(no subject)
The title of this file is storyofshame.
That should tell you what you need to know.
This was written to entertain Liz, don't expect it to be good.
I never do this, but I will for once:
WARNING: for non-pairing noncon, violence, gratuity of every flavor, and real world issues.
Unexpected Plot Twist Act 1
Arhur doesn't take calls from numbers that aren't in his phone. His voicemail is set up to automatically delete when full. That being said, this incoming call is a blocked number, which immediately piques his interest.
The message: Normally I wouldn't bother to even stoop to ask, but I've heard you're dangling in the wind these days. It's not good to leave you to your own devices, surely. I have a job.
That's it. No number. No email address. No details.
Arthur's sitting on his couch in pajama bottoms, a white t-shirt, and hasn't bothered to shave for so long he has a full beard. He runs a hand over his cheek, feels his hair curling against the collar of his shirt in the back. It's been years since he let himself go like this. Mostly because until recently he'd been on his toes 24/7 in preparation for Dom to go up like an A-bomb.
He realizes that Eames has thrown down a gauntlet here. Catch me if you can find me. Arthur rolls his head on the back of the couch and tries to decide if he cares. He's probably never going to have to work again. He doesn't know if he can rustle up the desire to want to, either.
It takes half a bottle of vodka (he's feeling sentimental) for him to boot up the trusty roughbook to start ferreting Eames out. "Na zdorovje," he salutes the screen when he hacks into wikileaks' servers and starts scanning for likely Eames-like bullshittery.
Four hours later he's blotto and laughing his ass off at second-hand stories about Putin wrestling a tiger.
He finds nothing. This is when he decides to admit he's pissed off.
*
The next time he gets a call from a blocked number he's waiting in the line for the self-serve check out at Kroger. "That took longer than I expected," he says after picking up the call.
"Huh?" Someone says. "You've been selected for a special rate for the Sunday New York Times…"
Arthur hangs up and laughs. The lady ahead of him buying 50 lbs of kitty litter and The Enquirer looks like the kind of person to hold up the line due to check-out incompetency. He steps to the other side of the queues.
*
He gets an email a few days after he's considered going to some actual effort to find Eames. He hasn't bothered because he figures if Eames really wants something, he'll find a way to get it.
Your not even curious?
Goddamn it, of course he is!
The address is ridiculous-johndoe at gmail. And Arthur wonders how Eames managed to land that handle. He rubs a hand against his beard. He hasn't shaved it off yet. He might not at all since he's past the itchy stage and he's kind of fond of the way people cross the street to not jog by him when he takes the trash out.
The second email reads: The tiger lark was fucking brilliant. Arthur laughs. Eames's always gotten on like houses on fire with Russians.
*
He calls Sergei on Tuesday afternoon after he's exhausted the crossword, fed the angry birds, and run his legs rubbery.
"You still owe me money," is how Sergei answers. His voice is slow like oil in winter. He was sleeping. Probably not in Vancouver then. He yawns. "This took longer than I expected."
"You know why I'm calling?" Arthur kicks his running shoes off and uses the tail of his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face.
Sergei laughs. "There's great cosmic coincidence or you're calling about the esteemed mister Eames."
"Why?" He not going to give anything up unnecessarily.
"Inception, are rumors true?"
"What rumors?" He's been disavowing knowledge since the job, why stop now?
Sergei clicks his tongue and says something muffled to someone with him. "You're lying, but we're comrades, so." Meaning they're all ex-military, which is exactly why he called Sergei and why Eames must have told Sergei to expect him to. "Very mysterious he is being. What do I get for number?"
"I think Eames paid you to give it to me already, so stop playing both ends." This gets a hacking laugh that trails off into a cough. "Smoking's bad for you."
"Yeah, yeah."
He gets a Swedish number and a lecture about gun safety that when concluded leaves Arthur wondering who got shot and why. He doesn't ask, though, he's got shit to do.
*
With the phone number everything else clicks into place neatly like a clip in a gun. Eames is in Sevastopol, which is a red flag. Nothing good can come of Eames in Ukraine. Arthur sees visions of damp prison cells and electro shock interrogations. What could Eames even be stealing there?
Arthur knows he won't find that kind of information other than directly or by sheer luck stumbling on someone with insider knowledge.
He gets another blocked call and answers it.
"When does your flight get in?" Eames sounds irritated.
"I don't remember signing a contract on this folly." Arthur leans back and rubs his eyes.
Eames huffs out an annoyed breath. "You're bored, curious, and at leisure. You're going to lose your mind if you don’t work. I have a job. I have a job involving dangerous men and guns. What more do you need to know?"
"Ideally, everything."
"This is suboptimal then, because I'm giving you nothing. It's a mystery. Don't ask me why I called you, don't bore us both with that kind of recursive tedium." His voice gets more and more clipped as he speaks.
"Are you in trouble?" Because why would Arthur ask why? He knows why. Who else is he going to call?
"That is something you'll have to ascertain when you land and we debrief." So that would be a yes.
"What are we liberating, at least?"
