fic: this is all there is, roll the dice

[wanderlight]

title: This is all there is, roll the dice
characters: Arthur/Eames
rating: NC-17
words: ~6,200
summary: A story about desire, fear, and Arthur's smile.

notes: Out of all the Inception fics I have sitting on my hard drive, I never thought I'd finish this one first. Huh. Thanks to the lovely jibrailis for the beta work! Title from a Matthew Good song. I haven't listened to him for years, but if the lyric fits, steal it.

--

This is all there is, roll the dice

The first memory he has of Arthur is from a dream.

Arthur's shirt is torn, and there's blood on the crisp white collar, on his jeans, on his teeth when he grins like he's having the time of his life. He fights his way through the projections, taking seven of them apart with his bare hands before kneeling down next to Eames.

"Hey," Arthur says, rubbing a hand across his face. A smudge of red stays behind on his cheekbone. It's someone else's blood; he's not even breathing hard. Twenty-four and just lured away from the military -- Dom's wasn't lying, he really is something.

"I'm impressed," Eames says. "In fact I think I'd be turned on, if I wasn't bleeding out on the ground."

Arthur laughs, and his smile is genuine, with none of the smirk in it they both get to know so well later. He reaches down, hands gentle, and snaps Eames' neck.

They had met before that, of course: shaken hands, done introductions, spent a week planning out the extraction with Dom and Mal. But that was the moment Arthur came alive in his mind, image burned there like a tattoo.

After the job, Eames lingers until it's only the two of them. Arthur finishes putting away the PASIV, and then turns and looks at Eames. He's probably known Eames was there all along, but he doesn't say anything. Just tilts his head, waiting.

There's something guileless in Arthur's expression, which isn't seen too often in this business. It strips Eames bare.

Eames means to flirt, to smile, to prolong the anticipation a bit longer, but he ends up saying, "Let me buy you a drink."

"You could do that," Arthur says. He pauses, draws out the silence. "Or you could just take me back to my hotel room and fuck me."

Arthur is spread out on the bed. The planes of his body are warm and hard underneath Eames, all compact muscle, and his kisses alternate between innocent, closed-mouth presses and completely filthy surrender. Eames thinks he could do this forever, rutting naked and tangled together in the sheets.

But Arthur's being very insistent, reaching for Eames' cock in a way that's almost pleading.

"Alright, love, alright," Eames says soothingly. He presses a kiss to Arthur's jaw, then slides down Arthur's body, pulling his legs apart. "Have you ever done this before?"

"No."

The look on Arthur's face is unashamed and open. When Eames starts to open him up with slick, lubed-up fingers, it's maybe even a little adoring.

"Fuck," Eames whispers, involuntarily.

Arthur relaxes, going still, as Eames' cock pushes in. His eyes are too wide, but as always he's in perfect control.

"Okay?" Eames says.

"It's fine." Arthur's breathing is even, his voice steady.

"Oh, I want it to be much more than fine, darling," Eames says. He reaches for Arthur's hand and makes him wrap it around his own cock.

Arthur's breath stutters, and a little sigh escapes his lips when Eames thrusts in all the way. He wants Arthur to remember this for the rest of his goddamn life, so he forces himself to respond to Arthur's body, moving slow and careful -- but not for long. Arthur goes from it's fine to yeah, that's good to oh, fuck, Eames very quickly, hips stuttering and encouraging.

Gasping, astonished, he starts to come apart, and it's one of the most beautiful things Eames has ever seen. It's been ten minutes, or maybe it's been half an hour. Arthur's gasps turn into moans, and at first he bites them back, like he's trying to be good and quiet, but Eames coaxes the sound out of him. They both keep their eyes open the entire time, and the intensity of it is hard to bear. The sheen of sweat covers Arthur's chest, which is smooth and unscarred, unmarked like blank slate.

"You're close," Eames says softly, wonderingly, as Arthur's breath begins to falter, and Arthur nods, pressing his eyes shut. In that moment, he looks intolerably young.

Eames leans down to kiss him, wraps his hands around Arthur's on his cock, and that's all it takes. Arthur moans Eames' name into his mouth and comes.

In the morning, he gets out of bed and takes his totem from the bedside table. He'd intended to leave yesterday, he should have left, but something in the way Arthur had curled around him afterwards made that unthinkable.

"Eames?" Arthur says, sleepy.

