(no subject)
part 1
Tim went to Dick. He climbed in through the window off the fire escape to find Dick hanging by his knees from a pull up bar. He swung back and forth, back and forth, picking up momentum.
"I've told you about that window, it's a security risk." Tim considered glaring, but Dick laughed bright and unbothered and Tim smiled in return. He sat on the couch and flipped through Dick's collection of music magazines and sketches of bodies in motion.
Dick extended an arm and propelled himself with a palm flattened onto the floor then bounded into three one-armed back flips. Tim sighed dramatically and Dick sprung on him, fake tickling and rubbing his long hair on Tim's face. "Let's go to a movie," Dick said, not bothering to get off Tim, his face pressed into Tim's neck.
"Ok," Tim replied easily. He didn't delude himself that he was only there for The Talk about Bruce.
Dick ran his nose from behind Tim's ear across his windpipe. "Maybe I should move home, you smell like Gotham."
"Are you saying I stink?"
Dick was laughing before Tim could finish. His thigh pressed across both of Tim's with his foot dangling over the side of the couch. The way he was laying left his hips completely open so that he was pressed flush into Tim. Dick was always shameless, a casual roll of hips, fingers under the edge of Tim's short sleeve so that his nail runs over the vein in his bicep.
"I miss you," Dick said for both of them, before he pressed open-mouthed kisses to the underside of Tim's jaw. The fingers popping Tim's fly were actually belated; Dick usually went for the pants first and the kisses and endearments afterward.
Tim didn't really even touch people if he could avoid it-if it wasn't subduing some criminal. He more than made up for this deficit with Dick's lewd writhing against him and the worshipful caresses on his cock. Tim tilted his head so he could kiss Dick's mouth, his eyes pressed closed because he couldn't look at Dick when he's so close. Dick always kissed like he'd never get another, tongue slipping against lips and teeth pulling at them. He made every kiss count. In this case enough to cause Tim to wilt against him, fingers twisting in Dick's hair and pulling without holding back. Dick's head snapped back as Tim came, throat exposed, and he didn't twist away from Tim yanking his hair.
The rest was inevitable, Dick biting at Tim's collarbone and coming in his own pants against Tim's leg with his scratchy sex laugh while Tim held his head back by the hair.
They didn't ever end up discussing the whole Jason thing on that trip. Tim couldn't bring himself to ruin Dick's mood.
*
Dick is in a cage. All in all, he doesn't look much the worse for wear. There's a toilet and a sink in the cage, a camp bed. Dick's playing a Gameboy sitting cross-legged on the middle of the bed when Jason ushers them into the backroom.
Dick glances up, he's got a split bruise on his right cheek and his hands are purpling with healing impact bruising. "Took you long enough," he says around a huge smile. His hair's shorter than usual, one side swept behind an ear, and he's wearing old jeans and a white t-shirt. He sets the game down and approaches the bars on bare feet.
"Your boyfriend needs to go." Jason flicks a thumb at Eames. Arthur watches him, assessing. Jason has always been unpredictable in a volatile way that discomfits him. Arthur likes to know where the cards lay, Jason's more of a fifty-two pickup kind of guy. Dick flicks his eyes over Eames in the deceptively casual way that makes people underestimate him. He's loose-limbed and his hands curl gently-he's ready to throw down. Unlike Jason, Dick's already dismissed Eames as vetted by Tim.
Because with Dick, of course, he's still Tim.
"Five count sound good?" Jason says, and Arthur can tell by the cant of his hips that he's about to start lobbing off batarangs. Eames is good, good enough to dodge the first three, but number four catches him in the stomach and deploys knock-out gas.
Arthur doesn't bother to smother the glare.
"Oh, there's the kid I know," Jason laughs, truly thrilled.
"He's going to be pissed, and I'm not going to stand between him and vengeance, just so we're clear." Arthur still has his gun in his hand, and when he looks over, Dick's frowning at it. Here we go, Arthur thinks.
