[ call me 00? ] and it only hurts when I breathe
This had to end.
Eames had made his living ever since high school by walking the streets, canting his hips and smiling prettily at older men, boys; anyone who could pay them for his time. As he got older he got wiser, choice to walk around places where there were businessmen and women away from their partners, who would see him or have an itch to scratch and ask him to join them, for a price.
It in turn fed Eames, housed him. And paid for his ability to continue doing the harder parts of his job; the men and women who wanted him hard, wanted him rough. And the only way he could get through that was by deadening his mind, and his body. The easiest way to do that was through various opiates.
It was easier to get through life, he had found, on those various opiates.
But what had to end was none of that. What had to end was Arthur.
Arthur was the mysterious, quiet, slim man he'd picked up in a hotel lobby, coming off a high and offered a price too tempting to resist even if Arthur wanted to smack him around. And Arthur hadn't. He'd wanted Eames interested and instead of just ordering it he'd been an active participant in turning Eames on. Eames, mostly sober, had even had a heated debate about letting Arthur rim him (he didn't think the man should, since he'd had multiple partners, despite his most recent tests and his refusal to bareback) and Arthur thought since he'd taken the precautions he should let him. In the end Arthur won. For the first time in a while, Eames had enjoyed doing his job.
It had only continued.
Arthur had stipulations; Eames wasn't to come to him high. He wanted Eames sober. He would refuse to do anything with the young man if he was. It had terrified Eames, because not only were his drugs to cope with pain and humiliation, they kept him distant. But Arthur paid well, and so he'd done it.
And he knew what was happening now.
Arthur had that look in his eyes he'd seen a few times. The worst part was that Eames knew he was only encouraging it. The first time he'd looked up as Arthur was fucking him and seen how beautiful his eyes were, blurting it out to tell him without the haze of drugs to stop his mouth. Then the touches, the lingering after he was done. Reaching back for Arthur's hand as they fucked, or burying his face in his neck. The extended conversations, before and after the deed. Sometimes Arthur even paid for time when all they had done was talk, sitting together.
Eames knew he had a problem when he'd taken his dose and gone to meet a particularly rough client. He'd gotten through it because he'd imagined, in his haze, that it was Arthur, taking him over and over.
He was falling for Arthur. He felt guilty with his other clients, like he was hurting Arthur by being with them. And so that was why, on the day of their appointment, Eames stood in his black jacket in front of the door, biting the nail of his thumb, dressed in his dark wash jeans and tight faded yellow shirt.
He was psyching himself up. He had to tell Arthur he couldn't hire Eames anymore, even though the man had single-handedly made it possible for Eames to pay up rent for a few months and buy some warmer clothes and comforters.
After a deep breath, he knocked on the door.