(no subject)
Title: Your Phantom Shape
Pairing/Characters: Arthur/Mal, Eames/Arthur/Mal
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 7,532
Warnings: Sibling incest, angst
Summary: Sometimes the perfection of being the half to another's whole is a lot more tarnished than you expected.
A/N: Written for i-reversebang
This piece really took my mind and ran with it! I thought it would be straight-forward for the most part, but it evolved into a full scale origin story, so there will definitely be more to come along the line :)
Tons of gratitude (and love, for that matter) should be showered over velificantes for not only providing her gorgeous work but also tolerating my tendency to pour helpless brainstorming sessions into her inbox and sending lovely encouragement right back.
The poetry used here (and on the artwork) comes from this rather haunting Japanese poem.
If it were death to love,
I should have died-
And died again
One thousand times over.
I dreamed I was holding
A double-edged sword close to my body-
What does it foretell? It tells
That I shall meet you soon.
---
Arthur’s earliest memories were of the sea. His mother, Marie, had certainly made no effort to keep the sea out, throwing the windows open wide whenever the weather would permit it (and living along the California coast made that often). The moisture would settle in, warping the wallpaper and softening the already worn wooden floorboards. Yet Marie never minded it, even when it wreaked havoc upon many of her books, leaving the bindings so swollen that it was next to impossible to force any of them closed anymore.
Such was the case with Marie’s favorite tome of Greek mythology. She would read to Arthur from it almost every night, the pages crinkling under her fingertips and causing the salty familiar scent to circulate around the room even more.
He heard plenty of tales of Poseidon in those days, yet the ones his mother told him the most often-as though trying to drive home a lesson-were those of the Underworld. Or, more particularly, of the two brothers that lived there.
“And there the children of the dark Night have their dwellings, Sleep and Death, awful gods.” No matter how much time she spent in the states, Marie’s voice still carried an unmistakable, if gentle, lisp of French to it. “The glowing Sun never looks upon them with his beams, neither as he goes up into heaven, nor as he comes down from heaven. And the former of them roams peacefully over the earth and the sea’s broad back and is kindly to men; but the other has a heart of iron, and his spirit within him is pitiless as bronze: whomsoever of men he has once seized he holds fast: and he is hateful even to the deathless gods.”
She smiled down at her son, the warmth in her face at complete odds with the chillingly dramatic words she had just spoken. “You are Thanatos, my petit-the god of Death.”
“Nu-uh!” Arthur shook his head, downy curls bouncing everywhere. “He sounds mean!”
“Only because his work makes him seem so.” Marie crooked a finger beneath Arthur’s chin, tipping his face up towards her. “He is strong enough to know that only those who see beyond such nonsense are worthy of him.” She pressed a kiss to her son’s forehead. “And, besides, a heart of iron can be a very grand thing to have. It will protect you.”
Even if such praise came from his mother, however, Arthur wasn’t inclined to believe it. In the end, death was still death, no matter how one dressed it up.
And, unlike Thanatos, he didn’t even have another sibling, let alone a twin.
He only mentioned this to his mother once, though, since she had stiffened, face twisting up horribly before she abandoned the pot of sauce on the stove, slamming the door to her bedroom shut.
It was a reaction that Arthur was forced to grow familiar with over the years when he began to understand just what people in town were whispering about when they went out amongst them. Gossip was the bread and butter of small towns, after all, and a woman who had shown up out of the blue with a baby cradled in her arms and no man in sight certainly caused a stir. That Marie refused to answer any questions about the father, shutting herself off from the society of the town as much as she could, only made matters worse.
She would even rage against Arthur whenever he would try asking. At first, a quick snap would be enough to force Arthur down into silence for at least a handful of years, but once he became a teenager that was no longer enough.
Marie had a temperament like the sea she so loved, capable of remaining deceptively calm until something-or someone-caused her to roar to life.
Unfortunately, her son was much the same, so no matter how fierce the waves she whipped at him were he was capable of holding firm and lashing back with just as much strength.
After his graduation from high school there was a lull, enough for Marie to start to believe that things might have evened out for good. Which was why she behaved as though she had been struck when one night while preparing for dinner Arthur announced that he had been offered a scholarship to a university in Paris and that he planned on staying in the city over the summer to prepare himself.
The row unleashed then was like none other with Marie actually going so far as to smash plates upon the ground and toss a glass at the wall when Arthur stormed away from her.
Nothing could change his mind, not the yelling or even the pleading she resorted to as the day of Arthur’s planned flight grew steadily closer. He knew that there had to be some reason for why she didn’t want him to go to Paris-why she appeared actually fearful of it-and he was determined to find out what it was.
---
In a way, Arthur had braced himself for Paris. Being on foreign soil for the first time would be strange enough, but he had never ventured outside the small confines of his hometown except for the occasional field trip. So he had been prepared to feel like a fish yanked from a pond to be plopped down into a huge lake, and one with a change of water at that.
So what wound up taking him back the most was how utterly at peace he felt in the city. The more sensible side of him wanted to say that it was because his mother had filled his head with stories of the place, ensuring that he had a fair grasp of how to get around without clutching to a map in obvious tourist fashion and, even better, he could speak the language with ease. But there was something more to it than that-something primal beating away below the surface-that simply seemed to say, “Here. You have always belonged here.”
It was a sentiment that his companion, Mallory Miles, would have agreed with whole-heartedly. Or, as she had admonished with a wrinkle of her nose and a gleam of amusement in her eyes, Mal.
Strictly speaking his guide around the city was supposed to be Stephen Miles, the head of the architecture department at Arthur’s soon to be university, but the man was off on a trip to his home country of England and had left his daughter in charge.
“Père knew would be in good hands with me, Arthur.” It was hard not to be drawn to just how lovely those hands were as well, even when doing something as mundane as plucking apart bits of bread to toss down to the ducks loitering down below in the Seine. When she turned to look at him, though, the wind ruffling her hair into a dark, wispy cloud around her head and her smile brilliant, she looked lovelier than ever. “We’ll make sure you don’t get stuck in dark rooms peering over dusty records all day.” And even Arthur had to laugh when she stuck out her tongue.
He didn’t miss out on any education either, even if Mal did tug him away from the university more often than not, giggling under her breath. It was just that it didn’t fall into any exact predictability. Mal could go out determined to track down the perfect gelato in the city, for example, then, after finding it leagues away from their starting point, would jolt up before even getting in a few spoonfuls so that she could drag Arthur off into a cathedral to point out the beauty she had just spotted in the elegant construction of the roof.
After surviving for so long in the rigid parameters that his mother had set down, Mal’s unpredictable nature was fascinating. He had had acquaintances in school-people he could study and hang out with-but all of them had melted away after graduation. Mal was the first person he ever called “friend” and have it feel right to do so.
Which was maybe why he had such difficulties when it came to dealing with the more tactile aspect of Mal’s nature. The only person who had made an effort to be hands on with him was his mother and, hell, if that didn’t sound unintentionally creepy.
Besides, what Mal engaged in was on a totally different scale than maternal pats on the head. Her fingers were constantly trailing over his hand or arm when they were out together, the only exceptions being when she would have him slip her hand into the crook of his arm. And even then she would still press up close, as though trying to burrow in against him.
Her feet would knock against his under the table whenever they sat down for meals and whenever he would escape to the couch for the night, either to read one of the heavy tomes assigned from various professors or to work on sketches, Mal would follow after him. Oftentimes she would wind up leaning against him with a book of her own or with her head flopped down in his lap, offering commentary as he went along.
One night, though, she wound up in his lap, head lolling against his shoulder as she dozed. Her hair brushed up against his neck, carrying the crisp scent of her perfume, and, as if that wasn’t distracting enough, her little, sleepy puffs of air kept hitting his cheek.
It was a wonder he was able to get through a few pages before the words started to slip out of focus for good.
Arthur was careful about lifting Mal up, not wanting to wake her up, but he must not have been careful enough because when he tried to lower Mal down onto her bed, her arms came up to lock around his neck.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to…” The rest of his words got locked in his throat as it constricted, however, and all because of the way Mal’s lips were tracing the curve of his neck.
“I won’t go to bed,” she announced, voice a low, smoky purr at his ear, “unless you come with me.”
A better man… No, actually, scratch that. An idiot would have wiggled free from Mal’s hold and left her there anyway. The better man would have been the one to join her in bed and simply twine around her warm, soft body until both of them managed to drift off to sleep.
