All's Fair (in Love & Werewolves) [3/3]
Title: All's Fair (in Love & Werewolves) - 3/3
Pairing: catboy!Arthur/werewolf!Eames
Words: ~17,600 (~28k overall)
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Arthur is lucky to have Eames. Somebody just as different, someone who understands when he wakes up in the middle of the night feeling like he's all alone in the universe. Eames makes that feeling go away.
Eames, however, is not alone.
Warnings: Knotting, heat, references to bestiality.
Author's Note: Pavlov's Bell verse! I motored through the majority of this in a single weekend. NANOWRIMO'S GOT NOTHIN' ON ME. Anyway, in 17,640 words there are bound to be some typos, so be gentle. xD And rejoice! It's done! --OR IS IT?? (The answer is no.)
(ETA: Look at this motherfucking fanart.
ETA2: Also look at this and this fanart by plasticwrappixi!)
part one, part two.
Arthur drifts murkily to consciousness feeling rather like a truck has run over his skull. Even his blood seems to be moving sluggishly in his veins. His tongue feels like a carpet. He can hear Alizé's voice and another, unfamiliar male's. He keeps his breathing deep and even, his eyes closed, to feign sleep.
“... for the pack leaders to decide, not you,” the other male voice is snapping out. “We've already dealt Eames a massive insult by kidnapping his partner. You told me he would be on his own, that we were to approach him and ask him to come with us. You said nothing about drugging him and then fighting Eames on our way out!”
“I was following orders,” Alizé hisses. “They said to bring Eames and his boyfriend home. I tell you, the second they caught wind of us they'd have been gone someplace where we couldn't track them. Trust me, Micah, the only way Eames will go home is if he thinks his mate is there.”
“And if he's not Eames' mate?” the other growls.
“You didn't see them in Toronto,” Alizé states flatly. “He's Eames' mate.”
Arthur's brain is throbbing thickly in his skull. He takes a slow breath in through his mouth, surreptitiously, to better taste the air. The wild, musky odour of recently-transformed werewolf hangs heavily in the air-Arthur's a little horrified when the scent sends a little thrill straight to his cock (he can't help that some of his favourite memories of sex are attached to that smell). He can smell that Faye is in the room as well as the males, lurking off to one side. He can smell the high tempers and anxiety in the room, too. His hands are bound behind his back-duct tape, he thinks, testing the bonds-so that he's lying on his arms. His shoulders cramp acutely.
“We'll figure this out when we get home,” Micah finishes. “It's not up to us anyway.”
“I don't think-” Faye starts to speaks up quietly, uncertainly, but Alizé cuts her off with a snarl.
“You,” he spits in the direction of Faye's voice, “you said that sedative would start to work instantly. He almost put a knife through my shoulder in the car park.”
“I misjudged his weight. He's heavier than he looks.” Faye sounds sullen. “And I said it would start to work instantly. It did.”
Alizé snorts. “The two things you're good for, and you fuck up one and won't even try the second.”
“We are not extracting from him, Alizé,” Faye snaps, and there's a new, authoritative bite in her voice. “Extracting from an extractor is nearly impossible to begin with, and they say he's the best there is. He'd run circles around me. If you've got loads of money to hire an even better extractor than him, then you're holding out on me, and Eames would already be on us by the time we could do it. It's a stupid idea, I'm telling you. There are much easier ways to get information. Like asking.”
“As if he'd be truthful. You know Eames has taught him what to say.”
The more conscious Arthur becomes, the worse the pain in his arms grows, the more aware he becomes of the ache in his shoulders. At last he has to fidget, trying to relieve the cramping of his muscles. The three bickering werewolves are all looking at him when he opens his eyes.
They're in a hotel room. The curtains are drawn over the windows. Arthur catalogues each detail quietly.
“Hello,” the unfamiliar male, Micah, breaks the ensuing silence. “Are you comfortable?”
It's a stupid question. Arthur has been unconscious for over twenty-four hours. His mouth is dry and tacky, his head is throbbing, he has to go to the bathroom, and his arms are ready to fall off, numb under his own weight.
He pushes himself upright and stretches his hands over his head, then down in front of him, wincing at the creak and pop in his shoulder followed by the painful tingle of blood starting to re-circulate.
“More comfortable now, thank you,” he says.
They're still staring at him like they've never seen a double-jointed person before.
“My name is Micah,” Micah says finally. “I'm sorry we had to meet under such disagreeable circumstances.” He approaches Arthur like he's a live grenade, pulling out a pocket knife slowly and deliberately so that Arthur can see, and begins to saw at the duct tape. “There was a ... miscommunication.”
“I see,” Arthur says. His voice is dry, hoarse from lack of use.
Micah severs the last strands of duct tape. He takes a not-so-surreptitious sniff before he gets up. “We're going to go to England. You don't have to come with us,” he says, with a pointed glare at Alizé, “but Eames will probably rendezvous with us there, if you'd like an escort. Is there anything you need at the moment?”
Arthur looks at them while he peels the tape off his wrists and rubs life back into his hands. A notion is occurring to him, a thought he's had several times around Eames. Their sense of smell isn't as good as his. Not by half, at least; not when they're in this form. As wolves, it might be different, but like this, their sense of smell is nothing on Arthur's. And so while he can smell that Faye is a little afraid of him, and that Alizé is still angry, and the cigarette Micah smoked before the moon came out, Micah hadn't even been able to smell Eames in Ketchikan, probably until they'd entered the hotel room. And they can't smell Arthur's subtly shifting pheromones until they get very close to him.
He has a couple of days before the heat will take him over entirely, and then the smell will be impossible to miss or ignore; but until then, they simply don't know what to make of him.
“I'd like a shower,” he answers Micah decisively.
To his surprise, both Micah and Alizé look at Faye. She looks a bit surprised to be put on the spot, too.
“It ... it should be fine if we sweep the bathroom first,” she says hesitantly. When both males make for the bathroom to do just that, she avoids Arthur's eyes and shrugs. “I hear stories. You murdered your way through a warehouse full of armed guards with nothing but a pen and the handcuffs attached to your wrists. We're not taking chances.”
Some Krav Maga training and the ability to see in the dark had helped in that scenario, but Arthur just shrugs modestly.
He makes his shower quick. They haven't left him much, but there is a bottle of fragrant shampoo, which he uses liberally as a body wash. That should cover him for the next day or so. They've taken away the hair dryer, so he takes pains not to get his tail wet, so that it won't be dripping down his pants all day.
While he towels off and dresses, he thinks. Despite shooting him with a tranquilizer and leaving him tied up on a bed for a day and a night, the werewolves don't seem unduly hostile. At least Micah doesn't. Binding his arms was probably a precaution against him leaving in case he were to wake while they were out during the full moon. It would seem their mission really is to get him to England, where he's certain Eames will be waiting to tear their throats out. Arthur wouldn't mind doing some of that himself. His tail is bristling furiously.
What he really wants to do is knife Alizé properly, maybe give the other two a few wounds to remember him by as well and then escape. But there's no place he can really go except to Eames, thanks to his impending heat, wherever Eames is now; and he senses the werewolves aren't a threat to him right now. There's no point taking risks when he's not in immediate danger. He'll go with them, he supposes. Maybe Eames will even be there as soon as they land, to whisk him away so they can suffer his heat together in peace.
When he leaves the bathroom, Micah is talking in a low voice into a cell phone while Faye packs their bags. Alizé, slumped in a chair nearest to the bathroom, smells Arthur coming and turns his head sharply, nostrils flaring. He gets up and starts to walk closer.
At once Arthur slides a foot between Alizé's and sweeps his legs out from under him. As soon as he's on the ground he twists to get his hands under him, and Arthur drops on him and grabs him in a guillotine chokehold. He forces Alizé to the ground, pulling with his arms and bearing down with his legs, and slowly squeezes off Alizé's air flow.
“If you touch me,” he says, feeling his tail ripple with cold anger like an electric current has passed through it, “whatever you think Eames would do to you will look like a joke. Are you listening?”
Micah hauls him off and pushes him away before Alizé can respond. Arthur rounds on the other werewolf, ready to defend himself, but Micah is standing back, unconcerned now that Alizé is free. Picking himself up off the ground, Alizé snarls furiously, “I'll kill you for that.”
“Piss off.” Micah shoves him back with one hand when he starts toward Arthur. “You've already been told not to touch him. Eames would flay you for sniffing too close, pet or not.”
Alizé scowls. Arthur could argue, tell them he's nobody's pet, thank you very much, but he doesn't know enough about the pack politics to know whether it would be better or worse to confirm himself as Eames' mate.
He decides to stay quiet on that front for now, and instead says coolly, “I've decided you can take me to England.”
Alizé looks irritated at his supercilious tone. Micah, however, looks relieved.
“I'm glad,” he says. “Alright then. Alizé, get our things together. I'll call a taxi.”
They'd taken some of Arthur's possessions from the room, including his passport, though not the PASIV-hopefully Eames doesn't forget to take it with him, or Arthur will kick his ass (once Eames is through with Arthur's). He follows the three werewolves grudgingly out to the parking lot, their individual scents grating his nose.
“Here.” Faye is holding out a pill to him when he looks up. Her face is inscrutable. “For your headache.”
“Thanks,” Arthur mutters, taking it.
She blinks, still expressionless. “It'll knock you out again. Alizé wants you to take it.”
Arthur holds the pill up, then drops it to the pavement and crushes it underfoot. Faye shrugs.