Eames bends over the bed brushes his lips across Arthur's temple, barely a kiss. "I would fuck you again, but I have a plane to catch," he says gently, and it isn't a lie.

"Mmm, okay," Arthur says, smiling without opening his eyes. "Next time, then."

When next time comes, it's been six months.

Arthur's graduated from dark wash jeans to well-tailored trousers, and his hair is longer, grown out of the military buzz cut. He looks older and younger at the same time.

"Your smile as disarming as ever, love," Eames says, instead of hello.

"You don't look bad yourself," Arthur says.

An hour later, with that smile on his face, Arthur tears apart Eames' extraction plan in front of Dom, like he wants to please, like he's got something to prove.

For the rest of the job, they spend hours arguing over minute details. Eames finds that he loves the challenge and the way Arthur looks at him when Eames turns out to be right. Sometimes, he stands a little too close -- which could mean something, or nothing at all. Arthur's different now, sharper. His posture is more relaxed, but he doesn't wear his emotions on his face the way Eames remembers.

By the time Arthur's satisfied with the plan, it's airtight. The extraction goes flawlessly, they're paid a decent amount -- the jobs they work at this point are still legal -- and Dom invites them both out for drinks.

"Sorry," Arthur says. "I've got other plans tonight."

The look he gives Eames makes him wish they weren't still in public.

Mal glances from Arthur to Eames amusedly, then blows them a kiss goodnight as Dom takes her by the elbow and leads her out the door, oblivious.

They take a taxi, both sliding into the backseat, and Eames can feel the slight tremble of anticipation when he puts a hand on Arthur's knee. Neither of them speak much on the way up to Arthur's room.

Eames shuts the door and fumbles for the light switch, but Arthur doesn't even bother with a kiss.

Eames' back hits the door as Arthur goes to his knees in front of him, hands on Eames' hips, holding him there and mouthing at the line of his cock through his trousers. He moves his lips over the fabric, wet, moaning low and satisfied in his throat until it's too much.

"Arthur," Eames growls, and Arthur's hands move to his belt.

Somehow, he ends up sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark, naked from the waist down. Arthur's between his legs, fully clothed, his mouth slipping over the head of Eames' cock and his hands working up and down the shaft.

Eames flicks on the bedside light, needing to see, and Arthur looks up at him, eyes wide, as he slides his mouth down, taking in more cock until his lips are at the base. Eames' hips snap forward, again and again, he can't help it -- Arthur's throat opens right up for him, and he holds Eames' gaze as he's choked full. Tears begin to form in the corners of his eyes.

Then he does something with his tongue that has Eames holding back a scream, and God, someone has to have taught him that. Eames isn't sure if he's jealous or turned on by the idea of Arthur fucking other men, learning these things to bring back to him.

"Undress," Eames manages, voice rough. "I'm going to fuck you now."

Arthur pulls off and stands up, lips slick and shiny. He undresses slowly, and it takes every ounce of discipline Eames has to keep still as Arthur strips. It turns out he isn't wearing underwear.

Eames bites down on his lower lip, and smiles in satisfaction when Arthur steps forward like he's been hypnotised. He slides his fingers into Eames' mouth, blunt nails dragging across his lip on the way out. He reaches down.

Using the wetness, he thumbs the slit of Eames' cock. Just once. Then he grins, suddenly obedient, and gets on his back on the bed.

Eames tries to go slow, gets one finger in and is about to add a second when Arthur makes a noise deep in his throat and rips the condom open with his teeth.

"Now," Arthur rasps, and Eames is a good man, but not a very good one.

Arthur isn't ready yet; he's unbearably tight, stretched. A noise that's half-pain escapes him, but he gets his hands on Eames' hips and pulls him in, sets the rhythm fast and hard.

His breath comes in whimpers, shocky, and Eames fucks him past the pain, until the words Arthur's moaning aren't even words any more and he comes all over his chest. A moment later Eames follows him, and has to close his eyes. It's too much, Arthur sprawled content beneath him, face open and happy. He leaves after Arthur falls asleep.

It's the beginning of a ritual, sort of. They fuck once after each extraction, and no more than that. No phone calls, no touching before or during the job. No talking about it. No talking around it. It happens a few times a year, for a few years.