But, well that did wind up happening, it was only after Arthur wound up lost between Mal’s legs, her thighs griping down around him tightly as his tongue lapped at her clit. She didn’t begin to truly thrust back against his fingers in earnest until he had built up to three and she wound up breaking apart not long after that.
Arthur would have liked to say that he held out nearly as long as she did, but that was next to impossible after hearing the sounds of Mal lost in rapture-and knowing that you were causing it-without becoming suitably worked up.
She merely cooed when he spilled out into her hand, however, not even bothering to wipe her hand off before clashing their mouths back together.
When he finally did slip off to sleep it was with his head on Mal’s chest, her heartbeat echoing in the shell of his ear. Even then, though, he still sparred enough of a thought to worry about how something like this might change things between them. And when he had woken up to find the bed empty he thought he had found his answer-things had gone wrong, horribly so.
But then Mal came bustling in, placing a tray laden with bits of their usual breakfast down onto the bed. There were the croissants from the bakery down the street whose owners had known Mal since was a child, which meant she always had a massive discount if she even had to pay at all and bits of sliced fruit.
She rambled away about a building she had seen in her dreams-a place like a cross between one of the Persian cathedrals and the ancient Roman temples-while she set about fixing their coffee. It was a quick, simple task, as it were, since both of them took it close to black with only a dash of sugar.
Arthur was still trying to work out what exactly he was supposed to make of it all when she leaned over to kiss him. Her lips tasted of the heavy dash of butter she had smeared across the croissants, yet when she pulled away her lips stuck to his for the briefest of seconds longer as a result of the jam she had smeared on as well. She was smiling at him then, small and soft, with her eyes gleaming with something that made his breath stick in his throat.
“What changed?” he heard himself ask.
“Oh, Arthur.” Mal pressed her forehead against his own, eyelashes lowering. “Nothing did. It has been like this from the instant I met you…when I touched you… It was as though I had found someone who…who was my la moitié de l'ensemble.”
Half of a whole, Arthur’s mind translated helplessly, and he reached up to grip tight to her arms. “I know what you mean.” His words left him in a quiet rush, as though she might slip away if he didn’t get them out fast enough. “I know exactly what you mean.”
It was there in the way that their limbs would slide together with such ease, reading each other’s body language without even realizing it. The way that they could finish each other’s thoughts, as though even their minds had been bound together.
And, even more than that, there was the feeling. The one that Arthur didn’t think that either of them could explain, but that could assure them with all certainty that if it were possible to burrow inside the other person than they would be returning home.
Needless to say trips out of the bed were fleeting that day.
---
The summer days seemed to peal back all the faster then, school pressing in close, but Miles still didn’t come home. Apparently his business in England-London specifically-was taking longer than expected.
Mal didn’t seem bothered by his absence, claiming that this was a fairly typical occurrence and that Arthur was company enough for her at the moment. “I know it’s silly,” she said, curled up against him on the couch, “but I don’t want to share you yet!” And since Arthur was more than inclined to agree with her it was last sort of thing he would reprimand her for.
It was, though, why both of them received a bit of a rude shock when the ease of their arrangement was broken.
Arthur had been out gathering groceries and, in retrospect, he probably should have realized something was up when he had to wrangle with the door on his own instead of Mal arriving to help. But he didn’t realize until he got the door open at last, any complaints disappearing when he saw that Mal’s face was twisted up in anger.
The tension in his chest eased somewhat when he realized that the expression wasn’t actually fixed on him, but only for a brief second because the person who was on the receiving end of it shouldn’t be there at all. In fact, Arthur wasn’t even sure who he was.
The man seemed better prepared than Arthur, however, based on the way that he burst up from where he had been sprawled out across the couch, smiling widely as he approach Arthur. “And this must be the dear protégé. Arthur, if memory serves? Now, let me help you with those…”
He was gathering up the bags before Arthur could even think to stop him, even if just out of politeness (his arms had begun to ache already anyway). He didn’t even bother to ask where things went, simply flicking open cupboards to see what was inside before popping things in from the bag. He must have been able to sense the way Mal continued to scowl at him, arms crossed over her chest, and how Arthur hadn’t moved in with the rest of the bags, too busy with gaping. He even, of all things, whistled under his breath while he worked.
He didn’t stop until all the bags he had were empty and even then it was simply to turn to look at the other two seeming…appalled? “Please tell me you bought tea?” he said. “This can’t be the home of a proper British gentleman if there isn’t any tea.”
“My père is in the habit of taking his own supplies with him when he travels,” Mal said frostily. “And since we weren’t aware that we were expecting company-let alone of the British variety-we simply didn’t have time to stock up.”
The man’s eyebrows arched, but he still didn’t seem put out in the slightest. “Huh, figures he wouldn’t have told you I was coming.” He slipped around the counter, gathering the last of the bags out of Arthur’s hands with a wink. “I’m Eames, and I’ve been working with your father recently on quite the interesting project. Or…well…one that I managed to lift from my former military commander for our own personal research use.”
Arthur felt something twist in his gut when he saw the flicker of interest in Mal’s eyes, which only grew as she probed Eames further on this “project” of her father’s, tone growing warmer with each passing word. But then he remembered the way that his own cheeks had warmed when Eames winked at him, the arousal that hit him as he watched the man’s muscles stretch while he put away the groceries-revealing a hint of curling black ink on the skin-and felt a hot flash of guilt.
---
In retrospect, Arthur should have known better than to think that it had gone unnoticed. That Mal wouldn’t be able to read him just because for the first time he didn’t want her to.
She cornered him the kitchen that night while Eames was locked in a dead sleep on the couch. He hadn’t been allowed to take the guest room since Mal still counted that as “Arthur’s space” even if he hadn’t actually slept in it for ages now.
“I didn’t know you liked men as well.” There is a hint of accusation under the softness of Mal’s voice and, although Arthur flinches under the weight of it, he can’t fault her for it. The two of them had hallowed out every detail of one another, sharing everything. To discover that there was still one secret left untouched must have felt disquieting.
“It’s nothing. He means nothing.” But even to his own ears Arthur’s voice fell flat, as though he was trying to recite something by route. “It doesn’t matter.” And, because something sharp nudged against his chest when Mal’s mouth pursed, he had to add, “No more than his project should matter.”
He hated the color that rose up along the edges of Mal’s cheekbones and the way that she ducked her head, curls falling across her cheek. It proved that he had been right. “It is my père’s project too, Arthur.” She turned her head, lifting her hands to frame his face. “Everything will be alright. This changes nothing.”
But there was a desperate tinge to her voice, as though she were trying to convince them both.
---
Eames had to notice the way they tiptoed around him the next day, casting wary glances at one another whenever he pressed in too close, but he never commented on it. Maybe he even expected it, given that he was, voucher from Miles or not, a stranger in their midst.
It turned out not to matter in the long run anyway, however, since the hurried walls that Mal and Arthur shoved up got toppled right back down when Eames introduced the device that he had been working on with Miles-a PASIV.
And once connected to it you could share dreams.
“The military-God knows which-started it up as a training program.” Eames was unwinding the plastic tubes from the device with surprising dexterity for such thick fingers. “A way for soldiers to butcher one another without doing any actual murdering.”
“Horrendous.” Mal’s upper lip had a slight curl to it when Arthur shifted his gaze to her. “Why make something so marvelous if you plan to use it only for terror?”
Arthur was surprised that to find that he wasn’t the only one looking at Mal in admiration. It was in Eames’ voice too when he spoke. “Which is precisely why I had to steal it.” He held out the tubes. “Now shall I do this part for you or…?”
Mal snagged two of the lines from him, tracing for Arthur’s strongest vein with the tips of her fingers before pressing the needle down. He waited until she had lifted the needle back out, leaving only the end of the tube underneath his skin, to do the same for her.
He wasn’t sure what to make of the fond expression on Eames’ face as he watched them, however.
“Well let’s begin then.”
---
The first time wasn’t exactly a disaster, but it came close.
There was just so much to do, so many different limits to push onwards and past, that it was hard to pay attention to Eames’ increasingly hurried warnings.
Especially not when Mal was smiling in that way that caused her whole face to glow, eyes gleaming as she squeezed Arthur’s hand tight.
