Fic: various Arthur/Eames vignettes
Inspired by the trope meme here, five short Arthur/Eames ficlets.
1. Forced to share a bed
"Stop kicking me," Arthur says.
"I'm not--this bed is entirely too small," Eames grouses as he twists his body around, searching unsuccessfully for more room.
"Obviously, but this would all go a lot more smoothly if you stopped acting like I had leprosy and laid still," Arthur replies, grabbing back the covers Eames keeps trying to monopolize.
"I'm simply trying to maintain the proper distance--"
"That is literally impossible because we're two fully grown men in a child's bed," Arthur interrupts. "And would you stop acting all weird and genteel? It's kind of creeping me out."
"Well, I certainly wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable," Eames says, yanking the covers back and catching Arthur's side with an elbow.
At this point, Arthur decides enough is enough. He grabs several fistfuls of the sheets, digs his heels into the mattress, and pulls hard enough to drag Eames (who still hasn't let go of his edge) across the bed in an ungainly sprawl. From there, it devolves into tussling with flying knees and rolling around and a sheet that eventually ends up trapping them chest to chest.
By the time Arthur catches his breath, Eames is lying diagonally across him, thigh wedged between Arthur's legs. It's a completely inappropriate time to be feeling anything besides fatigue and yet here he is, trapped underneath an insufferable and gorgeous man who manages to smell good even after two plane rides, a trip through a swamp, and withering bayou heat. There'd been a drunken fumble once, in Mexico years ago, that had gotten no further than fumbling thanks to too much tequila on both their parts, but now--
"Arthur, are you..." Apparently Eames has noticed, too.
"Yeah," Arthur says, brazen, because there's no point in being coy about it now. "You interested?"
"This is hardly the time or the place," Eames says, but Arthur feels something stir against his leg that can't be attributed to twisting sheets.
"Might help me sleep."
There's a pause and then Eames bursts into laughter. "Is that really--did you just say that to me right now?"
After a moment, Arthur snorts and begins to laugh, too. "We've been on the run for too many hours for me to come up with anything better than that, sorry."
Eames is still laughing helplessly, vibrating with it on top of Arthur. Arthur doesn't mind the weight as much as he thought he would. "The spirit is willing, but the body is sending up the white flag of surrender. Perhaps once we've crossed the border we can revisit the topic under more amenable circumstances."
"Yeah, I--" Arthur halts and rewinds the last few sentences in his head. "Are you saying yes to--"
"To a raincheck on sex? Yes." Eames yawns massively, then rearranges himself--still mostly on top of Arthur--before turning his face to one side and brushing soft lips across Arthur's cheek. "Now go to sleep, you silver-tongued seducer. We have an early morning of running for our lives tomorrow."
2. Arthur is secretly a virgin
"You've never slept with a man," Eames says, absolutely dumbfounded.
"That is what I said, yes," Arthur replies slowly, glancing over his shoulder at Eames as if he were a very dim child wrestling mightily with a simple concept.
"You're lying," Eames says. "That's not possible."
Arthur snorts out a laugh as he returns to packing up the PASIV. He stops laughing once he sees that Eames is serious. "Wait--are you telling me I don't know who I've had sex with? Is that what's happening here?"
"Your trousers are far too fitted for you to enjoy vaginas exclusively," Eames says. "They cup your arse so lovingly, like a--"
"This is going to a really weird place," Arthur interjects.
"You're a bloody American, for god's sake," Eames bursts out, frustrated. "The only Americans who know how to dress themselves are the ones preoccupied with the way men will see them--namely: women and gay men."
"Is calling me a liar and insulting my country of origin your way of hitting on to me?" Arthur shuts the PASIV case and pivots to look at Eames speculatively, leaning back against the table. "Huh. I think it is."
"I do not 'hit on' anyone," Eames says, haughtily. "I seduce, I court, I woo--"
"Okay, yes, you can be my very first sexual experience with a man," Arthur interrupts, swinging the PASIV off the table as he heads towards the door. "Now let's go get something to eat. I'm starving and you should at least buy me dinner before you plunder my virtue."
3. Eames is secretly a virgin
Arthur slides his hand up the back of Eames' neck and digs his fingers into Eames' hair, soft where there's no gel holding it down. Eames' lips feel every bit as wonderful as they look: plush and luscious and amazing. Arthur's already sort of lightheaded and they've only been making out for five minutes, max.
Arthur leans forward, eager to touch more, to press his body against Eames' and run his hands over every available surface. Eames mutters something in between kisses but Arthur can't quite hear, can't bring himself to detach long enough to catch it.
"Arthur," Eames says, only half-intelligible. "You're--mphgrg." At least, that's what it sounds like.
