the way walking is different. They’re neither comfortable nor uncomfortable, but he can’t forget that he’s wearing them like he does in a dream.
The salewoman moves in front of him with an armful of silky looking black everything.
“I’ll take all of it,” he says, and she beams.
-
Sometimes Eames imagines what Arthur was like before he ever walked a dream. What they’d be like in a different life, if they’d met in a different way. If Eames had simply stumbled on Arthur like a treasure in a coffee shop or a college course, instead of learning about him in bits and pieces.
Eames, after all, is a different person quite regularly.
He’s seen a few pictures, because Cobb is a sentimental sap above all else and still keeps fading snapshots in his wallet. Arthur is smiling with his whole face instead of the sharp set of his teeth, an arm around Cobb’s now-dead wife.
Arthur in the photo is gorgeous in the way that only a young man can be, longish hair and not an expanse of muscle put on out of necessity, just his natural form taking bloom. Mals’ eyes are crinkled in mirth. Sometimes Eames thinks it’s a fake.
Eames met him years after that photo was taken, after the military that changed them both in ways that Eames hasn’t been able to tease out yet. Arthur, by then, was a man streamlined, all his gentleness eroded away by sand and wind and guns.
When they fell together, it wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t a hardship.
-
Eames knew Mal first, because she was in charge of the project he’d ended up assigned to, out of the army but still employed by the British government.
“I’m starting to really hate this boys’ club,” Mal said to him after their team ended a discussion meeting dissatisfied. They needed three women in the dream, and they only had two.
Eames shrugged. “You know I do what I can,” and she laughed at him.
“I know someone, but I don’t think he’ll be happy about it,” she said and pulled out her phone.
“Another forger?” Eames asked. He was curious -- he had yet to meet another person with his skill set, but everything was so new and exciting in the world of dreamshare he knew he couldn’t be the only one.
“He is a friend of my-- Of Dom’s. One of his students.”
Eames let it go, but the mysterious Dom had yet to make an appearance. From how Mal talked about him, he’d gathered that Mal and he were in some kind of relationship, and he had a protege who entered university on the GI Bill after several impressive tours overseas in special ops. He’d heard more about Arthur than he’d ever heard about any of Mal’s other paramours -- for a while he’d been convinced that Dom and Arthur were one miraculous person.
“Dom ‘Arthur’ Cobb?” Eames had asked, “what kind of man are you dating?” Mal had frowned and swatted at his arm, but didn’t correct him til later.
Eames will grow to appreciate Arthur’s bullish resolve, but his inability to be anyone but himself was grating at first. It’s something Eames will love, really, the immutable core of Arthur that made even his forges practically dressed and serious while at work.
He came into their office prepared with intel and spent a few minutes tearing down their supervisor’s plan bit by bit until the professor (one of Mal’s contacts, through her father) held up his hands. “You’re just here to forge, not retool the whole operation.”
“Well,” Arthur said, “I’m not going under until you can produce a plan that’s better than whatever the fuck you have now.”
The first time they went under, Eames just knew that Arthur had a stiff left arm and maybe a limp from an old injury, that he had a nice but forced smile. That he got his off-the-rack suits tailored. And that Mal treated him with a warmness that didn’t seem particularly deserved.
“So, let’s see the ladies,” the supervisor of the project said. In a few months the role will be redesignated to ‘extractor,’ but they were still on government money then. Nothing was standard.
Mal rolled her eyes and Eames let himself fall into the body of their subject’s sister, a leggy blonde with a penchant for astrophysics and a nose for trouble. He liked being her, feeling her curiosity and the energy that springs in her step, and was thankful she had a penchant for flats.
Arthur shifted in a way that Eames had never considered before, his form expanding out in a blur of halftone dots and then reassembling into a woman. She was shorter than Arthur by a few inches, and a tad slimmer. Less powerfully built, but she didn’t strike Eames as a pushover. Her hair was pulled back into a high bun, a sensible pinstripe skirt and a black blazer rounded out the look. Arthur’s face was fuller, but still a little recognizable until he blinked a few times, shifting his eyes to blue.