"It's not a what, it's a who. And if you're coming, I wish you'd stop dithering and do so. Normally my bedroom manners are much better than that, fyi."
Arthur laughs. Eames rumbles pleasantly in return. "Two days. I have loose ends."
"That's a bleeding lie, and we both know it. See you then."
*
Arthur's never traveled to Ukraine on a legitimate passport. And more than once without one at all. His feelings about the place are heavily influenced by how many bones he's broken there. Eames is waiting for him on the tarmac, not inside the airport. So it's an off the books completely visit, then.
Eames is wearing black slacks and shirt under a pea coat. He's also wearing aviators, a heavy gold watch, and an excessively haughty expression. When Arthur approaches, Eames reaches out and runs his fingers above the line of Arthur's beard on his cheek. His touch is ice cold against Arthur's wind-blushed skin. Arthur doesn't immediately snatch his head away, but only because he can read the tendon in Eames's jaw flexing and unflexing.
He says nothing when Eames wraps his hand on the back of Arthur's neck and all but screams kissing is happening NOW. And it is. Eames presses against him, cigarette smoke heavy in the boiled wool of his coat. He tastes of cinnamon candy and alcohol. Arthur taps Eames's teeth with his tongue in acknowledgment that he's not going to break character to fuck this up, but he also bites down on Eames's lip, scraping his teeth way too savagely as he pulls away.
"Just so," Eames says. Arthur can see the glasses are as much about whomever's watching as they are for him.
"I missed you," Arthur says with fondness. Eames's slight smile folds away in what Arthur reads as surprise at Arthur's acting abilities. That annoys Arthur more than the kiss.
As Eames turns to lead them around the building Arthur catches his hand. Eames doesn't flinch away or look down. Arthur taps in Morse code against Eames's palm.
SITREP
Eames taps back FUBAR.
*
Predictably, there are lots of burly men in black with guns. Arthur doesn't sigh. He could have used some information here. Yes, he has weapons on his person, but that really doesn't make a difference unless he can use them without dying horribly anyway. They're bundled in the back of a Mercedes.
Eames tucks his sunglasses into his pocket. His face is impassive. "How was your trip?" he asks casually.
Arthur suppresses a laugh. "The usual. Luftanasa is predictably reliable."
"And how is the cat?" Eames turns to look him dead in the eye. He's thinner, his hair shorter. He looks like a dangerous man.
"Reassuringly catlike," Arthur answers.
"Good, it wouldn't do to have a repeat of what transpired when I was in Lucerne."
Arthur doesn't allow the sigh or the slow eye blink. Lucerne. Arthur is going to get Eames under and take him apart piece by piece starting with his toes.
*
Eames gives the signal right as Arthur has sussed that the tail has peeled off down an exit ramp. Arthur doesn't know what kind of outfit this is, but usually thugs at least know to fill the tank in between jobs. Eames pistol whips the passenger as Arthur puts the driver in a sleeper hold. He leans over in one fluid movement and opens the passenger door and shoves the guy out of it as he slides into the seat and closing the door back. He leans across and repeats the action with the driver's door and slides behind the wheel. Arthur is in the passenger seat immediately. The whole adventure takes about twenty seconds.
Eames grins at him, showing teeth, about to make some witticism. Arthur punches him in the jaw. He pulls the punch a little, because he doesn't want to wreck the car, but not by much. Eames glares at him rubbing his jaw for a second before laughing. "That's your one free shot. The next one goes on the ledger."
"You owe me a fuckton more than one pulled punch to the jaw, asshole." Arthur glares out the window clocking the rearview and turns to check the perimeter behind them. They're in a nondescript, grey stretch of broken concrete and blowing trash.
"I do so enjoy your potty mouth when we're not in mixed company, Arthur. It recalls hand jobs in barracks and the camaraderie of sharing a sleeping bag for warmth." Eames's words slither around the car on oiled vowels.
"Our service experiences were quite divergent, dickface."
Eames laughs again.
"Want to tell me who the victim is, how many people we're dealing with, what kind of hardware you have. You know, the debrief?"
Eames swerves suddenly and guns down a side road, bouncing them both enough for bitten tongues and clattering teeth. "Always so impatient," he intones.
They screech around a few more bends and come to a halt in a garage where a shady looking guy in a pair of overalls closes the door behind them…and turns out to be Yusuf.
"I thought you didn't want to do field work anymore?" Arthur bites out as he slams the car door behind him.
"Don't take your temper out on third parties, Arthur," Eames barks at his back.
Yusuf is placid in the face of their hostility. He waves at Arthur and approaches to shake his hand. "The beard and hair are unexpected. Otherwise, you look hale."
Arthur runs both of his hands through his hair and counts backwards from ten. He listens to his own heartbeat and breathes until it steadies to rest. "I'm going to ask, just once, what's going on. If I find the answer lacking, I'm going to walk out the door and never speak to either of you again."
"Such a drama princess!" Yusuf's pronouncement comes with an unexpected laugh.