“I'll tell him you took it. It doesn't matter. You're still coming off the other drugs.”
She's right; it doesn't matter that he didn't take the pill. They cab it to the airport and Arthur realizes, bemusedly, that they're in Seattle-bemused, because his thoughts are already a sluggish haze again.
Baggage check-in at the airport is a blur. They have to wait at their gate for awhile and by the time they board the plane, Arthur's nearly unconscious again. He and Faye are seated together; Alizé and Micah are nearby. He has time to think that that's one comfort, that he doesn't have to spend all those hours in close quarters with either of the male werewolves; but then he just decides that Faye-taking out her headphones and settling in-is no danger to him for the time being. He sleeps.
+He dreams again.
Eames is sinking into him slowly. He stops on every inch or so and just watches Arthur pant for breath, watches the sweat pool in the dip between Arthur's collarbones. Every time he starts to push in again, Arthur gasps and groans.
“You can take it,” Eames whispers. “Fuck, look at you. So bloody tight for me.”
He leans down, forcing Arthur's thighs apart a little more, and Arthur whines. He doesn't know if he wants to tell Eames to just shove it in him already, or stop altogether, but when he opens his mouth, only a sob comes out. Sweat runs into his eyes, making them sting.
Eames' patience is superhuman. Arthur's too tight when they've been apart for a few days, and Eames is determined that Arthur should be able to walk afterward, unlike their first couple times-booze and heat tend to cloud Arthur's ability to judge pain considerably. He just didn't know it would hurt this much. In this memory it's been a week since the last time. They've spent an hour on foreplay alone, he's already come once, he shouldn't still be this tight-but it hurts.
“More,” he gasps.
Eames grins and pushes his hips forward, sliding steadily in and not stopping. Arthur wails, arches off the bed, claws his back, and Eames doesn't stop. He doesn't stop until his hips are flush with Arthur's ass, and then Arthur feels Eames' hand at his face, stroking and petting and soothing.
“I'm in. I'm in. I've got you.”
Arthur just clenches his nails deep in Eames' back until he doesn't feel like he's in danger of being split in half, until he can open his eyes, blinking away the stinging salt-sweat. Eames is equally rigid above him, and Arthur realizes he's been lashing his tail against the bed in a blind bid to ease the stretched-out burn of his muscles. The rhythmic constricting sensation of the muscles in the base of his tail around Eames' cock must be incredible.
“Okay,” he says finally, when he can breathe again, “okay, move now.”
“Alright.” Eames' voice is strained. He rocks his hips, sliding back an inch and then forward again, and even this slight movement makes Arthur's spine arch. He builds momentum slowly, and every time he pushes in the breath is squeezed out of Arthur's chest, like Eames' cock is pressing directly up against his diaphragm. He'd believe it; Eames is so fucking deep, filling so much of Arthur. He writhes on the girth of Eames.
It's not rushed or frantic, even though they've been apart for a week; it's slow, and intense, with Eames' eyes burning into his. They kiss without any kind of finesse, and Eames' mouth is hot and possessive. It's starting to hit Arthur, Eames' scent doesn't bother him so much anymore. In fact, when he smells like this-sweat and sex, musky and masculine-Arthur even likes it. It's stupid, he thinks, how close they have to be, how they both need to touch each other, sometimes making the angle of their hips awkward; they have to kiss, they have to press their bodies together, it's a mindless compulsion that neither of them can escape. Maybe they need to smell themselves on each other, afterward-
-and a new feeling rushes through Arthur as he opens himself up more for Eames: The feeling of being claimed. Wanted.
It shouldn't feel good, to realize that Eames is marking him like a possession with every bruise on Arthur's hips, every bite mark on his neck. But it does. It feels good.
He's wanted.
He blinks awake slowly. He's hard in his pants.
He takes a quick glance around and, affirming that Faye is absorbed in a movie, does a surreptitious waistband-tuck to conceal his erection. With the clamour of different scents in the confined space, maybe she can't smell his arousal.
Christ, but that felt real-he can still feel the phantom ache of Eames inside him. He presses himself deep into his seat.
What if Eames doesn't get to him in time?
No. He can't think of that.
His head is killing him. It's a long flight to England.
+++
After Reno, Arthur and Eames didn't work together again until the Fischer job.
In the span of time between those two jobs, Eames thought about him every day.
This is the thing: it was never supposed to be serious, between them. Eames knew this. At first, it had been all about the hunt. Like Arthur was a piece of meat. Eames wanted to touch and smell and taste him all over, and the hunger burned him up. This nameless desire haunted his jaws when he prowled the woods under the ghostly light of a full moon, knowing that there was something he ought to be stalking, but not knowing what it was. The sheer want made the hinges of his jaws ache and salivate.
He wanted to run Arthur down and mount him over and over and over to the point of exhaustion. Until he burnt that itch right out of his system. Then he could leave Arthur alone. Somehow, Arthur's emotions never entered into the equation. Eames is far too greedy and selfish a man for that.
And then Reno happened, and everything changed.
The memory clung to him. It refused to be washed away. At night he remembered the way Arthur had smelled when his hips bucked with helpless arousal. How tight he'd been. The silky fur of his tail.
And yet this memory wasn't a carnal, lustful haze. It was fascination. He wanted more of Arthur. Wanted to know what he'd smell like when he was fresh out of the shower. How he takes his coffee when he's not mainlining caffeine for the purposes of a job. What compels him to follow a man like Cobb around the globe. He wanted to know where Arthur comes from and what he'll look like in twenty years, if he'll have slowed down at all.
He just wanted more.
And it made him long to fill his lungs with Arthur's scent, every second of every day, just to know that he was nearby.
This had never happened to him before. Eames is not a sentimental sort of person. He's an alpha male, for God's sake. He could not be pining over Arthur; it doesn't work like that. He was stronger than that. He'd fucked all sorts of people around the globe and never once gotten this attached.
But Arthur's always been different, of course.
Angry with himself for his childish crush, Eames spent all the time in between jobs trying in vain to drive Arthur out of his head. All his efforts were shot to hell the second Cobb found him in Mombasa and told him there was a new job.
In Paris, Arthur was just as prickly, just as condescending, just as wickedly competent. Eames made the plans, taking over easily, because it's in his nature to lead. Arthur tore his plans apart and made them better. Ariadne watched them bemusedly, and Eames found himself thinking that a person who didn't know any better might mistake his and Arthur's constant back-and-forth banter as something other than what it was. Something like affection.
He knew there was nothing like that sparking in Arthur's eyes every time their gazes met, though. If anything, Arthur hated him now more than ever. And because Eames didn't know what to do with this rejection, he settled back into the role he was accustomed to, and sniped back like a five-year-old tugging Arthur's pigtails.
At night, though, when he was all alone in Sydney, he let himself think about that striped tail hiding under Arthur's tailored suit, and how he would give anything to run it through his fingers again. How beautifully Arthur had fallen apart underneath him. How he would never, ever get the opportunity to see Arthur like that again, because he'd ruined everything in Reno. The only thing to do was to stop thinking about him-but Eames thought about him all the time.
Even when the Fischer job was over and done with and Arthur fell off the map and Eames went back to scamming his way through various gambling dens just because he could, he thought about Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, every beat of his heart to the tune of Arthur's name. He wasn't himself. He stumbled around cities in a daze. He found secluded places to transform on full moons and howled his heart out to the sky, aching with loneliness. He was the most pathetic specimen of an alpha male he'd ever seen in his life. Half-crazed, he put out feelers, found Arthur doing a job in Budapest and had actually bought himself a plane ticket when he realized what he was doing. He threw the ticket away.
He understood now. Love had made him its sorry bitch.
Faye caught him up at Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side. It was nighttime. The lights behind the falls made them glow red and blue. It was a rather romantic setting, Eames reflected. She slipped up beside him and they stood, not speaking, for a few minutes.
“Make a hell of a kick, wouldn't it?” said Eames. He added quietly, “If one was looking to wake up.”
She took his gloved hand in hers and said, “Come on.”
They went back to Eames' hotel. In his room he peeled out of his coat and she took off her jacket and her hat and he looked at her, and thought that once upon a time he'd thought he might settle down with her one day, when he'd finally satisfied his wanderlust. She looked back at him steadily.
“What have you been up to?” she asked.
“Inception.”
“Did it take?”
Eames shook his head. It's safer that nobody else knows. He was there with Robert Fischer in that first level of the dream, waiting it out for a week with him before the timer ran out naturally, and he knew it took. It went exactly as they intended, that simple seed of an idea taking root and infecting Fischer's whole body. It reminded him a lot of the idea that had gripped him after his one night with Arthur, growing and growing until it paralysed him under the weight of its inexorable truth: I love him.
“Too bad,” said Faye.
She was pretty as ever in the rosy light of the lamp, her cheeks still pink from the cold. Eames' heart hurt. He wished she were somebody else.
“I'm not going to sleep with you tonight,” he said.
It was the first time he'd ever said it. Surprise registered in her face.
“Why not?”
He studied her, Faye-Faye who grew up with him, who knows and keeps his secrets, who followed him loyally into dreamshare just to be that much nearer to him. And he couldn't tell her this. He somehow couldn't make himself say it.
“What's wrong?” she asked, and it struck him that he pitied her, because she liked him and his parents had been taking advantage of that fact for years-and he had, too. She had never asked for this.