Maybe a sister. Maybe she was no one but Arthur. The woman Eames was becoming felt a little intimidated and didn’t like the look of Arthur, didn’t think they’d get along. Eames, though, felt a little fond of him at this new reveal.
The supervisor laughed at Arthur’s forge but Eames, already fading at the edges, really couldn’t imagine why. Arthur colored and looked away, annoyed.
“Where’d you find this stick in the mud, Mal?” the supervisor asked, and she scowled.
“He lived in the town we summered in,” she told Eames later, much later, and Eames laughed because no one in the business didn’t know Mal in some way.
“I thought I was dreaming when I saw him in Dom’s lab, all serious faces and stuffy clothes,” she continued. “He’s so different than the boy I knew, but he was still so Arthur.”
Later, much later, Eames would understand what she meant.
-
Eames moves after the Inception job, the job Arthur told him not to fucking take, because I don’t want you getting all caught up in Cobb’s bullshit as though getting tangled up with Arthur didn’t automatically mean that by default.
They all move, really -- it seems wise. As he packs up his flat in Mombasa, the one Arthur visits the most, he finds the dusty shoebox. Under it, the soft drawsting bag of accommodating hosiery and the hard lines of a waist cincher. The impractical, dark silk panties are there and he runs then through his hands before pulling the bag closed.
Looking at the shoes he at first feels foolish, thinking that the whole thing was a waste of money. His own pair proved quite helpful in numerous jobs; his walk is perfect now.
Then he thinks of how long Arthur’s thighs had been the last time they’d slept together, Arthur riding him, head thrown back, and the feeling of his waist under Eames’ broad palm. He thinks of what those legs would look like in the four inch heels, muscle firm, and how his waist would curve just enough for the roundness of his hips to feel flush in his hands. How Arthur moves when he walks, with purpose and stride, and how the heels would mold it into something new but equally as dangerous.
He takes the box with him.
-
They worked well together, Mal said, and she sent them off into the world of dreamshare with a mile-long list of contacts while she and Dom tried on new identities, lovers and parents.
“It’s very different,” she told Eames, “being a wife. I don’t know how it will change me to be a mother.”
Eames wasn’t sure what to say, because change to him was a natural thing, not a struggle.
The jobs were good; technology was getting better all the time. New Somnacin blends left fewer aftereffects, and Eames didn’t miss the days-long hangovers or the synesthesia which made everything bright and loud.
Spending time with Arthur was just as much of a rush, and he loved the nights after the high crest of successful extraction, when he and Arthur would tumble into a hotel room with adreline spiking through their veins.
It was during those days that Eames started reconciling the heavy feeling in his chest when he thought of Arthur, immovable, stalwart Arthur, and how he could want Arthur with a fierce rush of possessiveness.
He had Arthur in his room, once, and was overcome with it, with the need to spread his affection until Arthur was glowing with it. Arthur was sprawling on his belly, Eames bracketed over him, hands pressing up against his skin between the bed and his hips.
“God,” Eames said as he let his hands slip up the sides of Arthur's glutes, squeezing lightly, “I fucking love your arse.”
Arthur laughed and wriggled his hips a little. “You charmer.”
Eames grinned and flipped him -- well, Arthur let himself be flipped by Eames -- and kissed him on the hip.
“I also love your belly,” he said and dipped a tongue into Arthur’s navel, making the man arch up and groan.
“Your knobby knees,” he said as he lifted one of Arthur’s legs and left a kiss on the inside of the joint.
Eames’ fingers caught on the hair on Arthur’s shins as he ran his hands up from Arthur’s ankle, and he leaned lower to nip at his Achille’s tendon.
“Your lovely ankles.”
He pressed a kiss to the arch of Arthur’s foot
“And I love your feet as well.”
Arthur was flushed by this point, cheeks pink, and he was smiling.
“You’re a big fuckin’ sap, you know that, right?” Arthur said, but he reached out and pulled Eames toward him.-
The front door opens wide and Eames’ hand is on his gun before he can see who the fuck just broke into his house. They’ve disabled the alarm system, he can tell, but --
“Eames, it’s me,” says a rough voice, deep, American accent.
“There’s something called a phone. I know you own at least three.”
