sharp like broken glass
arthur/eames
gunplay
(Is this a dream?" Eames asks.
"Maybe," Arthur says. "Does it matter?")
“Is this a dream?” Eames asks.
“Maybe,” Arthur says. “Does it matter?”
Yes, is what Eames thinks, of course it matters: dream-Paris may keep its charming winding streets, the last tendrils of summer fading into the red-gold of autumn, and dream-Arthur may still be all sharp angles and hard edges, like someone’s whittled the softness away with a razor - but there’s also a gun in Arthur’s hand, a gleam of dark metal that Eames can almost taste at the back of his throat.
Eames shrugs one shoulder, muses, “I suppose you’re looking for revenge.”
Arthur gives him a sliver of a smile, sharp as broken glass. “I suppose I am.”
Eames likes to catalogue people, likes to reduce them into pieces that he can file away in neat folders with neat headings: the slope of Cobb’s mouth is a little tired, a lot jaded; Yusuf is all clinical efficiency, the edges of him given to greed; the architect from Mumbai is doe-eyed, lines her eyes with too much kohl, and when she sells them all out to the mark, everyone but Eames is surprised.
Arthur, though - Arthur methodically destroys Eames’ perfectly constructed system: Arthur is stiff, buttoned-up competence in Madrid; wild and haloed by electric greens in Beijing, laughing as they tumble into the street, kissing, messy and slick; and half-smiling in Moscow, a bruise shadowing his eye, smiling like he’d always known Eames would betray them, like he was happy to be proven right.
Eames says, quiet, “I have at least five excellent reasons for what happened in Moscow,” and Arthur says,
“I’m not particularly interested in hearing them.”
“Of course not,” Eames says, rueful, because they really are excellent reasons.
Arthur rolls up his sleeves, and Eames stares, can’t help but watch the slow tease of skin, the always-surprising curve of wrist. Arthur says conversationally, “Do you know how long I was stuck in that shitty hotel?” When Eames doesn’t say anything - because he doesn’t know, actually, because the whole point of running out on a team, of selling out to a higher bidder, is to not know, is to not care - Arthur says, “Three weeks, two more in prison. It was a shame, actually, that you didn’t stick around. A couple of weeks spent in the same city, just us, isn’t that what you’re always pushing for?”
“Arthur,” Eames says carefully.
Arthur’s eyes touch on Eames’ mouth, as if he’s memorizing the shape of his name, there. And then he turns away, his fingers intimate and comfortable around the gun, and he says, “Take off your shirt.”
Eames says, “No.”
Arthur turns his head slightly; Eames can see the silhouette of his lashes, longer than they have any right to be. “You came here,” Arthur says, and Eames can see enough of Arthur’s mouth to know that it’s gone thin and white. “You didn’t have to; you chose to come here.”
And that, Eames thinks, is a truth amidst the mess of lies that is them. (It’s not that Eames is a liar, exactly. It’s just that they’re in the business of trading one truth for another, and at some point, you run out of truths and you realize that all you have left are the lies, and the lies aren’t so bad, so you start trading up for bigger, grander lies - only to find that at some point, your lies have become your truths.)
Eames had listened to Arthur’s voicemail at least ten times, again and again, had analyzed the tone of this word, the stress on that one, had bought a ticket to Morocco because he’d thought that had been the end of it, in Moscow, because betrayal in real life is hurtful, but betraying someone in a dream - somehow, that’s much, much worse.
But he’d come, had found himself in Paris - had found himself here, because that’s the thing about Arthur: Eames never knows if he’s running towards him or away from him, but he always, always seems to end up right next to him.
Arthur says again, the consonants deliberate, “Take off your shirt.”
Eames does. Arthur watches him through half-lidded eyes, tracking every movement: the slide of buttons, the ruffling of thin cotton, the reveal of skin. They’ve done this a thousand times - in New York, in Tokyo, in Mombasa - and it’s always different. In New York Arthur is hungry, the neon lights kaleidoscoping across his skin; in Tokyo he’s subdued, all carefully held control; and in Mombasa, he’s soft, lingering touches, fluttering eyelashes, as the dawn brightens into day.
But this - this is something different, Eames thinks. Arthur looks bored, and part of Eames is interested in that, because Arthur is many things with Eames, but never bored. Eames might be the one who always pushes for more, one more day, one more week, but Arthur is always the one who kisses him first, a gentle kiss with just a hint of teeth - a promise, maybe, or a threat.
Eames’ shirt pools on the floor. Arthur kicks it away. “Your pants,” he says.
Eames slips his fingers into his pockets, searching. Arthur says, “Your pants.”
“Is this a dream?” Eames says warily, eyeing the gun, looking supremely nonchalant in Arthur’s loose grip.
“Maybe,” Arthur says, and Eames catches the secret curve of Arthur’s smile before it disappears.
“Are you going to shoot me?” Eames wants to know, “because I’ve got a meeting in London tomorr-”
“Eames,” Arthur says, just a flat, thin line. “Take off your pants.”
