Ariadne/Eames- In A Land Of Rubble
Title: In A Land Of Rubble
Author: butterflys_fics/blacksouledbutterfly
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): Ariadne/Eames
Word Count: 6,893
Summary: It started on September the seventh. That’s when the first bomb was dropped.
Warnings: AU. Some foul language, scenes of a sexual nature, vague mentions of injuries/bombings.
Notes: For this prompt at inception_kink.
It started on September the seventh. That’s when the first bomb was dropped. Up until that point all of the attacks had been on airfields, against the military rather than civilian territories. Up until that point they hadn’t thought that anything bad was going to happen to civilians. Wars were supposed to be confined to those fighting it. Innocent people weren’t supposed to get dragged into it. But then the bombs started to drop onto civilian territories. And it wasn’t just London that they hit but London was first, London was the longest.
But after London more places were bombed as well, more cities. And as more cities got bombed and more civilians were injured. And all of England was on edge. Nurses that had been confined to military personnel had been asked to help take care of civilians that were injured. Hundreds died, thousands were wounded. And burned bodies became a way of life; the smell of scorched flesh filled the air. It was a time of fear, a time of worry. And the people, well, they found sanctuary in warehouse basements and in underground stations.
Nurse Ariadne Esse wakes up on November seventeenth just outside of Coventry two days after bombs were dropped down on the city. Over a thousand explosives were dropped down on the city. Tens of thousands of buildings were hit, most of which were destroyed. The body count had already been put at about three-hundred people by this time and hundreds of people had already been injured. When the bombs had dropped there had been chaos, people running around screaming and bleeding. And then, the people were being brought in, bloody and screaming. There were so many cuts, so many burns. It had been quite the sight.
Everyone had been running around without any type of knowledge of what they should do. Even if you had been stationed near another bombing before you were never, ever prepared for something like this. They had been so, so busy that they didn’t sleep for an entire day. They were so, so busy patching up wounds and making sure that they didn’t run out of supplies that when they were done they barely had the energy to cleanup before they all but collapsed into bed. But the problem was that they couldn’t sleep very long afterwards because they still had people to take care of.
Throwing her legs over the edge of her bed Ariadne prepares herself for the day, brushing her teeth and brushed her hair, pulling it back into a tight bun so that it stayed out of the way. She painted her lips the standard red and checked her nails to make sure they weren’t chipped. And then, once she was all dressed up in her uniform with her crisp, shiny white shoes, she made her way from the nurse's quarters to their makeshift hospital.
Each of them had assignments listed at the beginning of the day. All of the soldiers and civilians they had to deal with that had already been treated for the initial injuries were divided up between the nurses to care for until they had to leave. With the ones that had died and the ones that had injuries so minor that they could leave and so to a shelter already they hadn’t had as many patients as she thought they were.
So she checks in, signing in to let them know that she had arrived for duty and then went about tending to her patients. There were a lot of civilians there, women and children, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. There were little children that had been received minor injuries when the bombs fell. But their parents had been hurt and were staying there until their parents could leave. She had crouched down near the children and spoke to them, found them something to eat and drink and gave the some paper and some pencils so that they could draw and have fun. Or as much fun as they possibly could in a place like that.
She's making her way around to the last of her patients when she checks her watch. It's late at night already by the time she reaches the bed he's lying on and she has his chart in her hand- or what passed as a chart there. All they could use as charts were papers stuck in folders. This particular patient is one of the few that she had been assigned that was part of the military. A member of the royal air force that had been injured during the bombing. He had sustained a broken leg, several burns on his arms and legs and had a piece of shrapnel that had lodged in his side. And the wound, apparently, had been quite severe because according to the folder they had thought they were going to lose him at first. But then he had been saved and he had apparently made quite a miraculous recovery because when the nurse came to check on him last night he was awake and alert and though he was on a lot of medication for pain and to try to make sure that he didn’t get an infection.
She makes her way over to the bed, pulling back the curtain that was set up to give him privacy between him and the other people. She checks his IV to make sure that it doesn’t need to be replaced. She does all of that before she looks over at the man in the bed, watches him for a second before she smiles at him a bit. One of the things that she had been taught when she became a nurse was that sometimes just kindness was enough to help people, enough to make them feel a bit better.
"How are you doing, Mr. Eames?" she asks the man as she looks down at him lying in the bed, his leg wrapped up in a cast, a gash across his cheek. It doesn’t look deep enough to leave a permanent scar or anything of the like but it's noticeable nonetheless. But what she notices the most was the color of his eyes, a wonderfully pale, beautiful shade of blue that she has to force herself to look away from; she notices his full lips that she thinks, for a moment, may be too big for his face but when she really looks at him it fits with the rest of him.
Eames watches the young nurse quietly for several moments as her eyes jump across his face and he can't help but smile at her. She's a young thing, quite innocent looking. And he has to admit that she looks adorable in her crisp white uniform with her bright red lips, her dark hair pulled back in a tight bun. "Much better now that I have such wonderful company," he muses as he looks at her. And he can't help but feel a thrill of satisfaction shoot through him at the sight of her blushing.
Watching him for a moment the young nurse licks awkwardly at her bottom lip and turns her gaze down to the chart in her hand. Her eyes skip over the page, taking in what she's already read before. Her fingers reach for the pencil in her pocket wishing that she had something to add to the chart but she doesn’t. Not yet.
"I'm Nurse Esse," she tells him because that’s the most important thing that she can say to him right now. And in all honesty she doesn’t have anything else that she can say to him right now.
"Nice to meet you, Nurse Esse." Eames holds his hand out to her, knuckles scratched up. He offers her his palm, offers her a shake. He watches her look down skeptically at his hand before she seems to decide that it would be rude not to shake his offered hand and she takes her hand out of her uniform pocket, grasping his hand in hers. And so he lifts her hand up to his mouth and presses a kiss against her knuckles. "It's very nice to meet you."
Ariadne blushes again, taking her hand back from him so that she can stick it back into her pocket, tapping her fingers against her pencil. "Yeah," she replies a bit awkwardly, giving him another smile. "Nice to meet you, too."
It doesn’t escape Eames that he had done something that had made her a bit uneasy though he isn't sure what it is. And the more he thinks about it the more he realizes that the only explanation he can come up with is that maybe she's just not used to that type of attention from patients, the nice, casual flirtation. But as nurse working with military personnel she should be used to that sort of thing by now. Soldiers tend to be, after all, quite flirtatious with the nurses around them.
"Well," Ariadne says after a moment of silence. "I'm going to be your primary nurse. I'll be checking on you until you're okay to leave. If you need anything just ask someone to come get me and I'll help you with it. Nurse Davidson, whom you met last night, will be checking on you during the night." She pauses, waits. "Is there anything you need now?"
"Not that I can think of." He's blissfully pain free thanks to the medication they're giving him and his wounds are all bandaged up. And as much as he would like to find an excuse to have her stick around for a little while he simply can't come up with one. Not right now at least. Or at least not a plausible one.
"Wonderful." She gives him another smile, a small and professional one. "Then I'll leave you to your rest. And I'll see you in the morning, Mr. Eames."
"I can honestly say, Miss Esse, that that makes me look forward to morning more than I ever have in my life."
"You're American born."