Arthur steps into the living room and smiles a little weakly. His shirt is ripped and there’s a long stretch of abrasion on his side -- road rash, from being pushed out of a car or from jumping out of one.
He sways a little on his feet.
“Are they coming here?” Eames asks, getting up off the couch but not putting down the gun.
“No,” Arthur says, “I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t bring anyone here, wouldn’t come here if they were still.” His eyes squeeze shut and his mouth thins to a grimace.
Eames frowns as he considers that maybe Arthur’s lost more blood than it seems and steers him into the bathroom. He carefully pulls away Arthur’s shirt and works on getting his belt and trousers off.
“What happened?”
“I’m not doing shit inside a kid’s brain; that wasn’t in the description when I took the job.”
Eames gets Arthur to step out of his shoes and he pulls down his trousers. “I see. And?” He gently leads Arthur into the tub and picks up the handheld showerhead.
“His parents were less than pleased, and also owned a fucking security team.”
“This is going to hurt,” Eames says as he gets the water running to cool, and Arthur rolls his eyes. He hisses though, when Eames works to rinse out the mud and asphalt sticking to Arthur’s torn skin.
“Jesus, Eames,” he says when it’s over, when there’s just scraped raw skin and some stubborn pieces of rock left.
Arthur sinks down onto the closed toilet and Eames settles in on the edge of the tub with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a set of tweezers. He thinks of the long silver scar that runs over his left shoulder, the steadiness of Arthur’s hands when he field stitched him up.
This could be a favor, his debt absolved. If he wanted it to be. He starts slowly picking out gravel.
Arthur grits his teeth and doesn’t move.
-
Arthur sleeps for twenty hours and doesn’t leave.
It’s been two weeks and Arthur still hasn’t left. Eames doesn’t mind -- he’s happy to have Arthur sleeping, still and warm and a heavy weight next to him in his ludicrous bed. Arthur in the kitchen in the mornings, or watching television while he stays off his bad side.
When they fuck, it’s slow and languid and Arthur seems like he’s trying to draw as much of Eames inside himself as possible, curling around him and under him and kissing until they’re both breathless.
It’s everything that didn’t happen the last time Arthur had shown up at his doorstep.
-
Eames and Arthur don’t trade stories, but Eames isn’t sure why that is.
He thinks there’s a lot he could learn about Arthur, but Arthur doesn’t want to tell, and he isn’t sure if Arthur would trust anything Eames said about his past.
The third job together had been tense, snapping in the workspace and then fucking in the hotel, snarling and fighting and never being gentle.
It went well enough, except the building’s security had noticed intruders at the tailend, so they had to scatter. Eames found Arthur in the hotel room gathering up his laptop and his spare suit, and he pulled Arthur close and kissed him deep before heading out to the airport.
Then it was radio silence for three weeks.
Eames was upset, obviously. He’d liked, did like Arthur, liked the way he swore and the way he canted his hips when he was frustrated. But he chalked it up to something inscrutable about the other man; maybe Eames couldn’t read him after all.
So Eames was a little surprised to see Arthur at his door at the beginning of week four, face slightly reddened by the summer sun of Thessaloniki.
“Why didn’t you tell me where you were going.” Arthur says, arms crossed, face tight.
Eames let his posture relax in the door frame. “I would have if you’d called.”
Arthur frowned, the tense line of his body radiating anger. “If I’d called. What the hell are you playing at.”
Eames was a little confused and let it show on his face. “You seem to have found me all on your own, darling. I thought you’d call if you were interested, not barge in furious.”
Arthur tilted his head, frown still in place. “So are you interested then, Eames?”
Eames grabbed his face and pulled him for a kiss, swallowing a protesting noise and scraping his teeth over Arthur’s bottom lip. “Of course.”
Arthur trembled a little and said. “Okay. Don’t fuck with me like this again.”-
Four weeks in, it’s strangely domestic.
Eames comes home and starts depositing groceries into the fridge methodically. They cook routinely now, and it’s nice in a way eating take-out in a hotel suite isn’t. He’s expecting something to go wrong soon, a blow up or an argument over something bigger than whether or not Jonkers is reputable enough to take another job with.