"Don't tell me you couldn't have jumped between him and the batarangs, kid, no one's buying that." Jason rolls his eyes. "Like you want to air family business in front of a civvy." Which is true, of course. All of it. Some things are just too engrained. Even if Eames knows, Arthur's not going to flagrantly discuss this shit in front of anyone. Not even that anyone. Not all these secrets are Arthur's.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but this isn't how I pictured this going," Dick says to Arthur. There's humor under the words, he's not particularly bothered by all of this. Why would he be? This is a normal Thursday for him, at least there's no tentacle rape involved.
Arthur looks down his nose at Jason. "Cut the shit, what do you want?"
"What do I ever want? For someone to acknowledge all the goddamned good I do that goes unrecognized. Who picked off the escapees the last time Arkham imploded? Who took down those sex traffickers? Who-"
Dick cuts him off. "You blew The Riddler up! You tortured those Russians before you made them shoot each other. Tell me how that's something you should be thanked for." Dick runs a hand through his hair and huffs out a breath. He's about to work himself up into a righteous frenzy. The thing is, he really genuinely believes that Jason is worse than the criminals he puts down, and he feels a mélange of guilt, grief, and disgust about Jason's actions.
"Do you want to know what those sick fucks did before I took them down?" Jason's shouting now. He points a finger at Dick. "No, you fucking don't because you've always been protected from the really seedy parts of this gig, right? Not precious Dick, no. Open your goddamned eyes, there are worse things than dying."
"Cry me a river, dickhead," Dick barks. "I know what rationalization sounds like, have you met my role model? Blah blah blah, you had it hard and now you're acting out like the spoiled brat you are. Have you ever thought about us?"
"ALL I THINK ABOUT IS YOU." Jason's face is reddening. The violence is about to commence.
Arthur shoves Jason back from the cage with a palm flat on his chest. "Do you ever get tired of running round and round on the hamster wheel?"
Jason doesn't move to break his arm or sweep his feet out from under him. He's breathing hard and has one corner of his mouth caught in his teeth like he does when he's more desperate than usual. "Dick's not going to change," Arthur keeps his voice calm and steady, "you're not going to convince him." He knows this all too well.
"Wait, are you taking his side?" Dick wraps his hands around the bars and laughs angrily. "Et tu Timmy?"
"For fuck's sake." Dick is just about the only trigger Arthur has that's automatic and unrepressable. "How many times do I have to prove my loyalty?"
"Sing it, sister!" Jason's face falls back into his simmering rage configuration. Arthur drops his hand to get a bit of distance from him.
Arthur watches Dick. Finally Dick tilts his head and says, "Ok, that was uncalled for, I'm sorry." He drops his hands and wanders to the back of the cage, pacing, face towards the floor out of contrition and guilt.
And this, this whole fucking circus sums up their entire lives.
"Have either of your ever thought about, I don't know, moving the fuck on?" Yeah, he's angry now. Old anger pops up from time to time. It's also unfair since Dick's tried to get away, of course. Several times. He's a runner, that's his solution to everything, but his running away is just sulking because he always comes back when Bruce calls. Like a human yo-yo.
"Is that what you've done?" Jason turns the rage on Arthur. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like your entire life is an attempt to pretend the rest of us away. That's not moving on, that's denial."
"From where you're standing in Crazyland, you mean?" Dick automatically deflects Jason's attention back to himself.
"I can fight my own battles, Dick," Arthur blows out a breath.
"Oh yeah?" Jason's witty retort is cut off when the lights suddenly go out.
Arthur falls to a crouch, one finger on the ground in front of him and his safety off. "Let Dick out of the cage, I need the antidote to the knock-out gas, and we all need masks." He runs in a crouch to touch his fingers to Eames's throat to check his pulse.
"You're not the boss of me," Jason says, but he's laughing. Because they're all in peril for their lives.
The mask and syringe land at their feet. The mask goes on first.
Dick's instantly in his space, hovering. "It'd be better to keep him out, you know that."
"No, it really wouldn't." Arthur, of course, was prepared for this scenario, Eames ending up in the middle of some heroing drama, a long time ago. A lot longer ago than his brothers would ever understand. "Get me another mask," he shouts at Jason, who's scampering around preparing for maximum lethalness.
There was time when Jason's crazed laughing set the hair on the back of his neck off, now it's oddly nostalgic.