Eames is angled slightly to his side on the bed while she sits on the edge of it. She's replacing the bandage on his side when he says that to her and it makes her take pause, makes her look up at his profile for a moment before looking back at the task at hand. The wound is still bright red from trauma, the black stitches standing out starkly against his skin.
"Yes," she acknowledges. "I am."
"So how is it that you came to be a nurse for Her Majesty's army?"
It’s a simple question, an innocent one. And a logical one. She supposes that many people have wondered that over the years, have thought about that when they met her. It probably isn't very common that British soldiers encounter an American born nurse working for them. But no one has ever asked her that before. So it makes her take pause as she's readying a fresh piece of gauze for his wound, makes her wonder just how she should answer that question. Or if she should even answer it at all. But it really, really does seem innocent enough so she can't see a logical reason not to answer him.
"My family moves here when I was twelve," she tells him, resting the piece of gauze against his side, smoothing it gently over his wound. "I've been living here since then. I suppose since I've been living here that I decided it would be more appropriate for me to be a nurse here than to move back to America to be a nurse."
"That’s makes perfect sense," he assures her.
"I know." She hadn’t been searching for validation in her choice though she can't truly be mad at him for giving it to her. So she doesn’t take offense. She simply finishes applying the bandage and then stands up from the bed, tapping his shoulder to let him know he can lie back down normally. After two weeks of working as his nurse they've gotten to the point where she doesn’t have to tell him to move before he does so. And so she stands up as soon as she taps his shoulder so he can lie back down.
Once he's resting comfortably again he folds his hands to rest on his stomach, watching her quietly. "I'm under the impression that you don’t like me very much, Miss Esse," he tells her.
She watches him for a couple of moments, practically gaping at him, her red tinted mouth in a small 'o' shape. "Oh, no. No, it isn't that," she tries to assure him. "I like you just fine."
"You don’t act like you do."
"I assure you, Mr. Eames, that I like you just fine." She smiles at him a bit, picking up her chart from the place where she had put it. "I'll see you tomorrow then to check on your bandages again."
"I look forward to it."
She isn't sure why she had agreed to sit with him. Most of the patients that she had been assigned after the bombing had been released from the hospital so she wasn’t as busy as she had been before. But she still can't explain why she had agreed to sit with him for a while today. All she can honestly say is that he had asked and so in the end she had agreed to do it.
Sitting in the chair next to the bed she's reading the newest newspaper that she had managed to get a hold of. Eames had been in the hospital for an entire month. His burns had healed up well enough by now and his side no longer needed to be bandaged. But it was his leg that they were waiting on, that hadn’t healed up yet.
Eames had been sitting there the entire time that she had been reading the newspaper, had been watching her. One of the other soldiers that had been there had given him a book to read when he was leaving and he's been reading it on and off since then. And that’s what he had been trying to do when Ariadne first sat down there next to him, mostly because he didn’t want to seem like a bother. But he found himself terribly distracted and he couldn’t get very far in the book without having to put it down and look over at her. He would watch her face, would watch her dark eyes skimming across the page, her pale fingers clutching the paper in her hands, the red nail polish standing out starkly against her skin. She was honestly quite a beautiful sight. Beautiful in such a simple, innocent way.
She wasn’t like most of the women he was used to, the kind that flaunted their beauty, that shoved it down your throat. She wasn’t overly glamorous and while some may argue that’s because of her uniform but he had seen several nurses who glamorized their uniform, who tried to look fancy while wearing it. But she didn’t do that. And save for her bright red lipstick she wore very little makeup at all. And that was probably the most appealing thing about her. He had grown so used to women who flaunted their sexuality, used it like a weapon. To encounter someone who did the exact opposite was a wonderful breath of fresh air.
And he thinks that’s maybe why he's so enamored with her. There are other nurses walking around that place and he even has a different nurse at night. And all of them seem quite willing to talk to him, to let him flirt with them and to flirt back. But they weren’t challenging and they weren’t all that interesting if he's being honest. And when he flirted with them it didn’t feel the same as it did with her. Because it was her that had caught his eye. She was the one he wanted attention from.
Finally he gives up reading his book and puts it down on the little table next to the bed. Putting his hands on the bed for leverage he sits up a little straighter, his back against the pillows that are against what passes as a headboard. "Miss Esse?"
Ariadne lowers her newspaper so she can look up at him, watching him for a moment before she folds the paper up and rests it on her lap. "Yes, Mr. Eames?"
"What's your name?"
"Excuse me?"
"Your first name," he clarifies. "What's your first name?"
"Oh." She blinks her dark eyes at him for a couple of seconds, watching him for a moment, trying to decide whether or not she should answer him. It can't do much harm, of course. She knows that. But she isn't sure how much good it will do either. But without a good reason not to tell him she doesn’t think it would be polite to ignore the question. So, after a moment of contemplation she clears her throat, shifting a bit to get more comfortable in the chair. "Ariadne," he tells him.
"Ariadne," he repeats, testing how it feels rolling off of his tongue and he has to admit that he likes it quite a bit. "Ariadne." He says her name again, rolls it off of his tongue, smiles a bit on the tail end of doing so. "A lovely name for a lovely woman." He smiles at her as she blushes, a slight chuckle crawling up his throat. "My name is Charles."
"I'd prefer to call you Mr. Eames, if you don’t mind."
"Oh, of course I don’t mind," he assures her easily. "But may I request one small thing?"
"I suppose."
"Perhaps you could drop the 'mister' and just call me Eames. It would be so much easier."
"I suppose that would be alright," she agrees.
"Lovely." He claps his hands together excitedly and then cross his arms over his chest as he watches her. "May I say that it hasn’t gone unnoticed by me that you go out of your way to sit quite a bit away from me whenever you're around."
"No, I don’t."
"Oh, but you do."
"I sit the proper distance away."
"That’s what I mean. You're so concerned with being proper. I don’t think you'll get in trouble if you actually sit next to me, Ariadne. And I would so appreciate it."
Color rises on her face when he says her name that way, vaguely sexual, rolling it off his tongue like something special. It makes her feel warm and awkward and she has to clear her throat before she can speak again. "I don’t know…"
"I promise you won't get into trouble," he soothes. "And if anyone says anything about it I promise you can blame me."
She watches him for a moment, contemplating what to do. But in the end she decides that maybe it would be alright to sit next to him despite the heat that has risen up inside of her. So she stands up slowly from the chair and rests the folded up newspaper on top of his book. And then, smoothing out the skirt of her uniform she sits down on the bed.
"There we go," Eames says in a slow, deep voice. "That wasn’t so difficult, was it?"
"I never said it was difficult," she counters. "Simply that I wasn’t sure if it would be appropriate."
"And yet no one is jumping up to yell at you for it," he teases, glancing around the hospital a bit dramatically. He looks at the other nurses there, the doctor at the other end of the room. "I think you may just be in the clear, Ariadne. I don’t think anyone minds that you're sitting next to poor, bedridden me." Looking back over at her he smiles and she has to admit that it's charming, appealing. "Tell me, Ariadne, do you have someone at home missing you?" he asks her. "A husband perhaps? Or a suitor waiting anxiously for your return?"
