fic: and the doors are open [2/2]
PART ONE
It’s a gradual process. One day, Arthur stops visibly wincing every time Keisha cracks her knuckles; the next, he accepts Eames’s proffered triple-shot caramel macchiato with a polite, “Thank you.” His dimples fade back into obscurity as his face grows increasingly impassive and serious. He spends less time surreptitiously observing Eames’s arse and more time dispassionately critiquing his forge. He stops fidgeting.
They take the tube over to Kensington one day - Eames to have a look at Cordelia’s new haircut, Arthur on some mysterious business to do with the CCTV cameras near the dentist’s office - and Arthur doesn’t snarl or glare at a single person, not even the disorientated-looking tourist who treads on his foot disembarking at Leicester Square. He just stares blankly into the middle distance, wearing the same mask of polite disinterest as their fellow passengers. His silhouette is hazy and indistinct in Eames’s peripheral vision, blurring into the crowd.
Gloucester Road station is quiet; he and Arthur are the only ones getting off their train. They’re meant to be ignoring each other, but Eames finds himself quickening his pace on the steps up from the platform. He catches Arthur on the first landing, intentionally jostling Arthur’s shoulder as he passes.
“Sorry,” he says offhandedly, one preoccupied businessman to another. Arthur doesn’t even look at him. They continue on their way, strangers brought together by a common destination, until they reach the street and Arthur goes left while Eames goes right.
Arthur doesn’t ring, that night.
+++
Considering all the hiccups along the way, the extraction itself is almost anticlimactic. It all goes off without a hitch: Eames's Cordelia tugs at Stone’s Armani suit with ice creamy fingers and whips her into a frenzy of maternal guilt, paving the way for Keisha back on the first level to expertly coax her into brooding over the details of her latest time-consuming project. There’s one tense altercation with a fractious secretary, but for the most part they’re left alone, which indicates that Arthur is off somewhere wrangling projections with his typical pokerfaced flair. In the end, they’re in and out of Stone’s mind with the particulars of the vaccine in twenty minutes.
They scatter immediately after the job. Keisha hails a cab to St Pancras; she’ll be going to Paris, then, and from there perhaps back to America, or on to another job. Reggie disappears into a tube station, headed for God only knows where. Hell, most likely. Yusuf has already gone, departed on a morning flight to Nairobi, and Arthur vanished as soon as the last fingerprint was wiped, which leaves Eames standing alone in Heathrow, staring at the departures board and trying to work out where he’s going next.
He hasn’t got any jobs lined up, and he finds that he’s in no rush to return to Mombasa. His options are somewhat limited, of course - he’s not been welcome in Moscow since he fell out with an erudite but predictably unforgiving arms trafficker (cum very poor gambler), and Bangkok is best avoided unless he fancies another stint in the Hilton - but for the most part, the world is his oyster. Or, strictly speaking, it’s Gerald Robertson’s oyster, or perhaps Thomas King’s, depending on which passport he uses.
His mobile rings as he’s scanning the list of destinations - Lisbon, Buenos Aires, Philadelphia - and he fishes it out of his trouser pocket and glances down at the screen.
Arthur.
Of course it is. Arthur always calls each team member after the job to let them know that the payment has come through. It makes no difference if the two of them are barely on speaking terms, or if they’re on the run with a handful of broken bones between them, or if Eames has spent the last week watching Arthur fall progressively and comprehensively out of love with him. Arthur always calls.
“Arthur,” Eames greets. “Good news, I hope?” Mumbai might be nice: it’s pleasant enough this time of year, and Joshi has been making noises about how long it’s been since his last visit.
“Abrams came through,” Arthur says, voice tinny but brisk and professional as ever. “The money will be in your account by the end of the day.”
“Cheers,” Eames says. Rio is a possibility, though the red-lipped flight attendants on TAM tend to be rather unsettlingly indistinguishable.
Arthur is quiet for a moment. Eames waits for the polite dismissal. Arthur always calls, but he never lingers; any moment now he’ll say, “Goodbye, Mr. Eames,” and in a few hours the money will turn up in Eames’s account, and that will be that until the next time Arthur tracks him down for a job.
“Where are you going?” Arthur asks suddenly, interrupting Eames’s mental figuring of the odds that he could make it in and out of Istanbul without acquiring any significant damage to his person.
“I - “ Eames falters, thrown by the question, then admits, “I’ve no idea, actually.” He looks back at the departures board - Accra, Tel Aviv - and says, on a whim, “I was thinking Stockholm.”
“You don’t speak Swedish,” Arthur says, as if it matters.
“I know the important things,” Eames counters. “Hej, hur mår du, var är toaletten, jag har en kulspruta.”
“Your accent is terrible.” He might be smiling - but then, he might not. Eames can’t tell, anymore.
(They’d already been on the phone for nearly an hour when Arthur mentioned the term he’d spent in Gothenburg. They were both tired, worn down after a long day of practice runs. Arthur’s voice was low and unraveled, thick with sleep, and he passed out in the middle of a drowsy ode to salty licorice. Eames stayed on the line a few minutes more, half-asleep, drifting on the ebb and flow of Arthur’s breathing.)
“You could translate for me,” Eames says abruptly, because suddenly, insanely, he does want to go to Stockholm. He wants Arthur to mock his conjugation and his scarves, and he wants to eat that disgusting licorice until they’re both ill, and he wants to steal something together, state secrets or maybe a Rembrandt, and after that he wants to go to Zurich or San José or anywhere, really, anywhere, as long as Arthur -
“I have to be in Melbourne in two days,” Arthur says.
“Right,” Eames says. Of course Arthur’s got another job lined up already. Of course he has. Of course he doesn’t - he’s not - “Right, no, of course. No rest for the wicked, yeah? I expect I’ll be hearing from you again in a few months.”
“Most likely,” Arthur says. There’s another pause, longer this time. Eames wonders, idly, what the exchange rate is between pounds and Australian dollars these days, and whether that Afghan restaurant he likes in Dandenong is still open. He wonders how many connections Arthur will be making to disguise his trail, and why the stubborn bastard hasn’t just had the pins in his leg removed if he’s so concerned with keeping a low profile, and if he ever uses that Canadian passport Eames gave him years ago as a token of appreciation for alerting him to the price on his head in Rome - and then Arthur clears his throat and says, “Goodbye, Mr. Eames.”
The line goes dead, and Eames goes back to considering his multitude of options: Milan, Shanghai, Beirut.
+++
Prague is too cold for his tastes, and nearly as lousy with hipsters as the East End. He spends only a day there, drinking plum brandy and practicing his Scouse accent on a wild-haired backpacker wearing an Everton jersey, before moving on to Brussels (disagreeably damp, but with excellent chocolate) and then booking a ticket for Mumbai.
Joshi is pleased to see him. As always, she conveys her affection through food and criticism: he’s got too many tattoos, that identity card wouldn’t fool her five-year-old grandson, and those euros look like toy money, what is he, an amateur? Here, have more biryani. He stays with her for three weeks, and leaves without bothering to lie about when he’ll be back.
After that, he bounces around for a while, restless and oddly dissatisfied. He pulls a quick, effortless extraction job with an old colleague in Pretoria. He loses deliberately and extravagantly at cards to a sunburnt sex tourist in Havana, and decides on a whim to drop the man’s passport in the sewer instead of saving it for later use. He steals a minor Goya print from the Prado, just to keep his hand in.
He keeps moving.
+++
“Are you in prison?” Yusuf asks.
“Not currently, no,” Eames replies.
“Are you dying?”
“No.”
“On fire?”
“No.”
“Prepared to admit the physical, tactical and moral superiority of the Boks?”
Eames scowls. “Never.”
“Then I’m forced to conclude that I’m speaking to you at half-three in the morning because you’re still not sleeping and haven’t got a single shred of human decency.”
“Not one,” Eames agrees. No remorse, either. In the balance of things, Yusuf owes him a great deal more than a few late-night phone calls.
Besides, he’s bored. Normally, his bouts of insomnia follow the same pattern, but this latest spell is different: he’ll sleep for a few hours, then jerk awake sometime after midnight, exhausted but irreversibly alert. He’s tried all his standard tactics for tricking his body into falling back asleep - drinking, wanking, watching aggressively stupid infomercials - but nothing seems to be working. He’s still not sleeping, only now he’s got a sore dick and a drunkenly-ordered food processor into the bargain.
“This is ridiculous, Eames,” Yusuf says grouchily. “You need with deal with it.”
“Thank you for that constructive insight,” Eames says. “‘Deal with it’ - there’s an option I never considered.”
“Don’t be an ass. You know what I’m saying.”
“I don’t, actually. Would you care to enlighten me?”
Yusuf mutters something that sounds like, what have I done to deserve this, and then, louder but just as inexplicably, he says, “Just call him.”
Eames must be drunker than he’d thought. “Call who?”
“Arthur, you idiot.”
No, Yusuf must be drunk. “What’s Arthur got to do with anything?”
“Eames, come on,” Yusuf says impatiently. “Think about it.”