Eames studies him, finds that he can tell no more in one glance than he can after hours of watching Arthur sleep in Vienna, where Eames had thought Arthur might, in his sleep, spill secrets. But while sleep may relax Arthur, softens the harsh planes of his face, the press of his mouth, all that does is give Eames one more frustrating facet to him, a puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit.
Eames unzips his trousers, the give of the zipper clicking agonizingly slow. “You’re not going to undress,” he says, somewhere between a question and a statement, because the thing about Eames is that sometimes he doesn’t know when to stop.
“Funny time,” Arthur says as Eames steps out of his trousers, nudges them aside, “to start worrying about me.”
Eames wants to say something unbelievably trite, like, I always worry about you, but he doesn’t think Arthur would believe him (see: running out on him in Moscow because two million was a lot of money, because he didn’t think the job was going to work anyway and maybe, just maybe, because Arthur terrifies the shit out of Eames).
“Do you want me to apologize,” Eames says. It comes out thick, messy.
Arthur reaches out, slow as a dream, curves his palm around Eames’ cheek. Eames leans into the touch, helpless, his pulse skittering hot as blood, and he remembers Moscow, remembers turning a gun on Arthur, the metal greedy-cold, as if it was leeching the warmth from Eames’ skin. He remembers the weight of it, the perfect curve of his palm around the grip, and he is not at all surprised when, now, Arthur slides the muzzle across the wing of Eames’ clavicle, up the trembling shift of Eames’ throat.
“I want you to shut up,” Arthur says and kisses him.
Eames startles a bit: there’s the gun, for one, a mocking smile against his throat, and for another, Arthur is still clothed, a long hot line against Eames’ side, the weight of his belt catching against Eames’ skin. But then Arthur is kissing him harder, his teeth dragging under Eames’ lip, pleasure-pain, and Eames has never been able to outrun this, wanting Arthur. He lets his head tip back a bit, trying to get closer to Arthur and farther away from the gun, but the gun follows him, a covetous voyeur, pressing bruising kisses to the column of Eames’ throat.
“Arthur,” Eames says roughly.
Arthur knots his hand in Eames’ hair. “You want this,” Arthur says.
“This is a dream, isn’t it,” Eames says, and, “What are you going to do with that.”
Arthur moves so that he’s pressed up against Eames’ back, the gun resting familiarly in the crook of Eames’ neck, Arthur’s mouth as hot against Eames’ shoulder as the gun is cold. “I’d been working on that job for six months,” he says. “I went through three architects before I found Tanya, we had the inception set up three separate times, all of which fell through, and Moscow was going to work, and everything was perfect, and then you-”
“What,” Eames says softly.
“I’m pissed at you,” Arthur says, and he sounds furious, like his voice has been filed into a rasp. “The moment I start thinking, maybe I can trust him, you pull something like this, you betray me-”
“I ran out on the team,” Eames corrects. “It had nothing to do with you,” and that’s a lie, a total and elephant-sized lie, and Arthur must know, must be remembering the way they were tangled together in bed, three o’clock waning to four o’clock, and Arthur murmuring soft words, on the knife-edge of sleep, and Eames thinking, what am I even doing here, an impossible job and this - whatever - with Arthur, all of it utterly impossible, in each other’s beds and Arthur’s face in the morning, young with sleep-
and he’d left, had sold the team out for two million euros, because he’d realized that he may be in the business of finding and keeping secrets, but promises - promises are another thing altogether.
Arthur says, “Shut up,” and slides the gun up, trailing it along the curve of Eames’ neck, nuzzling his hair, until the muzzle is pressed against Eames’ temple, where his pulse is pounding, echoing down the barrel. Eames tries to twist away, turns his face away, and then Arthur is there, kissing him eager and a bit desperate, the gun steady at Eames’ temple, Arthur’s fingers splayed open low on Eames’ belly.
“Arthur,” Eames tries, his swallow a click in the back of his throat, but Arthur is saying,
“Shut up, Christ, Eames,” and then, “you want this, you want this.”
And Eames does, that’s never been up for debate: he wants Arthur, wants him spread out underneath him or braced over him, wants to lick the blood off his hands and the slick of his skin, fresh out of the shower. He wants it to be this simple, just Arthur and the gun, the gun, how it was before it got all confusing, before Arthur became real, before he knew that Arthur buys colorful boxes of sugary children’s cereal in bulk and that any coffee he makes is always and inexplicably terrible.
Arthur takes away the gun suddenly, says, “Tell me you want this-” and Eames says, greedy, strangled,
“Yes, fuck-”
and Arthur tangles his fingers in the coarse hair around Eames’ cock, scratching idly, teasing a groan from Eames. “I don’t want justifications,” Arthur says, curling his fingers too hard, the hairs catching, wiry, under Arthur’s nails, and Eames lets out a hiss, lets his head tip back onto Arthur’s shoulder. “I don’t want apologies, because, see, the one thing I haven’t forgotten, Eames?” He wraps his hand around Eames’ cock and Eames’ entire body just gives, but Arthur has him around the waist, and his voice is low, sharp: “Is that you’re a liar.”