"No," she answers easily and then wonders why she even bothered. It seems like too personal of a question really and she can't understand why he would ask that. And yet she hadn’t been able to stop herself from saying it. "No, just my family." She's quiet for a moment, her hands folded in her lap as she looks at him. "What about you?" she asks him. "Anyone waiting for you at home?"
"No suitor," he teases. Her face changes to a perfect mask of surprise and he chuckles a bit. "Just teasing, luv," he assures her, winking a bit at her. "But to answer your question no. No wife, no girlfriend. Just like you the only people waiting for me at home happen to be my family."
"I see."
"Tell me something," he muses. "How is that a pretty girl like yourself doesn’t have someone waiting for you at home?"
"I don’t know what you mean."
"Sure you do," he counters. "You're quite a lovely woman, Ariadne. I can't imagine that no one at home is waiting for you. So, why is that? Why is a lovely woman like you all alone?"
"I…I don’t know."
"It's such a shame," he muses. Reaching up he tucks some of the hair that had fallen out of her bun back behind one of her ears, his fingers brushing against her cheek. "A lovely woman like you shouldn’t be all alone." He watches as color comes to her cheeks. "I can assure you that any man would be lucky to have your attention, Ariadne. And if I had met you under different circumstances I can guarantee that I wouldn’t hesitate to show my interest in you."
The color that paints her cheeks is simply beautiful.
"You're looking lovely today, Ariadne, as always."
Ariadne spins around the moment she hears that voice behind her. She had been on her way back to the nurses' quarters when she had decided to stop by the supply room to pick up a few things and bring them back to the hospital for when they needed them in the morning. Standing there, cast still on his leg, propped up by crutches is the very pilot that she had been spending so much time with.
It had been exactly twenty weeks since his leg had been put into a cast. The doctors plan on removing the cast in a week and had been telling him that he should get out of bed for a bit, get used to moving around again but there was no way he could walk with his leg like that. And so they had supplied him with crutches to help him get around when he decided he wanted to get out of bed for a while.
"Mr. Eames-"
"Eames," he corrects her, cutting her off midsentence. He arches both of his eyebrows at her as if she should know what he means and watches as color paints her cheeks.
"Eames," she says after a moment. "You look exhausted. You've been pushing yourself far too much." She puts down the supplies and moves towards him. "Please, sit down." She motions vaguely behind him to indicate that he should sit down in the chair there.
Eames looks behind him, looks down at the chair there and then back at her. She has such a serious look on her face that he knows that if he doesn’t move she'll get a doctor in there to make him sit down. And so he backs up towards the chair and slowly lowers himself down onto it, taking the crutches out from under his legs and moving them towards the side and leans them against the wall.
"You can't push yourself too much," she scolds as she stands in front of him, crossing her arms over her chest. "If you push yourself too much then you're just going to hurt yourself. And you've been hurt enough haven’t you?"
"Oh, I'm touched," he says as he looks up at her, a smile on his face. "You're worried about me."
"It's my job to worry."
"No, it isn't just that," he argues. "You're worried about me." He looks her up and down for a moment, watches her face. "My, Ariadne. I do believe that perhaps you're not as immune to me as you like to pretend you are."
She blinks at him a couple of times, openly gaping at him. "I…I have no idea what you mean."
"Oh, but you do." Putting one hand behind him against the wall he uses it for leverage and stands up, towering over her tiny little frame as he looks down at her. "I do believe I've gotten to you."
"Please, sit down before you hurt yourself."
"I will," he agrees. "But I want you to do something for me first. You do it and I promise I'll sit right back down."
"What?"
"Give me a kiss, luv."
"I will not!"
"Oh, come now. Don’t play shy." Reaching out with the hand not braced against the wall he cups her cheek in his hand, tilts her face up a bit so it's more angled towards him. "Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about it."
"I haven’t!"
"Now that’s most definitely a lie."
Ariadne opens her mouth twice to say something and closes it both times because she realizes that she has no idea what to say. So in the end she just purses her crimson lips as she looks up at him.
"That’s what I thought," he says with more than a little bit of satisfaction. He smiles at her, brushes his thumb across her cheek. He looks down at her, at her big, dark brown eyes and he knows that he may get in trouble for this; he knows that she might not appreciate it. But despite that he also knows that he can't really help himself. He's wanted to kiss her for weeks now and he knows that it won't be long until he doesn’t have a chance to do that anymore. And so he takes advantage of the time he has now and he leans down, pressing his mouth against hers.
She knows that this is inappropriate, that she should push him away. She's his nurse and that means that she can't do something like that, that she can't kiss him or let him kiss her. It's inappropriate and in the end she could get in so, so much trouble for it. But despite knowing all that she can't bring herself to push him away. Because if she's completely honest with herself she's attracted to him. She's been attracted to him since the day that she had met him but she had kept pushing it away because it was inappropriate. But now, in that private room with his mouth pressed against hers she can't deny it, she can't push him away.
Instead she finds herself kissing him back, finds herself putting her hand on the back of his neck, her mouth pulling at his. Eames groans into her mouth when he feels her give in, when he feels her melt into him. But he can't stand up for much longer and so he doesn’t try to do it for much longer. He lowers himself down into the chair as he takes his hand off of her face, puts his hands on her waist and draws her closer to him, angling himself up as much as he can so she doesn’t have to lean down too much to keep their mouths connected.
His hands kneed at her sides through her crisp white uniform, her legs bumping into his knees; he kisses her deeper, opens her mouth and touches his tongue to hers. And in the back of his head he knows that they could get caught and she could get into trouble for this but he can't bring himself to stop. From the very moment she opened that curtain to look in on him on the first day he had wanted her, wanted her more than he had wanted anyone in such a long time. And here she is giving into him and he can't bring himself to stop. Because there's no resistance in her now, no distance. And as long as she's not putting that distance between them he's not going to stop.
He takes his mouth off of hers, moves it just a breadth away so he can whisper against her mouth, his voice low, deep, "If I ask you a question will you answer me honestly, darling?"
"Yes," she replies in a breathy voice.
"Do you want me, Miss Ariadne Esse?"
She looks down at him, her dark eyes clouded over. The sound of others moving around outside the door barely registers in her head as she listens to it, looks down at him and she swallows hard, knowing that she has to be honest with him. She has this feeling that he'll know if she lies. And so she nods her head slightly. "Yes."
That’s all he really needs to hear. He presses his mouth back against hers and his hands tug at her uniform. Her own hands move to help him as she undoes her uniform, letting the pieces of clothing drop to the floor. She steps out of her shoes, kicking them off with the opposite foot; she helps him roll down her white stockings, lets him unhook her bra and slides it down off of her arms. And then, standing there before him she bites down on her bottom lip, feeling shy and almost ashamed of her own body as she removes her underwear, leaving her naked before him.
He puts one hand on the wall behind him and uses the leverage to help himself stand up, reaching out and taking her hand in his other one. He guides it to the waistband of his hospital issued pants and meets her eyes, watches her with this look on his face, this look that tells her to go ahead and so she does, untying the drawstring and helps him push them and his underwear down off of his hips. They stop no further down his legs than where his cast is and then he lowers himself back down to the chair.
"If you want to stop then we can now," he assures you.
"I don’t want to," she whispers and it's maybe the most honest thing she's said to him the entire time that he's been there.
