Inception - I've Got a Rock n' Roll Life (1/16)
Title: I've Got a Rock n' Roll Life (1/16)
Author: osaki_nana_707
Word count: 6,959
Pairings/Characters: ArthurxEames, Ariadne, Cobb, Yusuf, Nash
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: language, smut, alcohol use, dub-con, Arthur being an asshole, leather pants, un-betaed
Summary: AU. Arthur is a concert violinist at a prestigious arts college. His best (and only) friend Ariadne convinces him to come with her to a rock concert, aka his worst nightmare. He does seem to be quite taken with the charismatic lead guitarist though... or rather, the guitarist seems to be quite taken by him.
Track One: Sweet Emotion
"It'll be fun!"
That was what Ariadne had said, the gall of her, when standing in the middle of his off-campus apartment living room with a pair of tickets in her hand. He had given her a skeptical look that was borderline agitated, adjusting the tuning peg on the E string of his violin, and scoffed.
"If by 'fun' you mean 'a horrendous nightmare that I would most definitely not have a good time at', then yes," Arthur replied flatly, pressing the chinrest between his left shoulder and jaw, running his bow along the strings to test the tuning. It was perfect.
"-but Arthur-"
"Besides, I've got a rehearsal for the recital at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. You really think I'd be interested in standing in a crowd of smelly, long haired idiots who wear their sunglasses all the time and spill beer all over everyone? I have to practice."
As if to emphasize his point, he began to play Bach's Partita no. 1 in B minor, one of the pieces he would be playing in said recital.
"You don't think I have class in the morning? Arthur, I swear to God, you don't even know the meaning of the word fun."
"I also don't believe in God, so your swearing is meaningless," he replied blithely, starting to lose himself in the music.
"…but we haven't done anything together all semester," Ariadne pouted. "Are you trying to shove me out of your life just like you do everyone else?"
"I'm never trying to shove anyone out of my life, Ariadne," Arthur said, eyes fluttering closed. "People don't understand how I work, and sometimes it gets on people's nerves when I desert them in favor of my music, but the fact of the matter is my music has never given me any reason to abandon it. I cannot say that about anyone else, except for you… though you're pushing it right now."
"I'm inviting you out for a little fun. It won't be like last time at Starkey's when that guy threw up on you during karaoke night, I swear."
"You can't promise that," Arthur said, mouth curving into a frown as he delicately continued the piece unperturbed. He had a feeling that playing so magnificently was only going to fuel Ariadne into claiming he didn't need to practice. He actually thought for a moment about missing a note purposely just so he could make a point, but he couldn't do that to his precious violin, not after it had served him so well for so many years.
"Please, Arthur? All of my other friends said they couldn't go. Alisha said that she had some kind of anniversary thing with her boyfriend, and Janet's going home to the family, and Mia is heading out on a trip."
"So? Take one of your guy friends," Arthur replied carelessly.
"That's what I'm trying to do, Arthur."
"You can't take Tony or Jake or Henry?"
"No, because they all are quite heterosexual, and if I took any one of them they'd get the idea that it was a date, and then I would lose another friend because I'm not interested in any of them."
"What makes you believe that I wouldn't come to that conclusion, I wonder?" Arthur asked, and he could tell by the way her shoulders were tensing up in his peripheral vision that she was getting agitated that he never even bothered to stop playing while she was talking.
"Um… because you don't like anyone," she replied, voice taking on the expected annoyed undertone. "I'm your only friend. I'm just trying to make sure you have a life before you get too caught up in this 'tortured artist' state of mind and slit your wrists in the bathtub to the tunes of Mozart's Lacrymosa and sprawl yourself out dramatically in the hopes someone from the photography club will find you."
"That doesn't sound like me at all," Arthur huffed. "Stop trying to make me into some melodramatic imbecile."
"That's true… you're not melodramatic because you're a completely unfeeling asshole."
When he didn't dignify her with a response, she started to whine.
"Arthur… come on! I won these tickets off the radio after a big effort, and they're front row tickets, and Radical Notion is my absolute favorite band of all time, and I don't want to go by myself because I'm tiny and vulnerable."
Arthur paused in his playing at last to give her a onceover with his eyes. He knew she was playing an angle, but it wasn't exactly a lie that she was tiny. Standing at barely five feet, she would likely be a favorite target of the creepers and thugs that liked to go to the godforsaken things that concerts were. Arthur was almost six feet tall and, while he wasn't exactly a tough looking guy, he had a daily workout regimen that he completed every morning, and he was toned with wiry muscle and enough venom in his words to bring down a linebacker (and that wasn't just speculation on his part-he'd proved it on a couple of occasions).
"So… you're asking me to come with you for protection?" Arthur asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes," Ariadne said, nodding. "I'll be eternally grateful."
"Is that all I get? Eternal gratefulness?"
"I'll buy you a t-shirt."
"Why would I want a t-shirt?"
"I'll take you out to dinner before the show. Your favorite place."
Arthur sighed, setting his violin down in the box before settling his hands on his knees. "You'd better."
…and that was how it happened.
That was how Ariadne had convinced him to go with her. She'd seduced him with innocence and then bribed him with food, the shameless harpy. He barely ate enough as it was, and she had used it against him.
Arthur still brought his violin with him, settling it in the backseat floorboard and practicing on it in the car while they waited for the stadium to open its doors and allow all of Radical Notion's fans (and Arthur) inside. He secretly hoped that one of their band members would throw a chair out of a hotel window or something and the police would arrest them and the show would get cancelled and Arthur would have gotten his delicious Italian (damn the carbs) for free. Rock stars did stuff like that, right?
"Put it away, Arthur, or I'll break it over my knee. Tonight is not a night for classical music," Ariadne complained, opening her car door.
"If you did that I would have to stab you to death with the pieces," Arthur responded dully, as if he was talking about going to the grocery store, but put it back in its case all the same.
"This is a night of rock n' roll, man!" Ariadne said excitedly, as if she hadn't made that abundantly clear by the tall shoes she'd worn and the way she'd done her make-up (he had refrained from telling her that the red lipstick and heavy eyeshadow made her look a little whorish-and she thought he wasn't nice).
"I said I'd come with you," Arthur replied, crawling out of the backseat and smoothing back his slicked back hair. She'd convinced him to wear jeans and a t-shirt (the only one of each that he owned) by reminding him that he wouldn't want to ruin any of his nice clothes, but he wasn't about to show up with his hair loose looking like a hooligan. He hadn't worn his hair down since he was twelve. "I'm not required to enjoy myself. Let's just go and get this over with."
"I bet you'll have a better time than you expect," Ariadne said confidently, dragging him by the wrist towards the stadium. "The music and the attitude of the crowd is really infectious."
"Oh, no doubt," Arthur said sarcastically. "By the time we leave, I'm sure I'll be both deaf and lack the IQ to tie my shoelaces."
"I do believe if we weren't neighbors as children, we wouldn't be friends," Ariadne said, glaring and pouting at him. He would not be fazed by that look, no matter how good she'd gotten at it.
He still let her lead him inside and up to the line (line? It was more like a giant, chaotic bustling of people) for merchandise, what Ariadne referred to as 'schwag'. She bought a t-shirt with all of the band members on it, a poster, and the special-live-studio-rare-only-at-the-concert CD. She put on the shirt and shoved the rest of it into her gigantic purse that Arthur thought screamed 'hey, come steal from me! Look at all the stuff I've got!' but… well, maybe that was just him. He never did understand girls, and while Ariadne wasn't typical, she still had tendencies.
Excitement was thrumming through her as she bolted down the steps, Arthur following despondently behind. The opening act hadn't even come on stage yet, and already he wanted to go home. The floor stuck to his shoes unpleasantly, and people were screaming needlessly, and-oh, God, was that girl not wearing a shirt? How did she get in without a-Oh, there's her shirt-how can her boyfriend not be bothered by th-oh, they're both her boyfriends-
Arthur shivered and hurried to catch up with Ariadne. Suddenly he felt like he needed her for protection rather than the other way around.
"Okay," she said, turning as soon as he found his spot next to her (he was disappointed to see that he'd be forced to stand and listen to this shit for the next few hours because there were no chairs), "since you know nothing, I'm going to give you the 'Radical Notion Crash Course', all right?"