Eames doesn’t say anything - can’t, anyway, when Arthur’s finger strokes a hot line along Eames’ cock, torturously gentle - because he thinks it’s better to be branded a liar than a coward. Arthur’s mouth tips into a sneer, branding heat into Eames’ neck, and his hand is all arrogance, thumb pricking hot at Eames’ nipple, hotter along Eames’ mouth, just brief touches, cutting off the pleasure before it begins, and Eames thinks, oh, this is - this is something else, what is this, is this a dream and does it really matter.
But then Arthur’s hand is running, slow, along the curve of Eames’ arse, and he’s saying, “You should’ve told me you like it like this,” because Arthur likes to talk during sex, but Eames didn’t know he liked it, isn’t sure if he likes it, the casual cruelty of Arthur’s touches, the gun laying hungry kisses against his temple, but he wants it, wants it, the sweep of Arthur’s fingers against the cleft of his arse, hot, bone-dry against his hole, testing, and Eames thinks, have I sinned, and then Arthur teases a finger into him and it hurts, maybe, or it’s fantastic, and Arthur is saying, “You don’t get to leave,” because it was never, ever about the job.
Arthur’s breaths are soft hitches of air against the nape of Eames’ neck, the feathery hairs there curling, damp, and time slows down for Eames to one heartbeat and then the next, the moments stringing up like Christmas lights. Arthur’s finger disappears and Eames shuts his eyes, hates this - no, no, he loves it, funny how thin that line is - not knowing what Arthur’s doing back there until Arthur’s fingers return, spit-slick, a rough twist, and Arthur says, “Does it hurt,” the question mark dropped, because Arthur doesn’t care right now.
So Eames says, “No,” and leans into the gun until it hurts, and Arthur’s got one - two - fingers in him, curling, obscene, setting flickers of shock into his blood, hot, right under his skin. It’s good, though, the gun and Arthur’s fingers, good in the way that it shouldn’t be, in the way that it will probably never be again, and they’ll leave here - dream-Paris - will wake up and think that it’s over, but right now there’s just this, so Eames fucks himself onto Arthur’s fingers, would do anything right now, would blow the gun, even, before it blew right through him.
The gun slips against Eames’ temple, down to his cheek, Arthur’s concentration falling apart, probably because he’s watching his fingers disappear into Eames, and Eames thinks, no, wants the gun, and so he curves his hand around Arthur’s wrist, steadies the hand, the gun, and can almost hear Arthur’s head snap up, his wide-eyed shock, because this might be about Arthur, but it’s also about them.
“This isn’t an apology,” Eames says, because it isn’t, because Eames will never apologize.
“Of course not,” Arthur says finally, and then, ragged, “because you’re not sorry, are you?”
Eames says, “No,” and that might be a lie, but it’s what Arthur wants to hear, and Eames will give him anything, has given him anything, stopping short of promises - of secrets, because those he doesn’t trust himself enough to give. Arthur swears, soft, the clicks of his consonants almost lascivious, thrilling to Eames’ ears, and then his fingers are screwing out of Eames, the blunt cut of his nails dragging hard against the sensitive skin around Eames’ hole. Eames can hear the almost-clinical give of Arthur’s fly, and of course that’s how they’ll do this: Arthur’s cock is blood-hot against Eames’ hole and Eames turns his face so that the barrel of the gun stripes cold against his cheek because he needs it, needs this, thinks that it should be impossible to want Arthur’s cock this much, thinks that this is a dream and that this is going to hurt, thinks that that should matter to Eames.
It doesn’t.
He arches, taut like a strung bow, and Arthur’s arm comes around him, reins him in. “This is going to hurt,” Arthur says, terribly casual, and Eames wants to say, but I hurt you, but that’s not what they say to each other: the space between them buzzes, electric, with all the things unsaid. And he wants this, the slow burn of Arthur, the dizzyingly bare heat, because he understands this, knows where it starts and ends, likes the finiteness of it; he knows that tomorrow he’ll be off to London and Arthur will be across the world and they’ll spend all of their time not thinking about each other, not dreaming about each other, both wanting more and being utterly terrified of the infinity that is more.
“Yeah,” Eames says, and Arthur knows Eames’ tells - the shuttering of his lashes, the shameless lilt of his body, the obscenity that is Eames’ surrender - well enough to read the, oh God I want this, in it.
And Arthur fucking into Eames with lewd precision is honestly like falling apart, the sounds of it - the low bass that is Arthur’s balls slapping against Eames’ arse - overrunning the way his body unfurls from the inside like origami. It hurts with furious single-mindedness, but it’s also so much at once, like Tokyo and Mombasa and New York, as if the last three years have been stripped bare, sharpened until they gleam like blades: Arthur’s hand at his hip, Arthur fucking him hard enough that his nerve endings thrill, and the gun pressing insistently into his temple like it wants in. And Eames thinks, do I trust him, because he can see the contrast that is Arthur’s skin against the gun, his finger unsteady on the trigger, do I trust him, Eames thinks, do I, do I, and the answer is - has to be - no, even as Arthur is moving inside him with long drags of his hips, even as Arthur is sketching biting kisses along the shell of Eames’ ear.