He smiles at her then, one that’s both lustful and pleased and he puts his hands on her hips, drawing her closer to him. His mouth presses against hers again and he pulls her down into his lap. He's hard beneath her and she moans against his mouth, the sound muffled though it sounds quite loud in her ears in the otherwise quiet room. Her knees rest on either side of his legs, her body elevated a bit above his. He keeps one hand on her hips as he separates their mouths and then, almost like he's moving in slow motion, he lowers her down onto him, entering her.
She lets out this sound that’s both a gasp and a moan and yet neither, a breathy sound that makes him groan softly. He puts both hands on her hips and waits until she puts her hands on his shoulders before he slowly, very slowly starts to move her, guiding her up and down over him on her his lap.
He keeps his gaze on her face the entire time, watching the look on her face and the way her eyes half close with each movement. Her mouth opens in a small 'o', her crimson lipstick smudged so it's over the edges of her mouth. She looks both so put together with her hair in a bun and yet such a mess with her lipstick smudged and so he reaches up with one hand and pulls the pins out of her hair, watching it go tumbling around her shoulders and around her face, dropping the pins to the floor and listening to the dull sound they make when they hit it.
He thinks she looks so, so beautiful like that with her hair hanging around her face, her skin flushed. She looks like some kind of a goddess to him, sounds like some kind of an angel with the way she's moaning like she can't get enough oxygen into her lungs and yet she can't stop herself.
It's like finally being able to scratch an itch he's wanted to scratch for months already and he can honestly say that this feels better than anything else he's experienced in such a long, long time. The feeling of her breath on his face, the feeling of being inside her, of her body moving over his. It's indescribable and so all that comes out of him is a low groaning sound, a sound that’s almost a growl rumbling in his chest.
She's not the most experienced person in the world when it comes to this but this isn't the first time that she's been so wrapped up in someone. She's been with a couple of guys before, had a handful of encounters that she could even attempt to compare to something like this but in the end none of them compare. This feels much better than any of those situations. And maybe its part of it is the sick thrill of knowing if they get caught she'll be in trouble. Maybe part of it is because they could get caught at any moment. Or maybe it's because she can hear her colleagues moving around outside of the door and there's a good change that they could hear the two of them inside as well.
And that knowledge alone makes the tension in her stomach mount, makes her feel warm and makes her body shudder above him. She leans down then and presses her mouth against the side of his neck to muffle the sounds she's making, a mewling moan passing between her lips. And she knows, in that moment, as soon as the sound passes between her lips she knows that she's close, that it won't be long before she's done. She knows that without a fact. She knows her body well enough by now to know that for a fact.
And that’s why she keeps her mouth pressed against his neck. She doesn’t want to get too loud and draw attention to them. her body tenses a bit and he tightens his grip on her hips and pulls her down more firmly against him, moving her faster. Her breath is warm against his neck and it makes goose bumps rise up on his arms, along his back. Outside he can hear one of the other nurses calling Ariadne's name but he knows that she's not going to answer him. Not yet at least. Not for a while. Because if she does then they'll get caught. And he knows she doesn’t want that.
The tension mounts inside of her, makes her feel like she's about to literally burst like a balloon filled with too much oxygen. And then, what seems like all at once, what seems quite suddenly and yet isn't that unexpected. She had felt it coming and yet when it comes to an end it surprises her so much that she gasps against his neck, the air all rushing out of her lungs against his sweaty neck. It ends in a moan that is all but torn out of her, her spine going rigid, her fingers tightening on his shoulders through the fabric of his shirt.
Once she reaches that end he groans against her moist skin, his hands tightening on her hips and he pulls her down against him again. Once, twice, three times before his own orgasm rips through him like some creature trying to break free. He presses his mouth against the side of her neck, groans against her soft skin hoping that it'll be muffled enough not to be heard.
Neither of them moves for quite some time.
The first time that she sees him in his uniform is on the day that he's going to be leaving the hospital. She stands towards the back of it and just looks at him towards the door in his nice crisp uniform, his face clean shaven. It’s the first time she's seen him walking without a cast on, the first time that she's seen him without a cast at all. There's a vague shadow on his hand from a burn that had healed up and she doesn’t doubt that the deep laceration that he had sustained will leave a nice big scar alone his side.
It she had thought he was attractive when he was unkempt with his face gone scruffy and his hair not cut the way he normally wore it then seeing him like this, in his uniform to get ready to go he's got to be the most attractive man that she had ever seen in her life. And she had encountered many, many men over the years.
She stands back from everything, watching him quietly, her hands folded behind her back. She supposes the right thing to do would be to move over to him, to tell him goodbye. But for some reasons she can't bring herself to do that, can't bring herself to move. And maybe that’s because as soon as she moves over to him, as soon as she actually says goodbye to him that means she's really not going to see him ever again. And she doesn’t want to face that, doesn’t want to imagine never seeing him again. She's seen him every day for what seems like such a long, long time that she can't imagine never seeing him again. And it's not just about what they had done in the supply room either. Its about him, it's about Eames and how she doesn’t want to never see him again.
Some of the other nurses are saying goodbye to him, bidding one of the patients that had been there the longest goodbye, telling him to be careful, to take care of himself. He's smiling at them and nodding like he's telling them that he'll take care of himself, that they don’t have to worry about him. And the urge to both go up to him and to run away grows and the difference between the two emotions is almost too much to handle.
And so she steps away from the wall so she can walk away from him, from that place, from watching him say goodbye. So she looks at him from behind, watches him standing there and then moves to go about her everyday business. Just because she can't bring herself to say goodbye, she can't bring herself to actually see this all end. And so she decides to head back over to handle the patients that she had.
"Nurse Esse." Eames calls out to her and it makes her stop dead in her tracks like maybe he pushed the stop button on her. And she finds herself standing there in a completely frozen state before she finally manages to turn herself around. And he just looks at her standing there, well put together and beautiful as the first time he saw her and he can't look away.
"Mr. Eames," she acknowledges, nodding her head a little bit at him.
"I thought we agreed to drop the 'mister' already."
"Yes, well, I thought it was appropriate given that you're leaving."
"Oh, darling, since when have I been concerned with appropriate?" He smiles at her, moves towards her and the smile melts something inside of her all over again. "Weren't you going to even say goodbye to me?"
"You seemed busy. I didn’t want to interrupt."
"Nonsense. I could always make time for you." He stops in front of her, pack slung over his shoulder filled with the meager amount of possessions that he had when he was brought in.
Ariadne nods a little to say that she heard him though she has no idea what to say in reply. And so she just looks at his face for a moment before she sticks out her hand to him. "It was very nice to meet you, Eames. I wish you well."
"Ariadne, luv, cut the shit." The vulgar word shocks her so badly for a moment that her eyes widen and she gapes at him. His hand shoots out and wraps around her wrist and then he's pulling her to him, her tiny body colliding against his chest and he leans down, pressing his mouth against hers. His hand releases her wrist and he moves it up, pressing it against the back of her neck. She swears she can taste her heart beating on her tongue.
"I'll find you," he whispers once their mouths have parted. "I'll find you when all of this is over. No matter where this war takes me, no matter where it takes you I'll find you. I promise."
"Don’t make promises, Eames. You don’t know if you can keep them."