*
When they worked with other people-Dom and Mal mostly-they were completely different people. Arthur became efficient, precise, particular. Eames became something of a spoiled brat whose toys had been taken away.
They poked and prickled at each other to keep the casual touches to a minimum. Arthur would find himself staring as he pored over spreadsheets, his eyes focusing as if on a lodestone. Eames was always looking back.
"Look, I'm only going to bring this up the once," Dom cocked his hip against Arthur's desk one time. Arthur looked up at him and extended his legs in front of himself. He turned one ankle and rocked it. He thought it was funny how Dom always used his size to impose himself on people. Like a couple inches of height made any difference. "Whatever's going on with you and Eames, I don't want it to fuck up the job. Handle your shit, that's all I'm saying."
"Yeah, ok," Arthur said, his face neutral. As Dom walked away Arthur wondered what it was like to be that clueless, to honestly believe you're in charge of a situation you don't even know the real name of. Arthur had seen people like that his whole life and wondered what that kind of absolute certainty felt like. Being an extractor didn't make Dom the leader of the team, but for some reason he fundamentally believed this to be true. This was a little like the concept that the person penetrating during a sex act was the dominant partner. That was to say, a naïve concept.
Arthur cast his eyes back to Eames. He was sketching something on the back of a paper bag, ink bleeding over his fingers and his right cuff carelessly unbuttoned. There were fingerprint bruises on his neck, and this was the real world, so that meant someone had tried to strangle him to death, not subdue him for a kiss.
*
Arthur crouches over Eames and covers his mouth with his hand. In the red glare of the safety lights he watches Eames's eyes snap open. "This isn't how I wanted this to happen," he whispers. Eames doesn't twitch a muscle. "It was inevitable, though." Arthur knew that. It was going to come out, he's always known that. He should have confessed the hundreds of chances he got, but being stubborn isn't something you can cure.
He lets Eames go and produces the domino Jason gave him. "It sticks with this," Arthur touches the polymer with his fingertip and presses the mask to Eames's face. He suppresses any reaction to seeing Eames's face like this, with his mouth crooked in disgruntled amusement and one eyebrow up over the mask in the garish light.
It's been exactly twenty seconds since the lights went out. He pulls Eames up with their hands clasped and trusts him to handle himself as the windows along the ceiling implode, glass flying everywhere. Ropes fly in the gaping holes in the walls and men start repelling down.
"Didn't you hear? Gate crashing is so last year," Dick shouts from behind Arthur and there's a flurry of movement as he shimmies up to the catwalk to begin karate kicking people in the face with his bare feet.
Jason's shooting the ones clambering in the other wall, counting as the bodies fall in an eerily bored tone.
"I will have you know that what I want most in the world right now is to pull my totem out of my pocket and then shoot myself in the head to wake up," Eames murmurs as he passes Arthur to take up a station by the back door.
"I've had the same exact thought more than once, trust me," Arthur takes the other side of the door, gun held in both hands in a lowerd position.
The discordant strains of a jack-in-the-box echo from outside, so Arthur knows what to expect when the bombs rain through the windows trailing smoke. Arthur kicks the back door open without giving a count with his face pressed in the crook of his arm.
Outside, purple-clad goons with green dreadlocks stack kindling against the building. It's snowing, the fat, heavy sort of snow that ices your hair.
"Are we killing these henchmen or are we fleeing?" Eames asks in a neutral tone. In the yellow street light he's washed out to pencil-sketch black and white, a streak of blood across his cheek above his beard where he was caught by shattered glass; he appears rendered in graphite.
Arthur watches Dick nimbly scamper out a window and up onto the roof, he waves at Arthur, his face obscured, bare feet leaving prints in the snow. "We leave. I wouldn't call it fleeing." He holsters his gun, securing the snap, and listens to Eames's tread on the concrete next to him. "They're just playing around," Arthur shrugs one shoulder at the crazed men singing jauntily as they prepare to torch the building.
"Not that I'm usually a law and order type, but arson's pretty dangerous. Perhaps we should stop them?" Eames touches Arthur's elbow.
The mask feels more comfortable than Arthur wants to admit, so he pulls it off. "They won't set the place up. They won't get a chance." They'll all be dead before that; Jason takes being attacked personally.