He didn't tell her there was someone else. Instead, he said, “You should leave me alone from now on.”
She blinked. Her face became shuttered, and he could tell he'd hurt her.
“Your parents say they love you and miss you,” she said tonelessly, picking up her jacket, “and you can come home and visit any time you want.”
But it's not as simple as that, he thought, watching her leave and slam the door shut behind her. It's just not.
Arthur called him up eventually to let him know that there was a new job, just them and Ariadne to build, and he wanted to know if Eames was interested. Because Eames is and has always been a greedy man, he said yes.
This would, of course, be the best decision of his life.
+Eames is furious.
All day and night he had sat, wolf-shaped, on the shore of the rocky island off of Ketchikan, waiting and waiting for the boat to return with his mate; sometimes lying down and crossing his paws and crying softly to himself. Whenever the thought crossed him that he should get up and take action, his dumb canine mind had cried back: What if the boat returned, and he wasn't there to meet it?
Waking up at dawn once the full moon is over, human-formed once again, Eames is so furious with himself he can barely see straight. Twenty-four hours he's wasted waiting on something that isn't going to happen. He changes long enough to make the swim back to Ketchikan and lope into the woods where he'd left his clothing; then he gets to work.
Providence is on his side. The sky is clear enough to take a plane out of town today. He charters the first aircraft willing to go up, taking with him only the barest essentials and the PASIV from their hotel room. From Ketchikan he goes to Juneau, then catches a flight to Vancouver. There, he purchases a ticket on the next flight bound to Toronto, where he'll connect to a flight to England.
He knows where they've taken Arthur, after all.
He has to wait forty minutes in Vancouver Airport and he can't sit still. He jostles a leg, chewing his cuticles obsessively. Then he gets up and paces. He can't breathe. His mate is out of sight, gone. He could be anywhere. He could be dead and Eames wouldn't know. He's sick with rage at himself for lingering in Alaska so long.
But maybe they haven't reached England yet either, he thinks suddenly. They would have had to stop somewhere on the way for the full moon. They couldn't have made it to England in a day.
He pulls out his cell phone and punches in a number by memory.
It rings once. Twice.
Then his mother answers.
“Hello?”
“What the hell have you done?” Eames growls. His voice crackles dangerously.
His mother hesitates. Then she says, quietly:
“Thomas?”
“Yes.”
“Oh ... oh, honey.” Her elation stabs Eames with impatience. “It's so good-”
“Stop,” he bites out, cutting her off. “Alizé took Arthur away. Tell me why.”
Her voice becomes muffled. He can hear her talking to somebody else. After a moment, another voice is on the line: his father's.
“Thomas?”
“What the hell is going on?” Eames barks, stopping short in the middle of the terminal, his hand clenched tightly around the phone. A young couple pointedly steer their stroller away from him. He must look like a mad man, his hair scraggly and unparted, dirt still embedded under his fingernails.
“I don't know what you mean,” his mother says. “Alizé took-?”
“Arthur, he came after us with Faye and Micah and he took Arthur, I think they might have hurt him. You told them to-”
“No,” his father interrupted, gently. “Of course we didn't.”
“Micah was with them, I smelled him there.” Eames' chest clenches tight, because Micah is the pack beta, and Micah being there means it was an order. It must have been. Alizé may be a wild card, but not Micah. “You sent them.”
“We sent them to talk to you,” his mother says, in the same hushed voice as her husband. “We ... we wanted to ask you to come home and bring Arthur with you. We wanted to meet him. That's all.”
He's so angry it burns his throat; he wants to scream with it, like he had after watching that boat disappear over the horizon. He wants to rage at them, he wants to tear into them with everything he's got, but he can't, so he bites down on everything until he can grit out:
“If you wanted to know whether I'd taken a mate you could have called and asked me.”
They're both quiet.
“That's not why ...” his mother starts, but Eames cuts her off again.
“Arthur isn't my mate. He's a colleague I fool around with and now Alizé's gone and kidnapped him because he thinks that's what you want.”
“If there's some way to repair this-” his father says.
“Tell Arthur whenever they get there that I'm on my way, if they didn't tear him apart last night. Or vice versa,” he adds retrospectively.
He ends the call. He's squeezing the phone so tight the plastic casing creaks in his hand.
He shoves the phone into his pocket and forces himself to sit back down. His lungs are painfully constricted, like he won't breathe until Arthur's in his arms again.
+++
Eames' parents are not what Arthur expected, somehow.
He's not sure what he did expect-maybe a whole group of cold, calculating werewolves who would interrogate him. Maybe the kind of elitist, anti-human extremists that get themselves in the news, usually for being arrested every other week.
Eames' parents are ... different.
When Arthur arrives with his escort at Eames' childhood home, a weathered stone house nestled amidst picturesque hills dotted with sheep, the Pendleton-Eameses are watching a game of soccer (football, Arthur's brain corrects itself) on TV.
Not feasting on raw meat. Not making a blood sacrifice to the moon gods. Not doing anything Arthur might have wildly imagined a pair of werewolves to be doing in their own home.
They turn off the TV when Micah presents Arthur to them, Alizé and Faye loitering in the lobby at the front of the house. Eames' mother, the Lady Pendleton-Eames, is quick to rise and embrace her brother. Eames' father is slower to get to his feet, and Arthur sees why: he has to reach for a polished wood cane to help support him. Arthur bites back his surprise, even though a hundred questions are thrumming through his head.
As soon as Lord Pendleton-Eames is on his feet, it hits Arthur like a punch, all at once, something he'd somehow never considered before:
Eames' parents are the alphas of his pack.
Arthur can feel all the fur on his tail flatten at once. He does his best to look impassive. They seem just as curious about him, but he detects something else in their expressions-contrition.
“Arthur,” Eames' mother says first. “It's lovely to have you in our home.”
Arthur clenches his jaw. He can't say the same. He'd rather be in Ketchikan right now, and that's saying something. And the overwhelming werewolf-scent is making his headache worse.
Eames' father limps the few steps forward to close the distance between them, his grey eyes intense and familiar. He offers a hand.
“May I?” he asks.
Arthur extends his own hand, and is again surprised when Eames' father clasps it gently and lifts it, leaning down so that he can sniff over the pulse point in Arthur's wrist. Arthur fights not to snatch his hand away, but his tail prickles in his pant leg with disconcert.
“I see,” Eames' father says quietly at last, releasing him. “Thank you.”
Eames' mother comes closer and does the same thing, again asking Arthur's permission, and he just nods, stymied. When she's smelled him, she exchanges a lingering look with her husband. They seem to be communing silently for a moment.
“I regret that we have to meet you under these circumstances,” Eames' father says finally, turning back to Arthur. His unwavering eye contact makes the fur on Arthur's tail prickle again. “We meant to ask our son to come home and extend the invitation to you. I'm afraid Alizé sometimes interprets my orders a little loosely.”
He smiles, embarrassed and a little troubled at the same time.
“I can see that,” Arthur says.
Micah is gone. It's just him and the ... alphas, he thinks. It's unsettling, but he doesn't feel in danger. They're so ... calm, so quietly assured of their power. Even Arthur can't help but feel grudging respect, and he doesn't even know them. This is the effect alphas have, though, on wolves and humans and whatever Arthur is alike. When Eames spoke of the parents who'd cast him out and banned him, this isn't what Arthur had in mind.
“Please sit,” Eames' mother says suddenly. “Would you like some tea?”
Arthur nods, and she's gone, slipping through the door and leaving him alone with the pack leader.
Arthur sits on a chair adjacent to the television. After a pause, Eames' father sits too, slowly, gripping his cane.
“Not every wound can be transformed away, unfortunately,” he says in answer to Arthur's open stare, smiling again and touching his leg. “This is an old injury from a challenge to my authority.”
“A hazard of the job, I suppose,” Arthur says.
The man chuckles. He never loses the intensity in his eyes, though. They're like Eames' eyes, somewhere between blue and green, almost a steely grey colour. Arthur surreptitiously wipes his palms down over his slacks.
“May I ask what you are?” Eames' father says, when a moment of silence has elapsed.
“Slightly feline.”
“You don't have a name for your kind?”
“No.” He feels a little let down. Maybe somewhere in the back of his mind, he'd hoped the werewolves might have answers. “I'm the only one of my kind that I know of.”
“That must be hard,” says Eames' father evenly.
“I guess.” Arthur wipes his palms again. He's already starting to feel hot all the time. How soon will his change in hormones be noticeable?
“Do you change?”
It takes him a second to work out what the man means. He shakes his head. “I was born with feline ears. And I have a tail.”
He doesn't really mean to say it; it just happens. Maybe it's those familiar eyes, or that his scent is similar to Eames', but Arthur feels quite secure here.
“Fascinating,” says Eames' father.
They wait for Eames' mother to return. Arthur thinks about what he knows of werewolves and their mating customs. The males are sexual beings who will willingly mount either gender, not confined to the labels and prejudices of humans-Arthur remembered this fact because it put him in mind of his own attitude toward sexual preference. Maybe that fact will make this less uncomfortable, anyway, werewolves not being picky-because they must know that Arthur and Eames are at least fucking, there's no way that would have slipped past Faye and Alizé in Toronto.
But then there's the inescapable fact that despite their nondiscrimination, same-sex mated pairs are rare among werewolves. It just seems to happen that way. Werewolves come with such a powerful drive to procreate, and at the end of the day they'll almost always find their proper love in someone who can give them cubs.
