(fic) A Long Slow Collision part 12

[cicer]

FUCK YES I WROTE A SEX SCENE. And it only took me about 45,000 words to get there! I am such a winner, you guys.

Please enjoy this much-delayed chapter of pointless smut.



Exactly one week after the ultrasound, they’re back at her flat, eating Chinese takeout and watching bad television.

Eames chews his lo mein slowly and watches the pictures flash on the screen. It’s some kind of forensic detective show.

After he showed up with the takeout, Arthur had gone into the kitchen to get plates and cups while he’d flicked through the channels, trying to find a good program for them to watch. He hadn’t mean to settle on the detective show. He’d been looking for a news program, since he had it in his head that that was probably the best sort of thing to watch. The news was nice and impersonal, and seemed like it would be a nice complement to this slightly awkward dinner.

He’d paused at the detective show, and had meant to keep channel-surfing, but Arthur had stopped him. Evidently, she liked the sort of show that involved people wandering around picking hairs off of dead bodies.

Eames isn’t sure why this surprises him.

He’s becoming increasing aware that he’s been very stupid in his assumptions about what Arthur will and will not like. He keeps expecting that the whole pregnancy thing will change her somehow, that he’ll drop in to see her one day and she’ll be knitting booties or making a pie or something.

That hasn’t happened.

She hasn’t changed. She still can’t cook and subsides mostly on takeout, which Eames actually worries about a little, because probably the baby shouldn’t be exposed to that kind of thing. But she drinks a lot of juice, so maybe that evens things out, nutrition-wise.

Anyway, she doesn’t cook, and she keeps her flat clean, but she’s not nearly as anal about it as he would have expected. Eames inspected the place while she was out one day. Things are mostly tidy, especially in Arthur’s room, but there’s dust under the refrigerator, and the hall closet is an absolute mess of broken umbrellas and old shopping bags.

It’s sort of comforting actually, the same way it’s comforting to see Arthur in sweatpants and bare feet. She looks like a real person when she’s in her apartment.

Eames knew she was a real person, of course. It’s not as though he seriously thought she was some sort of android Cobb had commissioned to be the perfect point-woman. Logically, he knew that she must have her strange personal quirks and bad habits and things like that, but it’s something else entirely to actually see that sort of thing firsthand.

It’s quite attractive actually. Eames swallows a mouthful of wine and thinks about that.

It is attractive. Arthur wouldn’t believe him if he told her that, but it’s true.

He sneaks a glance at her out of the corner of his eyes.

She’s staring at the television, evidently riveted.

He can’t quite tell if she’s faking and just trying to avoid looking at him. If it’s an act, it’s an awfully good one. He swishes the remaining wine around in his glass, then drains it.

Arthur had dug the bottle of wine out of a cupboard and poured him a glass when she plated the takeout.

Eames had deliberately neglected to bring anything to drink, thinking it would probably be rude to indulge when she couldn’t. But she’d poured him a generous glass of the wine and shrugged when he looked at her in surprise. someone might as well enjoy it, she’d said, looking sadly at the half-empty bottle.

He knows that he shouldn’t be surprised that she still had a bottle of something kicking around in her flat, even when she couldn’t drink anything. Arthur likes wine.

Eames knows this from working with her before, from the few occasions when they’ve gone out drinking together. She likes red wines, Bordeaux primarily, and when she has too much to drink she gets delightfully randy. Eames makes a mental note to buy her a particularly nice bottle once she’s given birth.

…He probably shouldn’t think about that now. Eames shifts on the sofa carefully and picks at the rest of his food.

If there was ever a time it was inappropriate to get turned out, this is it. He’s hard pressed to think of a worse time; he’d rather get turned on while in church or while hugging his great aunt. Anything would be less potentially destructive than this.

He puts the glass of wine down.

Probably best not to have any more of that, he thinks. Getting hard while he sits next to Arthur, while she watches an autopsy on television, is very bad indeed. But ending up passed out drunk on her couch isn’t much better.

If he is attempting to demonstrate to her that he’s a decent, reliable sort of person who can be trusted with her and with their child, inappropriate erections and extreme drunkenness are not the way to go. Eames may not know much about the finer points of complex relationship, but he is very sure of this.