"I see," is all Eames says.
They're back in the car before Eames pops the mask off of his face. He starts to laugh as he slides the key in the ignition.
"Adrenaline high?" Arthur knows the feeling all too well.
Eames twists his body so that his shoulders are against the car door and coughs to choke down the laughter. "Are you actually serious?" The smile doesn't melt as Arthur just stares at him. "No, funnily enough, I'm laughing at the absurdity of this farce. Are you really going to attempt to pretend that none of that just happened?"
No, he's not going to do that, but he was going to let the time stretch out a bit before he really had to have the conversation he's avoided all this time.
Something must show on his face because Eames stops smiling. He makes a click in his throat, something he only does when he's himself and earnest about something. "Oh, Arthur, don't be absurd, of course I knew."
His stomach feels like he's falling down an elevator shaft. He clears his throat. This is the moment he's painted himself into. "I know."
*
Something Arthur always knew, is that no matter how difficult something appears, practice will subdue it. He wasn't born knowing how to do a flying leap kick or pick a safe. He taught himself. Later, he was taught by others who were-at that time-better than him.
Gambling was never an interest of his. Of course he knew how to play cards, because the Titans had canasta tournaments and Dick loved to palm cards and try to cheat him out of the tiger balm packets ante. But casinos, in his experience, had always been a working environment.
"You need to relax." Eames placed a tumbler in front of him.
"I don’t drink." He sniffed down his nose and looked over Eames's shoulder at the ladies in evening gowns playing fan-tan.
"In the other world, perhaps." Eames nudged the glass towards him. He smelled like the crisp outdoors and cigarette smoke, distracting considering he was pressed against Arthur at hip and thigh. "Make this easy on me," Eames whispered close enough to his ear to be delicious but not enough to touch.
"Make what easy on you?" Because doing so wasn't in Arthur's repertoire.
Eames's fingers creeped under the French cuff of Arthur's formalwear. He pressed a finger into the space between his wrist and hand. The gesture was jarringly intimate, somehow more daring than a kiss.
They were going to be in Macau for three months. Ostensibly, Eames was teaching Arthur to be a deft cheat for a job. The truth of the matter was that Arthur could fake that without any effort. He had liked the idea of high-end hotel suites and Eames in a tux swanning about like James Bond's sleazier brother. His real life was a series of negotiated difficulties, asleep with Eames was all one-liners and easy.
He knew exactly what he was getting himself into. But only here, while they slept.
He took a sip of the drink, amaretto too sweet on his tongue.
"I like the taste of that," Eames murmured in explanation.
*
The reason that Arthur ever let Eames in to begin with is that Eames knew his secret and kept it. Take the Fischer job-there is literally no one else on earth that Arthur would have allowed to helm a third dream level while Arthur remained on the second.
Ok, maybe Kal-El if he took up dreamsharing.
Arthur's trust in Eames in the dreamscape is absolute. Which is why he indulged himself with everyone else in the room asleep, a smile and some shared affection when Eames went under. The real world was a different matter. Arthur has compartmentalized this relationship, the same way he keeps people from his old life away from the new one.
Arthur's not in the mood to revisit all the tense car rides of his teen years. "There never seemed to be a right time."
"And by that you mean you were scared to get involved in this world." Eames sometimes speaks ridiculously like that, but Arthur thinks that way himself, so he's hardly going to be critical of it. Dreamspace is hardly the only other reality he knows about.
"If you want to get under my skin by picking a fight, you're going to have to work harder, the precedent's been set."
"I'm not picking a fight, but I can, if that's how you want to do this." Eames shifts lanes to avoid an idiot changing their tire in the right hand lane instead of calling AAA.
Arthur wonders just how much it is Eames knows. And how. He'll find out shortly, so he leaves that alone for now. "I don't want to fight." He doesn't usually want to, but that's how things go.
"You think on your feet, so you've processed what's happening already. I'm not going to just walk away and make this easy on you if you want to run away. As you say, the precedent's been set." Eames speaks in the clipped way of his that's all him and not some face for a mark or a job.
Arthur laughs and rubs his eyes. The mask is heavy in his pocket. "Are you kidding? Running away when someone's chasing you is useless. Get a wall behind you and bring the fight to them."