Except Eames.
Alizé is talking quietly in the lobby to Faye. With normal human hearing Arthur wouldn't catch it, but even without his ears, his hearing is sharper than most. They don't realize that.
“Disgusting,” Alizé is murmuring. “I don't know how Eames does it. Like fucking a bloody alley cat.”
Eames' father is gazing distractedly out the window. Arthur sinks back into his seat. He's starting to wish he'd just stayed in Alaska.
+Eames' mother returns with a teapot and cups on a tray. She fixes Arthur's tea for him. He takes a polite sip and nearly burns his tongue, but doesn't care. She sits on the couch next to her husband, so they're both facing him. And here it comes. They're going to tell him to fuck off away from Eames because it isn't proper for a werewolf to have a male mate. He takes a deep breath.
“Thomas gave us a call earlier today,” Eames' mother says, before Arthur can speak. “He ... explained the situation.”
Arthur wets his lips with another sip of tea. Thomas, that's Eames. “Oh.”
“We're so sorry to have gotten you tangled up in this,” Eames' father says, and he sounds it, too. “We didn't mean for it to go this far. We had only heard that our son might have a romantic interest in you, and wanted to meet you. Apparently we were mistaken.”
Mistaken.
So Eames lied to them.
Why?
Arthur just nods dumbly when he realizes they're waiting for a response, and takes another gulp of tea. He feels oddly cold now, instead of hot, for the first time in hours. This is possibly the most uncomfortable situation he's ever been in, and the potential for uncomfortable situations is limitless when one is hiding a tail under one's clothes.
“He told us to tell you he's on his way here,” Eames' mother cuts back in. “You're free to leave, of course, but we made up a guest bedroom for you, if you wanted to rest ...?”
“Thank you,” Arthur mumbles. Being utterly confused and in a huge amount of discomfort doesn't leave him bereft of his manners, after all. “That would be great.”
“And of course you must have supper with us,” she says quickly. “It's the least we can do.”
“Thank you,” Arthur says again. He's too hungry to refuse the offer. Eames' mother beams, relieved.
Supper turns out to be duck a l'orange. Alizé and Micah are both gone, but Faye joins them, sitting quietly at the end of the table. While they make their way through a salad course, Eames' parents ply Arthur with questions. They seem to be genuinely, earnestly fascinated by him. For that reason Arthur answers any questions he's able to. He tells them about his mom, and what growing up was like, and why he decided to join the army, and which of his senses he's learned differ from humans', like how moving things tend to jump to the forefront of his vision. In spite of the discomfort of his impending fever, he finds himself relaxing gradually. Talking to the werewolves is-nice, actually, they listen intently and they don't judge him, because they're different too.
They tell Arthur about their pack. Their family has lived here for generations, claiming the hills as their own and learning to live semi-comfortably with the humans around them. And they tell him about Eames.
“It's very common for a young male to venture away from the pack, especially an alpha,” Eames' mother explains. “Of course, a father and son will get along peacefully enough, but the sons do eventually reach an age where they get a little more hot-headed, need some more space. That's usually the time when they find a mate, away from their family.”
“That's what we thought would happen with Thomas,” Eames' father says ruefully. “We told him he was welcome home when he'd found somebody. That was years ago. He should have settled down by now.”
“We're not getting any younger,” Lady Pendleton-Eames adds.
“Is that necessary, for him to have a mate before he can take over the pack?” Arthur asks.
Eames' father nods and his wife says, “It's important, in our culture.”
“Why?” Arthur asks. Faye suddenly looks up, shooting him a glare, and he fumbles. “I only ask because I don't know very much about your-culture-”
“Of course, Arthur. We don't mind answering your questions,” the Lady says gently. “We like to know that our pack will have a future, that's all.”
Arthur nods and focuses on his duck, which is a little greasier than chicken but incredible to somebody who hasn't eaten in a day. He wonders grouchily why Faye is even there. She's not a very high-ranking wolf in this pack, judging by the way Micah and especially Alizé speak to her. Eames' parents simply don't address her very much, but when they do, they're kind. When she excuses herself from the table and vanishes upstairs before the dessert course (custard trifle), Arthur makes the uncomfortable realization that she lives here with them-when she's at home, at least.
Eames' mother leads him upstairs once he's finished a last cup of tea. On their way up to the third floor, he thinks about why Eames had tried so stubbornly to keep Arthur away from his family. You don't know what they'll do to you, he'd said. But they're not doing anything. Eames had said he'd been cast out, but they make it sound like he left to join the military and simply chose never to come home again.
Disgusting, Alizé had called him. Maybe-
Maybe Eames has been keeping Arthur away from his family not to protect him, but because he's ashamed. Ashamed to have taken Arthur for a mate. Freakish, male, (disgusting) not-even-human Arthur. Maybe being cast out was a lie to make Arthur think he couldn't go home, rather than wouldn't.
Or maybe they wouldn't be this hospitable if they knew the truth, and Eames is protecting him.
Arthur's head hurts.
“There's a towel here if you'd like to bathe. The lavatory is the third door on the right there. If there's anything else you need-”
“Thank you,” Arthur says, automatically. The room is cosy and dimly-lit and smells like dust and fabric softener, so sharp it's almost enough to burn Arthur's doubly-sensitive nose at the moment. There's just a dresser and a double bed, freshly made up. He sits down on the mattress. “I'll just wait for Eames to get here.”
“Of course,” she says, and with a last gentle smile, she leaves.
Again, Arthur wasn't exactly expecting anything when he got here.
But maybe-somewhere in the back of his mind-some tiny, silly part of him had wondered-
If he has no species or family of his own, maybe Eames' family would accept him?
They're very nice, but he thinks about what Eames' mother said about the future of the pack, and recalls how important offspring are to Eames' kind. What reason would they have to be hospitable if they knew that Arthur is the reason their bloodline will end at Eames? His imagination makes up scenarios in which they forbid him to ever see Eames again under pain of death, and he digs his nails into the mattress anxiously. Then he forces himself to relax. They don't seem like elitists. And they do seem genuinely distressed at the way Alizé had interpreted their-invitation.
He gets in the shower to help clear his thoughts, and also because he can still smell traces of the plane on himself. When he gets out, he finds a folded-up pair of sleep clothes on the foot of his bed-a little large for him, but comfortable. He dresses, and almost doesn't see Faye enter his room without knocking.
“You should tell them the truth,” she says bluntly. Eames is not here: she has no need for false friendliness. “They're nice people. They deserve to know.”
“Eames already told them,” Arthur says dismissively, turning to face her. She scowls.
“The truth. I know you're his mate.”
“And what makes you say that?” he asks, feigning indifference.
“Because Alizé told me to distract Eames in Ketchikan,” she says. “But it didn't work. He didn't want me.”
Arthur pushes his hair off his face, trying vainly to tame the damp strands. “Have you considered that you're just annoying?”
“I practically rubbed myself all over him,” she says, tone becoming brittler. “And he barely looked at me. An unmated male doesn't ignore a receptive female, Arthur. Especially Eames. I should know.”
“So?” Arthur demands, swallowing the jealous anger that rips through him.
“So he was headed toward the town. Toward you. Eames didn't want me because he'd rather have been fucking you.”
Something snaps dully into place in Arthur's brain.
“Eames was in his wolf form,” he says.
“Yes, he was.”
“So why would he come for me?”
“To mate you,” she says, like it's obvious and he's just being stupid. She smiles humourlessly. “Werewolves love sex, Arthur. Doing it when you're both changed, that's considered one of the most intimate things you can do. He'd do it with a female werewolf, so why not with you?”
“Because it's not possible,” Arthur says, trying to rationalize. “Physically. Is it?”
“Not unless you helped him out, probably.” She eyes Arthur like this possibility wouldn't surprise her, him letting himself get fucked by a two-hundred-pound wolf. “But he'd maul you to death trying.”
That sends a little trickle of nausea into Arthur's stomach. So that's why Eames steadfastly refuses to change in front of him.
What's worse than a werewolf seeing you as its lunch? Arthur had asked. The answer, of course: being seen as its mate. Good Lord.
Eames knew, he realizes angrily. Does he wander around every full moon, sniffing and searching for his mate?
“So why not just tell them?” he demands, pushing that thought away for the time being. She scowls.
“Because mating goes both ways. I don't know how much Eames has explained to you, but werewolves mate for life, and they're serious about their partners. You think I haven't heard about you, Arthur? Everyone in the business says you're the best there is, but you're a robot. The only people you've ever been close to are those architects, the Cobbs, and they both went off the deep end. You've got no attachments. You left a man behind in Tokyo knowing he'd be tortured by Cobol Engineering. I don't know what you think you're doing with Eames,” she finishes coolly, “but if you're leading him on somehow, I swear-”
“You know nothing about me,” Arthur snaps, rankled. His tailtip wants to flick in its confines angrily. “Just because you're in love with him-”
Her eyes flash furiously. “I just came to tell you that you should either tell them the truth if you're going to be the reason Eames doesn't come home, or make things easier for everyone and bail on him now rather than later when you'll make everything much worse.”
“I'm not going to bail on Eames,” Arthur says flatly. “And I'm not stopping him from coming home.”
“You've always been the reason he doesn't come home,” she says. “You just didn't know it.”
She slips out of the room, leaving Arthur even more baffled and angry than he was before.