"Ariadne, I don't-"
"Okay," she continued, clearly not taking no for an answer (she seldom did). She pointed to each band member on her shirt and started to explain, and Arthur could have ignored it but then he would have been forced to listen to all of the disorder going on around him. "We've got Yusuf here, he's the drummer. He owns a twelve-foot python and used to have a drug problem when he was a teenager-not doing them, but he used to make them. This guy here is Nash, and he's the bassist. He's kind of an asshole and got arrested last year for public misconduct and drinking in public, and they had to have someone else play for him that night. Ah, this guy here, this is Eames. That's his last name. He doesn't like to go by his first name I guess… um, he is a fucking sick guitar player, so cool, and he's British too, so he's even cooler. Oh, and this is Dominic Cobb, the lead singer and super hottie."
"Cobb? Isn't that the same name as our French teacher?" It was one of the few classes he had with Ariadne.
"Yeah, so?" Ariadne asked, blinking, and he realized that he had not succeeded in derailing the conversation.
Arthur shrugged, sighing. "Go on."
"Okay, so like-Dom's got this really cool gravelly voice, and he and Eames write all the songs. He's got this one song that he apparently wrote for a former lover, at least according to interviews, that makes me fucking cry like a baby. I just get emotional when I listen to it, you know? He sounds so sincere, I guess."
Arthur wasn't sure why she found this information at all necessary, but he did keep it in mind in case she intended to test him on it later. "I do hope you know I'm going to need to be gloriously drunk to even attempt to enjoy this garbage," he said in annoyance.
"Beer. Got it."
By the time the opening act had come on, Arthur had already had three nasty beers and was downing them as fast as he could. The opening act was annoying as fuck, wailing their guitars for far longer than necessary, and the singer seemed to think that screaming and singing were the same thing. Ariadne and the rest of the crowd were cheering and yelling like they couldn't hear how stupid it was. There was nothing but relief for him when it was over, even if he was already well on his way to being wasted.
He feared that alcohol couldn't even make this experience painless.
…and then, there was the loud strum of a chord on the guitar, the battering of drums, the thrumming of a bass line… the stage filled with smoke, and the lights swept out over the audience…
…and the crowd went nuts.
Radical Notion took the stage, lit up like fucking Gods, and all Arthur could do was stare. He'd heard some of their music (regrettably) in the car ride to the stadium, but it had been turned down low at his request, and he hadn't really been paying attention to it. Now, he didn't really have a choice because it was loud, it was everywhere, it was powerful.
The crowd behind him began to move, jumping up and down to the beat, and Arthur thought that perhaps they were moving the entire world with the strength of their stomps. It was mildly frightening-
Then, someone stepped onto the stage in his direct line of vision.
It was the lead guitarist (Eames, wasn't it?), in a pair of leather boots, a pair of leather pants with a fucking lace-up crotch, and… well, that was it. He was offensive to everything Arthur believed in with his tattoos and barrel chest covered in hair and full lips pressed together as his fingers danced along the fret board of his guitar, the other hand expertly picking out the notes and chords, and…
Arthur had never been so entranced in his life.
The first song ended before Arthur was aware of it, and the crowd erupted into insane applause and cheering. Arthur didn't do anything but stand there. Ariadne had seemed to have found someone to scream 'Oh, my God!' at in the girl next to her with the dyed black hair.
"How are you guys feeling tonight?" Cobb asked, causing the eruption to get impossibly louder.
Arthur stared, jaw set, fists clenched at his side, and then he realized that he wasn't the only one staring.
Was the guitarist looking at him?
No, he couldn't be.
The second song started, just as loud and full of energy as the first one, and even Arthur had to admit that their melodies were much more infectious than the horrible opening act. He had to admit that Cobb actually had a pretty good voice (even though he clearly lacked any sort of classical training)… and even though he hated admitting it, he had to admit that the guitar player was charismatic-he had to have been, because Arthur couldn't stop staring at him no matter how hard he tried. With the fiery blasts coming from each side of the stage and the hot lights burning down on them, they had all broken into sweats by song three, and Eames shamelessly flaunted it around the stage, lifting his pick into the air as if it was a gift from heaven, showing off his disgusting yet surprisingly intriguing underarm hair. Arthur trimmed every hair on his body and had forgotten what it looked like when people didn't.
Song four, the lights lowered and turned blue, and Eames put down his electric in favor of an acoustic, and he'd barely gotten out the first few chords before Ariadne was theatrically sobbing. The whole crowd subdued themselves, falling nearly silent (besides the occasional 'woo!' or something like that) just to listen…
Arthur's heart thrummed, and his skin started to feel tingly, and he realized that he had stopped breathing. While surely everyone was watching as Cobb poured his heart and soul out to the microphone, Arthur still found himself watching Eames as he did the same to his guitar. He'd never in his life seen someone play quite like Eames did. He'd never seen someone look that way while playing, as if every strum was hitting him straight at his core, like the guitar was not an instrument but more an extension of himself. Arthur had never felt so amazed while watching someone else play.
He'd also never felt so awful about his own playing in his entire life.
He downed the rest of his seventh beer and wished he wasn't there, and he still didn't applaud when the song was over.
By the time the concert was over, Arthur was mentally and emotionally drained and feeling more drunk than he ever had in his entire life, but Ariadne was refusing to leave until she got her poster signed.
"Then let me go home," he'd whined because she clearly had a friend in Michelle, the girl with the dyed hair, that could drive her home.
"You are too drunk to drive," she scolded, and he was beginning to regret that he'd drank so much while she'd stayed sober.
"Fine, then I'll walk," Arthur complained. "Give me the keys so I can get my violin."
"Don't bother, the door's unlocked," she replied lightly. "Plus, if I give you the keys you'll try to drive anyway because you think you can do anything if you set your mind to it."
"Wh-" Arthur was not too drunk to just let that go. "You left the door unlocked? Are you out of your fucking mind?"
"What?" Ariadne asked, shrugging. "No one's going to steal my piece of shit car."
"My violin is in there," Arthur explained. He couldn't believe she'd been so careless. Was she not aware of how valuable those things were? How much that violin meant to him?
"I told you not to bring it," Ariadne said (the bitch). "Besides, nobody here is going to want your violin, trust me."
He huffed and attempted to storm off, but failed rather epically when he stumbled and had to grab hold of the nearest person to keep from falling on his ass. He didn't look back at the crowd gathered around the stage door, even though he was sure Ariadne was laughing at him.
By the time he got to the parking lot, he'd stumbled about eleven times, and he'd come to the conclusion that walking home was probably not an option. He didn't even remember how to get there, honestly, the road looking completely different at night and under the influence of alcohol. Regretfully, he decided to grab his violin and go back to Ariadne and just hope she'd let him live it down since he didn't have to come with her to the damned thing…
…but as he walked the parking lot, he discovered he had another problem.
He couldn't remember whether the stage door was on the right side or the left side.
Also, he was going to be sick.
He chose the right simply because it was closest and found he could keep his footing a lot better when he was in a desperate run, hightailing it across the parking lot and inside a partially cracked open chain-link gate that had apparently been damaged so it couldn't close all the way (had that been there before?) before stumbling to a stop in front of a trashcan to vomit loudly inside it, followed by a death moan.
This whole thing was a big mistake, he knew it. A concert violinist, a prodigy like himself should most definitely never find himself puking Italian and overpriced beer into a trashcan after a ridiculous rock and roll concert. If his father knew about this-well, if his father knew, he'd be a whole new level of screwed.
"Whoa-fuck-I-fuck-Oh… you're by yourself."
Arthur looked up over the rim of the trashcan to blearily see a man standing in a doorway with a cigarette clutched between his thumb and first two fingers. Arthur didn't get a good look at him before he was heaving again.
"Oh, fuck, you're really sick, aren't you," the man said, and Arthur picked up a distinct accent over the sounds of his retching. A moment later, he felt a hot hand press between his shoulder blades, and it reminded him of the gentle touches his nanny Gloria would give him as a child when he was ill. "Hey, hey, you okay?"