"Oh, luv," he coos, his mouth curving up into a smile. "I always keep my promises."
Author: butterflys_fics/blacksouledbutterfly
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): Ariadne/Eames
Word Count: 6,893
Summary: It started on September the seventh. That’s when the first bomb was dropped.
Warnings: AU. Some foul language, scenes of a sexual nature, vague mentions of injuries/bombings.
Notes: For this prompt at inception_kink.
It started on September the seventh. That’s when the first bomb was dropped. Up until that point all of the attacks had been on airfields, against the military rather than civilian territories. Up until that point they hadn’t thought that anything bad was going to happen to civilians. Wars were supposed to be confined to those fighting it. Innocent people weren’t supposed to get dragged into it. But then the bombs started to drop onto civilian territories. And it wasn’t just London that they hit but London was first, London was the longest.
But after London more places were bombed as well, more cities. And as more cities got bombed and more civilians were injured. And all of England was on edge. Nurses that had been confined to military personnel had been asked to help take care of civilians that were injured. Hundreds died, thousands were wounded. And burned bodies became a way of life; the smell of scorched flesh filled the air. It was a time of fear, a time of worry. And the people, well, they found sanctuary in warehouse basements and in underground stations.
Nurse Ariadne Esse wakes up on November seventeenth just outside of Coventry two days after bombs were dropped down on the city. Over a thousand explosives were dropped down on the city. Tens of thousands of buildings were hit, most of which were destroyed. The body count had already been put at about three-hundred people by this time and hundreds of people had already been injured. When the bombs had dropped there had been chaos, people running around screaming and bleeding. And then, the people were being brought in, bloody and screaming. There were so many cuts, so many burns. It had been quite the sight.
Everyone had been running around without any type of knowledge of what they should do. Even if you had been stationed near another bombing before you were never, ever prepared for something like this. They had been so, so busy that they didn’t sleep for an entire day. They were so, so busy patching up wounds and making sure that they didn’t run out of supplies that when they were done they barely had the energy to cleanup before they all but collapsed into bed. But the problem was that they couldn’t sleep very long afterwards because they still had people to take care of.
Throwing her legs over the edge of her bed Ariadne prepares herself for the day, brushing her teeth and brushed her hair, pulling it back into a tight bun so that it stayed out of the way. She painted her lips the standard red and checked her nails to make sure they weren’t chipped. And then, once she was all dressed up in her uniform with her crisp, shiny white shoes, she made her way from the nurse's quarters to their makeshift hospital.
Each of them had assignments listed at the beginning of the day. All of the soldiers and civilians they had to deal with that had already been treated for the initial injuries were divided up between the nurses to care for until they had to leave. With the ones that had died and the ones that had injuries so minor that they could leave and so to a shelter already they hadn’t had as many patients as she thought they were.
So she checks in, signing in to let them know that she had arrived for duty and then went about tending to her patients. There were a lot of civilians there, women and children, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. There were little children that had been received minor injuries when the bombs fell. But their parents had been hurt and were staying there until their parents could leave. She had crouched down near the children and spoke to them, found them something to eat and drink and gave the some paper and some pencils so that they could draw and have fun. Or as much fun as they possibly could in a place like that.
She's making her way around to the last of her patients when she checks her watch. It's late at night already by the time she reaches the bed he's lying on and she has his chart in her hand- or what passed as a chart there. All they could use as charts were papers stuck in folders. This particular patient is one of the few that she had been assigned that was part of the military. A member of the royal air force that had been injured during the bombing. He had sustained a broken leg, several burns on his arms and legs and had a piece of shrapnel that had lodged in his side. And the wound, apparently, had been quite severe because according to the folder they had thought they were going to lose him at first. But then he had been saved and he had apparently made quite a miraculous recovery because when the nurse came to check on him last night he was awake and alert and though he was on a lot of medication for pain and to try to make sure that he didn’t get an infection.
She makes her way over to the bed, pulling back the curtain that was set up to give him privacy between him and the other people. She checks his IV to make sure that it doesn’t need to be replaced. She does all of that before she looks over at the man in the bed, watches him for a second before she smiles at him a bit. One of the things that she had been taught when she became a nurse was that sometimes just kindness was enough to help people, enough to make them feel a bit better.
"How are you doing, Mr. Eames?" she asks the man as she looks down at him lying in the bed, his leg wrapped up in a cast, a gash across his cheek. It doesn’t look deep enough to leave a permanent scar or anything of the like but it's noticeable nonetheless. But what she notices the most was the color of his eyes, a wonderfully pale, beautiful shade of blue that she has to force herself to look away from; she notices his full lips that she thinks, for a moment, may be too big for his face but when she really looks at him it fits with the rest of him.
Eames watches the young nurse quietly for several moments as her eyes jump across his face and he can't help but smile at her. She's a young thing, quite innocent looking. And he has to admit that she looks adorable in her crisp white uniform with her bright red lips, her dark hair pulled back in a tight bun. "Much better now that I have such wonderful company," he muses as he looks at her. And he can't help but feel a thrill of satisfaction shoot through him at the sight of her blushing.
Watching him for a moment the young nurse licks awkwardly at her bottom lip and turns her gaze down to the chart in her hand. Her eyes skip over the page, taking in what she's already read before. Her fingers reach for the pencil in her pocket wishing that she had something to add to the chart but she doesn’t. Not yet.
"I'm Nurse Esse," she tells him because that’s the most important thing that she can say to him right now. And in all honesty she doesn’t have anything else that she can say to him right now.
"Nice to meet you, Nurse Esse." Eames holds his hand out to her, knuckles scratched up. He offers her his palm, offers her a shake. He watches her look down skeptically at his hand before she seems to decide that it would be rude not to shake his offered hand and she takes her hand out of her uniform pocket, grasping his hand in hers. And so he lifts her hand up to his mouth and presses a kiss against her knuckles. "It's very nice to meet you."
Ariadne blushes again, taking her hand back from him so that she can stick it back into her pocket, tapping her fingers against her pencil. "Yeah," she replies a bit awkwardly, giving him another smile. "Nice to meet you, too."
It doesn’t escape Eames that he had done something that had made her a bit uneasy though he isn't sure what it is. And the more he thinks about it the more he realizes that the only explanation he can come up with is that maybe she's just not used to that type of attention from patients, the nice, casual flirtation. But as nurse working with military personnel she should be used to that sort of thing by now. Soldiers tend to be, after all, quite flirtatious with the nurses around them.
"Well," Ariadne says after a moment of silence. "I'm going to be your primary nurse. I'll be checking on you until you're okay to leave. If you need anything just ask someone to come get me and I'll help you with it. Nurse Davidson, whom you met last night, will be checking on you during the night." She pauses, waits. "Is there anything you need now?"
"Not that I can think of." He's blissfully pain free thanks to the medication they're giving him and his wounds are all bandaged up. And as much as he would like to find an excuse to have her stick around for a little while he simply can't come up with one. Not right now at least. Or at least not a plausible one.
"Wonderful." She gives him another smile, a small and professional one. "Then I'll leave you to your rest. And I'll see you in the morning, Mr. Eames."
"I can honestly say, Miss Esse, that that makes me look forward to morning more than I ever have in my life."
"You're American born."