Eames flicks his eyes off the road towards him. "Has anyone ever told you that you might be a charming sociopath?"
"You just met my family. The thought has crossed my mind."
Eames brushes the back of his knuckles over Arthur's cheek while Arthur watches the side of his face. He's lost the beanie. The cut on his cheek is already clotting.
They pass the rest of the ride in silence. Dick texts him as they turn down Eames's street. My feet r cold. U finally brought him homw!!!
When he slides the phone back in his pocket and out of the car, Eames presses him to the wall of the garage, his bulk sliding over Arthur's front as Eames holds his head in both hands and stabs his tongue into his mouth. This isn't the casually familiar sex, a tumble and a tumble like it is with Dick, there's a franticness about Eames that doesn't suggest the number of times and the permutations of them doing this. But none of those times were real.
Eames holds him in place with his hips and weight, and the need to get away, to knock Eames down trembles through Arthur. His training is muscle memory, more than reflex, innate at this point. Eames shoves harder, like he can hear Arthur's thoughts. He twists his head to alter the kiss, his tongue fluttering just into Arthur's mouth over and over, maddening, and Arthur's thoughts turn to twisting his head away to get his own tongue in Eames's mouth.
A low groan vibrates out of Eames's chest into Arthur's. Eames stops kissing him. "Do you want to fight me?" he whispers against Arthur's mouth. Delicate licking at Arthur's bottom lip follows, punctuated with Eames kicking his feet apart more.
In that second, Arthur could fight him. He knows exactly how to bring Eames down with minimum effort. Instead he licks across the cut on Eames's cheek, unconcerned of the possibility of glass slivers on his tongue. The thrill of post-job blood in his mouth sends his pulse still higher and his fingers shake with adrenaline.
Eames groans again and drops to his knees. He undoes Arthur's belt with more efficiency than his previous behavior would indicate. "We're going to spar later." His tone of voice is familiar, Eames's sex voice, which should be bottled.
Eames sucks through the layers of Arthur's clothes, hard enough for Arthur's hand to grab the back of his head to press him closer. Arthur helps shove his pants down with his free hand and has to let Eames back off for the sake of the goal. Eames looks up at him. "As I was saying, later we're going to spar until I'm black and blue. I've been pleasuring myself to the thought for long enough. I'd be ashamed if I had the inclination."
"Why do I always get the talkative ones?" Arthur jerks Eames's hair. That gets a laugh out of Eames and a tongue on the head of his cock. This is real, he thinks when Eames stops teasing and sucks him inside. The feel of Eames's lips stretching brings on panting and lip biting from Arthur.
Pulling Eames's hair makes Eames moan which creates a loop of more pulling and more moaning, and Arthur doesn't even try to hold back from fucking Eames's face, from tapping on the back of his throat to feel the forbidden contraction. He looks down and Eames is looking up at him, his eyelashes dark from tears from gagging, and, predictably, he comes without even a shouted warning.
Of course, he instantly feels guilty when thoughts flood back into his head. Eames is blithely jerking himself off while fondling one of the dominos and doesn't bother to see Arthur's moment of regret. Because it's only momentary considering what Eames is doing.
*
They never fucked in the dreams unless they were alone. They both had a level of professionalism that other people thought of as overkill, but dedication to perfection was what drew them to each other to begin with.
Eames knew that Arthur liked him dressed well, all very stereotypically as a country gentlemen, and Arthur knew that Eames liked to see him rumpled, barefoot, with a stretched collar or a hole in his sleeve. They bent each other's way when they were alone and dreaming. Arthur didn't have to pretend to be anything but slavishly devoted to someone else's needs for a while when they dreamed. Eames could discuss game theory and quantum entanglement without worrying he was breaking character. They were themselves without a lifetime of other people's expectations.
Once the sex started, it always came first. How did I get here? and Where's Eames? one thought following another like a heart clenching and releasing.