Eames leans against the car on his hip. He takes a toothpick out of the pocket of his coat and tosses it from side to side in his mouth staring at Arthur for several seconds as Yusuf wanders over to tend to an electric kettle. "I was hired by the employer of the gentlemen you just had the pleasure to meet to rescue his daughter from kidnappers. He wasn't keen on paying the ransom, but less so to see his daughter dead. This is what he claimed. I knew he was lying, of course." His voice turns hard, the words suddenly fraught with heaviness. "It's unfortunate when goons assume that all criminals are as uncomplicatedly dim as they."
"He wanted you to grab someone. Presumably this is a sex trafficking scenario."
Eames's look turns blacker and he spits the toothpick on the floor. "Presumably and in fact."
And the chinks fit together. Eames told them he was gay so he wouldn't have to sample the wares. "This is now a liberation op." It's not a question. What is is how dead they're going to get. "Is there a dream element to this, or am I just here to shoot people in the head."
"Remains to be seen."
Yusuf approaches with mugs of tea. "And you?" Arthur takes his tea because he's conditioned to never turn down caffeine or food.
Yusuf shrugs one shoulder. "Seemed like the kind of thing you don't say no to."
"Fuck." Arthur frowns down at his tea before blowing across the surface of it.
*
They fall back to Belgrade because Eames and Arthur both have connections there. Some overlapping, some independent. Yusuf speaking Serbo-Croatian is something of a surprise, but Arthur doesn't know why at this point. They set up shop in a house owned by one of Arthur's Blackwater contacts.
"Why must you still cultivate these assets?" Eames starts grousing after two shots of the disgusting apricot "brandy" endemic to the region. "Have you no idealism left? If not idealism, morality."
"You have got to be fucking kidding me. Morality? People hired you to kidnap a teenaged girl. Take your lecture and shove it up your ass." He chugs his bitter pilsner.
Eames rumbles with laughter.
"I keep up with them so I know what doesn't get documented." He's not explaining that further.
"Are you a wikileaker, Arthur?" Eames leans forward and rests his arms on his thighs. Arthur scratches at his beard and ignores him.
"We could channel this to the authorities," Arthur muses.
"I know you're taking the piss now." Eames pours himself another drink of liquid death.
"It's an option. Not locals, obviously, but someone earnest at INTERPOL." He doesn't really mean this, he's just winding Eames up.
He gets a long sigh. "Please stop insulting my intelligence."
Yusuf swings around the door frame with a dish towel in his hand. "We're set for explosives. The hardest part was securing copper wire. I'm sure you're both impressed with my procurement skills."
"You stole it?" Arthur asks.
Yusuf's laughter is enough of an answer.
*
They need a squad to do this the conventional way. This is immediately apparent when Arthur combs over the security schematics. To do it clean, they need a one-to-one ratio of guns on the ground at least and a couple extra team members for contingencies. They can't do this conventionally.
"It has to be a dream." He slouches back on the couch and watches Eames light a cigarette.
"No." The smoke curls up both his nostrils and he breathes it out as he speaks.
"Do you have a plan?" Arthur isn't mad about the song and dance. Eames is just like this. He likes games and elaborate cons. That's who he is. Arthur likes a straight line and Occam's Razor. The combination of the two styles is what makes them bulletproof.
"You're my plan, of course." He flicks ash off his cigarette into the ashtray on his thigh. "You have all the contacts I need. Even the bloody Mossad if it comes down to it."
Arthur closes his eyes. "So what you meant was that you don't trust the authorities to actually keep anyone safe."
"Precisely."
Arthur tosses his pen across the room. "It's been a while since I did something like this."
"Yes, but this is bicycles and sex, and you know it."
They don't need a full squad if they don't plan to take any hostages or cover their tracks.
*
Eames grows his own beard and buzzes his hair off as they plot dates and tap into satellite feeds. Arthur starts showing up at poker games hosted by para and ex-military in the city and collects a fistful of promises for back up if the situation turns dire. He even believes half of them.
He'd already set his affairs in order--one call, always--before he hopped the flight to Frankfurt. He thinks about calling Dom in the lead up to the op, but doesn't. He'll live or he won't, and there's no reason to get anyone else involved at this point.
They hop a four-seater flying under radar surveillance right after dark on the day before Thanksgiving.
"We're coming," the copilot informs them in an accent very much like Eames's real one. Arthur immediately balks. He doesn't know these guys, and eleventh hour plan changes are what kills you way too often. Eames glances down at his boots then quickly back up to Arthur's face as the engines whine to life. He leans forward and says low and fast. "These are my squaddies, yeah?"
"You should have said something," Arthur bites back.
"He had no say in the matter," the pilot informs him before the sound in the cabin is too thunderous for conversation. Eames leans back in a deceptive sprawl, his arms over his chest. It doesn't deceive Arthur whose blood has gone cold from the litany in his head he trained himself to in the army.
I will not let my men die. I will live so they also live. I will not let my men die.
*
They land in an abandoned field, Arthur's contact is waiting with an SUV and a debrief. And also a lot of complaints.
"This is suicide. Even if you survive, they'll come for you. Thought you were smarter than this." Pender's red hair's going grey at the temples but his freckles are as livid as ever. East Texas still crawls out of his mouth when he speaks even after ten years in eastern Europe.