There’s a note on the fridge in dry-erase marker telling Eames that Arthur should be home in a few hours, so Eames sneaks a cigarette in the kitchen. Arthur doesn’t like him smoking inside, but it is his house.
Then he hears a noise coming from the bedroom and he pulls out a gun from the silverware drawer.
He’s expecting maybe a burglar or someone he’s worked with come to seek him out for an unsundry purpose -- the noise isn’t loud enough to warrant more than one person.
What he doesn’t expect is a decidedly not naked Arthur standing in front of his lavish bedroom mirror -- and from the startled look on Arthur’s face he wasn’t expecting him home either.
“Darling?” he asks, and fumbles with the cigarette that almost slid out of his mouth.
So, the heels fit perfectly, as it turns out, and he drags his eyes up Arthur’s firm legs, encased in a dark hose, up to the dark and shiny panties, to the garter belt that rests on his hipbones.
“Do you like what you see, Mr. Eames?” Arthur asks, but he laughs when he says it and a blush curls up his cheeks.
When he bought the shoes, the appeal was the softening of Arthur, of bringing the boyish beauty to the surface. And he’s unbound here by the masculine, careful lines of his suit and even his hair is wavy and damp from a shower, not slicked back and controlled.
Eames realizes that’s not the appeal at all, at least not anymore.
It’s that Arthur’s wearing these things because he thinks -- he knows -- Eames wants him to. The thought makes his dick stir, that Arthur’s willing to do even this ridiculous thing.
And it’s the contrast -- the flat planes of Arthur’s pectorals and abs above the garterbelt. Solid thighs encased in sheer hose. Eames wants to bite at the pale strip of skin right above the stay-ups.
It’s not that Arthur’s legs now look like a woman’s, because they don’t in any kind of socially acceptable way, and his feet look too broad at the end of his ankles, but it’s the fact that they belong to Arthur that does it. That Eames didn’t even need to ask for this and yet receives it, that the legs belong to Arthur, a man who could be almost anything.
And right now, he is Eames’, to touch and pamper and pretty up, his beauty just there in the opulent decor of his apartment alone.
“You’re not quite finished,” Eames says and his voice is rough when he walks up and picks the waist cincher off the bed.
“I think I could get this tighter than you could on your own,” he says and Arthur ducks his head, smiling, and lets Eames splay a hand across his flat abdomen before slipping the black leather and metal over his skin.
Eames’ bed is heavy, ornate, with plliars of dark wood at all four corners and a rather nice footboard. Arthur’s hands are gripping the wood and Eames runs his own from the wings of Arthur’s shoulderblades to where the laces of the half-corset need to be done up. Eames does it carefully and thinks of stitches, of closing things.
Arthur lets out a little gasp as Eames pulls, tight, and he strokes, gentling, down his spine. “Breathe out, love,” he says and Arthur does and he pulls, pulls the cincher until the dark material has no gaps showing Arthur’s pale back. Holding all of Arthur in place for him. The swell of his ass is rounder now, and Eames places his hands over where his hips now flare.
“Eames,” Arthur says, breathy.
He turns Arthur around, hands on hips leading him, and crowds him against the bedframe. “Arthur,” he says against his mouth between kisses, “What do you want?”
Arthur bites at his own lip and looks up at him from under long lashes. His mouth is red, maybe he smeared some make up on before slipping into the shoes and the thought makes Eames groan and nuzzle at his neck.
“You’re the one who bought these shoes,” Arthur says, “so what do you want?” and Eames needs to be naked as soon as possible, so he lets go of Arthur a little reluctantly.
“Get up on the bed,” Eames says and he doesn’t bother unbuttoning his shirt before pulling it over his head.
-
Eames doesn’t often want sex in dreams, but when he does it’s with the crushing need to escape his own skin, to inhabit someone else for a while.
The first time they did this, Arthur found him in his own hotel room, PASIV on the bed and wild eyed.
“Please,” Eames said, “I need.” But he didn’t know.
He didn’t know if Arthur ever needed to crawl out of his own skin, to hide in someone else, to be someone else just for a respite. To get out of his own mind and into another.
“Okay,” Arthur said, “it’s okay.”
When they were under, Eames could tell Arthur was confused, but he dealt with it, held Eames’ new body and kissed his new lips anyway, a comforting solid presence wrapped around him.