Arthur is just a haze of dark lashes and red mouth in Eames’ periphery. He says, “I could shoot you now, fuck you over like you fuck me over, like I let you fuck me over,” and that hurts, because Arthur is inside him, is everywhere, all hands and gun, all angles that twist until Eames finds himself in a labyrinth that has no way out, no solution. And then Eames thinks, why does that hurt, this isn’t love, and love, what is that, even, this isn’t even trust, because trust isn’t leaving Moscow with two million and a pocketful of guilt clanging like change.
Eames thinks about Vienna, Arthur suffused in soft hues; Marrakesh, Arthur a long, slim line in the distance; Tokyo, the bluish web-work of his veins showing translucent through his skin. Eames thinks about secrets and colorful boxes of cereal and promises, and Eames thinks: I want to trust him and, even more than that, I want him to trust me.
And so Eames says, “Do it, then,” because he wants this, in dream-Paris, in real-Paris.
Arthur goes utterly still even as he comes, the orgasm startled out of him, the rush of it sweet, sweeter paired with the way Arthur’s eyes go half-mast, with the way Eames thinks, we could have this for longer than a few days, a few cities, where time is not marked by betrayal.
And so Eames says, “Wake me up.”
And when they wake up, Eames thinks that he’ll kiss Arthur properly, kiss him with the late afternoon sun streaming through gauzy curtains, muting the light to faint glimmers of gold. And maybe Eames won’t go to London, maybe he’ll go with Arthur to wherever it is that Arthur goes when they’re not together, maybe Eames will start learning all those secrets, will start learning how to keep those secrets, instead of cataloguing them, struggling with them. Maybe Eames, for once, will be able to stop running.
Except - except.
Arthur is sliding out of him, the heat of him gone so suddenly that it hurts. The gun goes too, and Eames tries to reach for both of them, the gun and Arthur, but Arthur is all zipped up, and when Eames turns around, his eyes finding the gun first, and then following the line of Arthur’s arm up to his face, Arthur looks stiff, looks cracked open, vulnerable, is staring at the gun, the gun, the gun.
Wake me up, Eames thinks.
But Arthur is shoving the gun at him like it’s acid, poison, and Eames blankly takes it. It’s heavy in his hand, as heavy as it was back in Moscow, heavy with the sure weight of bullets, but Eames can’t look away from Arthur’s face, pale like moonlight even though that doesn’t make sense, Arthur has broken Eames’ neck in dreams, hands unbearably gentle like it meant something, and it’s just a dream, Eames wants to say, it’s just a dream.
“I have to go,” Arthur says, looking utterly helpless. “I have to - go.”
Eames says, “What.”
“You - want to wake up,” Arthur says, flat.
And Eames wants their cards laid out in the open, wants Arthur, wants his secrets: the way Arthur can go from hard, wicked certainty to broken in one knife-sharp second, wants to erase the betrayal that was Moscow from Arthur’s face, wants Tokyo and New York and Mombasa back, the way they catch the light, colorful like confetti. He doesn’t know what to do, exactly, has never known what to do when it comes to Arthur, but he knows what he wants.
“I want this,” he says and then, “I want this to be real.”
“Eames,” Arthur says. “Eames - this isn’t a dream.”
Eames stares at him.
“I thought - I thought you knew - but you wanted-”
“I didn’t,” Eames says and looks at the gun clutched up near his heart. “Know.” And he thinks about Arthur fucking him, thinks of the way he arched into the muzzle, thinks about Arthur’s finger, a faltering weight on the trigger, thinks of the bullets lying shiny and neat in their cartridges, ready, ready, thinks, who are they, that Arthur would do this, that Eames would want it, would want Arthur in or out of dreams, with or without the gun.
“Arthur,” Eames says haltingly, reaches for him, because it doesn’t matter that it’s a little fucked up because maybe, maybe this will work, maybe trust begins like this, choosing the hard truths where lies are easier.
But Arthur - Arthur, whom Eames has never been able to catalogue, has never been able to dissect, Arthur, who is different people in different cities and yet always, always the same - Arthur finds his hard angles, his sharp edges, and says, calm, ridiculously formal, “I see. Oh, very good.” His face relaxes a bit, his smile thin like it was drawn with dark, jagged lines. “You always have to win, don’t you? You’re always - playing these games, and it’s hilarious, isn’t it, that I always, always fall for them?”
“No,” Eames says. “Arthur.”
Arthur rolls down his sleeves, smoothes the creases away. “I think it’s best that we don’t do business together in the future, Mr. Eames,” he says, and, looking up, says, “Don’t you agree?”
And Eames wants to ask, wants to honestly know, what do you see when you look at me, but he doesn’t think he’d like the answer, thinks that all Arthur sees - all Arthur will ever see - is Moscow, Moscow where Eames turned a gun on them all, on Arthur, where Eames fled with two million and left a team of four behind, and Eames has always been too talented for his own good, because he’d wanted to get away from it all, and here is Arthur, letting him.
So, when Arthur leaves, walks out into the sunlight, Eames is crouching down on the floor, the gun in one hand and his poker chip in the other, and he’s wishing that he was the liar that everyone thinks he is, wishing that he was as good of a liar as everyone seems to think he is, because then maybe he could pretend that he’s absolutely fine.