"Do you have the transport or not?" Arthur starts his pre-mission check, opening his pockets and cataloging his gear.
"Don't treat me like a bitch." Pender turns back around in a huff.
"Americans are so delightful," Eames's friend Morris informs them all in a bright, cheerful voice.
"Fuck off," Arthur says snapping his switchblade open and closed again in one fluid motion.
"By delightful he means rude and boorish and somehow still sexually appealing, of course," Eames whispers into Arthur's ear around a laugh. Eames is already keyed up, ready for his boots to hit the ground, Arthur recognizes the battle lust.
*
They park in a garage a block from the target. They're met by Pam Ludlow and another chick Arthur doesn't know.
"You're INTERPOL, I can smell it on you," Eames accuses and attempts to skewer Arthur with a look.
"Yes, and I know who you are, too. If you weren't playing the Good Samaritan to rape victims, I'd have my knee in your back and zip ties around your wrists right now." Pam pops the snap on her hip holster.
"You could bloody well try, but I doubt you'd be quite so smug after the attempt," Eames growls.
"For fuck's sake, can we tighten up this abortion of discipline?" Arthur shoves Eames, who luckily allows it, and wheels around to face Pam. Everyone in the room is suddenly bristling with pre-mission jitters and serious trust issues. "We're all here for one reason. There will be no civilian casualties. Not one." He looks around the room and makes eye contact with each person. "Enemies are to be dropped on sight and left where they fall. Has everyone memorized their personal mission objectives?" He goes from person to person again getting nods from each one. "I'm on point, Eames is on Pam's six. Are we clear?"
He gets a mixed whoop of various forms of affirmation.
"We do this clean and tight, and we scatter. Pam will deal with the fallout on the girls' side. Pender will blow the building. Hoorah?"
*
From there, it's just instinct and training. Arthur sweeps in the front door and expects someone to have his back. Someone does. He takes down three goons, poppopop his suppressor singing them a dirge, and hears bullets singing past him when he crouches to check for pulses.
It goes pretty much textbook except for the fact that they all hesitate when they get to the room where the girls are tied up. Eames and Arthur sweep through the room cutting bonds efficiently as everyone else starts fireman carrying drugged bodies out of the building. Arthur's mind is blank besides I will not let my men die. I will live so they also live. I will not let my men die.
His mind is blank, but he'll remember later. He always remembers later.
*
Arthur hops into the back of the SUV as the first blast goes off. He's covered in gunpowder, sweat, and other people's blood. Eames's expression is grim, he has the kind of spray pattern on his face and neck that come from slitting someone's throat. He's not wiping himself down or making any move to clean himself up, just staring straight ahead with his jaw locked.
Arthur hasn't asked why Eames took this so personally. He has no plans to. He knows what he needs to about him, and the time has long come and passed when he needed to pry into Eames's secret history for leverage or insurance.
They bump along to the makeshift airstrip in silence.
*
Serbia isn't short on forged passports and the kind of shady people who don't ask questions about very specific requests. Arthur's exit plan had been to dust his hands and go back to Chicago where his greatest danger was political robocalls. He rapidly puts together a new strategy when Eames is uncharacteristically pliant and silent about Arthur's planning.
"Where's your safe house?" Arthur won't bluster about this.
"I was a bit caught up in the moment and didn't exactly plan that out," Eames has finally showered. They have to burn Belgrade. Yusuf's already amscrayed and Arthur feels like they're sitting right out in the open.
Arthur isn't going to rip the guy a new one for something Arthur's already figured out on his own. This was an emotion-fueled job, something he can't really bitch about all things considered.
"Ok, let's go," Arthur grabs his coat, his attaché, and the bag with his papers and cash. "Do you have your real passport?"
"Excuse me?" Eames seems interested in a way he hasn't the past several hours.
"We're floating up to the top." Arthur jerks his thumb towards the door and inclines his head that way. "Let's hit it before I leave your sorry ass flapping in the wind."
"We both know my ass is anything but sorry."
*
Here's the thing--Eames and Arthur are both decorated war vets. Arthur is actually famous in the mundane world of talk shows and press junkets because he won a Bronze Star before he went black ops. Well, not exactly before, but that doesn't matter. Eames was the face all over the news in the UK after the clusterfuck in Kabul. He single-handedly saved an entire squad of Americans and pulled the full "It wasn't me, it was my men." routine that just endeared him to the hearts of the nation even more.
These facts link them in ways that they've always avoided talking about. Eames works internationally for reasons that do not need further explanation.
"We're getting married," Arthur explains once they're settled in first class on British Airways.
"Could you repeat that, I think I misunderstood you," Eames pauses with his drink halfway to his mouth.
"You don't need to commit juvenile crimes to pay for your gambling habit or for the thrill of it. You're getting too old for that shit anyway." Arthur combs a hand through his hair. "I know how much money you have. At least the caches you let me know about, and I know the payout on the Fischer job."
Eames pops nuts into his mouth and chews while squinting one eye at him. "Do continue."