Eames realises that there's more to it when he ends the longest relationship he's ever managed, right after getting off the phone with Dom about a job. He may lie like it's his mother tongue, but he won't sleep around on someone he's made a promise to. So the easiest thing to do is to break that promise.

It's becoming a problem, this thing. But when he lets himself into the office space Dom's rented and sees Arthur leaning over a desk, wearing a three-piece suit, he can't bring himself to care.

"Is Mal dressing your boy?" Eames asks Dom, impressed.

Dom laughs. "No, that's all Arthur. Why, you like what you see?"

Eames grins, roguish. They don't get along as well as Eames and Mal, but they've worked together and talked often enough that Eames knows Mal is Dom's whole world, possibly his religion, and Dom knows how Eames is about conquest. Dom's not an idiot. He's probably worked it out by now.

"What," Eames says finally, "you're not going to warn me off?"

"Arthur can take care of himself," says Dom. It's casual, fond, and something else entirely.

Eames reads people for a living, and he wonders. Certain rumours have been circulating in the dreamsharing community.

"So it's true, then? Kiev?"

"Yeah," Dom says shortly. Arthur killed a man to protect me, he doesn't say. The interplay of love and guilt and pride on his face is fascinating.

They go slow, this time.

Eames brings Arthur back to his hotel room, pours him a glass of wine. For hours, all they do is drink and talk. There are two couches, but they sit together on one of them; Arthur shrugs off his suit jacket and Eames can feel the warmth of him when their shoulders press together. A tension hums just underneath every casual touch.

Eames presses his thumb to the corner of Arthur's lip, wiping away a drop of wine.

Arthur smiles a small, closed smile, and lets him get away with it. Eames wants to ask what exactly happened in Kiev, why Arthur rarely smiles any more, but he won't get an answer to either question.

"So tell me, Arthur, why are you in this business?" he asks instead.

"Why are you?"

Sometimes, Eames will play out conversations by rote, flirting, challenging, joking. It's not about the words at all -- what he's really looking for is the pauses, the things left unsaid; the way people laugh, or don't.

"I'm in it for the same reason that Dom and Mal are," Eames says. He doesn't think before he says it, so what slips out is actually the truth. "I like to find out what's possible."

Arthur's voice is fond when he says, "Mal likes to find out what's impossible. And then ignore it."

"This is true," Eames says, amused.

Arthur puts his glass down on the table and half-turns towards Eames, leans in so that they're too close. And then he holds still.

Once, Eames could drift around the edges of Arthur's personal space and study the curve of his lips, and know everything there was to know about him. But it's been three years, and people grow into themselves. Arthur's body isn't as honest as it used to be. It doesn't lie, but it doesn't tell anything, either. He's folded it up and pressed it into the lines of his three-piece suits.

Eames waits.

"You know the feeling you get when you put a gun to your head in a dream?" Arthur says. "Right as you pull the trigger, that half-second of doubt. Panic. Fuck, what if this is actually real? What if I made a mistake?"

Eames hates that feeling.

"I love that feeling," says Arthur.

"Let me fuck you," Eames says.

He wouldn't be above pleading, at this point. He can barely think straight with Arthur sitting in his lap, a warm and heavy weight. He rocks his hips, and Eames gasps as their cocks nudge against each other. The only article of clothing Eames is still wearing is his tie, and Arthur gives it a sharp tug.

"No," Arthur says. "I'm going to fuck you."

He slides off, lifting Eames by the hips and turning him over. Eames goes easily, pliant, but he can feel the strength behind that move, and he realises that if he wanted to resist, to get the upper hand, he couldn't. A year ago, maybe, but not anymore.

The thought makes him moan into the pillow, precome leaking into the sheets. Arthur teases him with his tongue, then works him full of lube as Eames tries to concentrate on breathing.

"Open up for me," Arthur whispers, and laughs appreciatively when Eames relaxes around him, just like that.

He fucks into Eames like he knows exactly what he's doing -- long, deep strokes, palm in the small of his back. When Eames can feel the heat building, Arthur snaps his hips faster, bringing him to the edge -- but then he slows, holding Eames there, torturously close.

"Arthur --"

"I want to make you beg," says Arthur, "but I'll let you get away with just saying please."

"Please."

Arthur bites down on the spot between Eames' neck and shoulder. He lets go, lets Eames' body take what it wants, and Eames comes, hard, clenching around Arthur's cock.