“I don’t - “ Eames objects, and then he stops, and thinks about it. About the way he keeps waking up already pawing at the bedside table, reaching instinctively for his silent mobile. About the random details about Arthur that have started popping into his head when he’s jerking off - not just the expected bits, but things like the shallow dip above his upper lip, the insufferably patronizing arch of his eyebrow. About the way something lurched in his chest when Yusuf said, Just call him.
“Jesus Christ,” he says, stunned.
“You’re in love with Arthur,” Yusuf says. “Did you wake me up for this?”
It’s true. He’s in love with Arthur. Arthur is the most pompous, unimaginative, anal-retentive little fuck to ever walk the earth in four hundred pound Ferragamo loafers, and Eames is arse over fucking teakettle in love with him.
And Arthur - Arthur’s not -
“Jesus Christ,” Eames says again. He wants to punch the wall, or shoot something. Mostly, though, he wants to suck Arthur’s cock until he screams and then maybe steal him a Maserati - but that only brings him back round to the point that it doesn’t matter what he wants to do to Arthur, the hours he’d happily spend trailing him round Savile Row or the bruises he’d like to suck into the soft skin behind his knees, because Arthur doesn’t love him back.
There’s a dull sound over the line, like something covering the receiver, and then Yusuf’s voice, muffled. He comes back a moment later and says, “Hasina wants to know if you’re finished being a total knob yet.”
“This is all your fault,” Eames accuses.
Yusuf sighs. “I’ll take that as a ‘no.’”
“You and your experiments, Christ, you use him as a guinea pig for your mad scientist potions and he starts giving me those eyes, of course I’m going to - and now he - and I - fucking hell.“
“Oh, don’t be stupid, Eames,” Yusuf snaps, sounding irritated now. “There’s no such thing as love potions.”
“Well, of course there’s - “ Eames draws up short. “Wait, what?”
Yusuf makes an aggravated noise. “Use your head, mate. If I could come up with a genuine love potion, I’d be richer than Saito. But it’s not possible.”
“But,” Eames starts, and finds that he’s got nothing to say.
“You can’t create something out of nothing,” Yusuf continues. “You can’t just implant emotions in someone’s mind - you of all people should understand that. I didn’t incept him, for God’s sake. The sedative was meant to lower his inhibitions, and it did. Did exactly what it said on the tin. Granted, I didn’t anticipate the spillover effect, but - “
“Yusuf,” Eames says, slowly, “what are you saying?” His brain doesn’t seem to be working properly; he feels dazed, almost numb, like he’s been drugged or wrapped up in cotton wool - but unstable as well, thrumming with repressed energy. One false move and he might fly apart.
“I’m saying you can’t make someone feel something they don’t. Arthur lashed out in meetings because he was genuinely annoyed. He called that cab driver an incompetent jackass because that’s what he was thinking. And he kissed you in that dreamscape because he wanted to kiss you.”
Eames doesn’t respond right away. He’s too busy thinking about the way Arthur’s eyes would follow him across the room, the way he’d stare at Eames’s lips when he thought Eames wasn’t looking. He’s thinking about those hot flushes of color across Arthur’s cheeks and the easy, familiar cadence of his voice late at night. He’s thinking about the look on Arthur’s face that first morning in the warehouse, wide-open and raw, how he looked so relieved to see Eames standing there.
He’s thinking about Arthur asking, Where are you going?
“From your stunned silence, I surmise that you’ve managed to piece things together,” Yusuf says. “Congratulations: you are quite possibly the last person on earth to know. Even Reggie figured it out, and he’s an idiot.”
“You’re all idiots,” interjects an aggrieved sleep-scratchy voice in the background.
“Yeah, I - I’ve got it,” Eames says, weakly, though in truth he’s only starting to put together an idea of what “it” is. “God, I - why didn’t you say something?”
Yusuf snorts. “I tried. You didn’t want to hear it. In any event, what could I have said? It was so obvious.”
It was. It was so damned obvious, and Eames looked right past it.
“I’ve got to go,” he says.
“You’re welcome,” Yusuf says pointedly. “Feel free to demonstrate your gratitude by never ringing me this late again.”
“If you’re not on a plane tomorrow morning - “ Hasina shouts into the phone, but Eames is already ending the call, reaching for his laptop.
+++
Getting on that plane is easier said than done. Eames has never actively sought Arthur out before. Arthur has always been the one to find him, to ferret out Eames’s most recent contact information or turn up at his latest gambling den with a new job offer. For his part, Eames has always been content to let Arthur come to him. He thought it was a good working arrangement, that it suited them both. He thought a lot of daft things.
He hardly knows where to start looking. The mobile number from the Stone job has been disconnected; the phone itself is likely in pieces at the bottom of the Channel. The job in Melbourne wrapped two weeks ago, and neither the extractor nor the architect have any idea where Arthur might have disappeared to. He’s got a vague idea that Arthur passes frequently through Paris, possibly even owns a flat there, but Ariadne says she’s not heard from Arthur in weeks. (She then proceeds to make repulsive kissy noises into the phone until Eames hangs up in disgust.)
He calls in a few favors with the sort of people who can track down anyone for the right price - and, no, he’d much prefer that Arthur’s head stay firmly on his shoulders rather than be posted to him in a polystyrene cool box, thank you, Sergei - but not one of them manages to turn up a single lead. Either no one in the entire criminal underworld knows where Arthur is, or they’re all more frightened of him than they are of a twenty-stone Nigerian mercenary - and it’s telling, isn’t it, that both theories are equally plausible.
Four days into his search, Eames swallows the last bitter dregs of his pride (and two fingers of Glenfiddich, to bolster his resolve) and rings Cobb.
“If you’re calling about a job, the answer is no,” Cobb says in greeting. There’s a loud crash in the background, and Cobb sighs loudly into the phone, then calls, “Phil, honey, what have I told you about playing pirates near your grand-mère’s china cabinet?”
“I’m not calling about a job,” Eames says.
Cobb is quiet, waiting for the punch line. His squint is nearly audible.
“I, ah,” Eames says. “I’m looking for Arthur.”
“You’re looking for Arthur,” Cobb repeats tonelessly. “Why?”
“I need to talk to him,” Eames equivocates. He suspects that Cobb is not likely to appreciate the finer details of his plan, which involves minimal talking, a fair amount of shouting and (with any luck) a great deal of nudity.
“You need to talk to him,” Cobb says, in that same flat yet strangely menacing voice.
“Is there a bloody echo in here? Yes, I need to talk to him,” Eames snaps. “Look, do you know where he is or don’t you?”
“I know,” Cobb replies, and doesn’t continue. Eames is starting to wish he’d stayed trapped in limbo.
“Look, I’m in a bit of a rush,” he says, as calmly as possible, “so if we could just skip to the part where you tell me what exactly it is you’re waiting to hear, that would be marvelous.“
“Do you remember the Cohen job?” Cobb asks, apropos of absolutely nothing. Eames doesn’t care what Arthur says: the man is patently mental.
“Of course,” Eames answers, attempting to humor him.
“You remember what the client’s thugs threatened to do to us if word got out about the extraction?”
“…yes,” Eames says, suddenly not liking where this is going.
“Okay,” Cobb says. “Just checking. Because, if you fuck Arthur over, I have absolutely no qualms about selling you to the highest bidder.”
Surprising even himself, Eames just snorts. “Cobb, I’m in love with a man I’ve seen kill someone twice his size with his bare feet. You really think I’m frightened of you?”
It doesn’t occur to him what he’s admitted until Cobb chuckles, an unexpectedly warm and sympathetic sound. “Yeah, good point.” He pauses, and then, just as Eames is sincerely considering flying to California to personally orphan those two adorable sprogs of his, he says:
“He’s in Mexico City.”
+++
Arthur is far and away the most detail-oriented person Eames has ever met. It’s what makes him such a formidable point man. He’s sharp-eyed and meticulous, verging occasionally on fastidious, though even Eames knows better than to let that particular assessment cross his lips. After all, Arthur may be particular, but he’s also quite astoundingly lethal.
So Eames is not terribly surprised, three seconds after breaking into Arthur’s short-term flat, to find himself pinned to the wall with an arm across his throat and what feels very much like the muzzle of Arthur’s favorite SIG shoved into his gut.
He’s also not going to complain, not when Arthur’s aggressive vigilance results in Arthur’s body pressed right up against him, Arthur’s damp unstyled curls tickling his cheek. He’s clearly interrupted Arthur in the middle of getting dressed, which is convenient, as it will mean fewer layers to remove later.
He can tell the instant Arthur recognizes him. He feels the catch of breath against his ear, the stiffening of Arthur’s already tense body against his own - and then, beautifully, a slight relaxing.
“Eames.” Arthur pulls back far enough to look at him, and the pressure eases on Eames’s throat, just enough to allow him to talk. The gun stays where it is. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I was in the neighborhood,” Eames says, as lightly as he can manage. He feels a bit breathless, and not just from the steely forearm so recently crushing his windpipe. It’s one thing to know intellectually that he’s in love with Arthur, and a different matter entirely to see him in the flesh like this, close and in his shirtsleeves, threatening Eames’s life.
“Marrakesh is not ‘the neighborhood,’” Arthur says.