Arthur pushes the remainder of her sesame chicken away and puts the plate on the coffee table. She props her bare feet up on the edges.

Eames tries very hard not the stare.

He is not successful.

She’s wiggling her toes, probably unconsciously, since she’s still raptly attentive to the medical examiner on the television pointing out the bite marks on the victim’s wrists.

She has very nice feet, he thinks. Eames shifts again.

The whole thing would be a great deal easier if she weren’t so stupidly beautiful. If she had the decency to be bloated and acne-ridden and all the other things the pregnancy books say she should be, this wouldn’t be an issue.

But she looks very good. She’s only got a tiny little belly, but she’s filled out more in other areas. (Eames is not going to think about how her breasts are nearly twice as big now, he’s not). The extra weight looks good on her. She was always a bit on the twiggy side, but now she’s got curves, and Eames is sure he cannot reasonably be blamed for noticing.

He’s a perfectly healthy red-blooded male. Of course if you drop this lovely creature in front of him he is going to notice and he is going to think…well. Things.

Things like how the pregnancy book (Ariadne gave him her copy, and he’s had a careful look at it since) says that a lot of women get really, really horny in their second trimester.

Well. That gives Eames some ideas, and he has decided there’s nothing wrong with that. He can’t be blamed for his thoughts.

He’s not going to do anything, of course. He’s already thought that through. If Arthur thinks it’s best that they try to do this whole parenting thing platonically, that’s all right. Smart, probably. He’s not going to make any sort of moves on her, not now.

But if she actually wants to…well, Eames has thought about that too, and he’s had to admit to himself that, while he agrees that the platonic-thing is smarter in theory, if Arthur tells him she would like a session between the sheets, she will not have time to finish that sentence because he will already have taken off all her clothes and locked them both in the nearest bedroom.

(Technically, of course, they wouldn’t need a bedroom. Any flat surface would do. But she’s pregnant, after all, and he is a gentleman.)

It is possible that he’s thought entirely too much about this.

Eames plays with a fortune cookie and inspects it carefully.

He’s not much of a fan of the cookies themselves, since they tend to taste like plaster. But he does like the fortunes. More specifically, he likes collecting a bunch of fortunes and then playing the game where you come up with increasingly ridiculous and obscene suffixes to add to them.

He doesn’t think he should play that game now, though. Not when he’s already dangerously tempted, what with the wine and takeout and Arthur being right there and looking unfairly fuckable.

A commercial comes on, and Arthur gets up and stretches. Eames stares at the wall and tries to think about dead puppies, and gruesome car crashes, and the way it feels when he dies in a dream by getting shot in the stomach or pushed off a roof. It’s only mildly helpful.

Arthur collects the dirty plates and empty takeout containers. She points at his.

“Done?” she asks.

He nods mutely.

She takes his plate and disappears into the kitchen.

Eames tries to think other unsexy thoughts. The book Ariadne gave him comes to mind, of course. It’s very enlightening and fascinating, of course, the miracle of life and all that, but it’s also quite horrifying. Especially the parts about the actual birth.

(The birth itself is allegedly going to be painful on a level he is not equipped to understand. Eames feels sorry for Arthur and has already decided that he will make sure that she has all the drugs she wants, all the drugs in the world, when that time comes.)

In the book, there’s a chapter about episiotomies. Eames read about two lines, slammed the book shut, and thanked God that he had a penis. There were pictures, and Eames glimpsed one before he could shut the book and hurl it away.

He thinks about that little glimpse now, to try to keep his mind off of Arthur.

It sort of works for a while, because the idea of bloody, torn vaginas is really, really awful, but then his mind sort of cycles back to Arthur and her vagina, and then Eames has to go back to thinking about the dead puppies.

He shifts on the sofa again.

Arthur is puttering around in the kitchen, and he can hear dishes clattering in the sink and the sound of the water being turned on and then off again. A cupboard opens and then shuts. There's the soft padding sound of her bare feet against the tiles floors.

Dead puppies, Eames thinks. Dead puppies, dead puppies, dead puppies.

Probably he should turn some lights on. He's beginning to realize that it's quite dark in the room, and that sort of atmosphere lends itself much too easily to amorous encounters.