"You should come to Paris with me," Arthur whispers into his ear, about ten minutes later. They're a tangle of limbs, and most of the blankets are on the floor.

Eames pretends to be asleep.

Arthur lets out a sound that's almost a sigh and tugs up the blankets, tucking them around Eames' chest.

This time, it's Arthur who leaves. By the time Eames wakes up, the bed has gone cold.

After James is born, Dom and Mal take a couple of jobs in Los Angeles, so that they can do the majority of their work from home.

Mal is wearing a sundress, holding a pipette and a vial marked with a biohazard symbol. She's mixing sedatives at the kitchen counter, telling Eames about how she and Dom have been experimenting with deeper sedation, more dream levels.

"Mal," Eames says. He grabs her wrist, a tiny bit furious. "You don't have any idea what the risks are. No one does."

"Are you the one with the Ph.D in chemistry?" Mal asks sweetly. "No, wait -- that's me. So don't worry your pretty head."

"I know enough to know that going deeper makes it easier to lose yourself."

Mal turns to him, and her eyes have an edge of cruelty. "I know you," she says. "You forget that sometimes. Look me in the eye and tell me that the possibilities of this don't thrill you."

"Have you ever thought that they also scare me shitless? And that maybe they should scare you, too?"

They're both silent.

Finally Mal says, "Would you make me some coffee? You're the only one who can brew it exactly how I like, you know. Don't tell Dom I said that."

There's something incongruous about Mal; she can frustrate and charm and perplex in a single breath. Eames suspects that's why everyone who meets her falls at least a little in love -- why Dom married her, why Arthur lets her kiss him on the cheek, why Eames is going to shut up and make the coffee.

"It's interesting," Mal says when they sit, hands cupped around her mug. She grins, which most people find disarming, but Eames knows better. "Arthur keeps finding us jobs that need a forger, and turning down the ones that don't."

"Oh," says Eames, noncommittal.

"I'm going to tell you something," Mal says, "so pay attention. I almost didn't marry Dom." She pauses, sips. "The week before the wedding, I thought -- God, he's perfect, it can't last. I'll lose him, and I won't be able to bear it. Once I started thinking it, I couldn't stop. So I booked a flight. I ran away."

"Really?" says Eames. "And then did Dom send Arthur out into the world to track you down with nothing but a flashlight and a Glock?"

Mal laughs. "No," she says. "I came back. I got over myself, and I married him."

Mal tells Eames he should stay with them, but when she opens the door to the guest room he stops short.

There are jackets and dress shirts hanging in the open closet, a stack of paper on the bedside table, next to a pair of cufflinks Eames recognises as Arthur's. There's only one bed, a queen; it's neatly made, clothes folded on top of the covers.

Arthur wears navy flannel pants to sleep, his mind notes traitorously.

"Did you ask Arthur about this?" Eames says, turning to look at Mal.

"Yes. He said yes."

Eames stands there for a long moment. He and Arthur are going to sleep together after this job's done. That's a certainty. Nothing else is. He picks up his suitcase. "Apologies, my dear, but I think I'll find myself a hotel."

The tilt of Mal's head is amused, her smile sad. "I don't understand you."

"I don't, either."

That's a lie, though.

Eames knows what he wants. He just doesn't want to get what he wants, because he understands the nature of desire. It's what makes him so good at his art. His paycheques come because he can give people so much of what they want that they crumble, vulnerable.

The beauty goes out of desire, when you look at it from all angles. When you shatter it along its planes, then forge the pieces back together and wear it like a cheap suit in someone else's dream.

So Eames has always filled his life with things he can get, things that don't matter -- simple hungers and harmless vices. Drugs, in his early twenties. Then gambling, stolen art, an endless string of men and women. Never more than one at a time, and never for very long.

Because this is the thing about a fantasy: it can never be fulfilled, or it will die. The desire for something is always more beautiful than the thing itself.

None of this explains why, after the job, Eames spends a week sleeping in Dom and Mal's guest room.

"Arthur," Eames murmurs when he wakes, "Arthur, Arthur ..."

"Fuck off," Arthur says, rolling across the bed onto his other side. But then he wiggles his hips back until they nudge up against Eames', spooning, and he tugs Eames' arm around him.