"You know what'll happen if we popped up in the media married. This is a big story right now in the States, you know that. We'd be untouchable by a gang of Ukrainian sex traffickers with CNN is sitting on the lawn."
"You're skipping the part where we wouldn't be able to work anymore."
"Bullshit. You can still work in dreams, no one would ever have to see your real face if you didn't want them to. As for me, I can pass as a projection in a dream if we're famous enough." He takes a drink of his scotch and looks across the aisle at the sleeping businessman with The Wall Street Journal over his face. "I've been thinking about retiring anyway," he adds because there's no reason not to mention that.
"What about when the media circus blows into another town and we've been left exposed?" Eames regards him with his work face, calculating.
"I've already handled that. They'll all be dead. The dead can't get much retribution aside from in dreams."
Eames leans on his elbow and moves his mouth so that it knocks against Arthur's ear. "Couldn't you at least have bought me roses?"
Arthur can't believe that Eames is acquiescing to this plan so readily.
"We'll have to have a pre-nup, of course. For verisimilitude." He taps a finger on his bottom lip and Arthur can almost see the pieces of the mural he's constructing in his mind. "I get to pick the rings."
"No." Arthur answers. Eames laughs, and Arthur realizes it's even the first time he's smiled since Sevastopol.
*
"Do you have people to warn?" Arthur asks as Eames strolls out of the bathroom off the living room of their suite.
Eames smooths his hand down the front of his tasteful white and purple striped oxford. "It's touching that you're still pretending to not know those things. I think we can drop the charade."
Shuh-rahd. Arthur smiles and shakes his head.
"You know I can't wait for them to twist in the wind." He lifts an eyebrow.
Arthur kicks back in the armchair and cocks a foot up on his knee. "Bitterness becomes you, which is unfortunate for your digestion." He's feeling pretty loose, still riding the come-down from a perfectly executed job. Inception was his peak, but doing something for righteous justice in the real world has a particular flavor in his soul. He only has a sliver of the idealistic youth who dared to be all he could be, but some aspects of a man's nature dog him.
"You, I believe, have a very different reality." Eames doesn't hide the schadenfreude. Why would he?
"I mostly ignore them anyway. They know I fuck guys, that was established in an incident I have yet to have scrubbed clean from my memory. Maybe you can incept me to forget it in the near future. This issue is something else entirely." Arthur's good mood has evaporated.
"Normally I'd let you dangle and make random, mean-spirited guesses until you were worked up into a full strop, but I think we understand each other a little better these days. I already know they're going to hate me because I'm not Jewish and pretend otherwise to be polite." Eames flops down on the couch and swings his legs up.
"The polite part you have completely wrong."
*
"I always knew I'd end up in a loveless dynastic match. What I didn't reckon on was doing it to myself." Eames puts his cigarette out in a cup of cold coffee.
"This's hardly dynastic. " Arthur pauses. "What is it about you that makes me act pedantic. You know I'm never like that but around you."
Eames sits up and watches him for a calculatedly uncomfortable amount of time. His eyes flutter over the open collar of Arthur's shirt and how he's holding the phone in his hand, appraising. "You know, I know that's an act," Arthur tells him.
Eames meets his eyes. "Do you now?"
Arthur shakes his head and smiles down at the angry birds on his phone screen.
Suddenly, Eames is all action. He bustles up off the couch and hauls Arthur up out of his seat. Arthur hangs as dead weight until he mercurially decides to just go with what Eames's is up to. "There's something we have to do. It's vital to our plans." He frog marches Arthur towards the bathroom and deposits him on the toilet.
"I'm not going to bother telling you to trust me." Eames rolls up his sleeves in neat, efficient movements to just above his elbows. Ink peeks out at Arthur on the right hand side. Eames drops one of the hand towels into the sink and turns on the hot tap. "You already do trust me, don't you?" Eames's voice drops on the interrogative part of the comment and he turns his face towards the sink pretending he didn't see the shock on Arthur's face.
Eames puts the hot towel on Arthur's face and leaves. He comes back with a straight back chair he sets in front of Arthur. He grabs the shaving cream off the sink basin and winks. "Ready?"
Arthur just stares. He's decided he's not going to talk right now. He feels the die in his pocket, his fingernails pushing into the indentations. Eames is the kind of person to take silence as consent, so Arthur is shortly lathered up.
He stands up to lean over Arthur to root around in his toiletry bag producing an old fashioned hard leather case. Inside is a safety razor, ancient but rust free. "I promise the blade is fresh," Eames whispers as he leans back. His eyes linger over Arthur's cheeks and don't meet his eyes. He has to press one of Arthur's knees between his to get close enough to get the right angle to make the first drag of the razor against Arthur's cheek.
Arthur feels dazed, perhaps drugged. The pads of Eames's fingers feel huge on his jaw. He closes his eyes and listens to Eames rinse the razor in the sink, his chest pressed to Arthur's as he stretches around him. Arthur counts backwards from ten and focuses on settling his pulse.