//
gunplay
(Is this a dream?" Eames asks.
"Maybe," Arthur says. "Does it matter?")
“Is this a dream?” Eames asks.
“Maybe,” Arthur says. “Does it matter?”
Yes, is what Eames thinks, of course it matters: dream-Paris may keep its charming winding streets, the last tendrils of summer fading into the red-gold of autumn, and dream-Arthur may still be all sharp angles and hard edges, like someone’s whittled the softness away with a razor - but there’s also a gun in Arthur’s hand, a gleam of dark metal that Eames can almost taste at the back of his throat.
Eames shrugs one shoulder, muses, “I suppose you’re looking for revenge.”
Arthur gives him a sliver of a smile, sharp as broken glass. “I suppose I am.”
Eames likes to catalogue people, likes to reduce them into pieces that he can file away in neat folders with neat headings: the slope of Cobb’s mouth is a little tired, a lot jaded; Yusuf is all clinical efficiency, the edges of him given to greed; the architect from Mumbai is doe-eyed, lines her eyes with too much kohl, and when she sells them all out to the mark, everyone but Eames is surprised.
Arthur, though - Arthur methodically destroys Eames’ perfectly constructed system: Arthur is stiff, buttoned-up competence in Madrid; wild and haloed by electric greens in Beijing, laughing as they tumble into the street, kissing, messy and slick; and half-smiling in Moscow, a bruise shadowing his eye, smiling like he’d always known Eames would betray them, like he was happy to be proven right.
Eames says, quiet, “I have at least five excellent reasons for what happened in Moscow,” and Arthur says,
“I’m not particularly interested in hearing them.”
“Of course not,” Eames says, rueful, because they really are excellent reasons.
Arthur rolls up his sleeves, and Eames stares, can’t help but watch the slow tease of skin, the always-surprising curve of wrist. Arthur says conversationally, “Do you know how long I was stuck in that shitty hotel?” When Eames doesn’t say anything - because he doesn’t know, actually, because the whole point of running out on a team, of selling out to a higher bidder, is to not know, is to not care - Arthur says, “Three weeks, two more in prison. It was a shame, actually, that you didn’t stick around. A couple of weeks spent in the same city, just us, isn’t that what you’re always pushing for?”
“Arthur,” Eames says carefully.
Arthur’s eyes touch on Eames’ mouth, as if he’s memorizing the shape of his name, there. And then he turns away, his fingers intimate and comfortable around the gun, and he says, “Take off your shirt.”
Eames says, “No.”
Arthur turns his head slightly; Eames can see the silhouette of his lashes, longer than they have any right to be. “You came here,” Arthur says, and Eames can see enough of Arthur’s mouth to know that it’s gone thin and white. “You didn’t have to; you chose to come here.”
And that, Eames thinks, is a truth amidst the mess of lies that is them. (It’s not that Eames is a liar, exactly. It’s just that they’re in the business of trading one truth for another, and at some point, you run out of truths and you realize that all you have left are the lies, and the lies aren’t so bad, so you start trading up for bigger, grander lies - only to find that at some point, your lies have become your truths.)
Eames had listened to Arthur’s voicemail at least ten times, again and again, had analyzed the tone of this word, the stress on that one, had bought a ticket to Morocco because he’d thought that had been the end of it, in Moscow, because betrayal in real life is hurtful, but betraying someone in a dream - somehow, that’s much, much worse.
But he’d come, had found himself in Paris - had found himself here, because that’s the thing about Arthur: Eames never knows if he’s running towards him or away from him, but he always, always seems to end up right next to him.
Arthur says again, the consonants deliberate, “Take off your shirt.”
Eames does. Arthur watches him through half-lidded eyes, tracking every movement: the slide of buttons, the ruffling of thin cotton, the reveal of skin. They’ve done this a thousand times - in New York, in Tokyo, in Mombasa - and it’s always different. In New York Arthur is hungry, the neon lights kaleidoscoping across his skin; in Tokyo he’s subdued, all carefully held control; and in Mombasa, he’s soft, lingering touches, fluttering eyelashes, as the dawn brightens into day.
But this - this is something different, Eames thinks. Arthur looks bored, and part of Eames is interested in that, because Arthur is many things with Eames, but never bored. Eames might be the one who always pushes for more, one more day, one more week, but Arthur is always the one who kisses him first, a gentle kiss with just a hint of teeth - a promise, maybe, or a threat.
Eames’ shirt pools on the floor. Arthur kicks it away. “Your pants,” he says.
Eames slips his fingers into his pockets, searching. Arthur says, “Your pants.”
“Is this a dream?” Eames says warily, eyeing the gun, looking supremely nonchalant in Arthur’s loose grip.
“Maybe,” Arthur says, and Eames catches the secret curve of Arthur’s smile before it disappears.
“Are you going to shoot me?” Eames wants to know, “because I’ve got a meeting in London tomorr-”
“Eames,” Arthur says, just a flat, thin line. “Take off your pants.”