“You’re behind the times, I’m afraid,” Eames says. “I left Marrakesh three days ago.”
Arthur’s jaw clenches; he does hate being caught out with flawed intel. “Why are you here, Eames?” he asks sharply, and lets out a short, startled noise as their mouths collide.
(The thing is: once he’s committed to a course of action, Eames doesn’t like to waste time.)
Arthur huffs a surprised breath against Eames’s mouth. His lips are warm and dry, a bit chapped. He smells faintly of shaving cream. Eames wants to eat him alive.
For now, he restrains himself to a single parting nip to the tempting curve of Arthur’s bottom lip. He pulls back reluctantly, and is delighted to see Arthur’s eyes blinking open, dazed and unfocused.
“What the fuck,” Arthur says. His voice is even, his breathing steady, but there’s an unmistakable tremor running down the arm still wedged against Eames’s throat. And Eames understands Arthur, now, in a way he never did before. He knows that Arthur says a number of things he doesn’t actually mean, and swallows back many more that he does; that he’s distracted by Eames’s mouth and thinks about him sometimes in the middle of the night; that he’ll buy coffee he hates every day of his life before it ever occurs to him to ask for what he really wants.
Eames wriggles a hand free from where it’s crushed between their bodies, and carefully removes Arthur’s arm from his throat. When that provokes no resistance, he brings his hand up to rest along the long, slightly damp line of Arthur’s neck. He strokes a thumb over Arthur’s jaw, his pointy chin.
“Eames,” Arthur says.
“Hmm?” Eames responds absently, thumbing the spot where he’s seen one of Arthur’s dimples appear as if by magic, sudden and unpredictable. He’s had a lot of egregiously sentimental thoughts about those dimples lately. More than a few filthy ones, as well, come to that.
Something jabs him uncomfortably in the stomach - Christ, he forgot about the gun - and Arthur’s voice and face are both a bit harder when he says, “Tell me what you’re doing here.”
Eames manages, barely, to keep from rolling his eyes. “Arthur,” he says patiently, “there’s no such thing as love potions.”
“Well, I know that - “ Arthur snaps, indignant, and his cross little face is so angry and lovely and so very Arthur that Eames really can’t help but kiss him again.
The first go was necessarily brief, but Eames takes his time on the second round, deliberate and thorough. He memorizes the precise shape of Arthur’s mouth under his, learning the taste and supple give of it, lingering over its curves and corners. He drags their lips together, a sweet velvety glide, then breaks away to lay down a line of kisses along Arthur’s jaw.
He’s investigating the delicate skin under Arthur’s ear when Arthur shifts against him, raising his arm. Eames has a moment to wonder if he’s about to be choked again, and then Arthur’s long fingers are sliding into his hair, skating lightly over his scalp. He tilts his head into the touch, lets out a small sigh of pleasure. Arthur makes a delicious little sound in return, and his grip tightens, insistent, urging Eames back to meet his soft, hot mouth.
Arthur is pressing eagerly back against him now - finally, finally - and the kiss gains momentum quickly. Arthur catches Eames’s bottom lip between his teeth and worries it gently, bites down hard and then soothes the sting with a slick swipe of his tongue that makes the bottom fall out of Eames’s stomach. He presses his advantage, working Eames’s mouth open with clever nudges of lips and tongue, and Eames lets his hand drop down to Arthur’s side. He trails teasing fingers over Arthur’s flank, smoothes a palm over his ribs and then round to his back, skimming up over the peaks of his shoulder blades before sliding back down to rest above the waistband of his trousers.
The gun wobbles where it’s digging into Eames’s stomach, so he prudently maneuvers it out of Arthur’s slack grip and tosses it blindly onto the entryway table.
“Safety on?” he asks belatedly, as Arthur’s newly-freed hand curls round the back of his neck.
Arthur’s lips curve against Eames’s, wet and scornful. “Of course it’s not.”
Eames grins back. He recognizes that this is not an appropriate reaction to narrowly escaping being gut-shot, but he can’t help it. He’s exhausted and jet-lagged, most likely smells like an airplane toilet, and Arthur is pushing forward in his arms, aggressive and demanding, prying Eames’s mouth open again and stroking inside with his tongue. He’s got everything he wants.
Well. Maybe not everything.
He tugs experimentally at the back of Arthur’s shirt where it’s tucked into his trousers. Arthur hums into his mouth, and then, monstrously, he actually pulls away. “I’m supposed to be tailing the mark’s son right now.”
And, look, Eames appreciates that Arthur takes his work seriously; in fact, his relentless single-mindedness is normally quite appealing. Still, he refuses to be cock-blocked by a spoilt nineteen-year-old brewing heir, particularly when Arthur is standing in front of him with his lips so indecently swollen and his hair in such enticing disarray.
“He can wait,” he suggests, hand drifting down over Arthur’s wool-clad arse.
“So can you,” Arthur returns, but there’s a slight wariness in his voice, a note of uncertainty at odds with his confident words.
“So can I,” Eames allows. It’s technically true; he’s waited this long, and another eight hours would probably not physically kill him, no matter how vehemently his cock disagrees with that estimation. “I’d rather not, though, if it’s all the same to you,” he adds, and gives Arthur’s backside a persuasive squeeze.
Arthur’s lashes flutter at the touch. Still, he looks entirely too doubtful for someone about to have the best orgasm of his life, so Eames peels his hand away from that magnificent arse and reaches up to thread his fingers through Arthur’s drying hair.
“Arthur,” he says seriously, “I called Cobb to find you.”
Arthur’s dimples flare in his cheeks, deep and dazzling. “You must have been pretty desperate.”
“Yes,” Eames agrees, simply, because he was; he is.
Arthur stares at him for a moment, smile faltering. Eames winds a curl round his finger and waits, allows Arthur to read what he will into the regrettably dopey grin he can feel tugging at his bruised lips - and then Arthur is on him again, shoving Eames’s jacket off his shoulders, clawing at his shirt.
“God, I hate this shirt,” he mutters into the hollow of Eames’s throat.
“Why - ah, shit - why do you think I like it so well?” Eames replies, fumbling with the buttons of Arthur’s own oxford. They’re tiny and slippery under his fingers, thwarting his fervent efforts to get at Arthur’s naked skin. “I’m going to rip this off you in a moment.”
“It cost more than your life is worth,” Arthur informs him. He slides his hands over the bared expanse of Eames’s shoulders, scratches lightly down Eames’s chest with blunt nails, and Eames groans and scrabbles again at the elusive buttons. Arthur’s chest is hard and warm beneath the oxford, bleeding heat through fine cotton; Eames has never resented an article of clothing more in his entire life.
The last button slips free, and Eames wastes no time in tearing off the stupid hateful shirt and the sweat-damp undershirt beneath it. He scarcely has time to take in the sight of Arthur’s chiseled chest and belly - the jut of his collarbones, the thin white scar near his navel where Eames recalls spying fresh stitches during the Zhao job - before Arthur is pressing up against him in a long solid line of muscle, biting none-too-carefully at his lips.
He consoles himself by running his hands up Arthur’s back, then down to slip under Arthur’s waistband, fingertips grazing the silky skin just above the swell of his arse. Arthur moans into Eames’s mouth and rocks his hips forward. His cock is half-hard and impossibly hot against Eames’s thigh, a searing brand through the fabric of their trousers, and Eames is sorely tempted to bring them both off like this: to grip Arthur’s arse in both hands and grind their cocks together, maybe flip their positions and haul Arthur’s leg up over his hip, rut into him mindless and crude until they’re both shaking apart.
Then Arthur drops to his knees, and the half-formed idea joins the rest of Eames’s thoughts in flying directly out of his head.
Arthur’s hands are quick and efficient at his flies. He yanks Eames’s trousers down and leans in, mouths Eames’s cock through his pants. Eames’s hips stutter forward, instinctive; Arthur makes a wordless scolding sound and pins them firmly to the wall, thumbs pressing hard against Eames’s hipbones. He licks a long tantalizing stripe up Eames’s cock, ducks down to nuzzle the heavy weight of his balls before pulling back to suckle gently at the crown.
Eames has endured actual torture less painful than this, less cruel than the agonizing drag of wet cotton over hypersensitive skin, the shivery heat of Arthur’s breath through the fabric. His nerves are on fire, and he’s never wanted anything the way he wants to fuck into that mouth, to tangle his fingers in Arthur’s hair and lose himself in that yielding wet heat.
Arthur draws back a bit, lips pursed red and swollen over the cloth-covered head of Eames’s cock. The sight of it sends an electric shock of lust tearing through Eames, and he moans, hips jerking ineffectively in Arthur’s hold.
Arthur’s gaze flicks up to meet his, eyes hot and black, all pupil. Eames nearly comes on the spot. Arthur looks desperate, starving, like he’s the one suffering here, tormented by the shape of Eames’s cock against his lips.