"We should fuck now," says Eames. He presses his nose into Arthur's shoulder, into the soft skin of his neck. He runs kisses all the way down Arthur's spine, and Arthur sighs contentedly. But he doesn't wake up, he never does -- if given the option, Arthur will sleep until noon.

So he watches Arthur for a while. Eventually he goes to help Mal cook an elaborate brunch, or to keep Phillipa and James -- who like to "help" -- out of the kitchen. At some point every morning, Arthur walks out of their room with his hair a tousled mess. He takes his coffee in exactly the same way Mal does, eats breakfast with an ankle hooked around Eames' underneath the table, and bullies Dom into helping him finish the crossword.

They spend the afternoons working on dreams. It's comforting to be able to monitor Dom and Mal when they go under. Miles' connections at the university get Mal access to the latest research papers, so Eames reads those for hours while he waits.

After dinner, Eames likes to suggest, "I think Uncle Arthur wants to go play in the park," and Phillipa always gets so excited that Arthur can't say no. He can glare, but he can't say no.

"We've gone to the park every day for the last four days," Arthur says, getting the stroller out of the front hall closet. "Why, Eames? Why?"

"Because," says Eames. "You wear jeans, and you smile like you're ten years old again, and sometimes you even take your shoes off and play in the sand. Really, can you blame me?"

One hand on the closet door, Arthur freezes.

"Arthur?"

Arthur's eyes are soft as he steps towards Eames and places one hand on his chest. He's trying not to smile, but it's not working. He leans in, presses a kiss to Eames' lips, and for a moment they're both breathless and quiet with surprise. It's the first time this has happened and had nothing to do with sex.

Everything about that week is simple and irresistible and when Eames gets a call from someone he owes a favour to in Mombasa, he's relieved that he has to go.

They're in Montreal.

Arthur usually doesn't work for other extractors, but Dom had told him to take this job. He and Mal needed some time off, he'd said. She was tired. So Arthur had given in, and he and Eames are on their second week together in a tiny rented flat. The job ended yesterday, but no one's said anything about leaving yet.

Eames wakes to find Arthur sitting upright in bed, the phone in his lap. He's staring into space.

"Arthur?" Eames says, putting a hand on Arthur's bare hip. "What time is it?"

"It happened," Arthur says in a monotone.

"What?"

"Mal. They went in too deep. They got lost. She's dead."

And finally, the dread that's been hovering in Eames' stomach for months drops. He has to swallow, because he thinks he might throw up. It should feel worse than this, but the truth is, a part of him had known, had been letting go of Mal already.

Arthur keeps staring, eyes empty, like he doesn't want to think. Then he turns to Eames and says, "I need you to fuck me right now."

In the dark, they reach for each other like they're trying to find oblivion.

If Eames hadn't woken up first, in the hours before sunrise, it might have gone differently. Arthur sleeps, sated, and Eames stares at him for what seems like an hour, his mind stuttering on the same thought over and over.

God, he's perfect, it can't last. I'll lose him, and I won't be able to bear it.

Mal had said those words just a few months ago. Eames thinks of them placed ironically, bitterly, into Dom's mouth. He thinks of Arthur, jumping off a ledge to his death, and he tastes acrid fear as the possibility of Mal's words burn against his own tongue.

He leaves. It's the worst thing he's ever done, and he knows it.

He doesn't even bother to take any of his things, just dresses with shaking fingers and pockets his totem. Arthur stays sleeping, a small smile on his lips. He'll probably wake up and assume Eames has just gone to get bagels from the shop down the road -- but eventually it will dawn on him, sick and slow.

The sun doesn't bother to rise that day; it hides behind the clouds. On the train outside the city, Eames looks out the window, mind blank.

The police look into Mal's death, and Eames keeps tabs on the investigation.

Just in case, he sends Arthur five different sets of fake passports and identification papers for him and Dom. He calls in a favour to make sure the two of them can get out of the country. And then he floats the name and the mythos of Dom Cobb to some of the major players in the underground community. Dom's natural talent will take it from there.

There's no way Arthur doesn't know who's behind it all. He and Dom worked on the legal side of things, before. Eames was their only contact whose paycheques hadn't come solely from the government.

But Arthur doesn't try to get in touch. Eames is glad.

Some nights he wakes up missing Arthur so much it's a physical ache, a pulse in his chest. When it happens, he pulls out the PASIV from underneath his bed and slides a line into his wrist.