She was clawing at Arthur’s hand only minutes later, screaming for him not to let go before one of the people-projections-pulled out a knife and she began to cry for him to-“Look away, Arthur, just look away! Put your head down and don’t-”
When Arthur lurched back awake, the first thing he realized was that Mal was still shouting, although the words were getting so muddled that it was more akin to wailing. What he saw next was enough to make his stomach lurch through yet another hurdle because Eames was touching Mal and even if it was obvious that he was just trying to calm her down, easing his hands up and down her arms, it still flooded Arthur’s mouth with a bitter taste.
Except then Mal is pulling away from Eames to all but throw herself into Arthur’s arms and everything feels a bit less like jagged glass.
They were careful about things after that, actually paying attention when Eames explained things to them. He was good at it too, teaching them how to stretch the limits of the dream without bringing the projections down on their heads.
Mal built wonders-divine, impossible structures that could only ever exist in a dream. She laughed whenever Arthur stepped in to add a swatch of color here to make it more realistic or a pillar to support a particularly delicate looking section from toppling over.
Eames kept saying that it was all part of the balance between them-what allowed them to work so flawlessly together-and, although it shouldn’t, the pride in his voice never failed to make them beam.
---
Arthur probably should have known better, though, then to assume that Eames had shown them his whole hand.
They’re in Arthur’s dream this time and he’s chosen to conjure up the ocean. He can still find the sea in Paris, of course, but nothing can truly beat the familiar roll of this body of water. It’s the only way he can think to enjoy it without slinking back home to face his mother, so he relishes in ever second of it.
Which was probably why he didn’t realize that someone was drawing in close until an arc of seawater and foam sprays out across his legs. He had rolled his pant legs up-jeans for once-so he could go barefoot in the water, so his clothes don’t actually get that wet, but still it’s the principal of the thing to turn and splash back with his own foot.
The trill of laughter identified the person near him as Mal before he even turned to see her gleeful face.
It didn’t take long for it to descend down into an all out splash war, the two of them laughing like children and even kicking up some of the wet sand in the rapid flurry of their feet.
Then Mal pitched herself into his arms, gigging into his mouth when he had to stumble back a little, arms wrapped firmly around her to keep them both from tumbling into the waves.
Nothing will ever compare to kissing Mal, not really, and at first Arthur was too lost in the sensation of it all to recognize the signs. Except then there are fingers, dragging along the side of his face where Mal always strokes and there’s a tongue pressing rather urgently against his mouth when Mal will give some sign-a thumb against the hinge of his jaw or a small noise-that she wants him to open up.
Arthur forced himself backwards, holding Mal-no, no-at arm’s length. “Who are you?” he demanded.
That was all it took for details to slip away and change. Arthur’s hands wind up rising with the change in height then spreading out to accommodate for wider shoulders. The smirk on the mouth, though, remained the same.
“Should have realized that’s what would give me away.” Eames rubbed at his chin, huffing out a laugh. “It’s not like I’ve been able to get any practice.”
“And you’re not going to get it,” Arthur snapped. He didn’t want to think of what would happen if Eames decided to wear his face instead. Would Mal be able to find a tell quicker than he had? Or would she be lured right in too and now Eames knew how Arthur actually kissed so…
“Oh, is this you volunteering to be my practice dummy?” Eames asked. “Can’t say I’m complaining, darling.” He danced back into the foam, winking when Arthur tried to shove him.
---
Except, apparently, the rules when it came to sharing weren’t exactly as strict as Arthur had thought.
He fumbled with his mug of tea when Mal brought it up the first time, cursing when the better part of the too hot liquid got all over his hands.
Mal was next to him in a heartbeat, wrapping a washcloth wrapped in cold water around his hands. Except, eventually, it became less about cleaning him up and more about simply holding his hands in her lap. “I know it’s something you want, Arthur.” She raised her eyes to meet his, lips pressed into a thin line.
“And I’m not afraid to do it.”
“I’m not saying you’re afraid.” Arthur sighed, wanting his hands back so he could hide his face in them. Which was perhaps part of why Mal was clinging onto them so tightly. “I’m just saying…this shouldn’t be something you have to do.”
Mal lifted one of her shoulders then let it drop, a gesture that would have seemed graceful if you didn’t know her well enough to catch the pinch between her brow, there and gone again in a second. “But I want to make you happy, to put you at ease, and if this is what does that then it’s what I want too.” She lifted up one of her hands at last, skimming her fingers over Arthur’s cheek. “Besides…that man can never really own you, not the way I do. I know that.”
---
Arthur wasn’t actually too surprised at how easy Eames was to proposition. What he was surprised over, though, was that Eames didn’t even put up so much as a token protest when he learned that Arthur was going to be the only one he fucked that night.
He was content to sit there on Mal’s-their-bed, watching through hooded eyes as Mal worked one finger after another up inside Arthur. It didn’t take him long to start stealing kisses from Arthur’s mouth, though, which only made Arthur wind up even more breathless.
It was as though Eames was trying to match the rhythm of Mal’s fingers somehow. He kept his kisses easy, content to simply explore Arthur’s mouth at the start, but as the twists of Mal’s fingers became surer, so did Eames’ kisses. The aggressive element of the kisses didn’t surprise him, but the possessive nature of it did. It was something he had only experienced from Mal, so-small as it might seem-it sent a bit of a thrill down his spine, as if it were something forbidden.
Eames even pulled away when Mal did, smirking over the way Arthur couldn’t help whining at the loss of them, and Arthur could hear the tinkle of Mal’s laughter from behind him.
Eames did raise an eyebrow, however, when Mal tossed a little tinfoil wrapped package down onto his chest. “Really, my dear?” he said, hoisting it up with an incredulous expression. “I wouldn’t have risked swapping IV lines with you if I didn’t know for sure I was clean.”
“That’s not the point.” Mal rolled her eyes when Eames only raised his eyebrows. She plucked the condom from his fingers, ripping the package open and rolling the bit of rubber onto Eames’ cock without even batting an eyelash. “Just because I’m willing to share Arthur with you, Monsieur Eames, doesn’t mean I’m willing to give you all of him.”
Eames’ face went alarmingly blank for a flicker of a second before a smile was plastered on over it. “Right, of course,” he said. “How silly of me to forget.”
“Eames…” Arthur swallowed hard when Eames glanced over at him. “If you don’t want to…”
“Oh, please.” There it was, Eames’ real smile was back again and relief broke out through the dam that had built up in Arthur’s chest. “This is hardly something you can convince me to turn back from, darling.”
Mal pushed Eames down to lay flat on the bed before Arthur could press further, but he kept a careful gaze on the other man’s face as he slid over on top of him. Which actually proved to be quite beneficial because he got to catch every emotion that flashed across Eames’ face as he eased his way down onto the man’s cock.
The arousal was almost comforting to see since it reminded him that Eames wanted this as much as he did, but the utter awe on the man’s face once Arthur bottomed out on his cock took Arthur’s breath away.
It was a position chosen to give Arthur some level of control, which he was grateful for now. It wasn’t as though he didn’t know what to expect (the internet and Mal’s rather inventive approach to sex had seen to that), but there was something quite different between all that and the real thing. Because Eames was wider than any toy he had used before (and longer too but it wouldn’t do to stroke the man’s ego too much) and able to shift inside Arthur, warm in ways that a bit of plastic just couldn’t be.
The only way in which Eames actually resembled any of those toys was the fact that, human or not, he was still under Arthur’s control.
Those large hands had to grip down fiercely on Arthur’s hips to keep from simply taking when Arthur first began to move in little jerks of his hips, trying to learn a new rhythm. He didn’t begin to push up on his own until Arthur gasped, having found the perfect way to angle himself so that Eames would hit, “Fuck, yes, right there. Come on, Eames, come on.”
From there it all descended into a mess of sensations.
There were Eames’ fingers digging into Arthur’s skin, the ragged sounds of their combined breath as Eames assured Arthur that he was, “So God damn perfect, darling, clenched around me like this.” And, in a way, Arthur wondered if it was like that because he never really wanted to let this go. The pleasure was too addicting, especially now that Eames could manage to hit that spot inside of him almost every time.
Except that couldn’t be all it was, not really, because Arthur also thought that it was beautiful to watch Eames as he was now, to now that he was the one that had put such a look of rapture onto the man’s face. He wondered if maybe he could get away with keeping Eames, if just for a little bit longer, or at least outside of just this moment.
But then Mal’s lips hit the back of his neck, shifting around to suck and bite at as much of his skin as she could get at-something sure to leave marks-and Arthur remembered why he couldn’t; that he owed an allegiance to someone else.