Arthur never changed, though Eames knew he could.
-
Arthur tugs at Eames’ arm from where he’s settled on the bed, but Eames just wants to look at him some more. He’s standing on the side of the bed, and he can’t help running his hands up and down Arthur’s legs where they’re now smooth and silken and dark. The wanton eroticism of the stockings that end in the pointed toes of Arthur’s shoes, resting on Eames’ white sheets goes straight to his dick.
He gives in to his early urge and runs his tongue over the elastic tops of Arthur’s tights, and Arthur groans and lets his legs fall open. The silk of the underwear is another sensuous touch under his hand, and Arthur’s hips move encouragingly as he slides his hang over Arthur’s budding erection.
“So, you like this then?” he asks, making his voice a low rumble as he teases the crease of thigh and hip, running fingers under the elastic of his panties.
“I didn’t know you like this,” Arthur says, squirming on the sheets.
“How could I not?” And he won’t stop, can’t stop touching Arthur’s waist and hips and all the little new patches of skin that are suddenly extra sensitive
“You’re so beautiful like this,” he breathes over Arthur’s chest, watching his nipples stiffen. Eames reaches up and pinches one and watches Arthur move, arching his back. He likes watching Arthur catalogue all the ways his body moves differently, constricted.
“Eames,” Arthur says, and it’s a bit of a whine, “Please. Get on the bed.”
He palms over Arthur’s erection again and Arthur gasps. “Shit.”
“It’s nice, right?” Eames asks, and he leans over Arthur to run his tongue over the fabric covering his dick. “Something a little tawdry.”
Arthur grabs a handful of Eames’ hair and tugs in warning. “Get the fuck on the bed.”
Eames smiles and grabs Arthur’s wrist, presses it toward the bed, and then grabs the other, pulling his arms above his head.
“Now, now,” he starts, keeping his weight on Arthur’s wrists as he gets up on the bed, throwing a leg over him and caging him in with his thighs. “Where’s that nice, pretty Arthur who was here just a moment ago?”
Arthur doesn’t have any leverage, but he bucks enough to rub against Eames’ cock. The heat of Arthur’s thighs and the smooth tights under his ass are making him feel heady, an overload of textures. Arthur must be dying with it, his skin already sensitive.
“I don’t want to be nice,” Arthur says, eyes closing when Eames starts to rock against him.
He lets go of Arthur’s wrists gently and presses his own hands on either side of Arthur’s head, leaning close. “But you do want to be pretty, don’t you?”
Arthur’s cheeks go flush and he bites his lip to stifle a moan. Eames drags the backs of his fingers across Arthur’s warm face, runs a thumb over his lip.
“Tell me,” he says, and it comes out a rushed whisper.
Arthur bites, gentle, on his thumb and looks up at him. “I do like the shoes,” he says shyly, then kisses him. “They make me feel...pretty, I guess.”
Eames has never been more turned on in his life, ever. The blush on Arthur’s face, his little smile, the way he’s so unknowable and yet is still here, wrapped up in black silk and leather that Eames bought. Just for him. It’s a vision that he’ll never forget, and it’s so much better than how he imagined it. Here Arthur isn’t fighting it, is letting Eames take and have.
Eames reaches back and unsnaps the garters and settles himself between Arthur’s legs. He lifts one and kisses Arthur’s ankle, lips gliding across the thigh-highs. He then leans up, licking along the heavy weight of Arthur’s cock in those panties in earnest this time, sucking the head through the fabric and getting it wet.
“Christ,” Arthur says and props himself on his elbows to watch.
He curls his fingers along the top band of the panties and Arthur shivers, and that’s new and exciting. He slowly draws them down, sliding them over his cock and then down his legs until they’re off. Arthur is watching him, eyes dark and framed by long lashes and the tendrils of hair falling into his face.
Eames carefully snaps his garters back together. “Don’t want these to fall down,” he says and then licks up his thighs back to his cock.
“Eames,” Arthur groans and grabs fistfuls of the sheets.
“So pretty,” Eames says. “Did you know how pretty you could be?”
And the blush returns in full force as Arthur shakes his head, biting his lip. “I don’t. I’m not.”