His head throbs, and it's not just the headache. The fever is starting to catch him up. He wants Eames, and he's not sure how much more time he's got.
continue
Pairing: catboy!Arthur/werewolf!Eames
Words: ~17,600 (~28k overall)
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Arthur is lucky to have Eames. Somebody just as different, someone who understands when he wakes up in the middle of the night feeling like he's all alone in the universe. Eames makes that feeling go away.
Eames, however, is not alone.
Warnings: Knotting, heat, references to bestiality.
Author's Note: Pavlov's Bell verse! I motored through the majority of this in a single weekend. NANOWRIMO'S GOT NOTHIN' ON ME. Anyway, in 17,640 words there are bound to be some typos, so be gentle. xD And rejoice! It's done! --OR IS IT?? (The answer is no.)
(ETA: Look at this motherfucking fanart.
ETA2: Also look at this and this fanart by plasticwrappixi!)
part one, part two.
Arthur drifts murkily to consciousness feeling rather like a truck has run over his skull. Even his blood seems to be moving sluggishly in his veins. His tongue feels like a carpet. He can hear Alizé's voice and another, unfamiliar male's. He keeps his breathing deep and even, his eyes closed, to feign sleep.
“... for the pack leaders to decide, not you,” the other male voice is snapping out. “We've already dealt Eames a massive insult by kidnapping his partner. You told me he would be on his own, that we were to approach him and ask him to come with us. You said nothing about drugging him and then fighting Eames on our way out!”
“I was following orders,” Alizé hisses. “They said to bring Eames and his boyfriend home. I tell you, the second they caught wind of us they'd have been gone someplace where we couldn't track them. Trust me, Micah, the only way Eames will go home is if he thinks his mate is there.”
“And if he's not Eames' mate?” the other growls.
“You didn't see them in Toronto,” Alizé states flatly. “He's Eames' mate.”
Arthur's brain is throbbing thickly in his skull. He takes a slow breath in through his mouth, surreptitiously, to better taste the air. The wild, musky odour of recently-transformed werewolf hangs heavily in the air-Arthur's a little horrified when the scent sends a little thrill straight to his cock (he can't help that some of his favourite memories of sex are attached to that smell). He can smell that Faye is in the room as well as the males, lurking off to one side. He can smell the high tempers and anxiety in the room, too. His hands are bound behind his back-duct tape, he thinks, testing the bonds-so that he's lying on his arms. His shoulders cramp acutely.
“We'll figure this out when we get home,” Micah finishes. “It's not up to us anyway.”
“I don't think-” Faye starts to speaks up quietly, uncertainly, but Alizé cuts her off with a snarl.
“You,” he spits in the direction of Faye's voice, “you said that sedative would start to work instantly. He almost put a knife through my shoulder in the car park.”
“I misjudged his weight. He's heavier than he looks.” Faye sounds sullen. “And I said it would start to work instantly. It did.”
Alizé snorts. “The two things you're good for, and you fuck up one and won't even try the second.”
“We are not extracting from him, Alizé,” Faye snaps, and there's a new, authoritative bite in her voice. “Extracting from an extractor is nearly impossible to begin with, and they say he's the best there is. He'd run circles around me. If you've got loads of money to hire an even better extractor than him, then you're holding out on me, and Eames would already be on us by the time we could do it. It's a stupid idea, I'm telling you. There are much easier ways to get information. Like asking.”
“As if he'd be truthful. You know Eames has taught him what to say.”
The more conscious Arthur becomes, the worse the pain in his arms grows, the more aware he becomes of the ache in his shoulders. At last he has to fidget, trying to relieve the cramping of his muscles. The three bickering werewolves are all looking at him when he opens his eyes.
They're in a hotel room. The curtains are drawn over the windows. Arthur catalogues each detail quietly.
“Hello,” the unfamiliar male, Micah, breaks the ensuing silence. “Are you comfortable?”
It's a stupid question. Arthur has been unconscious for over twenty-four hours. His mouth is dry and tacky, his head is throbbing, he has to go to the bathroom, and his arms are ready to fall off, numb under his own weight.
He pushes himself upright and stretches his hands over his head, then down in front of him, wincing at the creak and pop in his shoulder followed by the painful tingle of blood starting to re-circulate.
“More comfortable now, thank you,” he says.
They're still staring at him like they've never seen a double-jointed person before.
“My name is Micah,” Micah says finally. “I'm sorry we had to meet under such disagreeable circumstances.” He approaches Arthur like he's a live grenade, pulling out a pocket knife slowly and deliberately so that Arthur can see, and begins to saw at the duct tape. “There was a ... miscommunication.”
“I see,” Arthur says. His voice is dry, hoarse from lack of use.
Micah severs the last strands of duct tape. He takes a not-so-surreptitious sniff before he gets up. “We're going to go to England. You don't have to come with us,” he says, with a pointed glare at Alizé, “but Eames will probably rendezvous with us there, if you'd like an escort. Is there anything you need at the moment?”
Arthur looks at them while he peels the tape off his wrists and rubs life back into his hands. A notion is occurring to him, a thought he's had several times around Eames. Their sense of smell isn't as good as his. Not by half, at least; not when they're in this form. As wolves, it might be different, but like this, their sense of smell is nothing on Arthur's. And so while he can smell that Faye is a little afraid of him, and that Alizé is still angry, and the cigarette Micah smoked before the moon came out, Micah hadn't even been able to smell Eames in Ketchikan, probably until they'd entered the hotel room. And they can't smell Arthur's subtly shifting pheromones until they get very close to him.
He has a couple of days before the heat will take him over entirely, and then the smell will be impossible to miss or ignore; but until then, they simply don't know what to make of him.
“I'd like a shower,” he answers Micah decisively.
To his surprise, both Micah and Alizé look at Faye. She looks a bit surprised to be put on the spot, too.
“It ... it should be fine if we sweep the bathroom first,” she says hesitantly. When both males make for the bathroom to do just that, she avoids Arthur's eyes and shrugs. “I hear stories. You murdered your way through a warehouse full of armed guards with nothing but a pen and the handcuffs attached to your wrists. We're not taking chances.”
Some Krav Maga training and the ability to see in the dark had helped in that scenario, but Arthur just shrugs modestly.
He makes his shower quick. They haven't left him much, but there is a bottle of fragrant shampoo, which he uses liberally as a body wash. That should cover him for the next day or so. They've taken away the hair dryer, so he takes pains not to get his tail wet, so that it won't be dripping down his pants all day.
While he towels off and dresses, he thinks. Despite shooting him with a tranquilizer and leaving him tied up on a bed for a day and a night, the werewolves don't seem unduly hostile. At least Micah doesn't. Binding his arms was probably a precaution against him leaving in case he were to wake while they were out during the full moon. It would seem their mission really is to get him to England, where he's certain Eames will be waiting to tear their throats out. Arthur wouldn't mind doing some of that himself. His tail is bristling furiously.
What he really wants to do is knife Alizé properly, maybe give the other two a few wounds to remember him by as well and then escape. But there's no place he can really go except to Eames, thanks to his impending heat, wherever Eames is now; and he senses the werewolves aren't a threat to him right now. There's no point taking risks when he's not in immediate danger. He'll go with them, he supposes. Maybe Eames will even be there as soon as they land, to whisk him away so they can suffer his heat together in peace.
When he leaves the bathroom, Micah is talking in a low voice into a cell phone while Faye packs their bags. Alizé, slumped in a chair nearest to the bathroom, smells Arthur coming and turns his head sharply, nostrils flaring. He gets up and starts to walk closer.
At once Arthur slides a foot between Alizé's and sweeps his legs out from under him. As soon as he's on the ground he twists to get his hands under him, and Arthur drops on him and grabs him in a guillotine chokehold. He forces Alizé to the ground, pulling with his arms and bearing down with his legs, and slowly squeezes off Alizé's air flow.
“If you touch me,” he says, feeling his tail ripple with cold anger like an electric current has passed through it, “whatever you think Eames would do to you will look like a joke. Are you listening?”
Micah hauls him off and pushes him away before Alizé can respond. Arthur rounds on the other werewolf, ready to defend himself, but Micah is standing back, unconcerned now that Alizé is free. Picking himself up off the ground, Alizé snarls furiously, “I'll kill you for that.”
“Piss off.” Micah shoves him back with one hand when he starts toward Arthur. “You've already been told not to touch him. Eames would flay you for sniffing too close, pet or not.”
Alizé scowls. Arthur could argue, tell them he's nobody's pet, thank you very much, but he doesn't know enough about the pack politics to know whether it would be better or worse to confirm himself as Eames' mate.
He decides to stay quiet on that front for now, and instead says coolly, “I've decided you can take me to England.”
Alizé looks irritated at his supercilious tone. Micah, however, looks relieved.
“I'm glad,” he says. “Alright then. Alizé, get our things together. I'll call a taxi.”
They'd taken some of Arthur's possessions from the room, including his passport, though not the PASIV-hopefully Eames doesn't forget to take it with him, or Arthur will kick his ass (once Eames is through with Arthur's). He follows the three werewolves grudgingly out to the parking lot, their individual scents grating his nose.
“Here.” Faye is holding out a pill to him when he looks up. Her face is inscrutable. “For your headache.”
“Thanks,” Arthur mutters, taking it.
She blinks, still expressionless. “It'll knock you out again. Alizé wants you to take it.”
Arthur holds the pill up, then drops it to the pavement and crushes it underfoot. Faye shrugs.