Arthur lifted his head from the rim again, taking in a shaky breath, and he could only hope that he was done. A couple of seconds passed without the urge to puke, and he relaxed a little.
"I didn't expect anyone to be back here, being that it is staff only and all, but it looks like they left the gate open or something... You haven't texted your friends about it yet, have you?"
Arthur turned to look at the man who'd come to his aid, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist and… "It-It's you," he said, stunned.
It was the guitarist. Eames.
The guitarist.
Eames, the lead guitarist of Radical Notion was right next to him with his hand on his back, still in his leather pants and boots and nothing else.
Haha, suck it, Ariadne, Arthur thought for a moment. It was karma for her leaving his precious violin in an unlocked car.
"A big fan, eh?" Eames asked with a smirk, and Arthur remembered that he wasn't supposed to be excited about such a thing-and he wasn't excited at all.
"Not particularly, no. I was forced to come here," Arthur said as haughtily as possible, but the effect was somewhat dulled by the fact that his words were still smearing together.
"That doesn't surprise me," Eames chuckled, unfazed, helping Arthur to his feet by one arm. "I mean, you were glaring at me for the entire performance. It was quite unsettling."
So, he had been looking at Arthur. He hadn't imagined it after all.
Still, "No, I wasn't."
Eames chuckled, amused. "Ah… yeah, you were. I saw you. You stared me down for the whole show. I could have been blind and known you were doing it, you were staring so intensely." He put the cigarette between his lips and lit it, and then he looked up at Arthur with a smirk and said, "My lips are real by the way. I get asked that all the time, and given that you were gawking and all…"
Arthur blinked, and the way his eyes burned a little was proof that he actually was staring. He didn't know what had come over him. He normally had such good control over what he did, even when intoxicated. He'd been swatted by his mother when he was little for staring, and he'd never done it again. That is, he'd never done it again until that night, and for the life of him he couldn't figure out why he'd gone so stupid in fascination over this leather-clad bulk of a man who just happened to have full lips and the bone-structure of a model. He didn't care to take any notice of the man at all, whether his tattoos said things or the fact that he had dark eyeliner painted around his eyelids or that he had a scar in his right eyebrow.
"I don't care about your lips," Arthur replied flatly. "I don't even like your band. I think all rock music is stupid."
"That's another thing I'm not surprised by being that you didn't clap, not even once. Why'd you bother to come, my coifed little friend?" Eames actually had the audacity to run a hand over Arthur's slicked back hair, and Arthur swatted it away.
"My friend Ariadne made me come with her. For protection."
"Ah, girlfriend," Eames said with a sigh. "Now I get it. You're here to get her an autograph, right? The rest of the band went out to drink-"
"Ariadne's not my girlfriend," Arthur replied bluntly, and Eames shut up and looked almost…
Delighted?
"Oh, really? Potential girlfriend?"
"She bribed me with dinner," Arthur replied, pressing his back against the wall as the world started to tilt a little. He at least didn't feel nearly as wasted now that he'd puked. "She's just a friend, and I don't intend to change that anytime soon."
"Hmm…" Eames said.
Arthur didn't know what that meant, and frankly it made him uncomfortable.
"Then why are you back here?" Eames asked, removing his cigarette from that mouth of his that Arthur wasn't staring at.
"I had to vomit, and all I saw was a trashcan. I didn't know this was staff only. Trust me, I'm not sniffing for autographs at all, so don't flatter yourself. I had to get drunk just so I could tolerate your show."
"You wound me," Eames said, but he was still smiling like everything Arthur said was so goddamned funny. How could this guy be so amused all the time? It was starting to irk Arthur severely. "Those songs mean a lot to me, you know. That's my heart and soul you're insulting."
"You don't sound very agitated over it," Arthur said, narrowing his eyes.
"Oh, well, no, of course not," Eames replied with a shrug, planting a hand next to Arthur's head so that he could lean in close to whisper, "that would give you far too much satisfaction, now wouldn't it, darling?"
Arthur tried to summon up the ability to go flying into a rage, but with the alcohol rolling through his system all he could focus on was how Eames's voice made him feel like he was sinking into a tub full of hot water. He barely managed to squeak out, "You've got a lot of nerve."
"What, teasing a little pipsqueak like you?" Eames chuckled. "I could throw you with one arm."
Arthur did not take that opportunity to look at the arm flexed at the side of his face and how he probably couldn't get his hand halfway around his bicep.
Well, he didn't do it for any other reason than a mathematical one. As quick as he was, he usually fought with words, and Eames definitely had a leg up on him in brute strength.
He did not take that opportunity to look at the legs squeezed into the leather or at the trail of hair between the navel and the tie at the crotch of the pants, and then he definitely didn't stare at his crotch because that's not something that Arthur does. He'd never been interested in anyone, much less other men, because he didn't have time for such nonsense like relationships and foreplay and sex.
…not that he was thinking about sex at that moment. Of course not! The word only came to mind because the bastard was parading himself as the definition of the word, as rock stars often tended to do. Arthur wasn't like that at all. He didn't even allow himself the weakness of touching himself, choosing instead to take ice cold showers or thinking of other things.
He didn't want Eames.
He'd never wanted anyone in his entire life. He didn't even know what it felt like to want anyone.
"Now, are you some sort of android or are you really that incapable of getting a rise out of?" Eames asked, and he was still smiling, only this time he was right there, and Arthur could feel his breath when he spoke.
"I… I don't have any reason to be offended or satisfied by anything you say because I don't have enough respect for you to be so. Wh-why should I?"
"Well, you'd be able to prove me wrong about you being an emotionless twat," Eames said with a shrug.
"I'm not a twat-"
"So, you are emotionless?... and you think that you can insult my music? How can you know a damned thing about music if you don't know anything about feelings?"
Arthur's mouth fell open, and he wanted desperately to come out with one of his famous venomous retorts, but his brain wasn't supplying any. Eames chuckled low in his throat, shaking his head like Arthur was ridiculous and said, "My, you're adorable when surprised, like a puppy. You should go find your friend, love. She's probably worried about you and your ah-box."
Arthur clutched his violin case handle tighter. "It's a violin! I'll have you know I'm a 4.0 student at the Cobol School of the Arts, so my criticism of your music is perfectly justified!... a-and don't call me love, or adorable, or darling!"
"You didn't give me a name to call you by, cherub," Eames replied, stepping away from him and tossing his cigarette butt into the trashcan, "and just because you've got good grades doesn't mean you're a musician. It just means you're a good student."
Arthur was still gaping like a fish for some kind of retort, but he was literally frozen in shock. He'd never had someone completely wave off his musicianship. Never… and this motherfucker was going so far to claim he didn't know a damned thing, and he hadn't even heard Arthur play.
Arthur had never hated someone so much in his entire life.
He generally liked to keep a tight lid on his emotions so as to keep himself calm and collected. He never wanted to let anyone get under his skin because in the end screaming and yelling and throwing a fit was an exhausting waste of time. He had rather cut his ties with anyone who dared insult him and move on, staring a laser focus at his forthcoming music career…
…but this…
This.
This he didn't know what to do with. He was suddenly overflowing with so many feelings all at once that he was afraid the top of his head might just burst off and his brain would splatter against the wall. His adrenaline was boiling and rushing through his veins, heart pounding, and he was gasping for air, and the bastard was just walking away.
"HEY!" Arthur shouted, causing Eames to turn around and just look at him.
Well, that was about as far as Arthur had gotten with words being that his brain was handfuls of muddled chaos. He might as well have been back inside the stadium surrounded by the screaming crowd. That was all he could hear inside his head.
"Oh, bloody fuck, could you keep your voice down?" Eames's voice came cutting through the static, and all Arthur could do was blink in confusion as Eames took him by the wrist and started dragging him across the back lot. His hand was burning hot around his wrist, and Arthur felt like the heat was crawling up his arm, across his chest and up and down his whole body.
"I hate you," he seethed, and the next thing he knew, Eames was shutting the door of a trailer behind them and everything was silent.
"Jesus, are you trying to get me caught by the paparazzi? Fuck, here they come now," Eames grumbled, peeking out of the curtain covering the window on the door as he locked it.