"It's ok to enjoy this," Eames whispers in his ear and any improvement that Arthur had achieved in his heart rate evaporates. He bites the inside of his lip to keep from gasping then realizes it's really pointless with Eames's knee brushing the inside of his thighs. He tries to keep still and not lean forward to arch his hips up. Eames makes a deep sound in his throat. "Exactly so," his cigarette rough voice feels like another hand on Arthur's skin.
Eames peels away and Arthur's eyes flutter open. He lets Eames pull him around so that the back of his head is resting on the muscle of Eames's belly. Two fingers tip his head back so Eames can stretch out his neck. This is the vulnerable moment when Arthur's heart hits the bottom of his feet and every instinct he has tells him to slither to the ground and get the guy's arms behind his back. Arthur stretches his neck further back and swallows.
"Watching that thought process work through your head was akin to my first sexual experience, I'll have you know," Eames sounds almost pained. The clatter of metal on tiles rings through the room. "The rest will wait for later." He spins Arthur around and Arthur gets his hands wrapped in Eames's shirt as he falls to his knees between Arthur's. Arthur leans down to pull Eames's head back in an echo of how his own just was. He smears shaving cream all over his face in his haste and gets it in both of their mouths.
They both fly apart when the distinctive sound of the hammer of a gun clicks in the next room.
The guy's an amateur. Eames takes him out with an elbow to the temple and has him trussed up in thirty seconds. They don't spend time interrogating or killing him.
They're in New York ten hours later.
part two
That should tell you what you need to know.
This was written to entertain Liz, don't expect it to be good.
I never do this, but I will for once:
WARNING: for non-pairing noncon, violence, gratuity of every flavor, and real world issues.
Unexpected Plot Twist Act 1
Arhur doesn't take calls from numbers that aren't in his phone. His voicemail is set up to automatically delete when full. That being said, this incoming call is a blocked number, which immediately piques his interest.
The message: Normally I wouldn't bother to even stoop to ask, but I've heard you're dangling in the wind these days. It's not good to leave you to your own devices, surely. I have a job.
That's it. No number. No email address. No details.
Arthur's sitting on his couch in pajama bottoms, a white t-shirt, and hasn't bothered to shave for so long he has a full beard. He runs a hand over his cheek, feels his hair curling against the collar of his shirt in the back. It's been years since he let himself go like this. Mostly because until recently he'd been on his toes 24/7 in preparation for Dom to go up like an A-bomb.
He realizes that Eames has thrown down a gauntlet here. Catch me if you can find me. Arthur rolls his head on the back of the couch and tries to decide if he cares. He's probably never going to have to work again. He doesn't know if he can rustle up the desire to want to, either.
It takes half a bottle of vodka (he's feeling sentimental) for him to boot up the trusty roughbook to start ferreting Eames out. "Na zdorovje," he salutes the screen when he hacks into wikileaks' servers and starts scanning for likely Eames-like bullshittery.
Four hours later he's blotto and laughing his ass off at second-hand stories about Putin wrestling a tiger.
He finds nothing. This is when he decides to admit he's pissed off.
*
The next time he gets a call from a blocked number he's waiting in the line for the self-serve check out at Kroger. "That took longer than I expected," he says after picking up the call.
"Huh?" Someone says. "You've been selected for a special rate for the Sunday New York Times…"
Arthur hangs up and laughs. The lady ahead of him buying 50 lbs of kitty litter and The Enquirer looks like the kind of person to hold up the line due to check-out incompetency. He steps to the other side of the queues.
*
He gets an email a few days after he's considered going to some actual effort to find Eames. He hasn't bothered because he figures if Eames really wants something, he'll find a way to get it.
Your not even curious?
Goddamn it, of course he is!
The address is ridiculous-johndoe at gmail. And Arthur wonders how Eames managed to land that handle. He rubs a hand against his beard. He hasn't shaved it off yet. He might not at all since he's past the itchy stage and he's kind of fond of the way people cross the street to not jog by him when he takes the trash out.
The second email reads: The tiger lark was fucking brilliant. Arthur laughs. Eames's always gotten on like houses on fire with Russians.
*
He calls Sergei on Tuesday afternoon after he's exhausted the crossword, fed the angry birds, and run his legs rubbery.
"You still owe me money," is how Sergei answers. His voice is slow like oil in winter. He was sleeping. Probably not in Vancouver then. He yawns. "This took longer than I expected."
"You know why I'm calling?" Arthur kicks his running shoes off and uses the tail of his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face.
Sergei laughs. "There's great cosmic coincidence or you're calling about the esteemed mister Eames."
"Why?" He not going to give anything up unnecessarily.
"Inception, are rumors true?"
"What rumors?" He's been disavowing knowledge since the job, why stop now?
Sergei clicks his tongue and says something muffled to someone with him. "You're lying, but we're comrades, so." Meaning they're all ex-military, which is exactly why he called Sergei and why Eames must have told Sergei to expect him to. "Very mysterious he is being. What do I get for number?"
"I think Eames paid you to give it to me already, so stop playing both ends." This gets a hacking laugh that trails off into a cough. "Smoking's bad for you."
"Yeah, yeah."
He gets a Swedish number and a lecture about gun safety that when concluded leaves Arthur wondering who got shot and why. He doesn't ask, though, he's got shit to do.