“Do you want me to beg?” Eames demands. “Is that what this is about? Because I will, God, I’ll say anything you want, just - fuck, Arthur, please - “
He knows, logically, that there must be some steps between that breathless plea and the head of his cock bumping up against the back of Arthur’s throat. There are laws of physics to consider; his cock does not actually magic its way into Arthur’s mouth. That’s the sort of thing that happens in dreams, the telescoping of time between wanting something and having it. But he remembers arriving at the airport, smiling blandly through customs, falling into a taxi, slipping into Arthur’s building on the heels of a distracted German businessman. He remembers how he got here, right here, with Arthur’s tongue sliding messily over him and Arthur’s strong hands gripping the backs of his thighs, and he doesn’t need a totem to tell him that this is reality. This is real.
It’s not the most technically accomplished blowjob he’s ever received. Arthur’s mouth is rough and impatient around him, sloppy-wet with the faintest hint of teeth, and it’s so fucking good Eames feels like he’s coming out of his skin. He uncurls one hand where it’s clenched against the wall and traces clumsy fingers over Arthur’s smooth jaw, his cheek, the outline of his own cock through flushed skin. Arthur moans, ticklish against Eames’s fingertips and indescribable vibration round his cock, and Eames is gone, climax ripping through him with the relentless force of a hurricane, ruinous and deafening.
He’s distantly aware of Arthur manhandling him out of his shoes and trousers and pants, kissing up his chest and throat, tugging him away from the wall and - somewhere. He can’t really be arsed to care, not with little aftershocks of pleasure still shuddering up his spine, until Arthur prods him hard in the chest and he teeters over backwards, landing flat on his back on what feels like a very expensive mattress.
“So you do have a bed,” he says, groggy but pleased. “And here I thought perhaps you slept hanging from the ceiling, like a bat.”
Arthur does not dignify that with a verbal response. He does glare, but Eames hardly notices, which is Arthur’s own fault, really, as he’s chosen this moment to strip out of his preposterously well-fitting trousers.
Undressed, Arthur is slim and graceful, all clean lines and precise angles. Men who wear suits as well as Arthur does tend to look somewhat lost out of them, smaller and more vulnerable, but Arthur is strikingly confident in his skin, as though it too has been measured and fitted to his exacting standards.
Eames sits up and reaches for him, reels him in until he’s standing between Eames’s legs, close enough for Eames to nose at the line of hair leading up from the waistband of his pants. He fits his hands round Arthur’s narrow waist, flicks his tongue into the dip of Arthur’s navel. Arthur’s abdominal muscles jump under his palms.
“That’s disgusting,” says Arthur, who would probably commit hara-kiri before admitting to such a plebeian weakness as ticklishness. “Stop it.”
Eames does it again, just to be contrary. “I don’t see why I should.”
Arthur’s hand curves round the back of Eames’s neck. “Don’t you have better things to be doing with your mouth?”
“Well, if you insist,” Eames says, and tumbles him inelegantly down to the bed.
He runs his hands up Arthur’s long legs, enjoying the gentle friction of hair and warm skin. Arthur’s thighs are lean and very pale, unblemished apart from a scattering of small round burns near the bend of his left knee, each one slightly larger than the approximate diameter of a cigarette. Eames wants to hunt down the person who put them there and flay them alive. He settles for brushing his lips over the scars, mouthing at the damaged skin until Arthur is squirming under him, wriggling like an eel in his hands.
He’d like to carry on teasing Arthur for a while, torment him the way Eames himself was so recently tormented, but his mouth is already watering at the line of Arthur’s erection straining against black cotton. He tugs Arthur’s pants down his legs, then ducks back down to press his face into the join of hip and thigh. Arthur smells amazing, soapy and salty and alive, and Eames decides that teasing can wait for another day.
Arthur makes a low, broken sound when Eames takes him in. He’s close already, which is both arousing and disappointing, as Eames could quite happily work him over for hours. Eames sinks down on him, relishing the weight of Arthur’s cock on his tongue. He slips a hand round Arthur’s hip to grope shamelessly at his arse, encouraging the little abortive thrusts Arthur keeps making into his mouth, and Arthur’s legs fall open a bit wider.
Perhaps it’s just the force of his personality, but Eames has always thought of Arthur as hard and inflexible, the sort of man who would break before he’d bend. He’s wonderfully pliant now, though, loose-limbed and malleable. Eames could probably fold him right in half, if he wanted.
His cock twitches optimistically at the thought, and he pulls back, lets Arthur’s cock slip from his mouth. Arthur’s little whine of protest morphs into a groan as Eames sucks a proprietary mark onto his inner thigh.
“I hope you’re not overly fond of this mattress,” he pronounces around a mouthful of Arthur’s skin, “because I’m going to fuck you straight through it.”
Arthur chuckles, panting. “I’d like to see you try,” he says, defiant in a way only Arthur could manage in the midst of a blowjob.
He’s got a point, though. Eames isn’t a teenager anymore, and he’s too fucked out at this point to even consider lavishing Arthur’s arse with the attention it deserves.
(He will, though, later. He'll roll Arthur onto his belly and bite a trail of bruises down his back, work him open with two slick fingers and then lick into the wet, melting heat of him until he’s a shaky incoherent wreck. Please, he’ll hear, please, please, and it’ll take him a while to realize that it can’t possibly be coming from Arthur, who will be beyond words at that point, sobbing for breath and clawing at the tangled bed sheets.
Arthur will arch up against him when he pushes in, thighs trembling against Eames’s waist. For one long moment Eames will be frozen in place, completely undone by the miraculous curve of Arthur’s spine, the wild machine gun rattle of his heart - and then Arthur will fist a hand in Eames’s hair and say, Move, and Eames will move.
Later still, Arthur will haul himself out of the ruined bed and into the shower, spouting some nonsense about “work” and “responsibilities” and “basic hygiene.” Eames will take the opportunity to rifle through Arthur’s things, and afterwards he’ll take a terribly puerile pleasure in tugging Arthur in by his freshly-scrubbed hips and thoroughly dirtying him again. They’ll take another (enjoyably inefficient) shower, and together they’ll go tail Rafa Torres Alvarez as he drives at approximately five hundred kilometers per hour down the shady winding streets of Las Lomas, banging the undercarriage of his Mercedes E-Class against the topes.
No one will protest Eames’s unofficial joining of Arthur’s team, which will probably have something to do with the stony look of challenge in Arthur’s eyes the first day Eames shows up at the storage facility they’re using as a base. And, really, things won’t be so very different from the way they were before the Stone job. The two of them will argue as much as ever, and Arthur will continue to be scrupulously polite to everyone but Eames, though Eames will occasionally catch him eyeing a whiteboard marker with unmistakable longing. The only real difference will be Arthur’s new addiction to the most appallingly adulterated coffees he can find, which he’ll usually force Eames to pay for, claiming that la mordida is bleeding him dry. He will still be a terrible liar.
The job will be a success, the way their jobs always are, and they’ll go from Mexico City to New York to KL, and eventually to Mombasa. Arthur will develop an unexpected and deeply worrying friendship with Hasina, who will insist on having them both round for dinner, where her six-year-old niece will pester Arthur with questions about America. Yusuf will smirk and smirk into his coconut rice until Eames tells him to fuck off, at which point little Imani will echo, Fuck! and all hell will break loose.
In the ensuing chaos - Hasina’s sharp scolding Swahili, Yusuf’s guffaws, the dogs barking outside, the neighbor’s radio blaring yet another Bollywood love song - Eames will slide his hand onto Arthur’s thigh and squeeze. Arthur will shoot him a look, perhaps slightly more irritable than fond, but he won’t tell him to let go, and so Eames won’t.)
For the moment, he’s content to wrap his lips round Arthur’s cock, hollow his cheeks and stroke his tongue under the head until Arthur cries out, hips bucking off the mattress as he comes in hot salty pulses in Eames’s mouth.
Eames works him through it, pulling away only when Arthur’s little noises begin to cross the line from over-stimulated into pained. He’s exhausted, all of a sudden, wrung out with pleasure and jet lag. He crawls up a bit and collapses gratefully, head pillowed on Arthur’s heaving stomach.
Arthur shoves halfheartedly at his shoulder. “You’re heavy,” he complains.
“Mrrmph,” Eames rejoins, and stays where he is. He’ll move when he regains feeling in his arms and legs. Shouldn’t be longer than a week or so.
Arthur doesn’t put up much in the way of a struggle, just squirms a little, settling Eames’s weight more comfortably between his thighs. After a while, his hand comes to rest on the back of Eames’s head, fingers combing drowsily through Eames’s sweaty hair.
Perhaps two weeks.
Eames is already hovering on the languid verge of unconsciousness when a troubling thought occurs to him. He lifts his head and peers up the length of Arthur’s chest at his appealingly flushed face.
“You’re not going to set the bed on fire, are you?”
Arthur appears to think about it. “Not with you in it,” he concedes finally, magnanimous.
Eames looks at him, at the smudge of come on his chin and the poorly concealed twitching of his lips, and feels a great surge of affection wash over him. It’s overpowering, towing him under, and the riptide drags him up to press his lips to Arthur’s hairline, his chin, the point of his nose.
“Sorry, sorry,” he mumbles against Arthur’s eyebrow, “impulse control problems, you know, can’t be helped.”
Arthur kicks him in the shin. “Get off me, you asshole,” he says, but he’s smiling as he says it, wide open, with his eyes crinkled at the corners and his breath hot on Eames’s chin.