“I'll tell him you took it. It doesn't matter. You're still coming off the other drugs.”
She's right; it doesn't matter that he didn't take the pill. They cab it to the airport and Arthur realizes, bemusedly, that they're in Seattle-bemused, because his thoughts are already a sluggish haze again.
Baggage check-in at the airport is a blur. They have to wait at their gate for awhile and by the time they board the plane, Arthur's nearly unconscious again. He and Faye are seated together; Alizé and Micah are nearby. He has time to think that that's one comfort, that he doesn't have to spend all those hours in close quarters with either of the male werewolves; but then he just decides that Faye-taking out her headphones and settling in-is no danger to him for the time being. He sleeps.
+He dreams again.
Eames is sinking into him slowly. He stops on every inch or so and just watches Arthur pant for breath, watches the sweat pool in the dip between Arthur's collarbones. Every time he starts to push in again, Arthur gasps and groans.
“You can take it,” Eames whispers. “Fuck, look at you. So bloody tight for me.”
He leans down, forcing Arthur's thighs apart a little more, and Arthur whines. He doesn't know if he wants to tell Eames to just shove it in him already, or stop altogether, but when he opens his mouth, only a sob comes out. Sweat runs into his eyes, making them sting.
Eames' patience is superhuman. Arthur's too tight when they've been apart for a few days, and Eames is determined that Arthur should be able to walk afterward, unlike their first couple times-booze and heat tend to cloud Arthur's ability to judge pain considerably. He just didn't know it would hurt this much. In this memory it's been a week since the last time. They've spent an hour on foreplay alone, he's already come once, he shouldn't still be this tight-but it hurts.
“More,” he gasps.
Eames grins and pushes his hips forward, sliding steadily in and not stopping. Arthur wails, arches off the bed, claws his back, and Eames doesn't stop. He doesn't stop until his hips are flush with Arthur's ass, and then Arthur feels Eames' hand at his face, stroking and petting and soothing.
“I'm in. I'm in. I've got you.”
Arthur just clenches his nails deep in Eames' back until he doesn't feel like he's in danger of being split in half, until he can open his eyes, blinking away the stinging salt-sweat. Eames is equally rigid above him, and Arthur realizes he's been lashing his tail against the bed in a blind bid to ease the stretched-out burn of his muscles. The rhythmic constricting sensation of the muscles in the base of his tail around Eames' cock must be incredible.
“Okay,” he says finally, when he can breathe again, “okay, move now.”
“Alright.” Eames' voice is strained. He rocks his hips, sliding back an inch and then forward again, and even this slight movement makes Arthur's spine arch. He builds momentum slowly, and every time he pushes in the breath is squeezed out of Arthur's chest, like Eames' cock is pressing directly up against his diaphragm. He'd believe it; Eames is so fucking deep, filling so much of Arthur. He writhes on the girth of Eames.
It's not rushed or frantic, even though they've been apart for a week; it's slow, and intense, with Eames' eyes burning into his. They kiss without any kind of finesse, and Eames' mouth is hot and possessive. It's starting to hit Arthur, Eames' scent doesn't bother him so much anymore. In fact, when he smells like this-sweat and sex, musky and masculine-Arthur even likes it. It's stupid, he thinks, how close they have to be, how they both need to touch each other, sometimes making the angle of their hips awkward; they have to kiss, they have to press their bodies together, it's a mindless compulsion that neither of them can escape. Maybe they need to smell themselves on each other, afterward-
-and a new feeling rushes through Arthur as he opens himself up more for Eames: The feeling of being claimed. Wanted.
It shouldn't feel good, to realize that Eames is marking him like a possession with every bruise on Arthur's hips, every bite mark on his neck. But it does. It feels good.
He's wanted.
He blinks awake slowly. He's hard in his pants.
He takes a quick glance around and, affirming that Faye is absorbed in a movie, does a surreptitious waistband-tuck to conceal his erection. With the clamour of different scents in the confined space, maybe she can't smell his arousal.
Christ, but that felt real-he can still feel the phantom ache of Eames inside him. He presses himself deep into his seat.
What if Eames doesn't get to him in time?
No. He can't think of that.
His head is killing him. It's a long flight to England.
+++
After Reno, Arthur and Eames didn't work together again until the Fischer job.
In the span of time between those two jobs, Eames thought about him every day.
This is the thing: it was never supposed to be serious, between them. Eames knew this. At first, it had been all about the hunt. Like Arthur was a piece of meat. Eames wanted to touch and smell and taste him all over, and the hunger burned him up. This nameless desire haunted his jaws when he prowled the woods under the ghostly light of a full moon, knowing that there was something he ought to be stalking, but not knowing what it was. The sheer want made the hinges of his jaws ache and salivate.
He wanted to run Arthur down and mount him over and over and over to the point of exhaustion. Until he burnt that itch right out of his system. Then he could leave Arthur alone. Somehow, Arthur's emotions never entered into the equation. Eames is far too greedy and selfish a man for that.
And then Reno happened, and everything changed.
The memory clung to him. It refused to be washed away. At night he remembered the way Arthur had smelled when his hips bucked with helpless arousal. How tight he'd been. The silky fur of his tail.
And yet this memory wasn't a carnal, lustful haze. It was fascination. He wanted more of Arthur. Wanted to know what he'd smell like when he was fresh out of the shower. How he takes his coffee when he's not mainlining caffeine for the purposes of a job. What compels him to follow a man like Cobb around the globe. He wanted to know where Arthur comes from and what he'll look like in twenty years, if he'll have slowed down at all.
He just wanted more.
And it made him long to fill his lungs with Arthur's scent, every second of every day, just to know that he was nearby.
This had never happened to him before. Eames is not a sentimental sort of person. He's an alpha male, for God's sake. He could not be pining over Arthur; it doesn't work like that. He was stronger than that. He'd fucked all sorts of people around the globe and never once gotten this attached.
But Arthur's always been different, of course.
Angry with himself for his childish crush, Eames spent all the time in between jobs trying in vain to drive Arthur out of his head. All his efforts were shot to hell the second Cobb found him in Mombasa and told him there was a new job.
In Paris, Arthur was just as prickly, just as condescending, just as wickedly competent. Eames made the plans, taking over easily, because it's in his nature to lead. Arthur tore his plans apart and made them better. Ariadne watched them bemusedly, and Eames found himself thinking that a person who didn't know any better might mistake his and Arthur's constant back-and-forth banter as something other than what it was. Something like affection.
He knew there was nothing like that sparking in Arthur's eyes every time their gazes met, though. If anything, Arthur hated him now more than ever. And because Eames didn't know what to do with this rejection, he settled back into the role he was accustomed to, and sniped back like a five-year-old tugging Arthur's pigtails.
At night, though, when he was all alone in Sydney, he let himself think about that striped tail hiding under Arthur's tailored suit, and how he would give anything to run it through his fingers again. How beautifully Arthur had fallen apart underneath him. How he would never, ever get the opportunity to see Arthur like that again, because he'd ruined everything in Reno. The only thing to do was to stop thinking about him-but Eames thought about him all the time.
Even when the Fischer job was over and done with and Arthur fell off the map and Eames went back to scamming his way through various gambling dens just because he could, he thought about Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, every beat of his heart to the tune of Arthur's name. He wasn't himself. He stumbled around cities in a daze. He found secluded places to transform on full moons and howled his heart out to the sky, aching with loneliness. He was the most pathetic specimen of an alpha male he'd ever seen in his life. Half-crazed, he put out feelers, found Arthur doing a job in Budapest and had actually bought himself a plane ticket when he realized what he was doing. He threw the ticket away.
He understood now. Love had made him its sorry bitch.
Faye caught him up at Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side. It was nighttime. The lights behind the falls made them glow red and blue. It was a rather romantic setting, Eames reflected. She slipped up beside him and they stood, not speaking, for a few minutes.
“Make a hell of a kick, wouldn't it?” said Eames. He added quietly, “If one was looking to wake up.”
She took his gloved hand in hers and said, “Come on.”
They went back to Eames' hotel. In his room he peeled out of his coat and she took off her jacket and her hat and he looked at her, and thought that once upon a time he'd thought he might settle down with her one day, when he'd finally satisfied his wanderlust. She looked back at him steadily.
“What have you been up to?” she asked.
“Inception.”
“Did it take?”
Eames shook his head. It's safer that nobody else knows. He was there with Robert Fischer in that first level of the dream, waiting it out for a week with him before the timer ran out naturally, and he knew it took. It went exactly as they intended, that simple seed of an idea taking root and infecting Fischer's whole body. It reminded him a lot of the idea that had gripped him after his one night with Arthur, growing and growing until it paralysed him under the weight of its inexorable truth: I love him.
“Too bad,” said Faye.
She was pretty as ever in the rosy light of the lamp, her cheeks still pink from the cold. Eames' heart hurt. He wished she were somebody else.
“I'm not going to sleep with you tonight,” he said.
It was the first time he'd ever said it. Surprise registered in her face.
“Why not?”
He studied her, Faye-Faye who grew up with him, who knows and keeps his secrets, who followed him loyally into dreamshare just to be that much nearer to him. And he couldn't tell her this. He somehow couldn't make himself say it.
“What's wrong?” she asked, and it struck him that he pitied her, because she liked him and his parents had been taking advantage of that fact for years-and he had, too. She had never asked for this.
He didn't tell her there was someone else. Instead, he said, “You should leave me alone from now on.”