Eames studies him, finds that he can tell no more in one glance than he can after hours of watching Arthur sleep in Vienna, where Eames had thought Arthur might, in his sleep, spill secrets. But while sleep may relax Arthur, softens the harsh planes of his face, the press of his mouth, all that does is give Eames one more frustrating facet to him, a puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit.
Eames unzips his trousers, the give of the zipper clicking agonizingly slow. “You’re not going to undress,” he says, somewhere between a question and a statement, because the thing about Eames is that sometimes he doesn’t know when to stop.
“Funny time,” Arthur says as Eames steps out of his trousers, nudges them aside, “to start worrying about me.”
Eames wants to say something unbelievably trite, like, I always worry about you, but he doesn’t think Arthur would believe him (see: running out on him in Moscow because two million was a lot of money, because he didn’t think the job was going to work anyway and maybe, just maybe, because Arthur terrifies the shit out of Eames).
“Do you want me to apologize,” Eames says. It comes out thick, messy.
Arthur reaches out, slow as a dream, curves his palm around Eames’ cheek. Eames leans into the touch, helpless, his pulse skittering hot as blood, and he remembers Moscow, remembers turning a gun on Arthur, the metal greedy-cold, as if it was leeching the warmth from Eames’ skin. He remembers the weight of it, the perfect curve of his palm around the grip, and he is not at all surprised when, now, Arthur slides the muzzle across the wing of Eames’ clavicle, up the trembling shift of Eames’ throat.
“I want you to shut up,” Arthur says and kisses him.
Eames startles a bit: there’s the gun, for one, a mocking smile against his throat, and for another, Arthur is still clothed, a long hot line against Eames’ side, the weight of his belt catching against Eames’ skin. But then Arthur is kissing him harder, his teeth dragging under Eames’ lip, pleasure-pain, and Eames has never been able to outrun this, wanting Arthur. He lets his head tip back a bit, trying to get closer to Arthur and farther away from the gun, but the gun follows him, a covetous voyeur, pressing bruising kisses to the column of Eames’ throat.
“Arthur,” Eames says roughly.
Arthur knots his hand in Eames’ hair. “You want this,” Arthur says.
“This is a dream, isn’t it,” Eames says, and, “What are you going to do with that.”
Arthur moves so that he’s pressed up against Eames’ back, the gun resting familiarly in the crook of Eames’ neck, Arthur’s mouth as hot against Eames’ shoulder as the gun is cold. “I’d been working on that job for six months,” he says. “I went through three architects before I found Tanya, we had the inception set up three separate times, all of which fell through, and Moscow was going to work, and everything was perfect, and then you-”
“What,” Eames says softly.
“I’m pissed at you,” Arthur says, and he sounds furious, like his voice has been filed into a rasp. “The moment I start thinking, maybe I can trust him, you pull something like this, you betray me-”
“I ran out on the team,” Eames corrects. “It had nothing to do with you,” and that’s a lie, a total and elephant-sized lie, and Arthur must know, must be remembering the way they were tangled together in bed, three o’clock waning to four o’clock, and Arthur murmuring soft words, on the knife-edge of sleep, and Eames thinking, what am I even doing here, an impossible job and this - whatever - with Arthur, all of it utterly impossible, in each other’s beds and Arthur’s face in the morning, young with sleep-
and he’d left, had sold the team out for two million euros, because he’d realized that he may be in the business of finding and keeping secrets, but promises - promises are another thing altogether.
Arthur says, “Shut up,” and slides the gun up, trailing it along the curve of Eames’ neck, nuzzling his hair, until the muzzle is pressed against Eames’ temple, where his pulse is pounding, echoing down the barrel. Eames tries to twist away, turns his face away, and then Arthur is there, kissing him eager and a bit desperate, the gun steady at Eames’ temple, Arthur’s fingers splayed open low on Eames’ belly.
“Arthur,” Eames tries, his swallow a click in the back of his throat, but Arthur is saying,
“Shut up, Christ, Eames,” and then, “you want this, you want this.”
And Eames does, that’s never been up for debate: he wants Arthur, wants him spread out underneath him or braced over him, wants to lick the blood off his hands and the slick of his skin, fresh out of the shower. He wants it to be this simple, just Arthur and the gun, the gun, how it was before it got all confusing, before Arthur became real, before he knew that Arthur buys colorful boxes of sugary children’s cereal in bulk and that any coffee he makes is always and inexplicably terrible.
Arthur takes away the gun suddenly, says, “Tell me you want this-” and Eames says, greedy, strangled,
“Yes, fuck-”
and Arthur tangles his fingers in the coarse hair around Eames’ cock, scratching idly, teasing a groan from Eames. “I don’t want justifications,” Arthur says, curling his fingers too hard, the hairs catching, wiry, under Arthur’s nails, and Eames lets out a hiss, lets his head tip back onto Arthur’s shoulder. “I don’t want apologies, because, see, the one thing I haven’t forgotten, Eames?” He wraps his hand around Eames’ cock and Eames’ entire body just gives, but Arthur has him around the waist, and his voice is low, sharp: “Is that you’re a liar.”