After a few more incoherent mumbles by Eames, Arthur reluctantly lets go of Eames and takes several huge, sucking breaths of oxygen. "Yeah?"
"You're, ah," Eames glances down and away, lightning-fast. "There's something digging into my thigh."
Arthur's lips twitch, but Eames had threatened to call the whole thing off if Arthur laughed. "Yes. That's my penis. Getting hard."
"I had deduced as much, of course, I simply--" Eames runs a hand through his hair and looks away, foot tapping against the ground frenetically. "That is a new. Part of the experience."
"Haven't you seduced marks in dreams before?" Arthur asks. "I'd have thought you'd be used to strange men's erections pressing up against you by now."
"There are dreams and then there's--there's this," Eames says, and now his foot is practically tapping out an entire symphony. "I never wanted to--that is to say, I had to pretend as if--"
"Eames," Arthur says, voice softening as he puts two fingers gently under Eames' jaw. "Are you nervous?"
Eames exhales in a noisy gust of breath. "I expect you'll think less of me for this, but: yes."
"Hey," Arthur says quietly, guiding Eames' face up enough to drop butterfly kisses down his jaw, the corner of his mouth. "It's okay. I'm--you know, I'm a little nervous, too."
"But you're not a--"
"I'm not, but this is our first time together." Arthur strokes Eames' cheek, feels the soft skin just below the bristle of stubble. "I don't want to let you down."
"Virtually impossible," Eames says, turning back towards Arthur to kiss him fully on the mouth again. "I've no experience with men and thus my standards are extremely low."
Arthur chuckles against Eames' lips. "Good to hear it."
4. Historical AU
"This again?" Arthur says, opening his eyes to the interior of an ancient Roman villa. The layout was created by Ariadne and is mostly historically accurate, with tile mosaic floors and erotic wall art and an overbearing amount of color everywhere.
"Give it a chance, darling," Eames says, voice coming from behind Arthur somewhere, in another room. "I think you'll like it."
Arthur glances down at his clothing--the robes of a Patrician Roman--and sighs a little. Hopefully this fantasy romp will be a fairly straight-forward roleplay and not a full-blown Bacchanalian orgy; Arthur's still mentally exhausted from the last job and one never knows with Eames' picks for date night.
Arthur hears a sound and turns to behold Eames--but not the normal version of Eames, topside, with a slicked side-part and an endearingly retro wardrobe. This version of Eames is clad in nothing but a loincloth and oil, bare body muscular and gleaming in the flickering lamplight around them. Arthur's breath catches in his throat as Eames sinks to his knees before him in supplication.
"Hail Caesar," Eames murmurs in a voice filled with smoky promise. "I exist to serve."
5. Pretending to be married
"If he's into the newlyweds and honeymoon experience, why doesn't he just hire a prostitute to play happy houses with him?" Arthur asks, taking a seat on the couch in front of the big screen TV. They're renting a perfectly average, all-American model home for the duration of the job, the kind of place Arthur saw growing up TV but never actually lived in. It feels surreal--even more surreal than being in a dream modeled after a Barbie House, weirdly enough.
"Because he's a voyeur, and hates being touched," Eames says as he takes off his jacket and carefully hangs it up on the coat-rack. "And before you ask, yes, it's only heterosexual newlyweds, and yes, he does masturbate while he watches the footage."
"Every time I think I've figured out all the ways someone can be creepy, a mark goes and proves me wrong."
"We're lucky we found that massive collection of footage he keeps in that storage locker," Eames says as he takes a seat on the couch next to Arthur. "People can be astonishingly specific about their fetishes. I once had sex with a man who could only come while being slapped in the face with a dirty gym sock. True story."
"Sadly, I don't think that's the kind of thing you could make up," Arthur replies, rubbing at his eyes and rolling his shoulders back. His whole spine feels tense with exhaustion. "So what are we doing now besides living together? Pretending to be--"
"Newlyweds, yes," Eames supplies, arranging his body so that he's facing Arthur, one leg tucked up under the other. "I've never lived with nor married anyone before, and it'd be dangerous to rely on cliches picked up from films; this is a man whose hobby is studying couples in fresh nuptial bliss."
"Do I need to act like I'm in love with you?" Arthur opens his eyes and looks over at Eames, whose head is resting on the back of the couch, expression soft and relaxed.
"That would be the ideal situation, but since we haven't ironed out the details of who exactly will be going into the dream with me, it's not imperative that you do." There's a warm, dreamy quality to Eames' voice--something melodious and calming.
"You're good at this," Arthur says after a moment, realizing that without even meaning to he'd mirrored Eames' position: body curved like a comma, fingers almost reaching out to touch.