She blinked. Her face became shuttered, and he could tell he'd hurt her.
“Your parents say they love you and miss you,” she said tonelessly, picking up her jacket, “and you can come home and visit any time you want.”
But it's not as simple as that, he thought, watching her leave and slam the door shut behind her. It's just not.
Arthur called him up eventually to let him know that there was a new job, just them and Ariadne to build, and he wanted to know if Eames was interested. Because Eames is and has always been a greedy man, he said yes.
This would, of course, be the best decision of his life.
+Eames is furious.
All day and night he had sat, wolf-shaped, on the shore of the rocky island off of Ketchikan, waiting and waiting for the boat to return with his mate; sometimes lying down and crossing his paws and crying softly to himself. Whenever the thought crossed him that he should get up and take action, his dumb canine mind had cried back: What if the boat returned, and he wasn't there to meet it?
Waking up at dawn once the full moon is over, human-formed once again, Eames is so furious with himself he can barely see straight. Twenty-four hours he's wasted waiting on something that isn't going to happen. He changes long enough to make the swim back to Ketchikan and lope into the woods where he'd left his clothing; then he gets to work.
Providence is on his side. The sky is clear enough to take a plane out of town today. He charters the first aircraft willing to go up, taking with him only the barest essentials and the PASIV from their hotel room. From Ketchikan he goes to Juneau, then catches a flight to Vancouver. There, he purchases a ticket on the next flight bound to Toronto, where he'll connect to a flight to England.
He knows where they've taken Arthur, after all.
He has to wait forty minutes in Vancouver Airport and he can't sit still. He jostles a leg, chewing his cuticles obsessively. Then he gets up and paces. He can't breathe. His mate is out of sight, gone. He could be anywhere. He could be dead and Eames wouldn't know. He's sick with rage at himself for lingering in Alaska so long.
But maybe they haven't reached England yet either, he thinks suddenly. They would have had to stop somewhere on the way for the full moon. They couldn't have made it to England in a day.
He pulls out his cell phone and punches in a number by memory.
It rings once. Twice.
Then his mother answers.
“Hello?”
“What the hell have you done?” Eames growls. His voice crackles dangerously.
His mother hesitates. Then she says, quietly:
“Thomas?”
“Yes.”
“Oh ... oh, honey.” Her elation stabs Eames with impatience. “It's so good-”
“Stop,” he bites out, cutting her off. “Alizé took Arthur away. Tell me why.”
Her voice becomes muffled. He can hear her talking to somebody else. After a moment, another voice is on the line: his father's.
“Thomas?”
“What the hell is going on?” Eames barks, stopping short in the middle of the terminal, his hand clenched tightly around the phone. A young couple pointedly steer their stroller away from him. He must look like a mad man, his hair scraggly and unparted, dirt still embedded under his fingernails.
“I don't know what you mean,” his mother says. “Alizé took-?”
“Arthur, he came after us with Faye and Micah and he took Arthur, I think they might have hurt him. You told them to-”
“No,” his father interrupted, gently. “Of course we didn't.”
“Micah was with them, I smelled him there.” Eames' chest clenches tight, because Micah is the pack beta, and Micah being there means it was an order. It must have been. Alizé may be a wild card, but not Micah. “You sent them.”
“We sent them to talk to you,” his mother says, in the same hushed voice as her husband. “We ... we wanted to ask you to come home and bring Arthur with you. We wanted to meet him. That's all.”
He's so angry it burns his throat; he wants to scream with it, like he had after watching that boat disappear over the horizon. He wants to rage at them, he wants to tear into them with everything he's got, but he can't, so he bites down on everything until he can grit out:
“If you wanted to know whether I'd taken a mate you could have called and asked me.”
They're both quiet.
“That's not why ...” his mother starts, but Eames cuts her off again.
“Arthur isn't my mate. He's a colleague I fool around with and now Alizé's gone and kidnapped him because he thinks that's what you want.”
“If there's some way to repair this-” his father says.
“Tell Arthur whenever they get there that I'm on my way, if they didn't tear him apart last night. Or vice versa,” he adds retrospectively.
He ends the call. He's squeezing the phone so tight the plastic casing creaks in his hand.
He shoves the phone into his pocket and forces himself to sit back down. His lungs are painfully constricted, like he won't breathe until Arthur's in his arms again.
+++
Eames' parents are not what Arthur expected, somehow.
He's not sure what he did expect-maybe a whole group of cold, calculating werewolves who would interrogate him. Maybe the kind of elitist, anti-human extremists that get themselves in the news, usually for being arrested every other week.
Eames' parents are ... different.
When Arthur arrives with his escort at Eames' childhood home, a weathered stone house nestled amidst picturesque hills dotted with sheep, the Pendleton-Eameses are watching a game of soccer (football, Arthur's brain corrects itself) on TV.
Not feasting on raw meat. Not making a blood sacrifice to the moon gods. Not doing anything Arthur might have wildly imagined a pair of werewolves to be doing in their own home.
They turn off the TV when Micah presents Arthur to them, Alizé and Faye loitering in the lobby at the front of the house. Eames' mother, the Lady Pendleton-Eames, is quick to rise and embrace her brother. Eames' father is slower to get to his feet, and Arthur sees why: he has to reach for a polished wood cane to help support him. Arthur bites back his surprise, even though a hundred questions are thrumming through his head.
As soon as Lord Pendleton-Eames is on his feet, it hits Arthur like a punch, all at once, something he'd somehow never considered before:
Eames' parents are the alphas of his pack.
Arthur can feel all the fur on his tail flatten at once. He does his best to look impassive. They seem just as curious about him, but he detects something else in their expressions-contrition.
“Arthur,” Eames' mother says first. “It's lovely to have you in our home.”
Arthur clenches his jaw. He can't say the same. He'd rather be in Ketchikan right now, and that's saying something. And the overwhelming werewolf-scent is making his headache worse.
Eames' father limps the few steps forward to close the distance between them, his grey eyes intense and familiar. He offers a hand.
“May I?” he asks.
Arthur extends his own hand, and is again surprised when Eames' father clasps it gently and lifts it, leaning down so that he can sniff over the pulse point in Arthur's wrist. Arthur fights not to snatch his hand away, but his tail prickles in his pant leg with disconcert.
“I see,” Eames' father says quietly at last, releasing him. “Thank you.”
Eames' mother comes closer and does the same thing, again asking Arthur's permission, and he just nods, stymied. When she's smelled him, she exchanges a lingering look with her husband. They seem to be communing silently for a moment.
“I regret that we have to meet you under these circumstances,” Eames' father says finally, turning back to Arthur. His unwavering eye contact makes the fur on Arthur's tail prickle again. “We meant to ask our son to come home and extend the invitation to you. I'm afraid Alizé sometimes interprets my orders a little loosely.”
He smiles, embarrassed and a little troubled at the same time.
“I can see that,” Arthur says.
Micah is gone. It's just him and the ... alphas, he thinks. It's unsettling, but he doesn't feel in danger. They're so ... calm, so quietly assured of their power. Even Arthur can't help but feel grudging respect, and he doesn't even know them. This is the effect alphas have, though, on wolves and humans and whatever Arthur is alike. When Eames spoke of the parents who'd cast him out and banned him, this isn't what Arthur had in mind.
“Please sit,” Eames' mother says suddenly. “Would you like some tea?”
Arthur nods, and she's gone, slipping through the door and leaving him alone with the pack leader.
Arthur sits on a chair adjacent to the television. After a pause, Eames' father sits too, slowly, gripping his cane.
“Not every wound can be transformed away, unfortunately,” he says in answer to Arthur's open stare, smiling again and touching his leg. “This is an old injury from a challenge to my authority.”
“A hazard of the job, I suppose,” Arthur says.
The man chuckles. He never loses the intensity in his eyes, though. They're like Eames' eyes, somewhere between blue and green, almost a steely grey colour. Arthur surreptitiously wipes his palms down over his slacks.
“May I ask what you are?” Eames' father says, when a moment of silence has elapsed.
“Slightly feline.”
“You don't have a name for your kind?”
“No.” He feels a little let down. Maybe somewhere in the back of his mind, he'd hoped the werewolves might have answers. “I'm the only one of my kind that I know of.”
“That must be hard,” says Eames' father evenly.
“I guess.” Arthur wipes his palms again. He's already starting to feel hot all the time. How soon will his change in hormones be noticeable?
“Do you change?”
It takes him a second to work out what the man means. He shakes his head. “I was born with feline ears. And I have a tail.”
He doesn't really mean to say it; it just happens. Maybe it's those familiar eyes, or that his scent is similar to Eames', but Arthur feels quite secure here.
“Fascinating,” says Eames' father.
They wait for Eames' mother to return. Arthur thinks about what he knows of werewolves and their mating customs. The males are sexual beings who will willingly mount either gender, not confined to the labels and prejudices of humans-Arthur remembered this fact because it put him in mind of his own attitude toward sexual preference. Maybe that fact will make this less uncomfortable, anyway, werewolves not being picky-because they must know that Arthur and Eames are at least fucking, there's no way that would have slipped past Faye and Alizé in Toronto.
But then there's the inescapable fact that despite their nondiscrimination, same-sex mated pairs are rare among werewolves. It just seems to happen that way. Werewolves come with such a powerful drive to procreate, and at the end of the day they'll almost always find their proper love in someone who can give them cubs.
Except Eames.