"Why'd you bring me here?" Arthur tried shout, but it came out in an all-too-childish whine. Arthur blamed it on the alcohol.
"I panicked," Eames replied with a sigh, scrubbing a hand through his hair as he turned around. "I didn't want to be caught on camera with you. You should thank me really, since I was rescuing your dignity."
"How-"
"You don't want you and me on the photo of the National Enquirer as secret homosexual lovers do you?"
"No!" Arthur said with disgust.
"That's what I thought, and that's why I ran… Taking you with me may not have been the wisest decision though, but you apparently had something to say to me still. You want that autograph for your friend Arianna?"
"Ariadne."
Eames shrugged, slipping by Arthur to turn on a light. Every window in the trailer was covered with thick, plush curtains, so the light couldn't be seen from outside. "I don't really have a pen or anything," he mumbled.
"I don't need anything from you," Arthur huffed. He was being foolish. He needed to get a lid back on his emotions and get out of there before he lost it again.
There was one problem…
"Oh, you can't leave," Eames said, pushing open a door to what looked to be a small bedroom. "I hate to break it to you, but those paparazzi are merciless, and they aren't going to leave for a while still. You're lucky they didn't get your picture before."
"What the fuck am I supposed to do?" Arthur shouted, and he was so dizzy and out of breath with anger that he thought he might faint.
"You can go wait it out over in the make-up chair and ignore me if you like-Are you all right? You're all flushed."
"I'm… I'm pissed off, you jackass!" Arthur gasped, stomping towards Eames to shove him. It shouldn't have surprised him when Eames's body didn't give at all, being nothing but lean muscle.
"Your pupils are dilated," Eames said, bewildered, "and more surprisingly, you're showing a shred of emotion."
"You've-you've insulted my music without ever hearing me play, and you-you teased me and called me these stupid little pet names, and-and you've trapped me here with you and-and-fuck-"
Eames looked surprised by this admission, as if he hadn't even been there-but then Arthur realized that his gaze had taken a somewhat downward tilt. Arthur, in all of his lack of control, couldn't help but follow his gaze with his own…
…to discover he was rock hard in his jeans…
…and to realize he'd never been so turned on in his entire life.
Arthur looked back at Eames as if he had caught him in the middle of some unspeakable crime because for him it was. He never allowed himself to get turned on, ever. It was criminal of him to break that personal ambition, not to mention the fact that he was breaking it on behalf of this-this-
…alarmingly attractive British famous person in tight pants with full lips and bonestructure like a fucking model.
Arthur's cock jumped just from remembering that, and he suppressed a groan.
"Well, you are a confusing little bugger, aren't you?" Eames said, and he was smirking, smirking. "Confusing and confused as well. That must be bloody awful for you."
"Fuck-no, I don't-" Arthur stammered, but he was aching. He'd never ached quite like he was, and it wouldn't subside no matter what he attempted to think of. Everything all came back to this Eames, a dreadful man he didn't even like and yet could smell his cologne and see the mixture of color in his eyes and remember the sway of his hips when he practically fucked his guitar earlier on stage, dripping with sweat, shining with it, and…
"Go to hell!" Arthur shouted, dropping his violin case by his foot, and then he tackled him, taking his mouth in his.
He'd never kissed anyone like this. He'd never even seen other people kiss this way. His lid had blown, and he was running on nothing but pure, carnal instinct. It was a maddening experience that he couldn't understand any more than he could stop it.
"Jesus-" Eames gasped when Arthur came up for air, and he realized that the man had stumbled backwards into the bedroom and that Arthur had wrapped his legs around his waist and let him carry him the whole way.
Arthur's chest was heaving for air, and he was shaking with need, and he was terrified of what had become of his composure in what couldn't have been twenty minutes with this guy, and he was hoping that this Eames person was not who he expected and would stop this before it got too out of control but-
Oh, who was he kidding? It was already too out of control.
"I'm never one to deny anyone of the pleasures of life," Eames said and threw Arthur down on the mattress before jumping on top of him, pressing his body flat with Arthur's, "especially someone who clearly needs to get laid."
Arthur might have made an obscene noise at that point, but honestly he was too distracted by Eames biting and licking all the way down his neck while his hands rucked up the bottom of his shirt and searched around on the prickling and hot skin, and suddenly Arthur was being pulled up into a sitting position and the shirt was on the floor and Eames was raking a pair of crooked teeth across and nipple, and Arthur was a whimpering mess, bucking his hips in the search for some friction.
Eames wasn't one to let him go without, reaching between them to undo the fly on Arthur's jeans and tug them down, underwear and all, allowing his flushed, erect cock to bob forward, and Arthur had never even allowed himself to really look at himself that way. He definitely had never let anyone else see him that way.
"Shit," Eames hissed, admiring Arthur. "Bleeding Christ, you might be a twat but you are fit. Fucking ace!" He buried his face in Arthur's neck again before coming up to lick his way into his mouth, and Arthur couldn't stop him and didn't want him to.
Eames pulled away again to unlace the front of his pants, and Arthur had never seen another man in that condition either, and suddenly it was like Arthur was nothing but a big lump of fiery heat, just staring as Eames shoved the tight fabric down his thighs. Arthur somehow managed to kick off his pants being that they were somewhat baggy (he'd lost weight since he'd gotten to college), and he didn't care that he was still wearing his sneakers. He didn't care about anything at that moment.
Eames rifled around on the bedside table in an almost panicked state until he found what he was looking for, and the next thing Arthur knew, something cold was penetrating his hole, and all he could do was yelp.
"Scream all you want, pet," Eames said against the skin of Arthur's thigh. "This place is sound proof."
Eames's finger slipped in deeper and Arthur's legs spasmed where they were laid out on Eames's shoulders. He wasn't gentle in the slightest, shoving another finger in on the third thrust and a third finger on the fifth, and then he was stroking against Arthur's prostate and shouted, eyes flying open, and for a moment he forgot how to breathe or what his name was or where he was or what he was doing. All that existed was this desire, and he was kicking himself for ever denying himself of it in the first place, and-
"Oh, fuck, do that again," Arthur groaned and Eames obliged him, and then he could no longer speak. When Eames pulled out his fingers, all Arthur could do was dart his eyes around the room at the dark walls and the posters that covered them, only vaguely aware of the slide of satin beneath him (he had satin sheets, really?), and then he was being flipped over onto his front and Eames was scraping his teeth down Arthur's spine.
He heard a ripping sound and Eames's hands left him for a few moments and then he was shoving himself in. All Arthur could do was bunch the sheets in his fists, burying his face into the mattress and moan lewdly.
"Fuck-fuck-" Eames growled, and he was rolling his hips, seating himself inside of Arthur and then pulling out only to slam back in, and Arthur was wailing, shrieking, drunk beyond all belief on beer and arousal.
Arthur couldn't even get one of his fists to release the sheets from their white-knuckled grip to stroke himself, even though he was so desperately hard and leaking at this point that he could barely stand it. He didn't even know how to jerk himself off, only having done it once or twice, clumsily, when he'd first started puberty-and he'd done that more out of curiosity's sake (the first time) and getting it out of the way (the second time) than anything. Afterward, he'd watched as one of his fellow classmates got suspended from school for being caught in the bathroom doing it, and Arthur decided to not allow himself to get distracted by any sort of ridiculous pleasure because he had goals to achieve and songs to practice.
Soon enough, Arthur was finding even his voice giving out on him, leaving only enough sound for breathy squeaks as Eames pounded mercilessly into him, and… Oh, if Arthur believed in God, he'd be praising him because Eames was wrapping a hand around Arthur's cock and jerking him off, and Arthur's voice found itself again as he screamed and came all over the sheets and Eames's hand.
Arthur's vision went white and flashy, and he lost all feeling in his extremities. He was just floating in a cloud of perfect bliss. Never before had he experienced such a feeling, a feeling that curled over him and over him again and again, making his body ache pleasantly and then go numb, ache and go numb.
When the fuzz faded from him, he found himself plastered against the bed sheets, his own come against his chest, a thick sheen of sweat rolling down his shoulders and back, and Eames was on top of him, panting as he pulled out, and then Arthur was unconscious.