He's heard that some people who dreamshare too often can't let go. They cling to their memories, building them into a subconscious maze, replaying them over and over, sometimes with revisions, sometimes without.

What Eames does is probably worse. There's a room inside his head that's made of mirrors, where he goes to practice his forgeries.

He closes his eyes and slips into Arthur.

It's as intimate as sex. He knows all of the planes and contours of this body from years of mapping them out. He presses a finger to the sensitive spot behind Arthur's ear, feels the thrill go down his spine. Traces a finger down his bare torso, like a vivisection from sternum to pelvis. Smiles, just to see it light up Arthur's face.

"Eames," he makes Arthur's mouth say. "Eames."

On his last job, he'd turned a street corner and run straight into Arthur -- his mind's projection of Arthur. It had shot Eames just to watch him bleed out. Eames has heard of it happening before: projections turning ugly, manifesting guilt or regret.

But in this space, Eames can remember him exactly as he wants to. Arthur beautiful and tender, ideal forever.

They don't see each other again until the Fischer job.

The first time he walks into the warehouse with Dom, Arthur doesn't even look at him. His hair is slicked back, the line of his spine as inscrutable as the barrel of a gun. He's efficient, professional, condescending in a way that might seem indulgent to an outsider. Arthur belittles, Eames baits. The verbal sparring is a twisted mockery of the way they used to dance around each other.

Eames calls him darling, just to see if he can get a reaction. He can't.

"It's cute, how antagonistic you two are," Ariadne says. She has no idea.

One night he and Arthur work late at the warehouse. Dom might be in the back somewhere, experimenting as usual with God knows what. Eames doesn't need to ask to know that Dom's a total mess. He wants to ask -- he cared about Mal so much that he cares about Dom by extension. But he forfeited his right to a lot of things, when he walked away.

If no one else is around, he and Arthur usually don't bother to talk to each other.

Tonight Arthur says, "Someone told me I had a nice cameo in Switzerland. I've never fucking been to Switzerland."

"Then you're missing out," Eames says, flipping a page of the notes he's scanning. "The Alps are lovely."

"You forged me," Arthur says bluntly.

"Yes," Eames says. He'd needed someone who could get him in and out of an impromptu bank heist, someone a little bit James Dean, and the rest of it had either been sadism or masochism.

"Why?"

"What can I say, darling? You were too perfect. I couldn't resist."

Arthur reserves a single expression for Eames these days, a smirk that says he's mildly disgusted, so Eames doesn't bother to look up.

They all make it out of Fischer's subconscious, and none of them are braindead. It's a small miracle. Eames follows Arthur out of the airport to the taxi queue, though he's not sure why. Because it worked, maybe. Because death still hangs over both of them like an abstract spectre.

Arthur doesn't acknowledge his presence until he reaches for the door handle of a cab and finds Eames' hand there already.

"Okay," Arthur says quietly. "What the hell."

He won't look Eames in the eye, but he jerks his chin at the cab's back door like a command. Eames gets in.

At first, they fumble like strangers. It takes Eames ten minutes to get all of Arthur's clothes off, but when he does, Arthur comes alive. Their bodies remember how to do this.

His mouth is hungry, licking into Eames', biting down on his lower lip. On his shoulder, Arthur's teeth draw blood, and the pain is so good that Arthur ends up sliding his fingers into Eames' mouth to shut him up.

Arthur moves down Eames' body, sucking bruises into his neck, his hips. He gets to Eames' cock and just teases, staring up at Eames as he presses his palm against the base and licks the slit again and again.

"I want you," Arthur says against his skin. "I always want you."

There's too much earnestness there. Eames tells himself it's just the heat of the moment.

"Jesus, enough," Eames says, his hands in Arthur's hair, dragging him up and shoving him onto the bed.

It's nothing like the last time. After Mal killed herself, Arthur had touched Eames like it was a surrender, his body opening up entirely to pleasure, to giving and taking. As if, in the wake of death, all he'd wanted to do was lose himself in Eames and never find his way out.

This time it's like a fight. Arthur wants dominance, and Eames uses everything he knows about Arthur's body to disarm him, make him go limp with pleasure. Roughly, he drags Arthur's hips half-off the edge of the bed, reaching for the condom in his wallet. He takes Arthur's cock into his mouth and clenches his throat around it, one hand flat against Arthur's stomach, the other working Arthur's ass open with spit-slick fingers.