Sex in dreams is different from in the waking world. People's preferences say more and less about them personally, depending on whose mind you were in. In Arthur's mind, they fucked in allies behind dumpsters, the night hugging them with a clammy chill as car sirens went off in the distance and cats hissed at them. In his dreams everything was furtive, Arthur on his knees almost gagging, scratching red lines on Eames's belly always with the nagging feeling they were being watched. Eames dreamt them lounging on pallets in a fantasy opium den, their movements languid with drugs, Arthur's orgasms indolent and skating away from him. In Eames's dreams everything was a long summer afternoon of lawn bowling and making love al fresco while peacocks eyed them with hostility.
Arthur once dreamt Eames fucking him in the control room of the Justice League's satellite. He'd been careful not to touch any of the console buttons and to watch the monitors. Eames held him down with a forearm braced below Arthur's shoulder blades and called him naughty boy and strumpet and instead of being ridiculous, Arthur shook apart. He pressed his face again the cool glass of the closest monitor and let the moans out. The shame made it all so much better.
*
"Now you're going to tell me the story of how you liberated the PASIV." Eames blows on his milky tea while reclining on the couch and watching Arthur working on his laptop. Alfred had delivered his stuff earlier, along with a batch of the cookies he likes. He'd lifted an eyebrow and said, SAS? Really, Master Arthur? before fading back to the Manor.
"If you tell me how you figured out my secret." Arthur isn't huge on unnegotiated sharing.
"Honestly, how no one else ever has is beyond me. I'd seen you in the papers, of course. I knew Richard Grayson the same way, and the fact that he's a persistent projection for you would have given that up to anyone who paid attention. Luckily, the vast majority of humanity is too self-obsessed to pay much attention to anyone else." Eames has a deep tendency toward misanthropy, but this is strictly true and something Arthur agrees with. Eames is drinking a hot beverage while sprawled naked and halfway supine; Arthur watches waiting for the scalding with eager anticipation.
"Not that part, the secret. I agree about hiding in plain sight."
Eames makes his clicking noise. "The correlation between Bruce Wayne adopting a child and there being a new Robin in the Gotham night is one to one."
Arthur laughs, his head droops onto the back of the chair and his computer jiggles almost onto the floor. "Why has no one else ever noticed that?" Why? Arthur had himself found it not all that difficult to piece together Batman's real identity, and he's often wondered how many other people have. Eames, for one.
"In my experience, the citizens of Gotham defy scientific rationalism. Who chooses to live in a city where the boobyhatch for serial killers is regularly sprung?"
"You do." Arthur watches Eames sip his tea. Bruce.
"Quite," Eames rests his cup on his chest. He smiles as he braces an arm behind his head to sit up a bit more.
The scene feels comfortable, and Arthur knows that's because it is. Reality isn't always that different from dreaming, which is why people get lost in the dream. Arthur closes his computer and sets it on the table. "I'll tell you about the PASIV, but there are other people in this story, so I'm extending my trust."
Eames's dick twitches on his thigh. Arthur laughs and Eames's interest increases.
*
Tim got his chance when Bruce disappeared for the latest round of Justice League drama-Luthor's latest Superman-related diabolical plan involved bribing senators, but when that didn't work he unleashed the radioactive ants. Tim had several plans and backup plans for tackling Star Labs. He'd cultivated assets there and knew he could get in and out without a problem. All of that went off without a hitch; he was too good for there to be a hitch.
He stole the tech, destroyed all information relating to it in the computer system, uploaded the files he'd faked of slightly altered schematics that wouldn't ever work, and planted a few strategic bombs for good measure. All of that took about ten minutes.
The variable in his plan was, of course, Kon.
"What's up, dog? Or I guess bird?" Kon had his own place, but he stayed at the Tower most of the time anyway. But Tim knew he'd be home that night because it was Kory's night to cook dinner. He stepped back from the door when Tim pushed at his chest with the palm of his hand. "What's that?" Kon pointed at the case, much larger than what it would evolve into, and chomped half of his apple at once.
"It's the Brainiac tech I told you about." Tim set it on the floor by the couch. "I'm going to need to stay with you for a few days."
Kon was silent, which said as much as his babbling could. "Where's the rest?" Kon finally asked when Tim turned to lift an eyebrow at him.
"I blew it up." He settled on the couch gingerly because he had a crack in his left hip from being tossed four stories the week before.