Eames smiles. "You make it easy."
1. Forced to share a bed
"Stop kicking me," Arthur says.
"I'm not--this bed is entirely too small," Eames grouses as he twists his body around, searching unsuccessfully for more room.
"Obviously, but this would all go a lot more smoothly if you stopped acting like I had leprosy and laid still," Arthur replies, grabbing back the covers Eames keeps trying to monopolize.
"I'm simply trying to maintain the proper distance--"
"That is literally impossible because we're two fully grown men in a child's bed," Arthur interrupts. "And would you stop acting all weird and genteel? It's kind of creeping me out."
"Well, I certainly wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable," Eames says, yanking the covers back and catching Arthur's side with an elbow.
At this point, Arthur decides enough is enough. He grabs several fistfuls of the sheets, digs his heels into the mattress, and pulls hard enough to drag Eames (who still hasn't let go of his edge) across the bed in an ungainly sprawl. From there, it devolves into tussling with flying knees and rolling around and a sheet that eventually ends up trapping them chest to chest.
By the time Arthur catches his breath, Eames is lying diagonally across him, thigh wedged between Arthur's legs. It's a completely inappropriate time to be feeling anything besides fatigue and yet here he is, trapped underneath an insufferable and gorgeous man who manages to smell good even after two plane rides, a trip through a swamp, and withering bayou heat. There'd been a drunken fumble once, in Mexico years ago, that had gotten no further than fumbling thanks to too much tequila on both their parts, but now--
"Arthur, are you..." Apparently Eames has noticed, too.
"Yeah," Arthur says, brazen, because there's no point in being coy about it now. "You interested?"
"This is hardly the time or the place," Eames says, but Arthur feels something stir against his leg that can't be attributed to twisting sheets.
"Might help me sleep."
There's a pause and then Eames bursts into laughter. "Is that really--did you just say that to me right now?"
After a moment, Arthur snorts and begins to laugh, too. "We've been on the run for too many hours for me to come up with anything better than that, sorry."
Eames is still laughing helplessly, vibrating with it on top of Arthur. Arthur doesn't mind the weight as much as he thought he would. "The spirit is willing, but the body is sending up the white flag of surrender. Perhaps once we've crossed the border we can revisit the topic under more amenable circumstances."
"Yeah, I--" Arthur halts and rewinds the last few sentences in his head. "Are you saying yes to--"
"To a raincheck on sex? Yes." Eames yawns massively, then rearranges himself--still mostly on top of Arthur--before turning his face to one side and brushing soft lips across Arthur's cheek. "Now go to sleep, you silver-tongued seducer. We have an early morning of running for our lives tomorrow."
2. Arthur is secretly a virgin
"You've never slept with a man," Eames says, absolutely dumbfounded.
"That is what I said, yes," Arthur replies slowly, glancing over his shoulder at Eames as if he were a very dim child wrestling mightily with a simple concept.
"You're lying," Eames says. "That's not possible."
Arthur snorts out a laugh as he returns to packing up the PASIV. He stops laughing once he sees that Eames is serious. "Wait--are you telling me I don't know who I've had sex with? Is that what's happening here?"
"Your trousers are far too fitted for you to enjoy vaginas exclusively," Eames says. "They cup your arse so lovingly, like a--"
"This is going to a really weird place," Arthur interjects.
"You're a bloody American, for god's sake," Eames bursts out, frustrated. "The only Americans who know how to dress themselves are the ones preoccupied with the way men will see them--namely: women and gay men."
"Is calling me a liar and insulting my country of origin your way of hitting on to me?" Arthur shuts the PASIV case and pivots to look at Eames speculatively, leaning back against the table. "Huh. I think it is."
"I do not 'hit on' anyone," Eames says, haughtily. "I seduce, I court, I woo--"
"Okay, yes, you can be my very first sexual experience with a man," Arthur interrupts, swinging the PASIV off the table as he heads towards the door. "Now let's go get something to eat. I'm starving and you should at least buy me dinner before you plunder my virtue."
3. Eames is secretly a virgin
Arthur slides his hand up the back of Eames' neck and digs his fingers into Eames' hair, soft where there's no gel holding it down. Eames' lips feel every bit as wonderful as they look: plush and luscious and amazing. Arthur's already sort of lightheaded and they've only been making out for five minutes, max.
Arthur leans forward, eager to touch more, to press his body against Eames' and run his hands over every available surface. Eames mutters something in between kisses but Arthur can't quite hear, can't bring himself to detach long enough to catch it.
"Arthur," Eames says, only half-intelligible. "You're--mphgrg." At least, that's what it sounds like.