He thought Eames understood as well, for the man voiced no complaints when Arthur celebrated their afterglow by letting Mal drag him down between her thighs, gasping around a moan as he worked the nub of her under his tongue with lazy strokes.
Eames just reached over to run his fingers through Arthur’s hair while the younger one worked, seemingly unconcerned with the come that was still cooling on his chest.
But, then again, it wasn’t as thought Arthur was paying enough attention to catch the flickers of sadness in Eames’ eyes or that his sigh wasn’t strictly speaking one of contentment.
---
They never quite got the chance to figure out how things would have worked between them from then on. Whether things would have grown too awkward, especially with their minds wound together such as they were down in the dreams, or if it would be possible to simply accept and move past this until the time that the two would chose to become three again.
It started out as a normal day, peaceful even, with Mal up on the counter in one of Arthur’s dress shirts, which just barely came to the end of her thighs. She was singing her legs as she sipped at her coffee, humming some nonsensical tune while Arthur went to set the kettle on for Eames. He didn’t protest when Mal pulled him over between her legs once he was done (why would he?), meeting her lips with a smile.
Which was precisely when the door banged open, raised voices spilling into the flat. It startled Mal enough that her mug jerked from her hands, pouring coffee all down her front and splattering over onto Arthur’s.
Arthur snagged one the hand towels from near the stove on instinct, only to freeze when he realized just who was standing there a little ways away in the living room. “Mom?”
Mal looked up from where she had been holding the shirt a few inches away from her skin, jaw going slightly slack. “Père? You’re back?”
“Oh God.” Those were the only words that Marie managed to get out that were in English from that point on. The rest of the words spilled out of her in French as she stumbled backwards, face white. Arthur was already dashing forward, but it was Miles that managed to catch her when her shaky knees gave out beneath her at last.
It was only now that he was close enough, however, that Arthur managed to decipher bits of his mother’s babbles.
“I never should have… This is why you should have listened to… Brother and sister…”
Miles guided Marie over to the couch, having to half carry her all the way there, before sighing heavily and lifting his head to fix both children with a firm gaze.
“We need to talk.”
---
At the beginning there was Miles, the darling of the architecture department at his university. There were plenty of people enthralled by their new young teacher; French girls determined to “corrupt” an Englishman, although there was little to him that hadn’t been yet.
Then there was Marie, who had swept upon such a scene and curled her upper lip at the gaggle of swooning girls with their coy smiles. “Votre syntaxe est malheureux.” She didn’t flounce away like so many other girls Miles had seen before. Instead she strode off like a storm cloud come to life, not looking back so much as once, even when the girls flew into angry gossip over her.
It was marriage, as ever, that made things messy.
Miles saw nothing wrong with his long hours at the office or even the occasional night spent over. Marie was at home to see to the children and in the downtime she could work on her own projects.
The only issue was that there wasn’t any real downtime.
Their daughter had colic with almost nothing being capable of soothing her. The only thing really capable was handing her over to Miles-who was almost never home so that was out the window-or putting her down with her twin. But if their son got close enough he would start wailing too, having sensed his sister’s distress. It would turn into a vicious cycle then with each child fueling the other’s cries with their own. But, if kept separate, the girl would simply cry away until she had to give in to sleep.
Miles would stay for little snatches of time-a few days at most-to straighten things back into some kind of order and then he would be back out the door.
Which, of course, was when everything would fall apart.
Miles started ignoring Marie’s constant calls altogether, which was Marie said-and still did-that he had no one to blame but himself for letting her walk in on him with one of the still fresh faced teacher’s aides.
It was just a kiss, but Miles’ hands had already been roaming for more and Marie had exploded, especially after Miles had tried to suggest that perhaps an open marriage was what they really needed.
In the end, each parent wound up with one of their children, separating them in some sort of terrible cliché, like something from a movie. Which was why Miles had raised Mal in Paris while Marie fled to the coasts of California to bring up Arthur.
---
“That is a lie,” Mal spat. Her eyes darted over to Arthur, who was sitting at her side on the other couch, but he was too shell-shocked still to speak up in agreement. So instead she reached over to clutch at his hand, his own fingers curling around hers on instinct. “That is a filthy lie. We would have known if it were true.”
The two of them knew each other from the inside out, had carved out a place in the other to make their home. How could this have been missed?
“It’s our fault,” Miles said. “This should have been explained to you far sooner.”
His eyes slid over to Marie, causing the woman to scoff. “Oh, don’t try to pin this on me,” she said. “I tried to keep him from coming here, but he wouldn’t listen anymore than you used to.”
“I figured it had to have something to do with my father.” Arthur was aware of all the eyes in the room shifting towards him, but he kept his own gaze straight ahead, tone distressingly blank. “You only ever tried to keep me from something so much if it had something to do with him.”
“Now you see what comes from keeping secrets.” Miles’ tone was even, but there was a tinge of something unpleasant in his face when he looked over at Marie. “This all could have been avoided if you had just-”
“Why am I not surprised?” Marie was already flashing teeth, anger riling her up from her slumped over position on the couch as nothing else would. “You’re always so quick to twist the blame away from yourself. As if I could ever be expected to trust you in my life again, knowing the poison that you bring with you.”
“You can’t just twist-”
“Pardon me.” It was Eames, who had resisted any attempts to shoo him away. He was standing behind the couch on which Mal and Arthur were huddled, one hand braced against the frame as though he where some sort of guardian over them. Perhaps he was, at least then. “But I don’t think now is time to bicker.” He huffed. “This is actually about your children, not you, and you’ve just dealt them quite the shock.”
“No more than the one we’ve been dealt.” Marie’s eyes flicked over to Arthur and Mal then down to the floor, a tremble running through her. “I never thought you would have…”
“And what?” The volume of Arthur’s voice spiked for the first time, causing everyone to give a start. Well, everyone save for Mal, who simply curled in against him even more, face pressing down into his shoulder even as it heaved up and down. “We were just supposed to know better? Without ever being told?”
But what makes it all the worse was that maybe they had noticed. Perhaps that was what had drawn them towards one another in the first place, a sensing of similarities that stood for something far more platonic than what they had twisted it into.
Eames was the one that jumped into action then; the only person really suited to do so. He ushered the adults out to lead them off in search of a place for brunch, something that Miles was far more understanding of. As for Marie, she was persuaded with the allure of the native food she hadn’t tasted in years and the press of two different but equally firm hands on the small of her back.
The silence that descended once the door closed was, perhaps expectedly, deafening. Neither could be sure how long they sat there, but it felt like ages had passed with each tic of the clock. They didn’t want to talk, not when having to discuss it would officially mark it all as something too real to be avoided.
“We could always…”
“No.” Arthur didn’t even have to ask what Mal meant. It was something that had already flitted through his mind; a thing that he didn’t dare to consider. “Mal, we couldn’t. There are people that know.”
“No one who couldn’t be duped!” Mal exclaimed. “They don’t matter, Arthur. Not as much as… They can’t.”
“I’m sorry.” Arthur tried to reach up to touch Mal, but she recoiled from him skittering towards the end of the couch with her face buried in her hands. There was a faint tremble running through her body and the ragged breaths she took made it clear that she was crying even if it couldn’t be seen. Arthur ached to take her in his arms and will every bit of that pain away, but he knew that that was no longer his right.
“You have to go then.” Mal took in a deep breath, letting it back out slowly. “At least for now. You can’t ask me to… I can’t bear to be so close to you every minute of the day and know that I can’t have you.”
“You still have me.” Arthur spoke with all the vehemence of an oath spoken before a god, even when Mal’s laughter escaped from her in little hiccup like sounds. “It will be different now, but I’ll never stop being yours, Mal, I promise.”
Something in Mal seemed to break then because her curled up limbs sprang free and onto him in a heartbeat. Her nails dug into the meat of his shoulder blades even through the fabric of his shirt and Arthur wasn’t sure whether he she was trying to find a way to leave one last mark or keep him there through sheer force alone. Perhaps it was both.
The only thing Arthur did know for sure, as his arms tightened around the desperately fluttering creature in his arms, was that he had become exactly what his mother had predicted.
He was Thanatos with his iron heart after all.
---
If the gods of heaven and earth
Were bereft of reason,
I might die
Without seeing you
Whom I love so well.
The bells are tolling
Bidding all to rest.
But you being forever on my mind,
I cannot sleep.
To love you who love me not
Is like going to a great temple
To bow in adoration
Behind the back of the famished devil.