*
With the phone number everything else clicks into place neatly like a clip in a gun. Eames is in Sevastopol, which is a red flag. Nothing good can come of Eames in Ukraine. Arthur sees visions of damp prison cells and electro shock interrogations. What could Eames even be stealing there?
Arthur knows he won't find that kind of information other than directly or by sheer luck stumbling on someone with insider knowledge.
He gets another blocked call and answers it.
"When does your flight get in?" Eames sounds irritated.
"I don't remember signing a contract on this folly." Arthur leans back and rubs his eyes.
Eames huffs out an annoyed breath. "You're bored, curious, and at leisure. You're going to lose your mind if you don’t work. I have a job. I have a job involving dangerous men and guns. What more do you need to know?"
"Ideally, everything."
"This is suboptimal then, because I'm giving you nothing. It's a mystery. Don't ask me why I called you, don't bore us both with that kind of recursive tedium." His voice gets more and more clipped as he speaks.
"Are you in trouble?" Because why would Arthur ask why? He knows why. Who else is he going to call?
"That is something you'll have to ascertain when you land and we debrief." So that would be a yes.
"What are we liberating, at least?"
"It's not a what, it's a who. And if you're coming, I wish you'd stop dithering and do so. Normally my bedroom manners are much better than that, fyi."
Arthur laughs. Eames rumbles pleasantly in return. "Two days. I have loose ends."
"That's a bleeding lie, and we both know it. See you then."
*
Arthur's never traveled to Ukraine on a legitimate passport. And more than once without one at all. His feelings about the place are heavily influenced by how many bones he's broken there. Eames is waiting for him on the tarmac, not inside the airport. So it's an off the books completely visit, then.
Eames is wearing black slacks and shirt under a pea coat. He's also wearing aviators, a heavy gold watch, and an excessively haughty expression. When Arthur approaches, Eames reaches out and runs his fingers above the line of Arthur's beard on his cheek. His touch is ice cold against Arthur's wind-blushed skin. Arthur doesn't immediately snatch his head away, but only because he can read the tendon in Eames's jaw flexing and unflexing.
He says nothing when Eames wraps his hand on the back of Arthur's neck and all but screams kissing is happening NOW. And it is. Eames presses against him, cigarette smoke heavy in the boiled wool of his coat. He tastes of cinnamon candy and alcohol. Arthur taps Eames's teeth with his tongue in acknowledgment that he's not going to break character to fuck this up, but he also bites down on Eames's lip, scraping his teeth way too savagely as he pulls away.
"Just so," Eames says. Arthur can see the glasses are as much about whomever's watching as they are for him.
"I missed you," Arthur says with fondness. Eames's slight smile folds away in what Arthur reads as surprise at Arthur's acting abilities. That annoys Arthur more than the kiss.
As Eames turns to lead them around the building Arthur catches his hand. Eames doesn't flinch away or look down. Arthur taps in Morse code against Eames's palm.
SITREP
Eames taps back FUBAR.
*
Predictably, there are lots of burly men in black with guns. Arthur doesn't sigh. He could have used some information here. Yes, he has weapons on his person, but that really doesn't make a difference unless he can use them without dying horribly anyway. They're bundled in the back of a Mercedes.
Eames tucks his sunglasses into his pocket. His face is impassive. "How was your trip?" he asks casually.
Arthur suppresses a laugh. "The usual. Luftanasa is predictably reliable."
"And how is the cat?" Eames turns to look him dead in the eye. He's thinner, his hair shorter. He looks like a dangerous man.
"Reassuringly catlike," Arthur answers.
"Good, it wouldn't do to have a repeat of what transpired when I was in Lucerne."
Arthur doesn't allow the sigh or the slow eye blink. Lucerne. Arthur is going to get Eames under and take him apart piece by piece starting with his toes.
*
Eames gives the signal right as Arthur has sussed that the tail has peeled off down an exit ramp. Arthur doesn't know what kind of outfit this is, but usually thugs at least know to fill the tank in between jobs. Eames pistol whips the passenger as Arthur puts the driver in a sleeper hold. He leans over in one fluid movement and opens the passenger door and shoves the guy out of it as he slides into the seat and closing the door back. He leans across and repeats the action with the driver's door and slides behind the wheel. Arthur is in the passenger seat immediately. The whole adventure takes about twenty seconds.
Eames grins at him, showing teeth, about to make some witticism. Arthur punches him in the jaw. He pulls the punch a little, because he doesn't want to wreck the car, but not by much. Eames glares at him rubbing his jaw for a second before laughing. "That's your one free shot. The next one goes on the ledger."
"You owe me a fuckton more than one pulled punch to the jaw, asshole." Arthur glares out the window clocking the rearview and turns to check the perimeter behind them. They're in a nondescript, grey stretch of broken concrete and blowing trash.
"I do so enjoy your potty mouth when we're not in mixed company, Arthur. It recalls hand jobs in barracks and the camaraderie of sharing a sleeping bag for warmth." Eames's words slither around the car on oiled vowels.