Eames is angled slightly to his side on the bed while she sits on the edge of it. She's replacing the bandage on his side when he says that to her and it makes her take pause, makes her look up at his profile for a moment before looking back at the task at hand. The wound is still bright red from trauma, the black stitches standing out starkly against his skin.
"Yes," she acknowledges. "I am."
"So how is it that you came to be a nurse for Her Majesty's army?"
It’s a simple question, an innocent one. And a logical one. She supposes that many people have wondered that over the years, have thought about that when they met her. It probably isn't very common that British soldiers encounter an American born nurse working for them. But no one has ever asked her that before. So it makes her take pause as she's readying a fresh piece of gauze for his wound, makes her wonder just how she should answer that question. Or if she should even answer it at all. But it really, really does seem innocent enough so she can't see a logical reason not to answer him.
"My family moves here when I was twelve," she tells him, resting the piece of gauze against his side, smoothing it gently over his wound. "I've been living here since then. I suppose since I've been living here that I decided it would be more appropriate for me to be a nurse here than to move back to America to be a nurse."
"That’s makes perfect sense," he assures her.
"I know." She hadn’t been searching for validation in her choice though she can't truly be mad at him for giving it to her. So she doesn’t take offense. She simply finishes applying the bandage and then stands up from the bed, tapping his shoulder to let him know he can lie back down normally. After two weeks of working as his nurse they've gotten to the point where she doesn’t have to tell him to move before he does so. And so she stands up as soon as she taps his shoulder so he can lie back down.
Once he's resting comfortably again he folds his hands to rest on his stomach, watching her quietly. "I'm under the impression that you don’t like me very much, Miss Esse," he tells her.
She watches him for a couple of moments, practically gaping at him, her red tinted mouth in a small 'o' shape. "Oh, no. No, it isn't that," she tries to assure him. "I like you just fine."
"You don’t act like you do."
"I assure you, Mr. Eames, that I like you just fine." She smiles at him a bit, picking up her chart from the place where she had put it. "I'll see you tomorrow then to check on your bandages again."
"I look forward to it."
She isn't sure why she had agreed to sit with him. Most of the patients that she had been assigned after the bombing had been released from the hospital so she wasn’t as busy as she had been before. But she still can't explain why she had agreed to sit with him for a while today. All she can honestly say is that he had asked and so in the end she had agreed to do it.
Sitting in the chair next to the bed she's reading the newest newspaper that she had managed to get a hold of. Eames had been in the hospital for an entire month. His burns had healed up well enough by now and his side no longer needed to be bandaged. But it was his leg that they were waiting on, that hadn’t healed up yet.
Eames had been sitting there the entire time that she had been reading the newspaper, had been watching her. One of the other soldiers that had been there had given him a book to read when he was leaving and he's been reading it on and off since then. And that’s what he had been trying to do when Ariadne first sat down there next to him, mostly because he didn’t want to seem like a bother. But he found himself terribly distracted and he couldn’t get very far in the book without having to put it down and look over at her. He would watch her face, would watch her dark eyes skimming across the page, her pale fingers clutching the paper in her hands, the red nail polish standing out starkly against her skin. She was honestly quite a beautiful sight. Beautiful in such a simple, innocent way.
She wasn’t like most of the women he was used to, the kind that flaunted their beauty, that shoved it down your throat. She wasn’t overly glamorous and while some may argue that’s because of her uniform but he had seen several nurses who glamorized their uniform, who tried to look fancy while wearing it. But she didn’t do that. And save for her bright red lipstick she wore very little makeup at all. And that was probably the most appealing thing about her. He had grown so used to women who flaunted their sexuality, used it like a weapon. To encounter someone who did the exact opposite was a wonderful breath of fresh air.
And he thinks that’s maybe why he's so enamored with her. There are other nurses walking around that place and he even has a different nurse at night. And all of them seem quite willing to talk to him, to let him flirt with them and to flirt back. But they weren’t challenging and they weren’t all that interesting if he's being honest. And when he flirted with them it didn’t feel the same as it did with her. Because it was her that had caught his eye. She was the one he wanted attention from.
Finally he gives up reading his book and puts it down on the little table next to the bed. Putting his hands on the bed for leverage he sits up a little straighter, his back against the pillows that are against what passes as a headboard. "Miss Esse?"
Ariadne lowers her newspaper so she can look up at him, watching him for a moment before she folds the paper up and rests it on her lap. "Yes, Mr. Eames?"
"What's your name?"
"Excuse me?"
"Your first name," he clarifies. "What's your first name?"
"Oh." She blinks her dark eyes at him for a couple of seconds, watching him for a moment, trying to decide whether or not she should answer him. It can't do much harm, of course. She knows that. But she isn't sure how much good it will do either. But without a good reason not to tell him she doesn’t think it would be polite to ignore the question. So, after a moment of contemplation she clears her throat, shifting a bit to get more comfortable in the chair. "Ariadne," he tells him.
"Ariadne," he repeats, testing how it feels rolling off of his tongue and he has to admit that he likes it quite a bit. "Ariadne." He says her name again, rolls it off of his tongue, smiles a bit on the tail end of doing so. "A lovely name for a lovely woman." He smiles at her as she blushes, a slight chuckle crawling up his throat. "My name is Charles."
"I'd prefer to call you Mr. Eames, if you don’t mind."
"Oh, of course I don’t mind," he assures her easily. "But may I request one small thing?"
"I suppose."
"Perhaps you could drop the 'mister' and just call me Eames. It would be so much easier."
"I suppose that would be alright," she agrees.
"Lovely." He claps his hands together excitedly and then cross his arms over his chest as he watches her. "May I say that it hasn’t gone unnoticed by me that you go out of your way to sit quite a bit away from me whenever you're around."
"No, I don’t."
"Oh, but you do."
"I sit the proper distance away."
"That’s what I mean. You're so concerned with being proper. I don’t think you'll get in trouble if you actually sit next to me, Ariadne. And I would so appreciate it."
Color rises on her face when he says her name that way, vaguely sexual, rolling it off his tongue like something special. It makes her feel warm and awkward and she has to clear her throat before she can speak again. "I don’t know…"
"I promise you won't get into trouble," he soothes. "And if anyone says anything about it I promise you can blame me."
She watches him for a moment, contemplating what to do. But in the end she decides that maybe it would be alright to sit next to him despite the heat that has risen up inside of her. So she stands up slowly from the chair and rests the folded up newspaper on top of his book. And then, smoothing out the skirt of her uniform she sits down on the bed.
"There we go," Eames says in a slow, deep voice. "That wasn’t so difficult, was it?"
"I never said it was difficult," she counters. "Simply that I wasn’t sure if it would be appropriate."
"And yet no one is jumping up to yell at you for it," he teases, glancing around the hospital a bit dramatically. He looks at the other nurses there, the doctor at the other end of the room. "I think you may just be in the clear, Ariadne. I don’t think anyone minds that you're sitting next to poor, bedridden me." Looking back over at her he smiles and she has to admit that it's charming, appealing. "Tell me, Ariadne, do you have someone at home missing you?" he asks her. "A husband perhaps? Or a suitor waiting anxiously for your return?"