It's entirely accidental, of course. The sun was still out when he arrived, so Arthur hadn't turned any lights on yet, and then by the time they'd sat down and finished eating, the sun had gone down and the only light in the room was the faint bluish glow from the television and a thin stream peeking out from the kitchen.

More lights, Eames thinks. Yes. Except, if there's more light, then he'll just be able to see Arthur better, and that would not be helpful. It's a conundrum.

Arthur comes back out of the kitchen and sits on the couch.

The program has come back on and the killer is being confronted by the police, and it's all very dramatic, but Eames can't really think about anything except how good Arthur smells. He can actually feel her body heat. His thigh is only a few inches away from hers, and Eames is horribly tempted to do the old, clichéd, yawn-and-stretch and try to put an arm around her.

He thinks he should probably leave, because just sitting there and not touching her is getting to be genuinely torturous. But he really doesn't want to go.

Anyway, Arthur hasn't actually told him to leave yet, and that's very nice. She hasn't even started darting her eyes to the door, or fidgeting, or checking the clock, or making any of the other little gestures that would suggest that she wants him to go. She seems relaxed, actually, and Eames sort of wants to just sit there and watch her for a while.

The show ends, and the news comes on. Arthur watches half-heartedly, apparently not as interested in the stock market as she was in the dead bodies.

Eames watches her with considerably more interest.

Halfway through some human interest piece about a dog that saved a toddler from drowning, she glances over, and happens to catch him looking at her.

Eames is fully aware that the polite thing would be for him to look away and pretend that he wasn't staring, but he was never all that great at doing the polite thing.

Arthur tenses, very slightly, and watches him out of the corner of her eye.

"What," she says.

"Nothing."

It's probably the least suave answer he could give, but he doesn't have anything better to say.

Arthur's posture has changed, from something languid and casual to a sort of sharp awareness, but she doesn't move away.

She props her feet on the table again and studies the screen, but Eames can see that she isn't really watching it anymore. Her attention is focused on him, now, and that's perversely thrilling.

He wants very much to touch her.

"What are you looking at me for?" she asks quietly, after a moment.

"Am I not allowed to look at you?" He keeps his voice light, casual, but he doesn't think he's fooling Arthur for a minute.

Every inch of her body screams awareness, focus, the way it is when they're on a job and aren't sure whether or not they'll be shot at any moment. But she doesn’t seem afraid, exactly, or angry. Just tense.

“I didn’t say that,” Arthur says, after a long moment of silence.

Eames has been watching her so intently that he’s almost forgotten his question. She purses her lips.

“I said why are you looking at me.”

It’s a profoundly stupid question, and if it had been anyone other than Arthur asking, Eames would have thought they were fishing for a compliment. But Arthur isn’t like that at all, which means he needs to tread carefully.

A glib answer is on the tip of his tongue, something like, you’re by far the nicest thing to look at right now. It wouldn’t even be a lie, or an answer designed solely to flatter. It would be the truth, but Eames knows better than to say that.

“Why do you think?” he says, after a few seconds.

It’s an old trick, turn the question back on the person questioning you. Not very clever, but it’s all he’s got right now.

Arthur doesn’t say anything for nearly a full minute.

The news has changed, from the puppy story to something about a civil servant strike, but Eames barely notices. Arthur’s fingers are moving rhythmically on the sofa, picking at the seam. Eames doesn’t think she’s even aware she’s doing it.

She exhales slowly. “I don’t know.” She’s quiet for a moment. “What. What do you want?”

They’re not just talking about him looking at her right now, Eames knows that. It’s a bigger question, a more general, what do you want from me, and Eames draws in a slow, careful breath.

He wants to say, everything, because that’s the truth, and he thinks Arthur values the truth, but it would be too much right now, too much for this thin fragile moment that’s stretching between them.

“Whatever you want to give me,” he says, finally.

Arthur turns and looks at him fully, eyes wide, pupils blown, and she looks to excruciatingly beautiful that Eames really can’t do anything but kiss her, so he does.

Her mouth is soft and warm, and she tastes like sesame chicken and peppers, and he wants desperately to push his hand under her shirt and just feel her, every inch of her, her soft, perfect skin, the bullet scar near her shoulder, the jagged knife cut on her thigh.