OH GOD WHAT IS THIS
I COULDN'T STOP MYSELF
OMG
Author: osaki_nana_707
Word count: 6,959
Pairings/Characters: ArthurxEames, Ariadne, Cobb, Yusuf, Nash
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: language, smut, alcohol use, dub-con, Arthur being an asshole, leather pants, un-betaed
Summary: AU. Arthur is a concert violinist at a prestigious arts college. His best (and only) friend Ariadne convinces him to come with her to a rock concert, aka his worst nightmare. He does seem to be quite taken with the charismatic lead guitarist though... or rather, the guitarist seems to be quite taken by him.
Track One: Sweet Emotion
"It'll be fun!"
That was what Ariadne had said, the gall of her, when standing in the middle of his off-campus apartment living room with a pair of tickets in her hand. He had given her a skeptical look that was borderline agitated, adjusting the tuning peg on the E string of his violin, and scoffed.
"If by 'fun' you mean 'a horrendous nightmare that I would most definitely not have a good time at', then yes," Arthur replied flatly, pressing the chinrest between his left shoulder and jaw, running his bow along the strings to test the tuning. It was perfect.
"-but Arthur-"
"Besides, I've got a rehearsal for the recital at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. You really think I'd be interested in standing in a crowd of smelly, long haired idiots who wear their sunglasses all the time and spill beer all over everyone? I have to practice."
As if to emphasize his point, he began to play Bach's Partita no. 1 in B minor, one of the pieces he would be playing in said recital.
"You don't think I have class in the morning? Arthur, I swear to God, you don't even know the meaning of the word fun."
"I also don't believe in God, so your swearing is meaningless," he replied blithely, starting to lose himself in the music.
"…but we haven't done anything together all semester," Ariadne pouted. "Are you trying to shove me out of your life just like you do everyone else?"
"I'm never trying to shove anyone out of my life, Ariadne," Arthur said, eyes fluttering closed. "People don't understand how I work, and sometimes it gets on people's nerves when I desert them in favor of my music, but the fact of the matter is my music has never given me any reason to abandon it. I cannot say that about anyone else, except for you… though you're pushing it right now."
"I'm inviting you out for a little fun. It won't be like last time at Starkey's when that guy threw up on you during karaoke night, I swear."
"You can't promise that," Arthur said, mouth curving into a frown as he delicately continued the piece unperturbed. He had a feeling that playing so magnificently was only going to fuel Ariadne into claiming he didn't need to practice. He actually thought for a moment about missing a note purposely just so he could make a point, but he couldn't do that to his precious violin, not after it had served him so well for so many years.
"Please, Arthur? All of my other friends said they couldn't go. Alisha said that she had some kind of anniversary thing with her boyfriend, and Janet's going home to the family, and Mia is heading out on a trip."
"So? Take one of your guy friends," Arthur replied carelessly.
"That's what I'm trying to do, Arthur."
"You can't take Tony or Jake or Henry?"
"No, because they all are quite heterosexual, and if I took any one of them they'd get the idea that it was a date, and then I would lose another friend because I'm not interested in any of them."
"What makes you believe that I wouldn't come to that conclusion, I wonder?" Arthur asked, and he could tell by the way her shoulders were tensing up in his peripheral vision that she was getting agitated that he never even bothered to stop playing while she was talking.
"Um… because you don't like anyone," she replied, voice taking on the expected annoyed undertone. "I'm your only friend. I'm just trying to make sure you have a life before you get too caught up in this 'tortured artist' state of mind and slit your wrists in the bathtub to the tunes of Mozart's Lacrymosa and sprawl yourself out dramatically in the hopes someone from the photography club will find you."
"That doesn't sound like me at all," Arthur huffed. "Stop trying to make me into some melodramatic imbecile."
"That's true… you're not melodramatic because you're a completely unfeeling asshole."
When he didn't dignify her with a response, she started to whine.
"Arthur… come on! I won these tickets off the radio after a big effort, and they're front row tickets, and Radical Notion is my absolute favorite band of all time, and I don't want to go by myself because I'm tiny and vulnerable."
Arthur paused in his playing at last to give her a onceover with his eyes. He knew she was playing an angle, but it wasn't exactly a lie that she was tiny. Standing at barely five feet, she would likely be a favorite target of the creepers and thugs that liked to go to the godforsaken things that concerts were. Arthur was almost six feet tall and, while he wasn't exactly a tough looking guy, he had a daily workout regimen that he completed every morning, and he was toned with wiry muscle and enough venom in his words to bring down a linebacker (and that wasn't just speculation on his part-he'd proved it on a couple of occasions).
"So… you're asking me to come with you for protection?" Arthur asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes," Ariadne said, nodding. "I'll be eternally grateful."
"Is that all I get? Eternal gratefulness?"
"I'll buy you a t-shirt."
"Why would I want a t-shirt?"
"I'll take you out to dinner before the show. Your favorite place."
Arthur sighed, setting his violin down in the box before settling his hands on his knees. "You'd better."
…and that was how it happened.
That was how Ariadne had convinced him to go with her. She'd seduced him with innocence and then bribed him with food, the shameless harpy. He barely ate enough as it was, and she had used it against him.
Arthur still brought his violin with him, settling it in the backseat floorboard and practicing on it in the car while they waited for the stadium to open its doors and allow all of Radical Notion's fans (and Arthur) inside. He secretly hoped that one of their band members would throw a chair out of a hotel window or something and the police would arrest them and the show would get cancelled and Arthur would have gotten his delicious Italian (damn the carbs) for free. Rock stars did stuff like that, right?
"Put it away, Arthur, or I'll break it over my knee. Tonight is not a night for classical music," Ariadne complained, opening her car door.
"If you did that I would have to stab you to death with the pieces," Arthur responded dully, as if he was talking about going to the grocery store, but put it back in its case all the same.
"This is a night of rock n' roll, man!" Ariadne said excitedly, as if she hadn't made that abundantly clear by the tall shoes she'd worn and the way she'd done her make-up (he had refrained from telling her that the red lipstick and heavy eyeshadow made her look a little whorish-and she thought he wasn't nice).
"I said I'd come with you," Arthur replied, crawling out of the backseat and smoothing back his slicked back hair. She'd convinced him to wear jeans and a t-shirt (the only one of each that he owned) by reminding him that he wouldn't want to ruin any of his nice clothes, but he wasn't about to show up with his hair loose looking like a hooligan. He hadn't worn his hair down since he was twelve. "I'm not required to enjoy myself. Let's just go and get this over with."
"I bet you'll have a better time than you expect," Ariadne said confidently, dragging him by the wrist towards the stadium. "The music and the attitude of the crowd is really infectious."
"Oh, no doubt," Arthur said sarcastically. "By the time we leave, I'm sure I'll be both deaf and lack the IQ to tie my shoelaces."
"I do believe if we weren't neighbors as children, we wouldn't be friends," Ariadne said, glaring and pouting at him. He would not be fazed by that look, no matter how good she'd gotten at it.
He still let her lead him inside and up to the line (line? It was more like a giant, chaotic bustling of people) for merchandise, what Ariadne referred to as 'schwag'. She bought a t-shirt with all of the band members on it, a poster, and the special-live-studio-rare-only-at-the-concert CD. She put on the shirt and shoved the rest of it into her gigantic purse that Arthur thought screamed 'hey, come steal from me! Look at all the stuff I've got!' but… well, maybe that was just him. He never did understand girls, and while Ariadne wasn't typical, she still had tendencies.
Excitement was thrumming through her as she bolted down the steps, Arthur following despondently behind. The opening act hadn't even come on stage yet, and already he wanted to go home. The floor stuck to his shoes unpleasantly, and people were screaming needlessly, and-oh, God, was that girl not wearing a shirt? How did she get in without a-Oh, there's her shirt-how can her boyfriend not be bothered by th-oh, they're both her boyfriends-
Arthur shivered and hurried to catch up with Ariadne. Suddenly he felt like he needed her for protection rather than the other way around.
"Okay," she said, turning as soon as he found his spot next to her (he was disappointed to see that he'd be forced to stand and listen to this shit for the next few hours because there were no chairs), "since you know nothing, I'm going to give you the 'Radical Notion Crash Course', all right?"