"No," she answers easily and then wonders why she even bothered. It seems like too personal of a question really and she can't understand why he would ask that. And yet she hadn’t been able to stop herself from saying it. "No, just my family." She's quiet for a moment, her hands folded in her lap as she looks at him. "What about you?" she asks him. "Anyone waiting for you at home?"
"No suitor," he teases. Her face changes to a perfect mask of surprise and he chuckles a bit. "Just teasing, luv," he assures her, winking a bit at her. "But to answer your question no. No wife, no girlfriend. Just like you the only people waiting for me at home happen to be my family."
"I see."
"Tell me something," he muses. "How is that a pretty girl like yourself doesn’t have someone waiting for you at home?"
"I don’t know what you mean."
"Sure you do," he counters. "You're quite a lovely woman, Ariadne. I can't imagine that no one at home is waiting for you. So, why is that? Why is a lovely woman like you all alone?"
"I…I don’t know."
"It's such a shame," he muses. Reaching up he tucks some of the hair that had fallen out of her bun back behind one of her ears, his fingers brushing against her cheek. "A lovely woman like you shouldn’t be all alone." He watches as color comes to her cheeks. "I can assure you that any man would be lucky to have your attention, Ariadne. And if I had met you under different circumstances I can guarantee that I wouldn’t hesitate to show my interest in you."
The color that paints her cheeks is simply beautiful.
"You're looking lovely today, Ariadne, as always."
Ariadne spins around the moment she hears that voice behind her. She had been on her way back to the nurses' quarters when she had decided to stop by the supply room to pick up a few things and bring them back to the hospital for when they needed them in the morning. Standing there, cast still on his leg, propped up by crutches is the very pilot that she had been spending so much time with.
It had been exactly twenty weeks since his leg had been put into a cast. The doctors plan on removing the cast in a week and had been telling him that he should get out of bed for a bit, get used to moving around again but there was no way he could walk with his leg like that. And so they had supplied him with crutches to help him get around when he decided he wanted to get out of bed for a while.
"Mr. Eames-"
"Eames," he corrects her, cutting her off midsentence. He arches both of his eyebrows at her as if she should know what he means and watches as color paints her cheeks.
"Eames," she says after a moment. "You look exhausted. You've been pushing yourself far too much." She puts down the supplies and moves towards him. "Please, sit down." She motions vaguely behind him to indicate that he should sit down in the chair there.
Eames looks behind him, looks down at the chair there and then back at her. She has such a serious look on her face that he knows that if he doesn’t move she'll get a doctor in there to make him sit down. And so he backs up towards the chair and slowly lowers himself down onto it, taking the crutches out from under his legs and moving them towards the side and leans them against the wall.
"You can't push yourself too much," she scolds as she stands in front of him, crossing her arms over her chest. "If you push yourself too much then you're just going to hurt yourself. And you've been hurt enough haven’t you?"
"Oh, I'm touched," he says as he looks up at her, a smile on his face. "You're worried about me."
"It's my job to worry."
"No, it isn't just that," he argues. "You're worried about me." He looks her up and down for a moment, watches her face. "My, Ariadne. I do believe that perhaps you're not as immune to me as you like to pretend you are."
She blinks at him a couple of times, openly gaping at him. "I…I have no idea what you mean."
"Oh, but you do." Putting one hand behind him against the wall he uses it for leverage and stands up, towering over her tiny little frame as he looks down at her. "I do believe I've gotten to you."
"Please, sit down before you hurt yourself."
"I will," he agrees. "But I want you to do something for me first. You do it and I promise I'll sit right back down."
"What?"
"Give me a kiss, luv."
"I will not!"
"Oh, come now. Don’t play shy." Reaching out with the hand not braced against the wall he cups her cheek in his hand, tilts her face up a bit so it's more angled towards him. "Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about it."
"I haven’t!"
"Now that’s most definitely a lie."
Ariadne opens her mouth twice to say something and closes it both times because she realizes that she has no idea what to say. So in the end she just purses her crimson lips as she looks up at him.
"That’s what I thought," he says with more than a little bit of satisfaction. He smiles at her, brushes his thumb across her cheek. He looks down at her, at her big, dark brown eyes and he knows that he may get in trouble for this; he knows that she might not appreciate it. But despite that he also knows that he can't really help himself. He's wanted to kiss her for weeks now and he knows that it won't be long until he doesn’t have a chance to do that anymore. And so he takes advantage of the time he has now and he leans down, pressing his mouth against hers.
She knows that this is inappropriate, that she should push him away. She's his nurse and that means that she can't do something like that, that she can't kiss him or let him kiss her. It's inappropriate and in the end she could get in so, so much trouble for it. But despite knowing all that she can't bring herself to push him away. Because if she's completely honest with herself she's attracted to him. She's been attracted to him since the day that she had met him but she had kept pushing it away because it was inappropriate. But now, in that private room with his mouth pressed against hers she can't deny it, she can't push him away.
Instead she finds herself kissing him back, finds herself putting her hand on the back of his neck, her mouth pulling at his. Eames groans into her mouth when he feels her give in, when he feels her melt into him. But he can't stand up for much longer and so he doesn’t try to do it for much longer. He lowers himself down into the chair as he takes his hand off of her face, puts his hands on her waist and draws her closer to him, angling himself up as much as he can so she doesn’t have to lean down too much to keep their mouths connected.
His hands kneed at her sides through her crisp white uniform, her legs bumping into his knees; he kisses her deeper, opens her mouth and touches his tongue to hers. And in the back of his head he knows that they could get caught and she could get into trouble for this but he can't bring himself to stop. From the very moment she opened that curtain to look in on him on the first day he had wanted her, wanted her more than he had wanted anyone in such a long time. And here she is giving into him and he can't bring himself to stop. Because there's no resistance in her now, no distance. And as long as she's not putting that distance between them he's not going to stop.
He takes his mouth off of hers, moves it just a breadth away so he can whisper against her mouth, his voice low, deep, "If I ask you a question will you answer me honestly, darling?"
"Yes," she replies in a breathy voice.
"Do you want me, Miss Ariadne Esse?"
She looks down at him, her dark eyes clouded over. The sound of others moving around outside the door barely registers in her head as she listens to it, looks down at him and she swallows hard, knowing that she has to be honest with him. She has this feeling that he'll know if she lies. And so she nods her head slightly. "Yes."
That’s all he really needs to hear. He presses his mouth back against hers and his hands tug at her uniform. Her own hands move to help him as she undoes her uniform, letting the pieces of clothing drop to the floor. She steps out of her shoes, kicking them off with the opposite foot; she helps him roll down her white stockings, lets him unhook her bra and slides it down off of her arms. And then, standing there before him she bites down on her bottom lip, feeling shy and almost ashamed of her own body as she removes her underwear, leaving her naked before him.
He puts one hand on the wall behind him and uses the leverage to help himself stand up, reaching out and taking her hand in his other one. He guides it to the waistband of his hospital issued pants and meets her eyes, watches her with this look on his face, this look that tells her to go ahead and so she does, untying the drawstring and helps him push them and his underwear down off of his hips. They stop no further down his legs than where his cast is and then he lowers himself back down to the chair.
"If you want to stop then we can now," he assures you.
"I don’t want to," she whispers and it's maybe the most honest thing she's said to him the entire time that he's been there.