Pairing/Characters: Arthur/Mal, Eames/Arthur/Mal
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 7,532
Warnings: Sibling incest, angst
Summary: Sometimes the perfection of being the half to another's whole is a lot more tarnished than you expected.
A/N: Written for i-reversebang
This piece really took my mind and ran with it! I thought it would be straight-forward for the most part, but it evolved into a full scale origin story, so there will definitely be more to come along the line :)
Tons of gratitude (and love, for that matter) should be showered over velificantes for not only providing her gorgeous work but also tolerating my tendency to pour helpless brainstorming sessions into her inbox and sending lovely encouragement right back.
The poetry used here (and on the artwork) comes from this rather haunting Japanese poem.
If it were death to love,
I should have died-
And died again
One thousand times over.
I dreamed I was holding
A double-edged sword close to my body-
What does it foretell? It tells
That I shall meet you soon.
---
Arthur’s earliest memories were of the sea. His mother, Marie, had certainly made no effort to keep the sea out, throwing the windows open wide whenever the weather would permit it (and living along the California coast made that often). The moisture would settle in, warping the wallpaper and softening the already worn wooden floorboards. Yet Marie never minded it, even when it wreaked havoc upon many of her books, leaving the bindings so swollen that it was next to impossible to force any of them closed anymore.
Such was the case with Marie’s favorite tome of Greek mythology. She would read to Arthur from it almost every night, the pages crinkling under her fingertips and causing the salty familiar scent to circulate around the room even more.
He heard plenty of tales of Poseidon in those days, yet the ones his mother told him the most often-as though trying to drive home a lesson-were those of the Underworld. Or, more particularly, of the two brothers that lived there.
“And there the children of the dark Night have their dwellings, Sleep and Death, awful gods.” No matter how much time she spent in the states, Marie’s voice still carried an unmistakable, if gentle, lisp of French to it. “The glowing Sun never looks upon them with his beams, neither as he goes up into heaven, nor as he comes down from heaven. And the former of them roams peacefully over the earth and the sea’s broad back and is kindly to men; but the other has a heart of iron, and his spirit within him is pitiless as bronze: whomsoever of men he has once seized he holds fast: and he is hateful even to the deathless gods.”
She smiled down at her son, the warmth in her face at complete odds with the chillingly dramatic words she had just spoken. “You are Thanatos, my petit-the god of Death.”
“Nu-uh!” Arthur shook his head, downy curls bouncing everywhere. “He sounds mean!”
“Only because his work makes him seem so.” Marie crooked a finger beneath Arthur’s chin, tipping his face up towards her. “He is strong enough to know that only those who see beyond such nonsense are worthy of him.” She pressed a kiss to her son’s forehead. “And, besides, a heart of iron can be a very grand thing to have. It will protect you.”
Even if such praise came from his mother, however, Arthur wasn’t inclined to believe it. In the end, death was still death, no matter how one dressed it up.
And, unlike Thanatos, he didn’t even have another sibling, let alone a twin.
He only mentioned this to his mother once, though, since she had stiffened, face twisting up horribly before she abandoned the pot of sauce on the stove, slamming the door to her bedroom shut.
It was a reaction that Arthur was forced to grow familiar with over the years when he began to understand just what people in town were whispering about when they went out amongst them. Gossip was the bread and butter of small towns, after all, and a woman who had shown up out of the blue with a baby cradled in her arms and no man in sight certainly caused a stir. That Marie refused to answer any questions about the father, shutting herself off from the society of the town as much as she could, only made matters worse.
She would even rage against Arthur whenever he would try asking. At first, a quick snap would be enough to force Arthur down into silence for at least a handful of years, but once he became a teenager that was no longer enough.
Marie had a temperament like the sea she so loved, capable of remaining deceptively calm until something-or someone-caused her to roar to life.
Unfortunately, her son was much the same, so no matter how fierce the waves she whipped at him were he was capable of holding firm and lashing back with just as much strength.
After his graduation from high school there was a lull, enough for Marie to start to believe that things might have evened out for good. Which was why she behaved as though she had been struck when one night while preparing for dinner Arthur announced that he had been offered a scholarship to a university in Paris and that he planned on staying in the city over the summer to prepare himself.
The row unleashed then was like none other with Marie actually going so far as to smash plates upon the ground and toss a glass at the wall when Arthur stormed away from her.
Nothing could change his mind, not the yelling or even the pleading she resorted to as the day of Arthur’s planned flight grew steadily closer. He knew that there had to be some reason for why she didn’t want him to go to Paris-why she appeared actually fearful of it-and he was determined to find out what it was.
---
In a way, Arthur had braced himself for Paris. Being on foreign soil for the first time would be strange enough, but he had never ventured outside the small confines of his hometown except for the occasional field trip. So he had been prepared to feel like a fish yanked from a pond to be plopped down into a huge lake, and one with a change of water at that.
So what wound up taking him back the most was how utterly at peace he felt in the city. The more sensible side of him wanted to say that it was because his mother had filled his head with stories of the place, ensuring that he had a fair grasp of how to get around without clutching to a map in obvious tourist fashion and, even better, he could speak the language with ease. But there was something more to it than that-something primal beating away below the surface-that simply seemed to say, “Here. You have always belonged here.”
It was a sentiment that his companion, Mallory Miles, would have agreed with whole-heartedly. Or, as she had admonished with a wrinkle of her nose and a gleam of amusement in her eyes, Mal.
Strictly speaking his guide around the city was supposed to be Stephen Miles, the head of the architecture department at Arthur’s soon to be university, but the man was off on a trip to his home country of England and had left his daughter in charge.
“Père knew would be in good hands with me, Arthur.” It was hard not to be drawn to just how lovely those hands were as well, even when doing something as mundane as plucking apart bits of bread to toss down to the ducks loitering down below in the Seine. When she turned to look at him, though, the wind ruffling her hair into a dark, wispy cloud around her head and her smile brilliant, she looked lovelier than ever. “We’ll make sure you don’t get stuck in dark rooms peering over dusty records all day.” And even Arthur had to laugh when she stuck out her tongue.
He didn’t miss out on any education either, even if Mal did tug him away from the university more often than not, giggling under her breath. It was just that it didn’t fall into any exact predictability. Mal could go out determined to track down the perfect gelato in the city, for example, then, after finding it leagues away from their starting point, would jolt up before even getting in a few spoonfuls so that she could drag Arthur off into a cathedral to point out the beauty she had just spotted in the elegant construction of the roof.
After surviving for so long in the rigid parameters that his mother had set down, Mal’s unpredictable nature was fascinating. He had had acquaintances in school-people he could study and hang out with-but all of them had melted away after graduation. Mal was the first person he ever called “friend” and have it feel right to do so.
Which was maybe why he had such difficulties when it came to dealing with the more tactile aspect of Mal’s nature. The only person who had made an effort to be hands on with him was his mother and, hell, if that didn’t sound unintentionally creepy.
Besides, what Mal engaged in was on a totally different scale than maternal pats on the head. Her fingers were constantly trailing over his hand or arm when they were out together, the only exceptions being when she would have him slip her hand into the crook of his arm. And even then she would still press up close, as though trying to burrow in against him.
Her feet would knock against his under the table whenever they sat down for meals and whenever he would escape to the couch for the night, either to read one of the heavy tomes assigned from various professors or to work on sketches, Mal would follow after him. Oftentimes she would wind up leaning against him with a book of her own or with her head flopped down in his lap, offering commentary as he went along.
One night, though, she wound up in his lap, head lolling against his shoulder as she dozed. Her hair brushed up against his neck, carrying the crisp scent of her perfume, and, as if that wasn’t distracting enough, her little, sleepy puffs of air kept hitting his cheek.
It was a wonder he was able to get through a few pages before the words started to slip out of focus for good.
Arthur was careful about lifting Mal up, not wanting to wake her up, but he must not have been careful enough because when he tried to lower Mal down onto her bed, her arms came up to lock around his neck.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to…” The rest of his words got locked in his throat as it constricted, however, and all because of the way Mal’s lips were tracing the curve of his neck.
“I won’t go to bed,” she announced, voice a low, smoky purr at his ear, “unless you come with me.”
A better man… No, actually, scratch that. An idiot would have wiggled free from Mal’s hold and left her there anyway. The better man would have been the one to join her in bed and simply twine around her warm, soft body until both of them managed to drift off to sleep.