Her hand reaches out, grabs his knee, and he can’t tell whether she means to urge him on or shove him away, but her mouth is pliant and she’s not actively trying to withdraw, so he pushes forward, tracing the seam of her lips with his tongue.

Then she’s kissing him back in earnest, shoving her body against his, nearly pushing herself into his lap. He grabs her hips and slides his hands up, shoving up her shirt and wrapping his hands around her narrow waist.

She’s so warm, and Eames stops thinking about this maybe being a bad idea. He stops thinking about the benefits of platonic co-parenting, stops thinking about anything but Arthur, under his hands, her legs tangling with his, and he’s hard pretty much immediately.

Of course she can feel it, and for a minute Eames is afraid that this is too much too soon, that she’s going to back off and push him away. Maybe she’s not ready for this; maybe she just wanted to kiss for a while.

But she grabs the collar of his shirt and yanks him closer, pressing her knee very lightly against his cock, just enough pressure to be somewhere between painful and exhilarating.

Eames laughs against her mouth, and pulls her fully into his lap.

She straddles him, her fingers tangling in his hair, tugging lightly and she pushes herself down on him, grinding slowly. He can’t help the muffled groan he gives at that. She’s panting against him, and he thinks that if he stripped off her pants and let his fingers slide between her legs, he’d find her wet and ready for him.

They should probably talk about this, or at least move to the bed, or something. But anything that involves moving Arthur away from his body sounds like torture, so he just yanks at the waistband of her pants, because there are entirely too many layers between them right now.

She helps him, shoving down her sweatpants and kicking them off. They fall over the coffee table, nearly toppling Eames’ empty glass of wine. She fumbles with his belt, the zipper to his pants, still mauling his mouth with hers, and Eames wonders wildly why he didn’t do this sooner.

The wonderful thing about Arthur (well, one of the many wonderful things) is that she is never shy about making it known when she wants something, and that is something Eames really enjoys in a lover.

Arthur never lies still and leaves him trying to sort out whether she wants it harder or slower, more gently or less. She tears into him like a hurricane, pulling off his clothes and dragging his hands to the spots where she wants to be touched, fucking her tongue into his mouth and grinding against him.

Her pants are gone, and Eames really does not care that they’re probably collecting fortune-cookie crumbs, somewhere under the table. He does not care about anything that is not her body against his, and he slides the thin fabric of her panties over her hips as her hand finds its way into his pants.

She pushes the heel of her palm against him and he bucks against her and practically tears her panties off. She kicks those away too, shoves his trousers down around his knees, and there’s a brief struggle as they both fight to divest themselves of their remaining clothes.

The television flickers, changing between programs. It’s very hard to see, but Eames manages to blindly unhook her bra while she frees herself from her shirt.

His trousers are probably somewhere across the room at this point, or perhaps they’ve flown out the open window, but he couldn’t possibly care less. Arthur is naked, beautifully naked on his lap, straddling him again, flushed and sweaty, her breasts bouncing right in front of his eyes.

He leans forward and sucks at one lightly, and Arthur hisses softly. Eames remembers vaguely something in the book that said that pregnancy is supposed to make women’s breasts extra tender, so perhaps this is too much for her, but she rocks against his thighs and he feels her wetness, and that dispels all worries that she might not be enjoying this.

He transfers his mouth back to hers, and she bites at his lower lip, rocking against him. He lets his fingers slip down, between her legs, pushing inside slowly.

Arthur makes a startled sound and arches against him, one foot slipping behind his knee and locking there so she can push herself down onto his fingers.

She’s so warm and wet, and her nails are digging into his shoulders, and Eames really, reallywants to be inside her, right now, but he’s not entirely convinced that he’d last very long, and he wants this to be good for her.

He also wants to get his face between her thighs, to nose at the thick curly patch that’s currently under his fingers.

Arthur pushes down against him again. Her inner walls and gripping his fingers slowly, rhythmically. Eames watches a bead of sweat trickle down her neck and over her collarbone, down to her breasts. He licks it off, slowly, and thumbs at her clit.

Arthur shudders as she comes. Her eyes flutter closed and her hips jerk, and Eames wants to watch her like this forever, wants to plug them both into a PASIV and relive this moment again and again until both their brains are fried.