"Ariadne, I don't-"
"Okay," she continued, clearly not taking no for an answer (she seldom did). She pointed to each band member on her shirt and started to explain, and Arthur could have ignored it but then he would have been forced to listen to all of the disorder going on around him. "We've got Yusuf here, he's the drummer. He owns a twelve-foot python and used to have a drug problem when he was a teenager-not doing them, but he used to make them. This guy here is Nash, and he's the bassist. He's kind of an asshole and got arrested last year for public misconduct and drinking in public, and they had to have someone else play for him that night. Ah, this guy here, this is Eames. That's his last name. He doesn't like to go by his first name I guess… um, he is a fucking sick guitar player, so cool, and he's British too, so he's even cooler. Oh, and this is Dominic Cobb, the lead singer and super hottie."
"Cobb? Isn't that the same name as our French teacher?" It was one of the few classes he had with Ariadne.
"Yeah, so?" Ariadne asked, blinking, and he realized that he had not succeeded in derailing the conversation.
Arthur shrugged, sighing. "Go on."
"Okay, so like-Dom's got this really cool gravelly voice, and he and Eames write all the songs. He's got this one song that he apparently wrote for a former lover, at least according to interviews, that makes me fucking cry like a baby. I just get emotional when I listen to it, you know? He sounds so sincere, I guess."
Arthur wasn't sure why she found this information at all necessary, but he did keep it in mind in case she intended to test him on it later. "I do hope you know I'm going to need to be gloriously drunk to even attempt to enjoy this garbage," he said in annoyance.
"Beer. Got it."
By the time the opening act had come on, Arthur had already had three nasty beers and was downing them as fast as he could. The opening act was annoying as fuck, wailing their guitars for far longer than necessary, and the singer seemed to think that screaming and singing were the same thing. Ariadne and the rest of the crowd were cheering and yelling like they couldn't hear how stupid it was. There was nothing but relief for him when it was over, even if he was already well on his way to being wasted.
He feared that alcohol couldn't even make this experience painless.
…and then, there was the loud strum of a chord on the guitar, the battering of drums, the thrumming of a bass line… the stage filled with smoke, and the lights swept out over the audience…
…and the crowd went nuts.
Radical Notion took the stage, lit up like fucking Gods, and all Arthur could do was stare. He'd heard some of their music (regrettably) in the car ride to the stadium, but it had been turned down low at his request, and he hadn't really been paying attention to it. Now, he didn't really have a choice because it was loud, it was everywhere, it was powerful.
The crowd behind him began to move, jumping up and down to the beat, and Arthur thought that perhaps they were moving the entire world with the strength of their stomps. It was mildly frightening-
Then, someone stepped onto the stage in his direct line of vision.
It was the lead guitarist (Eames, wasn't it?), in a pair of leather boots, a pair of leather pants with a fucking lace-up crotch, and… well, that was it. He was offensive to everything Arthur believed in with his tattoos and barrel chest covered in hair and full lips pressed together as his fingers danced along the fret board of his guitar, the other hand expertly picking out the notes and chords, and…
Arthur had never been so entranced in his life.
The first song ended before Arthur was aware of it, and the crowd erupted into insane applause and cheering. Arthur didn't do anything but stand there. Ariadne had seemed to have found someone to scream 'Oh, my God!' at in the girl next to her with the dyed black hair.
"How are you guys feeling tonight?" Cobb asked, causing the eruption to get impossibly louder.
Arthur stared, jaw set, fists clenched at his side, and then he realized that he wasn't the only one staring.
Was the guitarist looking at him?
No, he couldn't be.
The second song started, just as loud and full of energy as the first one, and even Arthur had to admit that their melodies were much more infectious than the horrible opening act. He had to admit that Cobb actually had a pretty good voice (even though he clearly lacked any sort of classical training)… and even though he hated admitting it, he had to admit that the guitar player was charismatic-he had to have been, because Arthur couldn't stop staring at him no matter how hard he tried. With the fiery blasts coming from each side of the stage and the hot lights burning down on them, they had all broken into sweats by song three, and Eames shamelessly flaunted it around the stage, lifting his pick into the air as if it was a gift from heaven, showing off his disgusting yet surprisingly intriguing underarm hair. Arthur trimmed every hair on his body and had forgotten what it looked like when people didn't.
Song four, the lights lowered and turned blue, and Eames put down his electric in favor of an acoustic, and he'd barely gotten out the first few chords before Ariadne was theatrically sobbing. The whole crowd subdued themselves, falling nearly silent (besides the occasional 'woo!' or something like that) just to listen…
Arthur's heart thrummed, and his skin started to feel tingly, and he realized that he had stopped breathing. While surely everyone was watching as Cobb poured his heart and soul out to the microphone, Arthur still found himself watching Eames as he did the same to his guitar. He'd never in his life seen someone play quite like Eames did. He'd never seen someone look that way while playing, as if every strum was hitting him straight at his core, like the guitar was not an instrument but more an extension of himself. Arthur had never felt so amazed while watching someone else play.
He'd also never felt so awful about his own playing in his entire life.
He downed the rest of his seventh beer and wished he wasn't there, and he still didn't applaud when the song was over.
By the time the concert was over, Arthur was mentally and emotionally drained and feeling more drunk than he ever had in his entire life, but Ariadne was refusing to leave until she got her poster signed.
"Then let me go home," he'd whined because she clearly had a friend in Michelle, the girl with the dyed hair, that could drive her home.
"You are too drunk to drive," she scolded, and he was beginning to regret that he'd drank so much while she'd stayed sober.
"Fine, then I'll walk," Arthur complained. "Give me the keys so I can get my violin."
"Don't bother, the door's unlocked," she replied lightly. "Plus, if I give you the keys you'll try to drive anyway because you think you can do anything if you set your mind to it."
"Wh-" Arthur was not too drunk to just let that go. "You left the door unlocked? Are you out of your fucking mind?"
"What?" Ariadne asked, shrugging. "No one's going to steal my piece of shit car."
"My violin is in there," Arthur explained. He couldn't believe she'd been so careless. Was she not aware of how valuable those things were? How much that violin meant to him?
"I told you not to bring it," Ariadne said (the bitch). "Besides, nobody here is going to want your violin, trust me."
He huffed and attempted to storm off, but failed rather epically when he stumbled and had to grab hold of the nearest person to keep from falling on his ass. He didn't look back at the crowd gathered around the stage door, even though he was sure Ariadne was laughing at him.
By the time he got to the parking lot, he'd stumbled about eleven times, and he'd come to the conclusion that walking home was probably not an option. He didn't even remember how to get there, honestly, the road looking completely different at night and under the influence of alcohol. Regretfully, he decided to grab his violin and go back to Ariadne and just hope she'd let him live it down since he didn't have to come with her to the damned thing…
…but as he walked the parking lot, he discovered he had another problem.
He couldn't remember whether the stage door was on the right side or the left side.
Also, he was going to be sick.
He chose the right simply because it was closest and found he could keep his footing a lot better when he was in a desperate run, hightailing it across the parking lot and inside a partially cracked open chain-link gate that had apparently been damaged so it couldn't close all the way (had that been there before?) before stumbling to a stop in front of a trashcan to vomit loudly inside it, followed by a death moan.
This whole thing was a big mistake, he knew it. A concert violinist, a prodigy like himself should most definitely never find himself puking Italian and overpriced beer into a trashcan after a ridiculous rock and roll concert. If his father knew about this-well, if his father knew, he'd be a whole new level of screwed.
"Whoa-fuck-I-fuck-Oh… you're by yourself."
Arthur looked up over the rim of the trashcan to blearily see a man standing in a doorway with a cigarette clutched between his thumb and first two fingers. Arthur didn't get a good look at him before he was heaving again.
"Oh, fuck, you're really sick, aren't you," the man said, and Arthur picked up a distinct accent over the sounds of his retching. A moment later, he felt a hot hand press between his shoulder blades, and it reminded him of the gentle touches his nanny Gloria would give him as a child when he was ill. "Hey, hey, you okay?"
Arthur lifted his head from the rim again, taking in a shaky breath, and he could only hope that he was done. A couple of seconds passed without the urge to puke, and he relaxed a little.