But, well that did wind up happening, it was only after Arthur wound up lost between Mal’s legs, her thighs griping down around him tightly as his tongue lapped at her clit. She didn’t begin to truly thrust back against his fingers in earnest until he had built up to three and she wound up breaking apart not long after that.
Arthur would have liked to say that he held out nearly as long as she did, but that was next to impossible after hearing the sounds of Mal lost in rapture-and knowing that you were causing it-without becoming suitably worked up.
She merely cooed when he spilled out into her hand, however, not even bothering to wipe her hand off before clashing their mouths back together.
When he finally did slip off to sleep it was with his head on Mal’s chest, her heartbeat echoing in the shell of his ear. Even then, though, he still sparred enough of a thought to worry about how something like this might change things between them. And when he had woken up to find the bed empty he thought he had found his answer-things had gone wrong, horribly so.
But then Mal came bustling in, placing a tray laden with bits of their usual breakfast down onto the bed. There were the croissants from the bakery down the street whose owners had known Mal since was a child, which meant she always had a massive discount if she even had to pay at all and bits of sliced fruit.
She rambled away about a building she had seen in her dreams-a place like a cross between one of the Persian cathedrals and the ancient Roman temples-while she set about fixing their coffee. It was a quick, simple task, as it were, since both of them took it close to black with only a dash of sugar.
Arthur was still trying to work out what exactly he was supposed to make of it all when she leaned over to kiss him. Her lips tasted of the heavy dash of butter she had smeared across the croissants, yet when she pulled away her lips stuck to his for the briefest of seconds longer as a result of the jam she had smeared on as well. She was smiling at him then, small and soft, with her eyes gleaming with something that made his breath stick in his throat.
“What changed?” he heard himself ask.
“Oh, Arthur.” Mal pressed her forehead against his own, eyelashes lowering. “Nothing did. It has been like this from the instant I met you…when I touched you… It was as though I had found someone who…who was my la moitié de l'ensemble.”
Half of a whole, Arthur’s mind translated helplessly, and he reached up to grip tight to her arms. “I know what you mean.” His words left him in a quiet rush, as though she might slip away if he didn’t get them out fast enough. “I know exactly what you mean.”
It was there in the way that their limbs would slide together with such ease, reading each other’s body language without even realizing it. The way that they could finish each other’s thoughts, as though even their minds had been bound together.
And, even more than that, there was the feeling. The one that Arthur didn’t think that either of them could explain, but that could assure them with all certainty that if it were possible to burrow inside the other person than they would be returning home.
Needless to say trips out of the bed were fleeting that day.
---
The summer days seemed to peal back all the faster then, school pressing in close, but Miles still didn’t come home. Apparently his business in England-London specifically-was taking longer than expected.
Mal didn’t seem bothered by his absence, claiming that this was a fairly typical occurrence and that Arthur was company enough for her at the moment. “I know it’s silly,” she said, curled up against him on the couch, “but I don’t want to share you yet!” And since Arthur was more than inclined to agree with her it was last sort of thing he would reprimand her for.
It was, though, why both of them received a bit of a rude shock when the ease of their arrangement was broken.
Arthur had been out gathering groceries and, in retrospect, he probably should have realized something was up when he had to wrangle with the door on his own instead of Mal arriving to help. But he didn’t realize until he got the door open at last, any complaints disappearing when he saw that Mal’s face was twisted up in anger.
The tension in his chest eased somewhat when he realized that the expression wasn’t actually fixed on him, but only for a brief second because the person who was on the receiving end of it shouldn’t be there at all. In fact, Arthur wasn’t even sure who he was.
The man seemed better prepared than Arthur, however, based on the way that he burst up from where he had been sprawled out across the couch, smiling widely as he approach Arthur. “And this must be the dear protégé. Arthur, if memory serves? Now, let me help you with those…”
He was gathering up the bags before Arthur could even think to stop him, even if just out of politeness (his arms had begun to ache already anyway). He didn’t even bother to ask where things went, simply flicking open cupboards to see what was inside before popping things in from the bag. He must have been able to sense the way Mal continued to scowl at him, arms crossed over her chest, and how Arthur hadn’t moved in with the rest of the bags, too busy with gaping. He even, of all things, whistled under his breath while he worked.
He didn’t stop until all the bags he had were empty and even then it was simply to turn to look at the other two seeming…appalled? “Please tell me you bought tea?” he said. “This can’t be the home of a proper British gentleman if there isn’t any tea.”
“My père is in the habit of taking his own supplies with him when he travels,” Mal said frostily. “And since we weren’t aware that we were expecting company-let alone of the British variety-we simply didn’t have time to stock up.”
The man’s eyebrows arched, but he still didn’t seem put out in the slightest. “Huh, figures he wouldn’t have told you I was coming.” He slipped around the counter, gathering the last of the bags out of Arthur’s hands with a wink. “I’m Eames, and I’ve been working with your father recently on quite the interesting project. Or…well…one that I managed to lift from my former military commander for our own personal research use.”
Arthur felt something twist in his gut when he saw the flicker of interest in Mal’s eyes, which only grew as she probed Eames further on this “project” of her father’s, tone growing warmer with each passing word. But then he remembered the way that his own cheeks had warmed when Eames winked at him, the arousal that hit him as he watched the man’s muscles stretch while he put away the groceries-revealing a hint of curling black ink on the skin-and felt a hot flash of guilt.
---
In retrospect, Arthur should have known better than to think that it had gone unnoticed. That Mal wouldn’t be able to read him just because for the first time he didn’t want her to.
She cornered him the kitchen that night while Eames was locked in a dead sleep on the couch. He hadn’t been allowed to take the guest room since Mal still counted that as “Arthur’s space” even if he hadn’t actually slept in it for ages now.
“I didn’t know you liked men as well.” There is a hint of accusation under the softness of Mal’s voice and, although Arthur flinches under the weight of it, he can’t fault her for it. The two of them had hallowed out every detail of one another, sharing everything. To discover that there was still one secret left untouched must have felt disquieting.
“It’s nothing. He means nothing.” But even to his own ears Arthur’s voice fell flat, as though he was trying to recite something by route. “It doesn’t matter.” And, because something sharp nudged against his chest when Mal’s mouth pursed, he had to add, “No more than his project should matter.”
He hated the color that rose up along the edges of Mal’s cheekbones and the way that she ducked her head, curls falling across her cheek. It proved that he had been right. “It is my père’s project too, Arthur.” She turned her head, lifting her hands to frame his face. “Everything will be alright. This changes nothing.”
But there was a desperate tinge to her voice, as though she were trying to convince them both.
---
Eames had to notice the way they tiptoed around him the next day, casting wary glances at one another whenever he pressed in too close, but he never commented on it. Maybe he even expected it, given that he was, voucher from Miles or not, a stranger in their midst.
It turned out not to matter in the long run anyway, however, since the hurried walls that Mal and Arthur shoved up got toppled right back down when Eames introduced the device that he had been working on with Miles-a PASIV.
And once connected to it you could share dreams.
“The military-God knows which-started it up as a training program.” Eames was unwinding the plastic tubes from the device with surprising dexterity for such thick fingers. “A way for soldiers to butcher one another without doing any actual murdering.”
“Horrendous.” Mal’s upper lip had a slight curl to it when Arthur shifted his gaze to her. “Why make something so marvelous if you plan to use it only for terror?”
Arthur was surprised that to find that he wasn’t the only one looking at Mal in admiration. It was in Eames’ voice too when he spoke. “Which is precisely why I had to steal it.” He held out the tubes. “Now shall I do this part for you or…?”
Mal snagged two of the lines from him, tracing for Arthur’s strongest vein with the tips of her fingers before pressing the needle down. He waited until she had lifted the needle back out, leaving only the end of the tube underneath his skin, to do the same for her.
He wasn’t sure what to make of the fond expression on Eames’ face as he watched them, however.
“Well let’s begin then.”
---
The first time wasn’t exactly a disaster, but it came close.
There was just so much to do, so many different limits to push onwards and past, that it was hard to pay attention to Eames’ increasingly hurried warnings.
Especially not when Mal was smiling in that way that caused her whole face to glow, eyes gleaming as she squeezed Arthur’s hand tight.