“You are,” Eames growls and runs his fingers through Arthur’s hair, moving up the bed to press Arthur down with the weight of his body as they kiss.
Arthur is pliant and warm underneath him -- Eames moves his hands from shoulders to graze over nipples to rest at his newly slimmed waist. He loves it, this look on Arthur -- Arthur is built for this kind of treatment, to be made into something impossibly lovely.
Eames bites at his collarbone and Arthur whimpers. He’s uncharacteristically falling into the role, and Eames loves this new turn. He sits back again to gaze down at Arthur’s cock, bumping into the garterbelt, framed by black stockings and the black waist cincher. The feminine curve of his waist just makes it stand out more, dripping red and hot and hard.
He reaches out to find the lube, some condoms, in his bedside table and then settles in between Arthur’s legs again, running hands across the insides of his thighs to rest at the naked skin on top.
He slicks up two fingers and starts with that, letting Arthur’s legs fall open when he presses in. Arthur is an easy slide -- this is the normal part, the part that doesn’t make Eames shiver with newness.
But the way Arthur moans and shimmies his hips is a little new -- it has an edge that Eames wasn’t expecting. Arthur’s heeled left foot nudges up against Eames’ thigh and Eames slides in another finger, just because.
“Can’t wait to get fucked, can you? Must be why you’re all tarted up like that,” Eames says, and immediately expects Arthur to laugh or try to shrug it off. Arthur just rolls his hips and squeezes, making Eames’ breath catch in his throat.
“Dressed up like this, you’re just waiting for this, aren’t you?” He slips his fingers out and slides on the condom, slicking himself up and then sliding his cock into the cleft of Arthur’s ass, back and forth.
“Please, Eames,” Arthur says, grabbing at Eames’ arms. Eames grips Arthur’s impossibly thin waist .
“Just a pretty little slut for me,” Eames says and then he lines himself up and pushes in, slowly, teasing, until Arthur makes a broken, wordless noise. Eames shoves his cock, balls deep, and Arthur writhes.
Eames grabs Arthur under the knees and lifts his legs, and Arthur wraps them around Eames’ waist and digs his heels into Eames’ back.
“Fuck,” Eames says, “those shoes.” He’s still not moving, just enjoying the tight clutch of Arthur’s body and the feeling of stockings on his skin, leather under his hands.
Arthur presses them harder. “Exactly,” he grits out, “I want you to fuck,” and on that word his heels dig in sharp, “me. While I wear these fucking shoes.”
Eames can’t help but comply with that, and he pulls out as much as Arthur allows, rolling his own hips in circles until Arthur’s thighs are trembling and one of his own hands moves from Eames' bicep to his own cock, desperate and fast.
“Eames, c’mon, c’mon,” Arthur is begging, now, pleases and fucks and Eames’ name falling out of his red mouth and Eames hauls Arthur’s legs even higher, feeling the slide of Arthur’s stockings against his shoulders. A heel catches him once but it doesn’t register as pain, just bright feeling against his skin.
The callouses of his fingers catch in the hosiery as he folds Arthur in half and gives him what he wants, a punishing rhythm that has the blood roaring in his ears and blocks out the wonderful little noises Arthur makes at each thrust.
Eames barely registers the shudder through Arthur’s body when he hits orgasm because he wants Arthur to know how deep Eames can drive into him. He wants Arthur marked with his hands, and Arthur groans and pulls himself up to kiss Eames again.
It’s the rough hit of lips and teeth that it does it -- Eames’ hips snap twice and then he’s coming, hand squeezing Arthur’s right thigh and other hand cradling his waist.
When his vision snaps back into focus he sees Arthur smiling a little dazedly up at him and he slowly pulls out, lowers his legs.
“Pretty,” Eames says and runs a finger from Arthur’s temple to his chin, and then he hits the bed with a thump next to Arthur.
“Okay,” says Arthur. “How long --”
Eames cuts him off. “It doesn’t matter, now,” he says and then nuzzles Arthur’s neck, slotting fingers into the laces of the half corset around his waist.
“How long have you had these shoes?” Arthur finishes, but he smiles like he knows all of Eames’ secrets anyway.
He does.