Eames doesn’t say anything - can’t, anyway, when Arthur’s finger strokes a hot line along Eames’ cock, torturously gentle - because he thinks it’s better to be branded a liar than a coward. Arthur’s mouth tips into a sneer, branding heat into Eames’ neck, and his hand is all arrogance, thumb pricking hot at Eames’ nipple, hotter along Eames’ mouth, just brief touches, cutting off the pleasure before it begins, and Eames thinks, oh, this is - this is something else, what is this, is this a dream and does it really matter.
But then Arthur’s hand is running, slow, along the curve of Eames’ arse, and he’s saying, “You should’ve told me you like it like this,” because Arthur likes to talk during sex, but Eames didn’t know he liked it, isn’t sure if he likes it, the casual cruelty of Arthur’s touches, the gun laying hungry kisses against his temple, but he wants it, wants it, the sweep of Arthur’s fingers against the cleft of his arse, hot, bone-dry against his hole, testing, and Eames thinks, have I sinned, and then Arthur teases a finger into him and it hurts, maybe, or it’s fantastic, and Arthur is saying, “You don’t get to leave,” because it was never, ever about the job.
Arthur’s breaths are soft hitches of air against the nape of Eames’ neck, the feathery hairs there curling, damp, and time slows down for Eames to one heartbeat and then the next, the moments stringing up like Christmas lights. Arthur’s finger disappears and Eames shuts his eyes, hates this - no, no, he loves it, funny how thin that line is - not knowing what Arthur’s doing back there until Arthur’s fingers return, spit-slick, a rough twist, and Arthur says, “Does it hurt,” the question mark dropped, because Arthur doesn’t care right now.
So Eames says, “No,” and leans into the gun until it hurts, and Arthur’s got one - two - fingers in him, curling, obscene, setting flickers of shock into his blood, hot, right under his skin. It’s good, though, the gun and Arthur’s fingers, good in the way that it shouldn’t be, in the way that it will probably never be again, and they’ll leave here - dream-Paris - will wake up and think that it’s over, but right now there’s just this, so Eames fucks himself onto Arthur’s fingers, would do anything right now, would blow the gun, even, before it blew right through him.
The gun slips against Eames’ temple, down to his cheek, Arthur’s concentration falling apart, probably because he’s watching his fingers disappear into Eames, and Eames thinks, no, wants the gun, and so he curves his hand around Arthur’s wrist, steadies the hand, the gun, and can almost hear Arthur’s head snap up, his wide-eyed shock, because this might be about Arthur, but it’s also about them.
“This isn’t an apology,” Eames says, because it isn’t, because Eames will never apologize.
“Of course not,” Arthur says finally, and then, ragged, “because you’re not sorry, are you?”
Eames says, “No,” and that might be a lie, but it’s what Arthur wants to hear, and Eames will give him anything, has given him anything, stopping short of promises - of secrets, because those he doesn’t trust himself enough to give. Arthur swears, soft, the clicks of his consonants almost lascivious, thrilling to Eames’ ears, and then his fingers are screwing out of Eames, the blunt cut of his nails dragging hard against the sensitive skin around Eames’ hole. Eames can hear the almost-clinical give of Arthur’s fly, and of course that’s how they’ll do this: Arthur’s cock is blood-hot against Eames’ hole and Eames turns his face so that the barrel of the gun stripes cold against his cheek because he needs it, needs this, thinks that it should be impossible to want Arthur’s cock this much, thinks that this is a dream and that this is going to hurt, thinks that that should matter to Eames.
It doesn’t.
He arches, taut like a strung bow, and Arthur’s arm comes around him, reins him in. “This is going to hurt,” Arthur says, terribly casual, and Eames wants to say, but I hurt you, but that’s not what they say to each other: the space between them buzzes, electric, with all the things unsaid. And he wants this, the slow burn of Arthur, the dizzyingly bare heat, because he understands this, knows where it starts and ends, likes the finiteness of it; he knows that tomorrow he’ll be off to London and Arthur will be across the world and they’ll spend all of their time not thinking about each other, not dreaming about each other, both wanting more and being utterly terrified of the infinity that is more.
“Yeah,” Eames says, and Arthur knows Eames’ tells - the shuttering of his lashes, the shameless lilt of his body, the obscenity that is Eames’ surrender - well enough to read the, oh God I want this, in it.
And Arthur fucking into Eames with lewd precision is honestly like falling apart, the sounds of it - the low bass that is Arthur’s balls slapping against Eames’ arse - overrunning the way his body unfurls from the inside like origami. It hurts with furious single-mindedness, but it’s also so much at once, like Tokyo and Mombasa and New York, as if the last three years have been stripped bare, sharpened until they gleam like blades: Arthur’s hand at his hip, Arthur fucking him hard enough that his nerve endings thrill, and the gun pressing insistently into his temple like it wants in. And Eames thinks, do I trust him, because he can see the contrast that is Arthur’s skin against the gun, his finger unsteady on the trigger, do I trust him, Eames thinks, do I, do I, and the answer is - has to be - no, even as Arthur is moving inside him with long drags of his hips, even as Arthur is sketching biting kisses along the shell of Eames’ ear.