She was clawing at Arthur’s hand only minutes later, screaming for him not to let go before one of the people-projections-pulled out a knife and she began to cry for him to-“Look away, Arthur, just look away! Put your head down and don’t-”
When Arthur lurched back awake, the first thing he realized was that Mal was still shouting, although the words were getting so muddled that it was more akin to wailing. What he saw next was enough to make his stomach lurch through yet another hurdle because Eames was touching Mal and even if it was obvious that he was just trying to calm her down, easing his hands up and down her arms, it still flooded Arthur’s mouth with a bitter taste.
Except then Mal is pulling away from Eames to all but throw herself into Arthur’s arms and everything feels a bit less like jagged glass.
They were careful about things after that, actually paying attention when Eames explained things to them. He was good at it too, teaching them how to stretch the limits of the dream without bringing the projections down on their heads.
Mal built wonders-divine, impossible structures that could only ever exist in a dream. She laughed whenever Arthur stepped in to add a swatch of color here to make it more realistic or a pillar to support a particularly delicate looking section from toppling over.
Eames kept saying that it was all part of the balance between them-what allowed them to work so flawlessly together-and, although it shouldn’t, the pride in his voice never failed to make them beam.
---
Arthur probably should have known better, though, then to assume that Eames had shown them his whole hand.
They’re in Arthur’s dream this time and he’s chosen to conjure up the ocean. He can still find the sea in Paris, of course, but nothing can truly beat the familiar roll of this body of water. It’s the only way he can think to enjoy it without slinking back home to face his mother, so he relishes in ever second of it.
Which was probably why he didn’t realize that someone was drawing in close until an arc of seawater and foam sprays out across his legs. He had rolled his pant legs up-jeans for once-so he could go barefoot in the water, so his clothes don’t actually get that wet, but still it’s the principal of the thing to turn and splash back with his own foot.
The trill of laughter identified the person near him as Mal before he even turned to see her gleeful face.
It didn’t take long for it to descend down into an all out splash war, the two of them laughing like children and even kicking up some of the wet sand in the rapid flurry of their feet.
Then Mal pitched herself into his arms, gigging into his mouth when he had to stumble back a little, arms wrapped firmly around her to keep them both from tumbling into the waves.
Nothing will ever compare to kissing Mal, not really, and at first Arthur was too lost in the sensation of it all to recognize the signs. Except then there are fingers, dragging along the side of his face where Mal always strokes and there’s a tongue pressing rather urgently against his mouth when Mal will give some sign-a thumb against the hinge of his jaw or a small noise-that she wants him to open up.
Arthur forced himself backwards, holding Mal-no, no-at arm’s length. “Who are you?” he demanded.
That was all it took for details to slip away and change. Arthur’s hands wind up rising with the change in height then spreading out to accommodate for wider shoulders. The smirk on the mouth, though, remained the same.
“Should have realized that’s what would give me away.” Eames rubbed at his chin, huffing out a laugh. “It’s not like I’ve been able to get any practice.”
“And you’re not going to get it,” Arthur snapped. He didn’t want to think of what would happen if Eames decided to wear his face instead. Would Mal be able to find a tell quicker than he had? Or would she be lured right in too and now Eames knew how Arthur actually kissed so…
“Oh, is this you volunteering to be my practice dummy?” Eames asked. “Can’t say I’m complaining, darling.” He danced back into the foam, winking when Arthur tried to shove him.
---
Except, apparently, the rules when it came to sharing weren’t exactly as strict as Arthur had thought.
He fumbled with his mug of tea when Mal brought it up the first time, cursing when the better part of the too hot liquid got all over his hands.
Mal was next to him in a heartbeat, wrapping a washcloth wrapped in cold water around his hands. Except, eventually, it became less about cleaning him up and more about simply holding his hands in her lap. “I know it’s something you want, Arthur.” She raised her eyes to meet his, lips pressed into a thin line.
“And I’m not afraid to do it.”
“I’m not saying you’re afraid.” Arthur sighed, wanting his hands back so he could hide his face in them. Which was perhaps part of why Mal was clinging onto them so tightly. “I’m just saying…this shouldn’t be something you have to do.”
Mal lifted one of her shoulders then let it drop, a gesture that would have seemed graceful if you didn’t know her well enough to catch the pinch between her brow, there and gone again in a second. “But I want to make you happy, to put you at ease, and if this is what does that then it’s what I want too.” She lifted up one of her hands at last, skimming her fingers over Arthur’s cheek. “Besides…that man can never really own you, not the way I do. I know that.”
---
Arthur wasn’t actually too surprised at how easy Eames was to proposition. What he was surprised over, though, was that Eames didn’t even put up so much as a token protest when he learned that Arthur was going to be the only one he fucked that night.
He was content to sit there on Mal’s-their-bed, watching through hooded eyes as Mal worked one finger after another up inside Arthur. It didn’t take him long to start stealing kisses from Arthur’s mouth, though, which only made Arthur wind up even more breathless.
It was as though Eames was trying to match the rhythm of Mal’s fingers somehow. He kept his kisses easy, content to simply explore Arthur’s mouth at the start, but as the twists of Mal’s fingers became surer, so did Eames’ kisses. The aggressive element of the kisses didn’t surprise him, but the possessive nature of it did. It was something he had only experienced from Mal, so-small as it might seem-it sent a bit of a thrill down his spine, as if it were something forbidden.
Eames even pulled away when Mal did, smirking over the way Arthur couldn’t help whining at the loss of them, and Arthur could hear the tinkle of Mal’s laughter from behind him.
Eames did raise an eyebrow, however, when Mal tossed a little tinfoil wrapped package down onto his chest. “Really, my dear?” he said, hoisting it up with an incredulous expression. “I wouldn’t have risked swapping IV lines with you if I didn’t know for sure I was clean.”
“That’s not the point.” Mal rolled her eyes when Eames only raised his eyebrows. She plucked the condom from his fingers, ripping the package open and rolling the bit of rubber onto Eames’ cock without even batting an eyelash. “Just because I’m willing to share Arthur with you, Monsieur Eames, doesn’t mean I’m willing to give you all of him.”
Eames’ face went alarmingly blank for a flicker of a second before a smile was plastered on over it. “Right, of course,” he said. “How silly of me to forget.”
“Eames…” Arthur swallowed hard when Eames glanced over at him. “If you don’t want to…”
“Oh, please.” There it was, Eames’ real smile was back again and relief broke out through the dam that had built up in Arthur’s chest. “This is hardly something you can convince me to turn back from, darling.”
Mal pushed Eames down to lay flat on the bed before Arthur could press further, but he kept a careful gaze on the other man’s face as he slid over on top of him. Which actually proved to be quite beneficial because he got to catch every emotion that flashed across Eames’ face as he eased his way down onto the man’s cock.
The arousal was almost comforting to see since it reminded him that Eames wanted this as much as he did, but the utter awe on the man’s face once Arthur bottomed out on his cock took Arthur’s breath away.
It was a position chosen to give Arthur some level of control, which he was grateful for now. It wasn’t as though he didn’t know what to expect (the internet and Mal’s rather inventive approach to sex had seen to that), but there was something quite different between all that and the real thing. Because Eames was wider than any toy he had used before (and longer too but it wouldn’t do to stroke the man’s ego too much) and able to shift inside Arthur, warm in ways that a bit of plastic just couldn’t be.
The only way in which Eames actually resembled any of those toys was the fact that, human or not, he was still under Arthur’s control.
Those large hands had to grip down fiercely on Arthur’s hips to keep from simply taking when Arthur first began to move in little jerks of his hips, trying to learn a new rhythm. He didn’t begin to push up on his own until Arthur gasped, having found the perfect way to angle himself so that Eames would hit, “Fuck, yes, right there. Come on, Eames, come on.”
From there it all descended into a mess of sensations.
There were Eames’ fingers digging into Arthur’s skin, the ragged sounds of their combined breath as Eames assured Arthur that he was, “So God damn perfect, darling, clenched around me like this.” And, in a way, Arthur wondered if it was like that because he never really wanted to let this go. The pleasure was too addicting, especially now that Eames could manage to hit that spot inside of him almost every time.
Except that couldn’t be all it was, not really, because Arthur also thought that it was beautiful to watch Eames as he was now, to now that he was the one that had put such a look of rapture onto the man’s face. He wondered if maybe he could get away with keeping Eames, if just for a little bit longer, or at least outside of just this moment.
But then Mal’s lips hit the back of his neck, shifting around to suck and bite at as much of his skin as she could get at-something sure to leave marks-and Arthur remembered why he couldn’t; that he owed an allegiance to someone else.