"I didn't expect anyone to be back here, being that it is staff only and all, but it looks like they left the gate open or something... You haven't texted your friends about it yet, have you?"
Arthur turned to look at the man who'd come to his aid, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist and… "It-It's you," he said, stunned.
It was the guitarist. Eames.
The guitarist.
Eames, the lead guitarist of Radical Notion was right next to him with his hand on his back, still in his leather pants and boots and nothing else.
Haha, suck it, Ariadne, Arthur thought for a moment. It was karma for her leaving his precious violin in an unlocked car.
"A big fan, eh?" Eames asked with a smirk, and Arthur remembered that he wasn't supposed to be excited about such a thing-and he wasn't excited at all.
"Not particularly, no. I was forced to come here," Arthur said as haughtily as possible, but the effect was somewhat dulled by the fact that his words were still smearing together.
"That doesn't surprise me," Eames chuckled, unfazed, helping Arthur to his feet by one arm. "I mean, you were glaring at me for the entire performance. It was quite unsettling."
So, he had been looking at Arthur. He hadn't imagined it after all.
Still, "No, I wasn't."
Eames chuckled, amused. "Ah… yeah, you were. I saw you. You stared me down for the whole show. I could have been blind and known you were doing it, you were staring so intensely." He put the cigarette between his lips and lit it, and then he looked up at Arthur with a smirk and said, "My lips are real by the way. I get asked that all the time, and given that you were gawking and all…"
Arthur blinked, and the way his eyes burned a little was proof that he actually was staring. He didn't know what had come over him. He normally had such good control over what he did, even when intoxicated. He'd been swatted by his mother when he was little for staring, and he'd never done it again. That is, he'd never done it again until that night, and for the life of him he couldn't figure out why he'd gone so stupid in fascination over this leather-clad bulk of a man who just happened to have full lips and the bone-structure of a model. He didn't care to take any notice of the man at all, whether his tattoos said things or the fact that he had dark eyeliner painted around his eyelids or that he had a scar in his right eyebrow.
"I don't care about your lips," Arthur replied flatly. "I don't even like your band. I think all rock music is stupid."
"That's another thing I'm not surprised by being that you didn't clap, not even once. Why'd you bother to come, my coifed little friend?" Eames actually had the audacity to run a hand over Arthur's slicked back hair, and Arthur swatted it away.
"My friend Ariadne made me come with her. For protection."
"Ah, girlfriend," Eames said with a sigh. "Now I get it. You're here to get her an autograph, right? The rest of the band went out to drink-"
"Ariadne's not my girlfriend," Arthur replied bluntly, and Eames shut up and looked almost…
Delighted?
"Oh, really? Potential girlfriend?"
"She bribed me with dinner," Arthur replied, pressing his back against the wall as the world started to tilt a little. He at least didn't feel nearly as wasted now that he'd puked. "She's just a friend, and I don't intend to change that anytime soon."
"Hmm…" Eames said.
Arthur didn't know what that meant, and frankly it made him uncomfortable.
"Then why are you back here?" Eames asked, removing his cigarette from that mouth of his that Arthur wasn't staring at.
"I had to vomit, and all I saw was a trashcan. I didn't know this was staff only. Trust me, I'm not sniffing for autographs at all, so don't flatter yourself. I had to get drunk just so I could tolerate your show."
"You wound me," Eames said, but he was still smiling like everything Arthur said was so goddamned funny. How could this guy be so amused all the time? It was starting to irk Arthur severely. "Those songs mean a lot to me, you know. That's my heart and soul you're insulting."
"You don't sound very agitated over it," Arthur said, narrowing his eyes.
"Oh, well, no, of course not," Eames replied with a shrug, planting a hand next to Arthur's head so that he could lean in close to whisper, "that would give you far too much satisfaction, now wouldn't it, darling?"
Arthur tried to summon up the ability to go flying into a rage, but with the alcohol rolling through his system all he could focus on was how Eames's voice made him feel like he was sinking into a tub full of hot water. He barely managed to squeak out, "You've got a lot of nerve."
"What, teasing a little pipsqueak like you?" Eames chuckled. "I could throw you with one arm."
Arthur did not take that opportunity to look at the arm flexed at the side of his face and how he probably couldn't get his hand halfway around his bicep.
Well, he didn't do it for any other reason than a mathematical one. As quick as he was, he usually fought with words, and Eames definitely had a leg up on him in brute strength.
He did not take that opportunity to look at the legs squeezed into the leather or at the trail of hair between the navel and the tie at the crotch of the pants, and then he definitely didn't stare at his crotch because that's not something that Arthur does. He'd never been interested in anyone, much less other men, because he didn't have time for such nonsense like relationships and foreplay and sex.
…not that he was thinking about sex at that moment. Of course not! The word only came to mind because the bastard was parading himself as the definition of the word, as rock stars often tended to do. Arthur wasn't like that at all. He didn't even allow himself the weakness of touching himself, choosing instead to take ice cold showers or thinking of other things.
He didn't want Eames.
He'd never wanted anyone in his entire life. He didn't even know what it felt like to want anyone.
"Now, are you some sort of android or are you really that incapable of getting a rise out of?" Eames asked, and he was still smiling, only this time he was right there, and Arthur could feel his breath when he spoke.
"I… I don't have any reason to be offended or satisfied by anything you say because I don't have enough respect for you to be so. Wh-why should I?"
"Well, you'd be able to prove me wrong about you being an emotionless twat," Eames said with a shrug.
"I'm not a twat-"
"So, you are emotionless?... and you think that you can insult my music? How can you know a damned thing about music if you don't know anything about feelings?"
Arthur's mouth fell open, and he wanted desperately to come out with one of his famous venomous retorts, but his brain wasn't supplying any. Eames chuckled low in his throat, shaking his head like Arthur was ridiculous and said, "My, you're adorable when surprised, like a puppy. You should go find your friend, love. She's probably worried about you and your ah-box."
Arthur clutched his violin case handle tighter. "It's a violin! I'll have you know I'm a 4.0 student at the Cobol School of the Arts, so my criticism of your music is perfectly justified!... a-and don't call me love, or adorable, or darling!"
"You didn't give me a name to call you by, cherub," Eames replied, stepping away from him and tossing his cigarette butt into the trashcan, "and just because you've got good grades doesn't mean you're a musician. It just means you're a good student."
Arthur was still gaping like a fish for some kind of retort, but he was literally frozen in shock. He'd never had someone completely wave off his musicianship. Never… and this motherfucker was going so far to claim he didn't know a damned thing, and he hadn't even heard Arthur play.
Arthur had never hated someone so much in his entire life.
He generally liked to keep a tight lid on his emotions so as to keep himself calm and collected. He never wanted to let anyone get under his skin because in the end screaming and yelling and throwing a fit was an exhausting waste of time. He had rather cut his ties with anyone who dared insult him and move on, staring a laser focus at his forthcoming music career…
…but this…
This.
This he didn't know what to do with. He was suddenly overflowing with so many feelings all at once that he was afraid the top of his head might just burst off and his brain would splatter against the wall. His adrenaline was boiling and rushing through his veins, heart pounding, and he was gasping for air, and the bastard was just walking away.
"HEY!" Arthur shouted, causing Eames to turn around and just look at him.
Well, that was about as far as Arthur had gotten with words being that his brain was handfuls of muddled chaos. He might as well have been back inside the stadium surrounded by the screaming crowd. That was all he could hear inside his head.
"Oh, bloody fuck, could you keep your voice down?" Eames's voice came cutting through the static, and all Arthur could do was blink in confusion as Eames took him by the wrist and started dragging him across the back lot. His hand was burning hot around his wrist, and Arthur felt like the heat was crawling up his arm, across his chest and up and down his whole body.
"I hate you," he seethed, and the next thing he knew, Eames was shutting the door of a trailer behind them and everything was silent.
"Jesus, are you trying to get me caught by the paparazzi? Fuck, here they come now," Eames grumbled, peeking out of the curtain covering the window on the door as he locked it.
"Why'd you bring me here?" Arthur tried shout, but it came out in an all-too-childish whine. Arthur blamed it on the alcohol.