They fuck in total silence. The light is dim enough that if Eames lets his eyes shutter half-closed, he doesn't have to look at the lack of expression Arthur's face.

He has Arthur on his knees, hand braced against the headboard, when he notices it. A scar. It's newly healed, running down Arthur's back from his shoulderblade to his hipbone. Eames has no idea where he got it.

His pace slows. His cock aches inside of Arthur, but he doesn't move, he can't stop looking. Something is twisting in his chest.

"Get a move on, Eames," Arthur growls.

Gentle, Eames bends down. He licks up the length of the scar and back down again, licks the tender skin around it, and yeah, Arthur seems to like that. He drives himself back onto Eames' cock, hard enough to hurt, and comes into Eames' hand with a small cry.

In the morning, Arthur watches him leave.

"You're a damn coward," Arthur says. He sounds tired. "You always were."

After the Fischer job, it makes sense for them to work together.

He and Arthur are at the top of their fields and in high demand. Dom's retired, so Arthur needs an extractor -- and that's a role Eames usually takes, unless he's been hired specifically to forge. He's good enough that he usually does the forgery and the extraction himself; it's more efficient that way.

Arthur calls him.

"There's a job in the States," he says. The connection's bad, and the static warps his voice. "It's not difficult, but it might take a while."

"Arthur," Eames says.

"I want you," Arthur says. "To work with me."

"I'm sorry," Eames says. He hangs up.

In the end, it takes a cliché to make Eames realise what he doesn't have.

They come together in Cortona, because Yusuf calls them both, not knowing that they haven't spoken in a year. The job is so simple that they don't need an architect -- Arthur can manage the basics -- and when one of Yusuf's dreamers in Mombasa has an emergency, they don't have a chemist, either. Yusuf takes the first flight back, leaving them with an apology and the compounds they'll need.

So it's just the two of them. Knowing the responsibility Yusuf feels towards his dreamers, Eames can't even manage to be angry. He and Arthur are terse and civil for the half-day it takes to plan the job.

Then they go under, and it all goes to shit.

The mark doesn't know it's a dream, but it doesn't matter. They'd cut corners on the research, wanting the job to be over; they should have checked his medical records. Eames discovers later that the mark has a long history of mental health issues. When he realises there's something off, and can't figure out what, his projections don't turn on them. He just kills himself.

"Fuck," Arthur says, and puts a bullet in his skull.

Eames catches Arthur's body as it falls, lowering it to the ground. Then he does the same.

He wakes to find Arthur on his knees in front of the mark, his eyes closed in rare surrender. There's a gun pressed to his forehead. The mark has his back to Eames, so Eames can see Arthur's expression clearly.

The look on his face says, I know I'm going to die, and for a second, Eames knows it, too.

The mark's shoulders shift as he prepares for the recoil, and Eames doesn't even think, just reaches for his gun and --

A shot goes off. The mark crumples.

Neither of them say anything.

Arthur bends over the man's body, checking it, then stands up. His voice doesn't waver when he speaks. "You got him in the shoulder. He'll live. We need to call a hospital and then get the hell out of this city."

He starts to put away the PASIV, but Eames comes up behind him and takes over. Arthur doesn't protest, and Eames places a hand in the small of his back and guides him out of the room, into the hallway.

After closing the door, Eames drops the PASIV on the floor and presses Arthur back against the wall, until there isn't an inch of space separating them. He runs his hands over Arthur's body, not searching for anything specific; he just needs to touch, to reassure himself.

"Arthur," Eames says. He leans in, pressing their foreheads together. "Remember what you said once about that moment of panic, right before you pull the trigger? The thought that you've made a mistake?"

"Yes?" Arthur says, confused but unresisting.

A tremble runs between them. Eames can't tell whose it is. He cups Arthur's face in both hands, something he's never done before, and almost can't believe he's doing it.

He's fucking terrified of this. He always has been. It doesn't matter.

"When I saw you on your knees like that, I knew I'd made one. I'd waited too long, I was too late."

"Eames --"

"I'm sorry," Eames says. "Arthur. Please."

"Eames," Arthur says again. He smiles the smile that Eames fell in love with years ago. It's open and adoring and he looks so intolerably young, just like he did at the beginning.

Arthur presses his lips to Eames', and says into his mouth, "You're not too late."