He thought Eames understood as well, for the man voiced no complaints when Arthur celebrated their afterglow by letting Mal drag him down between her thighs, gasping around a moan as he worked the nub of her under his tongue with lazy strokes.
Eames just reached over to run his fingers through Arthur’s hair while the younger one worked, seemingly unconcerned with the come that was still cooling on his chest.
But, then again, it wasn’t as thought Arthur was paying enough attention to catch the flickers of sadness in Eames’ eyes or that his sigh wasn’t strictly speaking one of contentment.
---
They never quite got the chance to figure out how things would have worked between them from then on. Whether things would have grown too awkward, especially with their minds wound together such as they were down in the dreams, or if it would be possible to simply accept and move past this until the time that the two would chose to become three again.
It started out as a normal day, peaceful even, with Mal up on the counter in one of Arthur’s dress shirts, which just barely came to the end of her thighs. She was singing her legs as she sipped at her coffee, humming some nonsensical tune while Arthur went to set the kettle on for Eames. He didn’t protest when Mal pulled him over between her legs once he was done (why would he?), meeting her lips with a smile.
Which was precisely when the door banged open, raised voices spilling into the flat. It startled Mal enough that her mug jerked from her hands, pouring coffee all down her front and splattering over onto Arthur’s.
Arthur snagged one the hand towels from near the stove on instinct, only to freeze when he realized just who was standing there a little ways away in the living room. “Mom?”
Mal looked up from where she had been holding the shirt a few inches away from her skin, jaw going slightly slack. “Père? You’re back?”
“Oh God.” Those were the only words that Marie managed to get out that were in English from that point on. The rest of the words spilled out of her in French as she stumbled backwards, face white. Arthur was already dashing forward, but it was Miles that managed to catch her when her shaky knees gave out beneath her at last.
It was only now that he was close enough, however, that Arthur managed to decipher bits of his mother’s babbles.
“I never should have… This is why you should have listened to… Brother and sister…”
Miles guided Marie over to the couch, having to half carry her all the way there, before sighing heavily and lifting his head to fix both children with a firm gaze.
“We need to talk.”
---
At the beginning there was Miles, the darling of the architecture department at his university. There were plenty of people enthralled by their new young teacher; French girls determined to “corrupt” an Englishman, although there was little to him that hadn’t been yet.
Then there was Marie, who had swept upon such a scene and curled her upper lip at the gaggle of swooning girls with their coy smiles. “Votre syntaxe est malheureux.” She didn’t flounce away like so many other girls Miles had seen before. Instead she strode off like a storm cloud come to life, not looking back so much as once, even when the girls flew into angry gossip over her.
It was marriage, as ever, that made things messy.
Miles saw nothing wrong with his long hours at the office or even the occasional night spent over. Marie was at home to see to the children and in the downtime she could work on her own projects.
The only issue was that there wasn’t any real downtime.
Their daughter had colic with almost nothing being capable of soothing her. The only thing really capable was handing her over to Miles-who was almost never home so that was out the window-or putting her down with her twin. But if their son got close enough he would start wailing too, having sensed his sister’s distress. It would turn into a vicious cycle then with each child fueling the other’s cries with their own. But, if kept separate, the girl would simply cry away until she had to give in to sleep.
Miles would stay for little snatches of time-a few days at most-to straighten things back into some kind of order and then he would be back out the door.
Which, of course, was when everything would fall apart.
Miles started ignoring Marie’s constant calls altogether, which was Marie said-and still did-that he had no one to blame but himself for letting her walk in on him with one of the still fresh faced teacher’s aides.
It was just a kiss, but Miles’ hands had already been roaming for more and Marie had exploded, especially after Miles had tried to suggest that perhaps an open marriage was what they really needed.
In the end, each parent wound up with one of their children, separating them in some sort of terrible cliché, like something from a movie. Which was why Miles had raised Mal in Paris while Marie fled to the coasts of California to bring up Arthur.
---
“That is a lie,” Mal spat. Her eyes darted over to Arthur, who was sitting at her side on the other couch, but he was too shell-shocked still to speak up in agreement. So instead she reached over to clutch at his hand, his own fingers curling around hers on instinct. “That is a filthy lie. We would have known if it were true.”
The two of them knew each other from the inside out, had carved out a place in the other to make their home. How could this have been missed?
“It’s our fault,” Miles said. “This should have been explained to you far sooner.”
His eyes slid over to Marie, causing the woman to scoff. “Oh, don’t try to pin this on me,” she said. “I tried to keep him from coming here, but he wouldn’t listen anymore than you used to.”
“I figured it had to have something to do with my father.” Arthur was aware of all the eyes in the room shifting towards him, but he kept his own gaze straight ahead, tone distressingly blank. “You only ever tried to keep me from something so much if it had something to do with him.”
“Now you see what comes from keeping secrets.” Miles’ tone was even, but there was a tinge of something unpleasant in his face when he looked over at Marie. “This all could have been avoided if you had just-”
“Why am I not surprised?” Marie was already flashing teeth, anger riling her up from her slumped over position on the couch as nothing else would. “You’re always so quick to twist the blame away from yourself. As if I could ever be expected to trust you in my life again, knowing the poison that you bring with you.”
“You can’t just twist-”
“Pardon me.” It was Eames, who had resisted any attempts to shoo him away. He was standing behind the couch on which Mal and Arthur were huddled, one hand braced against the frame as though he where some sort of guardian over them. Perhaps he was, at least then. “But I don’t think now is time to bicker.” He huffed. “This is actually about your children, not you, and you’ve just dealt them quite the shock.”
“No more than the one we’ve been dealt.” Marie’s eyes flicked over to Arthur and Mal then down to the floor, a tremble running through her. “I never thought you would have…”
“And what?” The volume of Arthur’s voice spiked for the first time, causing everyone to give a start. Well, everyone save for Mal, who simply curled in against him even more, face pressing down into his shoulder even as it heaved up and down. “We were just supposed to know better? Without ever being told?”
But what makes it all the worse was that maybe they had noticed. Perhaps that was what had drawn them towards one another in the first place, a sensing of similarities that stood for something far more platonic than what they had twisted it into.
Eames was the one that jumped into action then; the only person really suited to do so. He ushered the adults out to lead them off in search of a place for brunch, something that Miles was far more understanding of. As for Marie, she was persuaded with the allure of the native food she hadn’t tasted in years and the press of two different but equally firm hands on the small of her back.
The silence that descended once the door closed was, perhaps expectedly, deafening. Neither could be sure how long they sat there, but it felt like ages had passed with each tic of the clock. They didn’t want to talk, not when having to discuss it would officially mark it all as something too real to be avoided.
“We could always…”
“No.” Arthur didn’t even have to ask what Mal meant. It was something that had already flitted through his mind; a thing that he didn’t dare to consider. “Mal, we couldn’t. There are people that know.”
“No one who couldn’t be duped!” Mal exclaimed. “They don’t matter, Arthur. Not as much as… They can’t.”
“I’m sorry.” Arthur tried to reach up to touch Mal, but she recoiled from him skittering towards the end of the couch with her face buried in her hands. There was a faint tremble running through her body and the ragged breaths she took made it clear that she was crying even if it couldn’t be seen. Arthur ached to take her in his arms and will every bit of that pain away, but he knew that that was no longer his right.
“You have to go then.” Mal took in a deep breath, letting it back out slowly. “At least for now. You can’t ask me to… I can’t bear to be so close to you every minute of the day and know that I can’t have you.”
“You still have me.” Arthur spoke with all the vehemence of an oath spoken before a god, even when Mal’s laughter escaped from her in little hiccup like sounds. “It will be different now, but I’ll never stop being yours, Mal, I promise.”
Something in Mal seemed to break then because her curled up limbs sprang free and onto him in a heartbeat. Her nails dug into the meat of his shoulder blades even through the fabric of his shirt and Arthur wasn’t sure whether he she was trying to find a way to leave one last mark or keep him there through sheer force alone. Perhaps it was both.
The only thing Arthur did know for sure, as his arms tightened around the desperately fluttering creature in his arms, was that he had become exactly what his mother had predicted.
He was Thanatos with his iron heart after all.
---
If the gods of heaven and earth
Were bereft of reason,
I might die
Without seeing you
Whom I love so well.
The bells are tolling
Bidding all to rest.
But you being forever on my mind,
I cannot sleep.
To love you who love me not
Is like going to a great temple
To bow in adoration
Behind the back of the famished devil.