"You. Blew. It. Up." Kon whistled. "Dude, he's gonna be so pissed! There'll be heavy silences and death glares and judgey thinking like whoa."
"Yeah, that's why I need a place to stay." Tim laughed at the look on Kon's face, always so transparent.
"Not that I don't think I can take an ass kicking from the Bat, but why not your brother?" Kon just wanted to preen a bit that he was chosen as the safe harbor.
"Don't want to put him in the middle of it." Which was one part of the truth, but he also didn't want to see the look on Dick's face, see him worry, see him disappointed.
"Oh, but me, whatever, right? I can be in the middle of it." He rolled his eyes and tried to look angry. Mostly he just looked excited.
"He doesn't like you anyway," Tim said and smiled when Kon lurched towards him in a tackle.
*
"I hate to mention this, but you were distinctly unsuccessful in arresting the adoption of PASIV technology." Eames crouches by the fireplace with the poker, he's conceded to the weather by putting on soft, grey flannel pajamas and wool socks.
Arthur smiles. "Well, that is a whole other story involving one of my prototypes being stolen by The League of Shadows, a mistimed pizza run, and several persons with ADHD."
Eames stands up and motions towards him with the poker. "Are you trying to sell me on a story where someone stole something from you?"
The pleased contentment at being respected for his true worth is warming. "Hell no. Some of my friends." Roy and Bart and Kon with a little help from Kory blowing up the kitchen.
"So what you're saying is that dreamsharing only exists because some former child sidekick heroes were famished?" Eames makes his this is bullshit face.
"What I don't understand is why you think this is the unbelievable part of the story." Of course he does, farce always pings people as falsehood. Arthur had to train that instinct out of himself when he was becoming Robin. For some reason aliens aren't hard to wrap your head around, but giant talking gorillas just beg believability.
Eames settles back next to him on the couch where Arthur had moved to be more comfortable, to be closer to Eames really. He stretches his arm across Arthur's shoulders and plucks his bottom lip with one hand while brushing Arthur's hair behind an ear with the other. "This is very personal, and I won't be cross if you-"
"The estrangement was...bad. He never liked being defied, but this was something else." Irrationality stemming from Bruce's control freak mentality, his belief that Tim was going down the same path as Jason, all that getting wrapped up together. You botched an on-going Justice League investigation to satisfy some childish whim! Bruce at his worst, like Luthor Corp wasn't a perennially on-going Justice League mission. He shrugs one shoulder. "I didn't think I had anything to apologize for."
"Ah," Eames says. "You're both too stubborn to give an inch."
Arthur pulls back a little, glares.
Eames chuckles and waggles his eyebrows. "I do know you, Arthur. Aside from that being my job, I've paid special attention to you. For many, many years."
Arthur won't ever feel comfortable with that kind of scrutiny or being pinned beneath glass so easily. He relaxes, though, because he doesn't want to fight. He rarely does anymore. "We both tend to think we're righter than the next person." Which is an admission that doesn't come easily.
"Because you usually are," Eames kisses him behind his ear.
His phone pings, the special tone.
"Are you being called into the night to thwart the nefarious plans of a lunatic bent on destroying the city?" Eames lolls against his side.
"Did you practice that line?" Arthur's tone is fonder than he'd like it to be. Eames laughs, pleased with himself. "And, yes, probably. Dick can't resist, I'm sure he thinks I wouldn't be back if I wasn't going to be back."
Eames burrows in closer, wrapping around him. "I've been waiting with baited breath to see you in the costume, don't make me wait any longer."
Arthur shakes his head and smiles down at Eames's half-lidded expression. "I don't wear the old one anymore."
"Oh, my dear, I know that only too well." His voice threads up Arthur's spine.
And there is that out in the open, too.
"I'd have to go to the Manor and find something to wear-" Arthur knows exactly where the costume is, of course.
Eames pulls the domino he wore himself out from under the couch cushion. "Fancy this being right here," he clicks his tongue.
Arthur quirks an eyebrow and twists up one corner of his mouth.
"I think Thai tonight," Eames speaks damp words into the skin beneath Arthur's jaw. Arthur figures corniness must be his type marker.
I had some issues when I tried to post this, so let's see if I completely screwed it up or what.