It’s a gradual process. One day, Arthur stops visibly wincing every time Keisha cracks her knuckles; the next, he accepts Eames’s proffered triple-shot caramel macchiato with a polite, “Thank you.” His dimples fade back into obscurity as his face grows increasingly impassive and serious. He spends less time surreptitiously observing Eames’s arse and more time dispassionately critiquing his forge. He stops fidgeting.
They take the tube over to Kensington one day - Eames to have a look at Cordelia’s new haircut, Arthur on some mysterious business to do with the CCTV cameras near the dentist’s office - and Arthur doesn’t snarl or glare at a single person, not even the disorientated-looking tourist who treads on his foot disembarking at Leicester Square. He just stares blankly into the middle distance, wearing the same mask of polite disinterest as their fellow passengers. His silhouette is hazy and indistinct in Eames’s peripheral vision, blurring into the crowd.
Gloucester Road station is quiet; he and Arthur are the only ones getting off their train. They’re meant to be ignoring each other, but Eames finds himself quickening his pace on the steps up from the platform. He catches Arthur on the first landing, intentionally jostling Arthur’s shoulder as he passes.
“Sorry,” he says offhandedly, one preoccupied businessman to another. Arthur doesn’t even look at him. They continue on their way, strangers brought together by a common destination, until they reach the street and Arthur goes left while Eames goes right.
Arthur doesn’t ring, that night.
+++
Considering all the hiccups along the way, the extraction itself is almost anticlimactic. It all goes off without a hitch: Eames's Cordelia tugs at Stone’s Armani suit with ice creamy fingers and whips her into a frenzy of maternal guilt, paving the way for Keisha back on the first level to expertly coax her into brooding over the details of her latest time-consuming project. There’s one tense altercation with a fractious secretary, but for the most part they’re left alone, which indicates that Arthur is off somewhere wrangling projections with his typical pokerfaced flair. In the end, they’re in and out of Stone’s mind with the particulars of the vaccine in twenty minutes.
They scatter immediately after the job. Keisha hails a cab to St Pancras; she’ll be going to Paris, then, and from there perhaps back to America, or on to another job. Reggie disappears into a tube station, headed for God only knows where. Hell, most likely. Yusuf has already gone, departed on a morning flight to Nairobi, and Arthur vanished as soon as the last fingerprint was wiped, which leaves Eames standing alone in Heathrow, staring at the departures board and trying to work out where he’s going next.
He hasn’t got any jobs lined up, and he finds that he’s in no rush to return to Mombasa. His options are somewhat limited, of course - he’s not been welcome in Moscow since he fell out with an erudite but predictably unforgiving arms trafficker (cum very poor gambler), and Bangkok is best avoided unless he fancies another stint in the Hilton - but for the most part, the world is his oyster. Or, strictly speaking, it’s Gerald Robertson’s oyster, or perhaps Thomas King’s, depending on which passport he uses.
His mobile rings as he’s scanning the list of destinations - Lisbon, Buenos Aires, Philadelphia - and he fishes it out of his trouser pocket and glances down at the screen.
Arthur.
Of course it is. Arthur always calls each team member after the job to let them know that the payment has come through. It makes no difference if the two of them are barely on speaking terms, or if they’re on the run with a handful of broken bones between them, or if Eames has spent the last week watching Arthur fall progressively and comprehensively out of love with him. Arthur always calls.
“Arthur,” Eames greets. “Good news, I hope?” Mumbai might be nice: it’s pleasant enough this time of year, and Joshi has been making noises about how long it’s been since his last visit.
“Abrams came through,” Arthur says, voice tinny but brisk and professional as ever. “The money will be in your account by the end of the day.”
“Cheers,” Eames says. Rio is a possibility, though the red-lipped flight attendants on TAM tend to be rather unsettlingly indistinguishable.
Arthur is quiet for a moment. Eames waits for the polite dismissal. Arthur always calls, but he never lingers; any moment now he’ll say, “Goodbye, Mr. Eames,” and in a few hours the money will turn up in Eames’s account, and that will be that until the next time Arthur tracks him down for a job.
“Where are you going?” Arthur asks suddenly, interrupting Eames’s mental figuring of the odds that he could make it in and out of Istanbul without acquiring any significant damage to his person.
“I - “ Eames falters, thrown by the question, then admits, “I’ve no idea, actually.” He looks back at the departures board - Accra, Tel Aviv - and says, on a whim, “I was thinking Stockholm.”
“You don’t speak Swedish,” Arthur says, as if it matters.
“I know the important things,” Eames counters. “Hej, hur mår du, var är toaletten, jag har en kulspruta.”
“Your accent is terrible.” He might be smiling - but then, he might not. Eames can’t tell, anymore.
(They’d already been on the phone for nearly an hour when Arthur mentioned the term he’d spent in Gothenburg. They were both tired, worn down after a long day of practice runs. Arthur’s voice was low and unraveled, thick with sleep, and he passed out in the middle of a drowsy ode to salty licorice. Eames stayed on the line a few minutes more, half-asleep, drifting on the ebb and flow of Arthur’s breathing.)
“You could translate for me,” Eames says abruptly, because suddenly, insanely, he does want to go to Stockholm. He wants Arthur to mock his conjugation and his scarves, and he wants to eat that disgusting licorice until they’re both ill, and he wants to steal something together, state secrets or maybe a Rembrandt, and after that he wants to go to Zurich or San José or anywhere, really, anywhere, as long as Arthur -
“I have to be in Melbourne in two days,” Arthur says.
“Right,” Eames says. Of course Arthur’s got another job lined up already. Of course he has. Of course he doesn’t - he’s not - “Right, no, of course. No rest for the wicked, yeah? I expect I’ll be hearing from you again in a few months.”
“Most likely,” Arthur says. There’s another pause, longer this time. Eames wonders, idly, what the exchange rate is between pounds and Australian dollars these days, and whether that Afghan restaurant he likes in Dandenong is still open. He wonders how many connections Arthur will be making to disguise his trail, and why the stubborn bastard hasn’t just had the pins in his leg removed if he’s so concerned with keeping a low profile, and if he ever uses that Canadian passport Eames gave him years ago as a token of appreciation for alerting him to the price on his head in Rome - and then Arthur clears his throat and says, “Goodbye, Mr. Eames.”
The line goes dead, and Eames goes back to considering his multitude of options: Milan, Shanghai, Beirut.
+++
Prague is too cold for his tastes, and nearly as lousy with hipsters as the East End. He spends only a day there, drinking plum brandy and practicing his Scouse accent on a wild-haired backpacker wearing an Everton jersey, before moving on to Brussels (disagreeably damp, but with excellent chocolate) and then booking a ticket for Mumbai.
Joshi is pleased to see him. As always, she conveys her affection through food and criticism: he’s got too many tattoos, that identity card wouldn’t fool her five-year-old grandson, and those euros look like toy money, what is he, an amateur? Here, have more biryani. He stays with her for three weeks, and leaves without bothering to lie about when he’ll be back.
After that, he bounces around for a while, restless and oddly dissatisfied. He pulls a quick, effortless extraction job with an old colleague in Pretoria. He loses deliberately and extravagantly at cards to a sunburnt sex tourist in Havana, and decides on a whim to drop the man’s passport in the sewer instead of saving it for later use. He steals a minor Goya print from the Prado, just to keep his hand in.
He keeps moving.
+++
“Are you in prison?” Yusuf asks.
“Not currently, no,” Eames replies.
“Are you dying?”
“No.”
“On fire?”
“No.”
“Prepared to admit the physical, tactical and moral superiority of the Boks?”
Eames scowls. “Never.”
“Then I’m forced to conclude that I’m speaking to you at half-three in the morning because you’re still not sleeping and haven’t got a single shred of human decency.”
“Not one,” Eames agrees. No remorse, either. In the balance of things, Yusuf owes him a great deal more than a few late-night phone calls.
Besides, he’s bored. Normally, his bouts of insomnia follow the same pattern, but this latest spell is different: he’ll sleep for a few hours, then jerk awake sometime after midnight, exhausted but irreversibly alert. He’s tried all his standard tactics for tricking his body into falling back asleep - drinking, wanking, watching aggressively stupid infomercials - but nothing seems to be working. He’s still not sleeping, only now he’s got a sore dick and a drunkenly-ordered food processor into the bargain.
“This is ridiculous, Eames,” Yusuf says grouchily. “You need with deal with it.”
“Thank you for that constructive insight,” Eames says. “‘Deal with it’ - there’s an option I never considered.”
“Don’t be an ass. You know what I’m saying.”
“I don’t, actually. Would you care to enlighten me?”
Yusuf mutters something that sounds like, what have I done to deserve this, and then, louder but just as inexplicably, he says, “Just call him.”
Eames must be drunker than he’d thought. “Call who?”
“Arthur, you idiot.”
No, Yusuf must be drunk. “What’s Arthur got to do with anything?”
“Eames, come on,” Yusuf says impatiently. “Think about it.”