"I panicked," Eames replied with a sigh, scrubbing a hand through his hair as he turned around. "I didn't want to be caught on camera with you. You should thank me really, since I was rescuing your dignity."
"How-"
"You don't want you and me on the photo of the National Enquirer as secret homosexual lovers do you?"
"No!" Arthur said with disgust.
"That's what I thought, and that's why I ran… Taking you with me may not have been the wisest decision though, but you apparently had something to say to me still. You want that autograph for your friend Arianna?"
"Ariadne."
Eames shrugged, slipping by Arthur to turn on a light. Every window in the trailer was covered with thick, plush curtains, so the light couldn't be seen from outside. "I don't really have a pen or anything," he mumbled.
"I don't need anything from you," Arthur huffed. He was being foolish. He needed to get a lid back on his emotions and get out of there before he lost it again.
There was one problem…
"Oh, you can't leave," Eames said, pushing open a door to what looked to be a small bedroom. "I hate to break it to you, but those paparazzi are merciless, and they aren't going to leave for a while still. You're lucky they didn't get your picture before."
"What the fuck am I supposed to do?" Arthur shouted, and he was so dizzy and out of breath with anger that he thought he might faint.
"You can go wait it out over in the make-up chair and ignore me if you like-Are you all right? You're all flushed."
"I'm… I'm pissed off, you jackass!" Arthur gasped, stomping towards Eames to shove him. It shouldn't have surprised him when Eames's body didn't give at all, being nothing but lean muscle.
"Your pupils are dilated," Eames said, bewildered, "and more surprisingly, you're showing a shred of emotion."
"You've-you've insulted my music without ever hearing me play, and you-you teased me and called me these stupid little pet names, and-and you've trapped me here with you and-and-fuck-"
Eames looked surprised by this admission, as if he hadn't even been there-but then Arthur realized that his gaze had taken a somewhat downward tilt. Arthur, in all of his lack of control, couldn't help but follow his gaze with his own…
…to discover he was rock hard in his jeans…
…and to realize he'd never been so turned on in his entire life.
Arthur looked back at Eames as if he had caught him in the middle of some unspeakable crime because for him it was. He never allowed himself to get turned on, ever. It was criminal of him to break that personal ambition, not to mention the fact that he was breaking it on behalf of this-this-
…alarmingly attractive British famous person in tight pants with full lips and bonestructure like a fucking model.
Arthur's cock jumped just from remembering that, and he suppressed a groan.
"Well, you are a confusing little bugger, aren't you?" Eames said, and he was smirking, smirking. "Confusing and confused as well. That must be bloody awful for you."
"Fuck-no, I don't-" Arthur stammered, but he was aching. He'd never ached quite like he was, and it wouldn't subside no matter what he attempted to think of. Everything all came back to this Eames, a dreadful man he didn't even like and yet could smell his cologne and see the mixture of color in his eyes and remember the sway of his hips when he practically fucked his guitar earlier on stage, dripping with sweat, shining with it, and…
"Go to hell!" Arthur shouted, dropping his violin case by his foot, and then he tackled him, taking his mouth in his.
He'd never kissed anyone like this. He'd never even seen other people kiss this way. His lid had blown, and he was running on nothing but pure, carnal instinct. It was a maddening experience that he couldn't understand any more than he could stop it.
"Jesus-" Eames gasped when Arthur came up for air, and he realized that the man had stumbled backwards into the bedroom and that Arthur had wrapped his legs around his waist and let him carry him the whole way.
Arthur's chest was heaving for air, and he was shaking with need, and he was terrified of what had become of his composure in what couldn't have been twenty minutes with this guy, and he was hoping that this Eames person was not who he expected and would stop this before it got too out of control but-
Oh, who was he kidding? It was already too out of control.
"I'm never one to deny anyone of the pleasures of life," Eames said and threw Arthur down on the mattress before jumping on top of him, pressing his body flat with Arthur's, "especially someone who clearly needs to get laid."
Arthur might have made an obscene noise at that point, but honestly he was too distracted by Eames biting and licking all the way down his neck while his hands rucked up the bottom of his shirt and searched around on the prickling and hot skin, and suddenly Arthur was being pulled up into a sitting position and the shirt was on the floor and Eames was raking a pair of crooked teeth across and nipple, and Arthur was a whimpering mess, bucking his hips in the search for some friction.
Eames wasn't one to let him go without, reaching between them to undo the fly on Arthur's jeans and tug them down, underwear and all, allowing his flushed, erect cock to bob forward, and Arthur had never even allowed himself to really look at himself that way. He definitely had never let anyone else see him that way.
"Shit," Eames hissed, admiring Arthur. "Bleeding Christ, you might be a twat but you are fit. Fucking ace!" He buried his face in Arthur's neck again before coming up to lick his way into his mouth, and Arthur couldn't stop him and didn't want him to.
Eames pulled away again to unlace the front of his pants, and Arthur had never seen another man in that condition either, and suddenly it was like Arthur was nothing but a big lump of fiery heat, just staring as Eames shoved the tight fabric down his thighs. Arthur somehow managed to kick off his pants being that they were somewhat baggy (he'd lost weight since he'd gotten to college), and he didn't care that he was still wearing his sneakers. He didn't care about anything at that moment.
Eames rifled around on the bedside table in an almost panicked state until he found what he was looking for, and the next thing Arthur knew, something cold was penetrating his hole, and all he could do was yelp.
"Scream all you want, pet," Eames said against the skin of Arthur's thigh. "This place is sound proof."
Eames's finger slipped in deeper and Arthur's legs spasmed where they were laid out on Eames's shoulders. He wasn't gentle in the slightest, shoving another finger in on the third thrust and a third finger on the fifth, and then he was stroking against Arthur's prostate and shouted, eyes flying open, and for a moment he forgot how to breathe or what his name was or where he was or what he was doing. All that existed was this desire, and he was kicking himself for ever denying himself of it in the first place, and-
"Oh, fuck, do that again," Arthur groaned and Eames obliged him, and then he could no longer speak. When Eames pulled out his fingers, all Arthur could do was dart his eyes around the room at the dark walls and the posters that covered them, only vaguely aware of the slide of satin beneath him (he had satin sheets, really?), and then he was being flipped over onto his front and Eames was scraping his teeth down Arthur's spine.
He heard a ripping sound and Eames's hands left him for a few moments and then he was shoving himself in. All Arthur could do was bunch the sheets in his fists, burying his face into the mattress and moan lewdly.
"Fuck-fuck-" Eames growled, and he was rolling his hips, seating himself inside of Arthur and then pulling out only to slam back in, and Arthur was wailing, shrieking, drunk beyond all belief on beer and arousal.
Arthur couldn't even get one of his fists to release the sheets from their white-knuckled grip to stroke himself, even though he was so desperately hard and leaking at this point that he could barely stand it. He didn't even know how to jerk himself off, only having done it once or twice, clumsily, when he'd first started puberty-and he'd done that more out of curiosity's sake (the first time) and getting it out of the way (the second time) than anything. Afterward, he'd watched as one of his fellow classmates got suspended from school for being caught in the bathroom doing it, and Arthur decided to not allow himself to get distracted by any sort of ridiculous pleasure because he had goals to achieve and songs to practice.
Soon enough, Arthur was finding even his voice giving out on him, leaving only enough sound for breathy squeaks as Eames pounded mercilessly into him, and… Oh, if Arthur believed in God, he'd be praising him because Eames was wrapping a hand around Arthur's cock and jerking him off, and Arthur's voice found itself again as he screamed and came all over the sheets and Eames's hand.
Arthur's vision went white and flashy, and he lost all feeling in his extremities. He was just floating in a cloud of perfect bliss. Never before had he experienced such a feeling, a feeling that curled over him and over him again and again, making his body ache pleasantly and then go numb, ache and go numb.
When the fuzz faded from him, he found himself plastered against the bed sheets, his own come against his chest, a thick sheen of sweat rolling down his shoulders and back, and Eames was on top of him, panting as he pulled out, and then Arthur was unconscious.
OH GOD WHAT IS THIS
I COULDN'T STOP MYSELF
OMG