He smiles at her then, one that’s both lustful and pleased and he puts his hands on her hips, drawing her closer to him. His mouth presses against hers again and he pulls her down into his lap. He's hard beneath her and she moans against his mouth, the sound muffled though it sounds quite loud in her ears in the otherwise quiet room. Her knees rest on either side of his legs, her body elevated a bit above his. He keeps one hand on her hips as he separates their mouths and then, almost like he's moving in slow motion, he lowers her down onto him, entering her.
She lets out this sound that’s both a gasp and a moan and yet neither, a breathy sound that makes him groan softly. He puts both hands on her hips and waits until she puts her hands on his shoulders before he slowly, very slowly starts to move her, guiding her up and down over him on her his lap.
He keeps his gaze on her face the entire time, watching the look on her face and the way her eyes half close with each movement. Her mouth opens in a small 'o', her crimson lipstick smudged so it's over the edges of her mouth. She looks both so put together with her hair in a bun and yet such a mess with her lipstick smudged and so he reaches up with one hand and pulls the pins out of her hair, watching it go tumbling around her shoulders and around her face, dropping the pins to the floor and listening to the dull sound they make when they hit it.
He thinks she looks so, so beautiful like that with her hair hanging around her face, her skin flushed. She looks like some kind of a goddess to him, sounds like some kind of an angel with the way she's moaning like she can't get enough oxygen into her lungs and yet she can't stop herself.
It's like finally being able to scratch an itch he's wanted to scratch for months already and he can honestly say that this feels better than anything else he's experienced in such a long, long time. The feeling of her breath on his face, the feeling of being inside her, of her body moving over his. It's indescribable and so all that comes out of him is a low groaning sound, a sound that’s almost a growl rumbling in his chest.
She's not the most experienced person in the world when it comes to this but this isn't the first time that she's been so wrapped up in someone. She's been with a couple of guys before, had a handful of encounters that she could even attempt to compare to something like this but in the end none of them compare. This feels much better than any of those situations. And maybe its part of it is the sick thrill of knowing if they get caught she'll be in trouble. Maybe part of it is because they could get caught at any moment. Or maybe it's because she can hear her colleagues moving around outside of the door and there's a good change that they could hear the two of them inside as well.
And that knowledge alone makes the tension in her stomach mount, makes her feel warm and makes her body shudder above him. She leans down then and presses her mouth against the side of his neck to muffle the sounds she's making, a mewling moan passing between her lips. And she knows, in that moment, as soon as the sound passes between her lips she knows that she's close, that it won't be long before she's done. She knows that without a fact. She knows her body well enough by now to know that for a fact.
And that’s why she keeps her mouth pressed against his neck. She doesn’t want to get too loud and draw attention to them. her body tenses a bit and he tightens his grip on her hips and pulls her down more firmly against him, moving her faster. Her breath is warm against his neck and it makes goose bumps rise up on his arms, along his back. Outside he can hear one of the other nurses calling Ariadne's name but he knows that she's not going to answer him. Not yet at least. Not for a while. Because if she does then they'll get caught. And he knows she doesn’t want that.
The tension mounts inside of her, makes her feel like she's about to literally burst like a balloon filled with too much oxygen. And then, what seems like all at once, what seems quite suddenly and yet isn't that unexpected. She had felt it coming and yet when it comes to an end it surprises her so much that she gasps against his neck, the air all rushing out of her lungs against his sweaty neck. It ends in a moan that is all but torn out of her, her spine going rigid, her fingers tightening on his shoulders through the fabric of his shirt.
Once she reaches that end he groans against her moist skin, his hands tightening on her hips and he pulls her down against him again. Once, twice, three times before his own orgasm rips through him like some creature trying to break free. He presses his mouth against the side of her neck, groans against her soft skin hoping that it'll be muffled enough not to be heard.
Neither of them moves for quite some time.
The first time that she sees him in his uniform is on the day that he's going to be leaving the hospital. She stands towards the back of it and just looks at him towards the door in his nice crisp uniform, his face clean shaven. It’s the first time she's seen him walking without a cast on, the first time that she's seen him without a cast at all. There's a vague shadow on his hand from a burn that had healed up and she doesn’t doubt that the deep laceration that he had sustained will leave a nice big scar alone his side.
It she had thought he was attractive when he was unkempt with his face gone scruffy and his hair not cut the way he normally wore it then seeing him like this, in his uniform to get ready to go he's got to be the most attractive man that she had ever seen in her life. And she had encountered many, many men over the years.
She stands back from everything, watching him quietly, her hands folded behind her back. She supposes the right thing to do would be to move over to him, to tell him goodbye. But for some reasons she can't bring herself to do that, can't bring herself to move. And maybe that’s because as soon as she moves over to him, as soon as she actually says goodbye to him that means she's really not going to see him ever again. And she doesn’t want to face that, doesn’t want to imagine never seeing him again. She's seen him every day for what seems like such a long, long time that she can't imagine never seeing him again. And it's not just about what they had done in the supply room either. Its about him, it's about Eames and how she doesn’t want to never see him again.
Some of the other nurses are saying goodbye to him, bidding one of the patients that had been there the longest goodbye, telling him to be careful, to take care of himself. He's smiling at them and nodding like he's telling them that he'll take care of himself, that they don’t have to worry about him. And the urge to both go up to him and to run away grows and the difference between the two emotions is almost too much to handle.
And so she steps away from the wall so she can walk away from him, from that place, from watching him say goodbye. So she looks at him from behind, watches him standing there and then moves to go about her everyday business. Just because she can't bring herself to say goodbye, she can't bring herself to actually see this all end. And so she decides to head back over to handle the patients that she had.
"Nurse Esse." Eames calls out to her and it makes her stop dead in her tracks like maybe he pushed the stop button on her. And she finds herself standing there in a completely frozen state before she finally manages to turn herself around. And he just looks at her standing there, well put together and beautiful as the first time he saw her and he can't look away.
"Mr. Eames," she acknowledges, nodding her head a little bit at him.
"I thought we agreed to drop the 'mister' already."
"Yes, well, I thought it was appropriate given that you're leaving."
"Oh, darling, since when have I been concerned with appropriate?" He smiles at her, moves towards her and the smile melts something inside of her all over again. "Weren't you going to even say goodbye to me?"
"You seemed busy. I didn’t want to interrupt."
"Nonsense. I could always make time for you." He stops in front of her, pack slung over his shoulder filled with the meager amount of possessions that he had when he was brought in.
Ariadne nods a little to say that she heard him though she has no idea what to say in reply. And so she just looks at his face for a moment before she sticks out her hand to him. "It was very nice to meet you, Eames. I wish you well."
"Ariadne, luv, cut the shit." The vulgar word shocks her so badly for a moment that her eyes widen and she gapes at him. His hand shoots out and wraps around her wrist and then he's pulling her to him, her tiny body colliding against his chest and he leans down, pressing his mouth against hers. His hand releases her wrist and he moves it up, pressing it against the back of her neck. She swears she can taste her heart beating on her tongue.
"I'll find you," he whispers once their mouths have parted. "I'll find you when all of this is over. No matter where this war takes me, no matter where it takes you I'll find you. I promise."
"Don’t make promises, Eames. You don’t know if you can keep them."
"Oh, luv," he coos, his mouth curving up into a smile. "I always keep my promises."