After a few more incoherent mumbles by Eames, Arthur reluctantly lets go of Eames and takes several huge, sucking breaths of oxygen. "Yeah?"
"You're, ah," Eames glances down and away, lightning-fast. "There's something digging into my thigh."
Arthur's lips twitch, but Eames had threatened to call the whole thing off if Arthur laughed. "Yes. That's my penis. Getting hard."
"I had deduced as much, of course, I simply--" Eames runs a hand through his hair and looks away, foot tapping against the ground frenetically. "That is a new. Part of the experience."
"Haven't you seduced marks in dreams before?" Arthur asks. "I'd have thought you'd be used to strange men's erections pressing up against you by now."
"There are dreams and then there's--there's this," Eames says, and now his foot is practically tapping out an entire symphony. "I never wanted to--that is to say, I had to pretend as if--"
"Eames," Arthur says, voice softening as he puts two fingers gently under Eames' jaw. "Are you nervous?"
Eames exhales in a noisy gust of breath. "I expect you'll think less of me for this, but: yes."
"Hey," Arthur says quietly, guiding Eames' face up enough to drop butterfly kisses down his jaw, the corner of his mouth. "It's okay. I'm--you know, I'm a little nervous, too."
"But you're not a--"
"I'm not, but this is our first time together." Arthur strokes Eames' cheek, feels the soft skin just below the bristle of stubble. "I don't want to let you down."
"Virtually impossible," Eames says, turning back towards Arthur to kiss him fully on the mouth again. "I've no experience with men and thus my standards are extremely low."
Arthur chuckles against Eames' lips. "Good to hear it."
4. Historical AU
"This again?" Arthur says, opening his eyes to the interior of an ancient Roman villa. The layout was created by Ariadne and is mostly historically accurate, with tile mosaic floors and erotic wall art and an overbearing amount of color everywhere.
"Give it a chance, darling," Eames says, voice coming from behind Arthur somewhere, in another room. "I think you'll like it."
Arthur glances down at his clothing--the robes of a Patrician Roman--and sighs a little. Hopefully this fantasy romp will be a fairly straight-forward roleplay and not a full-blown Bacchanalian orgy; Arthur's still mentally exhausted from the last job and one never knows with Eames' picks for date night.
Arthur hears a sound and turns to behold Eames--but not the normal version of Eames, topside, with a slicked side-part and an endearingly retro wardrobe. This version of Eames is clad in nothing but a loincloth and oil, bare body muscular and gleaming in the flickering lamplight around them. Arthur's breath catches in his throat as Eames sinks to his knees before him in supplication.
"Hail Caesar," Eames murmurs in a voice filled with smoky promise. "I exist to serve."
5. Pretending to be married
"If he's into the newlyweds and honeymoon experience, why doesn't he just hire a prostitute to play happy houses with him?" Arthur asks, taking a seat on the couch in front of the big screen TV. They're renting a perfectly average, all-American model home for the duration of the job, the kind of place Arthur saw growing up TV but never actually lived in. It feels surreal--even more surreal than being in a dream modeled after a Barbie House, weirdly enough.
"Because he's a voyeur, and hates being touched," Eames says as he takes off his jacket and carefully hangs it up on the coat-rack. "And before you ask, yes, it's only heterosexual newlyweds, and yes, he does masturbate while he watches the footage."
"Every time I think I've figured out all the ways someone can be creepy, a mark goes and proves me wrong."
"We're lucky we found that massive collection of footage he keeps in that storage locker," Eames says as he takes a seat on the couch next to Arthur. "People can be astonishingly specific about their fetishes. I once had sex with a man who could only come while being slapped in the face with a dirty gym sock. True story."
"Sadly, I don't think that's the kind of thing you could make up," Arthur replies, rubbing at his eyes and rolling his shoulders back. His whole spine feels tense with exhaustion. "So what are we doing now besides living together? Pretending to be--"
"Newlyweds, yes," Eames supplies, arranging his body so that he's facing Arthur, one leg tucked up under the other. "I've never lived with nor married anyone before, and it'd be dangerous to rely on cliches picked up from films; this is a man whose hobby is studying couples in fresh nuptial bliss."
"Do I need to act like I'm in love with you?" Arthur opens his eyes and looks over at Eames, whose head is resting on the back of the couch, expression soft and relaxed.
"That would be the ideal situation, but since we haven't ironed out the details of who exactly will be going into the dream with me, it's not imperative that you do." There's a warm, dreamy quality to Eames' voice--something melodious and calming.
"You're good at this," Arthur says after a moment, realizing that without even meaning to he'd mirrored Eames' position: body curved like a comma, fingers almost reaching out to touch.
Eames smiles. "You make it easy."