“I don’t - “ Eames objects, and then he stops, and thinks about it. About the way he keeps waking up already pawing at the bedside table, reaching instinctively for his silent mobile. About the random details about Arthur that have started popping into his head when he’s jerking off - not just the expected bits, but things like the shallow dip above his upper lip, the insufferably patronizing arch of his eyebrow. About the way something lurched in his chest when Yusuf said, Just call him.
“Jesus Christ,” he says, stunned.
“You’re in love with Arthur,” Yusuf says. “Did you wake me up for this?”
It’s true. He’s in love with Arthur. Arthur is the most pompous, unimaginative, anal-retentive little fuck to ever walk the earth in four hundred pound Ferragamo loafers, and Eames is arse over fucking teakettle in love with him.
And Arthur - Arthur’s not -
“Jesus Christ,” Eames says again. He wants to punch the wall, or shoot something. Mostly, though, he wants to suck Arthur’s cock until he screams and then maybe steal him a Maserati - but that only brings him back round to the point that it doesn’t matter what he wants to do to Arthur, the hours he’d happily spend trailing him round Savile Row or the bruises he’d like to suck into the soft skin behind his knees, because Arthur doesn’t love him back.
There’s a dull sound over the line, like something covering the receiver, and then Yusuf’s voice, muffled. He comes back a moment later and says, “Hasina wants to know if you’re finished being a total knob yet.”
“This is all your fault,” Eames accuses.
Yusuf sighs. “I’ll take that as a ‘no.’”
“You and your experiments, Christ, you use him as a guinea pig for your mad scientist potions and he starts giving me those eyes, of course I’m going to - and now he - and I - fucking hell.“
“Oh, don’t be stupid, Eames,” Yusuf snaps, sounding irritated now. “There’s no such thing as love potions.”
“Well, of course there’s - “ Eames draws up short. “Wait, what?”
Yusuf makes an aggravated noise. “Use your head, mate. If I could come up with a genuine love potion, I’d be richer than Saito. But it’s not possible.”
“But,” Eames starts, and finds that he’s got nothing to say.
“You can’t create something out of nothing,” Yusuf continues. “You can’t just implant emotions in someone’s mind - you of all people should understand that. I didn’t incept him, for God’s sake. The sedative was meant to lower his inhibitions, and it did. Did exactly what it said on the tin. Granted, I didn’t anticipate the spillover effect, but - “
“Yusuf,” Eames says, slowly, “what are you saying?” His brain doesn’t seem to be working properly; he feels dazed, almost numb, like he’s been drugged or wrapped up in cotton wool - but unstable as well, thrumming with repressed energy. One false move and he might fly apart.
“I’m saying you can’t make someone feel something they don’t. Arthur lashed out in meetings because he was genuinely annoyed. He called that cab driver an incompetent jackass because that’s what he was thinking. And he kissed you in that dreamscape because he wanted to kiss you.”
Eames doesn’t respond right away. He’s too busy thinking about the way Arthur’s eyes would follow him across the room, the way he’d stare at Eames’s lips when he thought Eames wasn’t looking. He’s thinking about those hot flushes of color across Arthur’s cheeks and the easy, familiar cadence of his voice late at night. He’s thinking about the look on Arthur’s face that first morning in the warehouse, wide-open and raw, how he looked so relieved to see Eames standing there.
He’s thinking about Arthur asking, Where are you going?
“From your stunned silence, I surmise that you’ve managed to piece things together,” Yusuf says. “Congratulations: you are quite possibly the last person on earth to know. Even Reggie figured it out, and he’s an idiot.”
“You’re all idiots,” interjects an aggrieved sleep-scratchy voice in the background.
“Yeah, I - I’ve got it,” Eames says, weakly, though in truth he’s only starting to put together an idea of what “it” is. “God, I - why didn’t you say something?”
Yusuf snorts. “I tried. You didn’t want to hear it. In any event, what could I have said? It was so obvious.”
It was. It was so damned obvious, and Eames looked right past it.
“I’ve got to go,” he says.
“You’re welcome,” Yusuf says pointedly. “Feel free to demonstrate your gratitude by never ringing me this late again.”
“If you’re not on a plane tomorrow morning - “ Hasina shouts into the phone, but Eames is already ending the call, reaching for his laptop.
+++
Getting on that plane is easier said than done. Eames has never actively sought Arthur out before. Arthur has always been the one to find him, to ferret out Eames’s most recent contact information or turn up at his latest gambling den with a new job offer. For his part, Eames has always been content to let Arthur come to him. He thought it was a good working arrangement, that it suited them both. He thought a lot of daft things.
He hardly knows where to start looking. The mobile number from the Stone job has been disconnected; the phone itself is likely in pieces at the bottom of the Channel. The job in Melbourne wrapped two weeks ago, and neither the extractor nor the architect have any idea where Arthur might have disappeared to. He’s got a vague idea that Arthur passes frequently through Paris, possibly even owns a flat there, but Ariadne says she’s not heard from Arthur in weeks. (She then proceeds to make repulsive kissy noises into the phone until Eames hangs up in disgust.)
He calls in a few favors with the sort of people who can track down anyone for the right price - and, no, he’d much prefer that Arthur’s head stay firmly on his shoulders rather than be posted to him in a polystyrene cool box, thank you, Sergei - but not one of them manages to turn up a single lead. Either no one in the entire criminal underworld knows where Arthur is, or they’re all more frightened of him than they are of a twenty-stone Nigerian mercenary - and it’s telling, isn’t it, that both theories are equally plausible.
Four days into his search, Eames swallows the last bitter dregs of his pride (and two fingers of Glenfiddich, to bolster his resolve) and rings Cobb.
“If you’re calling about a job, the answer is no,” Cobb says in greeting. There’s a loud crash in the background, and Cobb sighs loudly into the phone, then calls, “Phil, honey, what have I told you about playing pirates near your grand-mère’s china cabinet?”
“I’m not calling about a job,” Eames says.
Cobb is quiet, waiting for the punch line. His squint is nearly audible.
“I, ah,” Eames says. “I’m looking for Arthur.”
“You’re looking for Arthur,” Cobb repeats tonelessly. “Why?”
“I need to talk to him,” Eames equivocates. He suspects that Cobb is not likely to appreciate the finer details of his plan, which involves minimal talking, a fair amount of shouting and (with any luck) a great deal of nudity.
“You need to talk to him,” Cobb says, in that same flat yet strangely menacing voice.
“Is there a bloody echo in here? Yes, I need to talk to him,” Eames snaps. “Look, do you know where he is or don’t you?”
“I know,” Cobb replies, and doesn’t continue. Eames is starting to wish he’d stayed trapped in limbo.
“Look, I’m in a bit of a rush,” he says, as calmly as possible, “so if we could just skip to the part where you tell me what exactly it is you’re waiting to hear, that would be marvelous.“
“Do you remember the Cohen job?” Cobb asks, apropos of absolutely nothing. Eames doesn’t care what Arthur says: the man is patently mental.
“Of course,” Eames answers, attempting to humor him.
“You remember what the client’s thugs threatened to do to us if word got out about the extraction?”
“…yes,” Eames says, suddenly not liking where this is going.
“Okay,” Cobb says. “Just checking. Because, if you fuck Arthur over, I have absolutely no qualms about selling you to the highest bidder.”
Surprising even himself, Eames just snorts. “Cobb, I’m in love with a man I’ve seen kill someone twice his size with his bare feet. You really think I’m frightened of you?”
It doesn’t occur to him what he’s admitted until Cobb chuckles, an unexpectedly warm and sympathetic sound. “Yeah, good point.” He pauses, and then, just as Eames is sincerely considering flying to California to personally orphan those two adorable sprogs of his, he says:
“He’s in Mexico City.”
+++
Arthur is far and away the most detail-oriented person Eames has ever met. It’s what makes him such a formidable point man. He’s sharp-eyed and meticulous, verging occasionally on fastidious, though even Eames knows better than to let that particular assessment cross his lips. After all, Arthur may be particular, but he’s also quite astoundingly lethal.
So Eames is not terribly surprised, three seconds after breaking into Arthur’s short-term flat, to find himself pinned to the wall with an arm across his throat and what feels very much like the muzzle of Arthur’s favorite SIG shoved into his gut.
He’s also not going to complain, not when Arthur’s aggressive vigilance results in Arthur’s body pressed right up against him, Arthur’s damp unstyled curls tickling his cheek. He’s clearly interrupted Arthur in the middle of getting dressed, which is convenient, as it will mean fewer layers to remove later.
He can tell the instant Arthur recognizes him. He feels the catch of breath against his ear, the stiffening of Arthur’s already tense body against his own - and then, beautifully, a slight relaxing.
“Eames.” Arthur pulls back far enough to look at him, and the pressure eases on Eames’s throat, just enough to allow him to talk. The gun stays where it is. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I was in the neighborhood,” Eames says, as lightly as he can manage. He feels a bit breathless, and not just from the steely forearm so recently crushing his windpipe. It’s one thing to know intellectually that he’s in love with Arthur, and a different matter entirely to see him in the flesh like this, close and in his shirtsleeves, threatening Eames’s life.
“Marrakesh is not ‘the neighborhood,’” Arthur says.
“You’re behind the times, I’m afraid,” Eames says. “I left Marrakesh three days ago.”