Arthur is just a haze of dark lashes and red mouth in Eames’ periphery. He says, “I could shoot you now, fuck you over like you fuck me over, like I let you fuck me over,” and that hurts, because Arthur is inside him, is everywhere, all hands and gun, all angles that twist until Eames finds himself in a labyrinth that has no way out, no solution. And then Eames thinks, why does that hurt, this isn’t love, and love, what is that, even, this isn’t even trust, because trust isn’t leaving Moscow with two million and a pocketful of guilt clanging like change.
Eames thinks about Vienna, Arthur suffused in soft hues; Marrakesh, Arthur a long, slim line in the distance; Tokyo, the bluish web-work of his veins showing translucent through his skin. Eames thinks about secrets and colorful boxes of cereal and promises, and Eames thinks: I want to trust him and, even more than that, I want him to trust me.
And so Eames says, “Do it, then,” because he wants this, in dream-Paris, in real-Paris.
Arthur goes utterly still even as he comes, the orgasm startled out of him, the rush of it sweet, sweeter paired with the way Arthur’s eyes go half-mast, with the way Eames thinks, we could have this for longer than a few days, a few cities, where time is not marked by betrayal.
And so Eames says, “Wake me up.”
And when they wake up, Eames thinks that he’ll kiss Arthur properly, kiss him with the late afternoon sun streaming through gauzy curtains, muting the light to faint glimmers of gold. And maybe Eames won’t go to London, maybe he’ll go with Arthur to wherever it is that Arthur goes when they’re not together, maybe Eames will start learning all those secrets, will start learning how to keep those secrets, instead of cataloguing them, struggling with them. Maybe Eames, for once, will be able to stop running.
Except - except.
Arthur is sliding out of him, the heat of him gone so suddenly that it hurts. The gun goes too, and Eames tries to reach for both of them, the gun and Arthur, but Arthur is all zipped up, and when Eames turns around, his eyes finding the gun first, and then following the line of Arthur’s arm up to his face, Arthur looks stiff, looks cracked open, vulnerable, is staring at the gun, the gun, the gun.
Wake me up, Eames thinks.
But Arthur is shoving the gun at him like it’s acid, poison, and Eames blankly takes it. It’s heavy in his hand, as heavy as it was back in Moscow, heavy with the sure weight of bullets, but Eames can’t look away from Arthur’s face, pale like moonlight even though that doesn’t make sense, Arthur has broken Eames’ neck in dreams, hands unbearably gentle like it meant something, and it’s just a dream, Eames wants to say, it’s just a dream.
“I have to go,” Arthur says, looking utterly helpless. “I have to - go.”
Eames says, “What.”
“You - want to wake up,” Arthur says, flat.
And Eames wants their cards laid out in the open, wants Arthur, wants his secrets: the way Arthur can go from hard, wicked certainty to broken in one knife-sharp second, wants to erase the betrayal that was Moscow from Arthur’s face, wants Tokyo and New York and Mombasa back, the way they catch the light, colorful like confetti. He doesn’t know what to do, exactly, has never known what to do when it comes to Arthur, but he knows what he wants.
“I want this,” he says and then, “I want this to be real.”
“Eames,” Arthur says. “Eames - this isn’t a dream.”
Eames stares at him.
“I thought - I thought you knew - but you wanted-”
“I didn’t,” Eames says and looks at the gun clutched up near his heart. “Know.” And he thinks about Arthur fucking him, thinks of the way he arched into the muzzle, thinks about Arthur’s finger, a faltering weight on the trigger, thinks of the bullets lying shiny and neat in their cartridges, ready, ready, thinks, who are they, that Arthur would do this, that Eames would want it, would want Arthur in or out of dreams, with or without the gun.
“Arthur,” Eames says haltingly, reaches for him, because it doesn’t matter that it’s a little fucked up because maybe, maybe this will work, maybe trust begins like this, choosing the hard truths where lies are easier.
But Arthur - Arthur, whom Eames has never been able to catalogue, has never been able to dissect, Arthur, who is different people in different cities and yet always, always the same - Arthur finds his hard angles, his sharp edges, and says, calm, ridiculously formal, “I see. Oh, very good.” His face relaxes a bit, his smile thin like it was drawn with dark, jagged lines. “You always have to win, don’t you? You’re always - playing these games, and it’s hilarious, isn’t it, that I always, always fall for them?”
“No,” Eames says. “Arthur.”
Arthur rolls down his sleeves, smoothes the creases away. “I think it’s best that we don’t do business together in the future, Mr. Eames,” he says, and, looking up, says, “Don’t you agree?”
And Eames wants to ask, wants to honestly know, what do you see when you look at me, but he doesn’t think he’d like the answer, thinks that all Arthur sees - all Arthur will ever see - is Moscow, Moscow where Eames turned a gun on them all, on Arthur, where Eames fled with two million and left a team of four behind, and Eames has always been too talented for his own good, because he’d wanted to get away from it all, and here is Arthur, letting him.
So, when Arthur leaves, walks out into the sunlight, Eames is crouching down on the floor, the gun in one hand and his poker chip in the other, and he’s wishing that he was the liar that everyone thinks he is, wishing that he was as good of a liar as everyone seems to think he is, because then maybe he could pretend that he’s absolutely fine.
//