Alizé is talking quietly in the lobby to Faye. With normal human hearing Arthur wouldn't catch it, but even without his ears, his hearing is sharper than most. They don't realize that.
“Disgusting,” Alizé is murmuring. “I don't know how Eames does it. Like fucking a bloody alley cat.”
Eames' father is gazing distractedly out the window. Arthur sinks back into his seat. He's starting to wish he'd just stayed in Alaska.
+Eames' mother returns with a teapot and cups on a tray. She fixes Arthur's tea for him. He takes a polite sip and nearly burns his tongue, but doesn't care. She sits on the couch next to her husband, so they're both facing him. And here it comes. They're going to tell him to fuck off away from Eames because it isn't proper for a werewolf to have a male mate. He takes a deep breath.
“Thomas gave us a call earlier today,” Eames' mother says, before Arthur can speak. “He ... explained the situation.”
Arthur wets his lips with another sip of tea. Thomas, that's Eames. “Oh.”
“We're so sorry to have gotten you tangled up in this,” Eames' father says, and he sounds it, too. “We didn't mean for it to go this far. We had only heard that our son might have a romantic interest in you, and wanted to meet you. Apparently we were mistaken.”
Mistaken.
So Eames lied to them.
Why?
Arthur just nods dumbly when he realizes they're waiting for a response, and takes another gulp of tea. He feels oddly cold now, instead of hot, for the first time in hours. This is possibly the most uncomfortable situation he's ever been in, and the potential for uncomfortable situations is limitless when one is hiding a tail under one's clothes.
“He told us to tell you he's on his way here,” Eames' mother cuts back in. “You're free to leave, of course, but we made up a guest bedroom for you, if you wanted to rest ...?”
“Thank you,” Arthur mumbles. Being utterly confused and in a huge amount of discomfort doesn't leave him bereft of his manners, after all. “That would be great.”
“And of course you must have supper with us,” she says quickly. “It's the least we can do.”
“Thank you,” Arthur says again. He's too hungry to refuse the offer. Eames' mother beams, relieved.
Supper turns out to be duck a l'orange. Alizé and Micah are both gone, but Faye joins them, sitting quietly at the end of the table. While they make their way through a salad course, Eames' parents ply Arthur with questions. They seem to be genuinely, earnestly fascinated by him. For that reason Arthur answers any questions he's able to. He tells them about his mom, and what growing up was like, and why he decided to join the army, and which of his senses he's learned differ from humans', like how moving things tend to jump to the forefront of his vision. In spite of the discomfort of his impending fever, he finds himself relaxing gradually. Talking to the werewolves is-nice, actually, they listen intently and they don't judge him, because they're different too.
They tell Arthur about their pack. Their family has lived here for generations, claiming the hills as their own and learning to live semi-comfortably with the humans around them. And they tell him about Eames.
“It's very common for a young male to venture away from the pack, especially an alpha,” Eames' mother explains. “Of course, a father and son will get along peacefully enough, but the sons do eventually reach an age where they get a little more hot-headed, need some more space. That's usually the time when they find a mate, away from their family.”
“That's what we thought would happen with Thomas,” Eames' father says ruefully. “We told him he was welcome home when he'd found somebody. That was years ago. He should have settled down by now.”
“We're not getting any younger,” Lady Pendleton-Eames adds.
“Is that necessary, for him to have a mate before he can take over the pack?” Arthur asks.
Eames' father nods and his wife says, “It's important, in our culture.”
“Why?” Arthur asks. Faye suddenly looks up, shooting him a glare, and he fumbles. “I only ask because I don't know very much about your-culture-”
“Of course, Arthur. We don't mind answering your questions,” the Lady says gently. “We like to know that our pack will have a future, that's all.”
Arthur nods and focuses on his duck, which is a little greasier than chicken but incredible to somebody who hasn't eaten in a day. He wonders grouchily why Faye is even there. She's not a very high-ranking wolf in this pack, judging by the way Micah and especially Alizé speak to her. Eames' parents simply don't address her very much, but when they do, they're kind. When she excuses herself from the table and vanishes upstairs before the dessert course (custard trifle), Arthur makes the uncomfortable realization that she lives here with them-when she's at home, at least.
Eames' mother leads him upstairs once he's finished a last cup of tea. On their way up to the third floor, he thinks about why Eames had tried so stubbornly to keep Arthur away from his family. You don't know what they'll do to you, he'd said. But they're not doing anything. Eames had said he'd been cast out, but they make it sound like he left to join the military and simply chose never to come home again.
Disgusting, Alizé had called him. Maybe-
Maybe Eames has been keeping Arthur away from his family not to protect him, but because he's ashamed. Ashamed to have taken Arthur for a mate. Freakish, male, (disgusting) not-even-human Arthur. Maybe being cast out was a lie to make Arthur think he couldn't go home, rather than wouldn't.
Or maybe they wouldn't be this hospitable if they knew the truth, and Eames is protecting him.
Arthur's head hurts.
“There's a towel here if you'd like to bathe. The lavatory is the third door on the right there. If there's anything else you need-”
“Thank you,” Arthur says, automatically. The room is cosy and dimly-lit and smells like dust and fabric softener, so sharp it's almost enough to burn Arthur's doubly-sensitive nose at the moment. There's just a dresser and a double bed, freshly made up. He sits down on the mattress. “I'll just wait for Eames to get here.”
“Of course,” she says, and with a last gentle smile, she leaves.
Again, Arthur wasn't exactly expecting anything when he got here.
But maybe-somewhere in the back of his mind-some tiny, silly part of him had wondered-
If he has no species or family of his own, maybe Eames' family would accept him?
They're very nice, but he thinks about what Eames' mother said about the future of the pack, and recalls how important offspring are to Eames' kind. What reason would they have to be hospitable if they knew that Arthur is the reason their bloodline will end at Eames? His imagination makes up scenarios in which they forbid him to ever see Eames again under pain of death, and he digs his nails into the mattress anxiously. Then he forces himself to relax. They don't seem like elitists. And they do seem genuinely distressed at the way Alizé had interpreted their-invitation.
He gets in the shower to help clear his thoughts, and also because he can still smell traces of the plane on himself. When he gets out, he finds a folded-up pair of sleep clothes on the foot of his bed-a little large for him, but comfortable. He dresses, and almost doesn't see Faye enter his room without knocking.
“You should tell them the truth,” she says bluntly. Eames is not here: she has no need for false friendliness. “They're nice people. They deserve to know.”
“Eames already told them,” Arthur says dismissively, turning to face her. She scowls.
“The truth. I know you're his mate.”
“And what makes you say that?” he asks, feigning indifference.
“Because Alizé told me to distract Eames in Ketchikan,” she says. “But it didn't work. He didn't want me.”
Arthur pushes his hair off his face, trying vainly to tame the damp strands. “Have you considered that you're just annoying?”
“I practically rubbed myself all over him,” she says, tone becoming brittler. “And he barely looked at me. An unmated male doesn't ignore a receptive female, Arthur. Especially Eames. I should know.”
“So?” Arthur demands, swallowing the jealous anger that rips through him.
“So he was headed toward the town. Toward you. Eames didn't want me because he'd rather have been fucking you.”
Something snaps dully into place in Arthur's brain.
“Eames was in his wolf form,” he says.
“Yes, he was.”
“So why would he come for me?”
“To mate you,” she says, like it's obvious and he's just being stupid. She smiles humourlessly. “Werewolves love sex, Arthur. Doing it when you're both changed, that's considered one of the most intimate things you can do. He'd do it with a female werewolf, so why not with you?”
“Because it's not possible,” Arthur says, trying to rationalize. “Physically. Is it?”
“Not unless you helped him out, probably.” She eyes Arthur like this possibility wouldn't surprise her, him letting himself get fucked by a two-hundred-pound wolf. “But he'd maul you to death trying.”
That sends a little trickle of nausea into Arthur's stomach. So that's why Eames steadfastly refuses to change in front of him.
What's worse than a werewolf seeing you as its lunch? Arthur had asked. The answer, of course: being seen as its mate. Good Lord.
Eames knew, he realizes angrily. Does he wander around every full moon, sniffing and searching for his mate?
“So why not just tell them?” he demands, pushing that thought away for the time being. She scowls.
“Because mating goes both ways. I don't know how much Eames has explained to you, but werewolves mate for life, and they're serious about their partners. You think I haven't heard about you, Arthur? Everyone in the business says you're the best there is, but you're a robot. The only people you've ever been close to are those architects, the Cobbs, and they both went off the deep end. You've got no attachments. You left a man behind in Tokyo knowing he'd be tortured by Cobol Engineering. I don't know what you think you're doing with Eames,” she finishes coolly, “but if you're leading him on somehow, I swear-”
“You know nothing about me,” Arthur snaps, rankled. His tailtip wants to flick in its confines angrily. “Just because you're in love with him-”
Her eyes flash furiously. “I just came to tell you that you should either tell them the truth if you're going to be the reason Eames doesn't come home, or make things easier for everyone and bail on him now rather than later when you'll make everything much worse.”
“I'm not going to bail on Eames,” Arthur says flatly. “And I'm not stopping him from coming home.”
“You've always been the reason he doesn't come home,” she says. “You just didn't know it.”
She slips out of the room, leaving Arthur even more baffled and angry than he was before.
His head throbs, and it's not just the headache. The fever is starting to catch him up. He wants Eames, and he's not sure how much more time he's got.
continue