Arthur’s jaw clenches; he does hate being caught out with flawed intel. “Why are you here, Eames?” he asks sharply, and lets out a short, startled noise as their mouths collide.
(The thing is: once he’s committed to a course of action, Eames doesn’t like to waste time.)
Arthur huffs a surprised breath against Eames’s mouth. His lips are warm and dry, a bit chapped. He smells faintly of shaving cream. Eames wants to eat him alive.
For now, he restrains himself to a single parting nip to the tempting curve of Arthur’s bottom lip. He pulls back reluctantly, and is delighted to see Arthur’s eyes blinking open, dazed and unfocused.
“What the fuck,” Arthur says. His voice is even, his breathing steady, but there’s an unmistakable tremor running down the arm still wedged against Eames’s throat. And Eames understands Arthur, now, in a way he never did before. He knows that Arthur says a number of things he doesn’t actually mean, and swallows back many more that he does; that he’s distracted by Eames’s mouth and thinks about him sometimes in the middle of the night; that he’ll buy coffee he hates every day of his life before it ever occurs to him to ask for what he really wants.
Eames wriggles a hand free from where it’s crushed between their bodies, and carefully removes Arthur’s arm from his throat. When that provokes no resistance, he brings his hand up to rest along the long, slightly damp line of Arthur’s neck. He strokes a thumb over Arthur’s jaw, his pointy chin.
“Eames,” Arthur says.
“Hmm?” Eames responds absently, thumbing the spot where he’s seen one of Arthur’s dimples appear as if by magic, sudden and unpredictable. He’s had a lot of egregiously sentimental thoughts about those dimples lately. More than a few filthy ones, as well, come to that.
Something jabs him uncomfortably in the stomach - Christ, he forgot about the gun - and Arthur’s voice and face are both a bit harder when he says, “Tell me what you’re doing here.”
Eames manages, barely, to keep from rolling his eyes. “Arthur,” he says patiently, “there’s no such thing as love potions.”
“Well, I know that - “ Arthur snaps, indignant, and his cross little face is so angry and lovely and so very Arthur that Eames really can’t help but kiss him again.
The first go was necessarily brief, but Eames takes his time on the second round, deliberate and thorough. He memorizes the precise shape of Arthur’s mouth under his, learning the taste and supple give of it, lingering over its curves and corners. He drags their lips together, a sweet velvety glide, then breaks away to lay down a line of kisses along Arthur’s jaw.
He’s investigating the delicate skin under Arthur’s ear when Arthur shifts against him, raising his arm. Eames has a moment to wonder if he’s about to be choked again, and then Arthur’s long fingers are sliding into his hair, skating lightly over his scalp. He tilts his head into the touch, lets out a small sigh of pleasure. Arthur makes a delicious little sound in return, and his grip tightens, insistent, urging Eames back to meet his soft, hot mouth.
Arthur is pressing eagerly back against him now - finally, finally - and the kiss gains momentum quickly. Arthur catches Eames’s bottom lip between his teeth and worries it gently, bites down hard and then soothes the sting with a slick swipe of his tongue that makes the bottom fall out of Eames’s stomach. He presses his advantage, working Eames’s mouth open with clever nudges of lips and tongue, and Eames lets his hand drop down to Arthur’s side. He trails teasing fingers over Arthur’s flank, smoothes a palm over his ribs and then round to his back, skimming up over the peaks of his shoulder blades before sliding back down to rest above the waistband of his trousers.
The gun wobbles where it’s digging into Eames’s stomach, so he prudently maneuvers it out of Arthur’s slack grip and tosses it blindly onto the entryway table.
“Safety on?” he asks belatedly, as Arthur’s newly-freed hand curls round the back of his neck.
Arthur’s lips curve against Eames’s, wet and scornful. “Of course it’s not.”
Eames grins back. He recognizes that this is not an appropriate reaction to narrowly escaping being gut-shot, but he can’t help it. He’s exhausted and jet-lagged, most likely smells like an airplane toilet, and Arthur is pushing forward in his arms, aggressive and demanding, prying Eames’s mouth open again and stroking inside with his tongue. He’s got everything he wants.
Well. Maybe not everything.
He tugs experimentally at the back of Arthur’s shirt where it’s tucked into his trousers. Arthur hums into his mouth, and then, monstrously, he actually pulls away. “I’m supposed to be tailing the mark’s son right now.”
And, look, Eames appreciates that Arthur takes his work seriously; in fact, his relentless single-mindedness is normally quite appealing. Still, he refuses to be cock-blocked by a spoilt nineteen-year-old brewing heir, particularly when Arthur is standing in front of him with his lips so indecently swollen and his hair in such enticing disarray.
“He can wait,” he suggests, hand drifting down over Arthur’s wool-clad arse.
“So can you,” Arthur returns, but there’s a slight wariness in his voice, a note of uncertainty at odds with his confident words.
“So can I,” Eames allows. It’s technically true; he’s waited this long, and another eight hours would probably not physically kill him, no matter how vehemently his cock disagrees with that estimation. “I’d rather not, though, if it’s all the same to you,” he adds, and gives Arthur’s backside a persuasive squeeze.
Arthur’s lashes flutter at the touch. Still, he looks entirely too doubtful for someone about to have the best orgasm of his life, so Eames peels his hand away from that magnificent arse and reaches up to thread his fingers through Arthur’s drying hair.
“Arthur,” he says seriously, “I called Cobb to find you.”
Arthur’s dimples flare in his cheeks, deep and dazzling. “You must have been pretty desperate.”
“Yes,” Eames agrees, simply, because he was; he is.
Arthur stares at him for a moment, smile faltering. Eames winds a curl round his finger and waits, allows Arthur to read what he will into the regrettably dopey grin he can feel tugging at his bruised lips - and then Arthur is on him again, shoving Eames’s jacket off his shoulders, clawing at his shirt.
“God, I hate this shirt,” he mutters into the hollow of Eames’s throat.
“Why - ah, shit - why do you think I like it so well?” Eames replies, fumbling with the buttons of Arthur’s own oxford. They’re tiny and slippery under his fingers, thwarting his fervent efforts to get at Arthur’s naked skin. “I’m going to rip this off you in a moment.”
“It cost more than your life is worth,” Arthur informs him. He slides his hands over the bared expanse of Eames’s shoulders, scratches lightly down Eames’s chest with blunt nails, and Eames groans and scrabbles again at the elusive buttons. Arthur’s chest is hard and warm beneath the oxford, bleeding heat through fine cotton; Eames has never resented an article of clothing more in his entire life.
The last button slips free, and Eames wastes no time in tearing off the stupid hateful shirt and the sweat-damp undershirt beneath it. He scarcely has time to take in the sight of Arthur’s chiseled chest and belly - the jut of his collarbones, the thin white scar near his navel where Eames recalls spying fresh stitches during the Zhao job - before Arthur is pressing up against him in a long solid line of muscle, biting none-too-carefully at his lips.
He consoles himself by running his hands up Arthur’s back, then down to slip under Arthur’s waistband, fingertips grazing the silky skin just above the swell of his arse. Arthur moans into Eames’s mouth and rocks his hips forward. His cock is half-hard and impossibly hot against Eames’s thigh, a searing brand through the fabric of their trousers, and Eames is sorely tempted to bring them both off like this: to grip Arthur’s arse in both hands and grind their cocks together, maybe flip their positions and haul Arthur’s leg up over his hip, rut into him mindless and crude until they’re both shaking apart.
Then Arthur drops to his knees, and the half-formed idea joins the rest of Eames’s thoughts in flying directly out of his head.
Arthur’s hands are quick and efficient at his flies. He yanks Eames’s trousers down and leans in, mouths Eames’s cock through his pants. Eames’s hips stutter forward, instinctive; Arthur makes a wordless scolding sound and pins them firmly to the wall, thumbs pressing hard against Eames’s hipbones. He licks a long tantalizing stripe up Eames’s cock, ducks down to nuzzle the heavy weight of his balls before pulling back to suckle gently at the crown.
Eames has endured actual torture less painful than this, less cruel than the agonizing drag of wet cotton over hypersensitive skin, the shivery heat of Arthur’s breath through the fabric. His nerves are on fire, and he’s never wanted anything the way he wants to fuck into that mouth, to tangle his fingers in Arthur’s hair and lose himself in that yielding wet heat.
Arthur draws back a bit, lips pursed red and swollen over the cloth-covered head of Eames’s cock. The sight of it sends an electric shock of lust tearing through Eames, and he moans, hips jerking ineffectively in Arthur’s hold.
Arthur’s gaze flicks up to meet his, eyes hot and black, all pupil. Eames nearly comes on the spot. Arthur looks desperate, starving, like he’s the one suffering here, tormented by the shape of Eames’s cock against his lips.