He watches her shudder her way through her orgasm. She’s lax afterward, slumped against him, and it’s delightfully easy to take hold of her hips and move her carefully so that she’s lying on the couch and he’s between her knees.

She blinks at his slowly, languidly, her hair sticking to her face with sweat. She looks disoriented, and one of her feet moves over his thigh slowly, drifting toward his cock.

She’s so painfully lovely, Eames thinks. He’s so in love with her.

He closes his eyes briefly, and dips his head between her legs. She groans before his tongue even hits her thigh.

She squirms forward, into him, spreading her legs wantonly, letting him see every inch of her.

It’s really all Eames can do to keep himself from diving in, face first, but he takes it slow, tonguing his way over his thighs and stomach until she’s shaking, grabbing his hair.

There’s a stream of filthy nonsense coming out of her mouth, and she seems to be struggling to breathe.

“Fuck, fuck, just, fuck, do it, I want you to.”

He presses his lips to her stomach, just below the belly button where her stomach is starting to swell outward in a slow, gentle curve. He kisses her there and thinks about what it will be like when she’s bigger, when they can both feel the baby moving around. He thinks about what it would be like to make love her like that.

“What do you want?”

He can’t help it, he wants to make her say it. He bites at the inside of her thigh, lightly.

“I want,” she gasps, and wraps a leg around his waist, trying to drag him closer. “I want…fuck. Your mouth. I want you to eat me, I want…fuck, I want you to fuck me, I want that, fuck, Eames…”

Eames shuts his eyes, because for a minute, it’s just too much. He’s so hard it hurts, and he wants her so badly. He wants her in every way he can have her, every way she’ll let him have her, and it hurts.

Her voice is hoarse, and he wants to makes her scream, wants to hear her say his name like that, again and again, want to make her swear and cuss until she can’t say anything else.

He licks her, long and slow, right up to her clit. She makes a choked sound and cries out, her nails digging into the back of his neck.

She tastes amazing, rich and musky, and he sort of wants to just stay there for a while, tonguing her for hours. But more than that, he needs to be inside her, right now.

He looks up at Arthur, at her red, bitten mouth, her hazy eyes.

She sees what he wants somehow, because she spreads her legs wider, one of them falling off the sofa, the other draping lazily over his shoulder. She’s right there, pink and wet and shiny, and it’s too easy to line himself up and slide right in.

It’s so hot, and she’s so tight, it almost chokes the breath right out of him. She makes a soft, whimpering sound, almost like she’s in pain, but at the same time she shoves herself down so he’s fully inside her.

She rocks against him frantically, mumbling his name over and over, until the word almost loses all its meaning, and Eames can almost forget that it’s him she’s talking to.

He kisses her, and she unfolds against him so beautifully. She’s shaking around him, against him, and Eames wants to crawl completely inside her and just stay there, warm and safe, listening to the rapid beat of her heart, her ragged breaths.

That’s what it must be like for the baby, he thinks. The idea should really creep him out, but it doesn’t, not at all.

He wants to tell her that he loves her, and he almost does, but then she presses her mouth against his and tongues her way inside, and then he’s coming and so is she, and they’re both shaking together like they’re falling apart, like there’s an earthquake and the building is falling down around their ears.

When it’s over, he’s lying practically on top of her and her face is buried in his neck. He can smell her hair, her shampoo and perfume.

She’s so warm, and he’s still inside her. Eames thinks that he could fall asleep just like this, but he’s probably crushing her, so he moves back a little. He looks down at her face.

Her eyes are closed, but she’s still awake. Her breathing is uneven, and her lashes keep fluttering, like she’s not sure if she wants to go to the trouble of being awake or not.

He thinks he should probably move them both somewhere more comfortable, before they both pass out.

Slowly, he pushes himself up, slides out of her, and staggers to his feet.

Arthur throws a hand over her eyes, and makes a vague, disgruntled sound when he picks her up, but she doesn’t resist when he carries her into her bedroom, nudging open the door with a hip.

He deposits her carefully on the unmade bed and crawls in next to her. He puts an arm around her, carefully.

She lets him.

Onto the next part...

Next part will have moar pr0n. That's right. Fuck plots and character development! I'm going to write ALL THE PORN. \o/