“Do you want me to beg?” Eames demands. “Is that what this is about? Because I will, God, I’ll say anything you want, just - fuck, Arthur, please - “
He knows, logically, that there must be some steps between that breathless plea and the head of his cock bumping up against the back of Arthur’s throat. There are laws of physics to consider; his cock does not actually magic its way into Arthur’s mouth. That’s the sort of thing that happens in dreams, the telescoping of time between wanting something and having it. But he remembers arriving at the airport, smiling blandly through customs, falling into a taxi, slipping into Arthur’s building on the heels of a distracted German businessman. He remembers how he got here, right here, with Arthur’s tongue sliding messily over him and Arthur’s strong hands gripping the backs of his thighs, and he doesn’t need a totem to tell him that this is reality. This is real.
It’s not the most technically accomplished blowjob he’s ever received. Arthur’s mouth is rough and impatient around him, sloppy-wet with the faintest hint of teeth, and it’s so fucking good Eames feels like he’s coming out of his skin. He uncurls one hand where it’s clenched against the wall and traces clumsy fingers over Arthur’s smooth jaw, his cheek, the outline of his own cock through flushed skin. Arthur moans, ticklish against Eames’s fingertips and indescribable vibration round his cock, and Eames is gone, climax ripping through him with the relentless force of a hurricane, ruinous and deafening.
He’s distantly aware of Arthur manhandling him out of his shoes and trousers and pants, kissing up his chest and throat, tugging him away from the wall and - somewhere. He can’t really be arsed to care, not with little aftershocks of pleasure still shuddering up his spine, until Arthur prods him hard in the chest and he teeters over backwards, landing flat on his back on what feels like a very expensive mattress.
“So you do have a bed,” he says, groggy but pleased. “And here I thought perhaps you slept hanging from the ceiling, like a bat.”
Arthur does not dignify that with a verbal response. He does glare, but Eames hardly notices, which is Arthur’s own fault, really, as he’s chosen this moment to strip out of his preposterously well-fitting trousers.
Undressed, Arthur is slim and graceful, all clean lines and precise angles. Men who wear suits as well as Arthur does tend to look somewhat lost out of them, smaller and more vulnerable, but Arthur is strikingly confident in his skin, as though it too has been measured and fitted to his exacting standards.
Eames sits up and reaches for him, reels him in until he’s standing between Eames’s legs, close enough for Eames to nose at the line of hair leading up from the waistband of his pants. He fits his hands round Arthur’s narrow waist, flicks his tongue into the dip of Arthur’s navel. Arthur’s abdominal muscles jump under his palms.
“That’s disgusting,” says Arthur, who would probably commit hara-kiri before admitting to such a plebeian weakness as ticklishness. “Stop it.”
Eames does it again, just to be contrary. “I don’t see why I should.”
Arthur’s hand curves round the back of Eames’s neck. “Don’t you have better things to be doing with your mouth?”
“Well, if you insist,” Eames says, and tumbles him inelegantly down to the bed.
He runs his hands up Arthur’s long legs, enjoying the gentle friction of hair and warm skin. Arthur’s thighs are lean and very pale, unblemished apart from a scattering of small round burns near the bend of his left knee, each one slightly larger than the approximate diameter of a cigarette. Eames wants to hunt down the person who put them there and flay them alive. He settles for brushing his lips over the scars, mouthing at the damaged skin until Arthur is squirming under him, wriggling like an eel in his hands.
He’d like to carry on teasing Arthur for a while, torment him the way Eames himself was so recently tormented, but his mouth is already watering at the line of Arthur’s erection straining against black cotton. He tugs Arthur’s pants down his legs, then ducks back down to press his face into the join of hip and thigh. Arthur smells amazing, soapy and salty and alive, and Eames decides that teasing can wait for another day.
Arthur makes a low, broken sound when Eames takes him in. He’s close already, which is both arousing and disappointing, as Eames could quite happily work him over for hours. Eames sinks down on him, relishing the weight of Arthur’s cock on his tongue. He slips a hand round Arthur’s hip to grope shamelessly at his arse, encouraging the little abortive thrusts Arthur keeps making into his mouth, and Arthur’s legs fall open a bit wider.
Perhaps it’s just the force of his personality, but Eames has always thought of Arthur as hard and inflexible, the sort of man who would break before he’d bend. He’s wonderfully pliant now, though, loose-limbed and malleable. Eames could probably fold him right in half, if he wanted.
His cock twitches optimistically at the thought, and he pulls back, lets Arthur’s cock slip from his mouth. Arthur’s little whine of protest morphs into a groan as Eames sucks a proprietary mark onto his inner thigh.
“I hope you’re not overly fond of this mattress,” he pronounces around a mouthful of Arthur’s skin, “because I’m going to fuck you straight through it.”
Arthur chuckles, panting. “I’d like to see you try,” he says, defiant in a way only Arthur could manage in the midst of a blowjob.
He’s got a point, though. Eames isn’t a teenager anymore, and he’s too fucked out at this point to even consider lavishing Arthur’s arse with the attention it deserves.
(He will, though, later. He'll roll Arthur onto his belly and bite a trail of bruises down his back, work him open with two slick fingers and then lick into the wet, melting heat of him until he’s a shaky incoherent wreck. Please, he’ll hear, please, please, and it’ll take him a while to realize that it can’t possibly be coming from Arthur, who will be beyond words at that point, sobbing for breath and clawing at the tangled bed sheets.
Arthur will arch up against him when he pushes in, thighs trembling against Eames’s waist. For one long moment Eames will be frozen in place, completely undone by the miraculous curve of Arthur’s spine, the wild machine gun rattle of his heart - and then Arthur will fist a hand in Eames’s hair and say, Move, and Eames will move.
Later still, Arthur will haul himself out of the ruined bed and into the shower, spouting some nonsense about “work” and “responsibilities” and “basic hygiene.” Eames will take the opportunity to rifle through Arthur’s things, and afterwards he’ll take a terribly puerile pleasure in tugging Arthur in by his freshly-scrubbed hips and thoroughly dirtying him again. They’ll take another (enjoyably inefficient) shower, and together they’ll go tail Rafa Torres Alvarez as he drives at approximately five hundred kilometers per hour down the shady winding streets of Las Lomas, banging the undercarriage of his Mercedes E-Class against the topes.
No one will protest Eames’s unofficial joining of Arthur’s team, which will probably have something to do with the stony look of challenge in Arthur’s eyes the first day Eames shows up at the storage facility they’re using as a base. And, really, things won’t be so very different from the way they were before the Stone job. The two of them will argue as much as ever, and Arthur will continue to be scrupulously polite to everyone but Eames, though Eames will occasionally catch him eyeing a whiteboard marker with unmistakable longing. The only real difference will be Arthur’s new addiction to the most appallingly adulterated coffees he can find, which he’ll usually force Eames to pay for, claiming that la mordida is bleeding him dry. He will still be a terrible liar.
The job will be a success, the way their jobs always are, and they’ll go from Mexico City to New York to KL, and eventually to Mombasa. Arthur will develop an unexpected and deeply worrying friendship with Hasina, who will insist on having them both round for dinner, where her six-year-old niece will pester Arthur with questions about America. Yusuf will smirk and smirk into his coconut rice until Eames tells him to fuck off, at which point little Imani will echo, Fuck! and all hell will break loose.
In the ensuing chaos - Hasina’s sharp scolding Swahili, Yusuf’s guffaws, the dogs barking outside, the neighbor’s radio blaring yet another Bollywood love song - Eames will slide his hand onto Arthur’s thigh and squeeze. Arthur will shoot him a look, perhaps slightly more irritable than fond, but he won’t tell him to let go, and so Eames won’t.)
For the moment, he’s content to wrap his lips round Arthur’s cock, hollow his cheeks and stroke his tongue under the head until Arthur cries out, hips bucking off the mattress as he comes in hot salty pulses in Eames’s mouth.
Eames works him through it, pulling away only when Arthur’s little noises begin to cross the line from over-stimulated into pained. He’s exhausted, all of a sudden, wrung out with pleasure and jet lag. He crawls up a bit and collapses gratefully, head pillowed on Arthur’s heaving stomach.
Arthur shoves halfheartedly at his shoulder. “You’re heavy,” he complains.
“Mrrmph,” Eames rejoins, and stays where he is. He’ll move when he regains feeling in his arms and legs. Shouldn’t be longer than a week or so.
Arthur doesn’t put up much in the way of a struggle, just squirms a little, settling Eames’s weight more comfortably between his thighs. After a while, his hand comes to rest on the back of Eames’s head, fingers combing drowsily through Eames’s sweaty hair.
Perhaps two weeks.
Eames is already hovering on the languid verge of unconsciousness when a troubling thought occurs to him. He lifts his head and peers up the length of Arthur’s chest at his appealingly flushed face.
“You’re not going to set the bed on fire, are you?”
Arthur appears to think about it. “Not with you in it,” he concedes finally, magnanimous.
Eames looks at him, at the smudge of come on his chin and the poorly concealed twitching of his lips, and feels a great surge of affection wash over him. It’s overpowering, towing him under, and the riptide drags him up to press his lips to Arthur’s hairline, his chin, the point of his nose.
“Sorry, sorry,” he mumbles against Arthur’s eyebrow, “impulse control problems, you know, can’t be helped.”
Arthur kicks him in the shin. “Get off me, you asshole,” he says, but he’s smiling as he says it, wide open, with his eyes crinkled at the corners and his breath hot on Eames’s chin.