"Our service experiences were quite divergent, dickface."
Eames laughs again.
"Want to tell me who the victim is, how many people we're dealing with, what kind of hardware you have. You know, the debrief?"
Eames swerves suddenly and guns down a side road, bouncing them both enough for bitten tongues and clattering teeth. "Always so impatient," he intones.
They screech around a few more bends and come to a halt in a garage where a shady looking guy in a pair of overalls closes the door behind them…and turns out to be Yusuf.
"I thought you didn't want to do field work anymore?" Arthur bites out as he slams the car door behind him.
"Don't take your temper out on third parties, Arthur," Eames barks at his back.
Yusuf is placid in the face of their hostility. He waves at Arthur and approaches to shake his hand. "The beard and hair are unexpected. Otherwise, you look hale."
Arthur runs both of his hands through his hair and counts backwards from ten. He listens to his own heartbeat and breathes until it steadies to rest. "I'm going to ask, just once, what's going on. If I find the answer lacking, I'm going to walk out the door and never speak to either of you again."
"Such a drama princess!" Yusuf's pronouncement comes with an unexpected laugh.
Eames leans against the car on his hip. He takes a toothpick out of the pocket of his coat and tosses it from side to side in his mouth staring at Arthur for several seconds as Yusuf wanders over to tend to an electric kettle. "I was hired by the employer of the gentlemen you just had the pleasure to meet to rescue his daughter from kidnappers. He wasn't keen on paying the ransom, but less so to see his daughter dead. This is what he claimed. I knew he was lying, of course." His voice turns hard, the words suddenly fraught with heaviness. "It's unfortunate when goons assume that all criminals are as uncomplicatedly dim as they."
"He wanted you to grab someone. Presumably this is a sex trafficking scenario."
Eames's look turns blacker and he spits the toothpick on the floor. "Presumably and in fact."
And the chinks fit together. Eames told them he was gay so he wouldn't have to sample the wares. "This is now a liberation op." It's not a question. What is is how dead they're going to get. "Is there a dream element to this, or am I just here to shoot people in the head."
"Remains to be seen."
Yusuf approaches with mugs of tea. "And you?" Arthur takes his tea because he's conditioned to never turn down caffeine or food.
Yusuf shrugs one shoulder. "Seemed like the kind of thing you don't say no to."
"Fuck." Arthur frowns down at his tea before blowing across the surface of it.
*
They fall back to Belgrade because Eames and Arthur both have connections there. Some overlapping, some independent. Yusuf speaking Serbo-Croatian is something of a surprise, but Arthur doesn't know why at this point. They set up shop in a house owned by one of Arthur's Blackwater contacts.
"Why must you still cultivate these assets?" Eames starts grousing after two shots of the disgusting apricot "brandy" endemic to the region. "Have you no idealism left? If not idealism, morality."
"You have got to be fucking kidding me. Morality? People hired you to kidnap a teenaged girl. Take your lecture and shove it up your ass." He chugs his bitter pilsner.
Eames rumbles with laughter.
"I keep up with them so I know what doesn't get documented." He's not explaining that further.
"Are you a wikileaker, Arthur?" Eames leans forward and rests his arms on his thighs. Arthur scratches at his beard and ignores him.
"We could channel this to the authorities," Arthur muses.
"I know you're taking the piss now." Eames pours himself another drink of liquid death.
"It's an option. Not locals, obviously, but someone earnest at INTERPOL." He doesn't really mean this, he's just winding Eames up.
He gets a long sigh. "Please stop insulting my intelligence."
Yusuf swings around the door frame with a dish towel in his hand. "We're set for explosives. The hardest part was securing copper wire. I'm sure you're both impressed with my procurement skills."
"You stole it?" Arthur asks.
Yusuf's laughter is enough of an answer.
*
They need a squad to do this the conventional way. This is immediately apparent when Arthur combs over the security schematics. To do it clean, they need a one-to-one ratio of guns on the ground at least and a couple extra team members for contingencies. They can't do this conventionally.
"It has to be a dream." He slouches back on the couch and watches Eames light a cigarette.
"No." The smoke curls up both his nostrils and he breathes it out as he speaks.
"Do you have a plan?" Arthur isn't mad about the song and dance. Eames is just like this. He likes games and elaborate cons. That's who he is. Arthur likes a straight line and Occam's Razor. The combination of the two styles is what makes them bulletproof.
"You're my plan, of course." He flicks ash off his cigarette into the ashtray on his thigh. "You have all the contacts I need. Even the bloody Mossad if it comes down to it."
Arthur closes his eyes. "So what you meant was that you don't trust the authorities to actually keep anyone safe."
"Precisely."
Arthur tosses his pen across the room. "It's been a while since I did something like this."
"Yes, but this is bicycles and sex, and you know it."
They don't need a full squad if they don't plan to take any hostages or cover their tracks.
*
Eames grows his own beard and buzzes his hair off as they plot dates and tap into satellite feeds. Arthur starts showing up at poker games hosted by para and ex-military in the city and collects a fistful of promises for back up if the situation turns dire. He even believes half of them.
He'd already set his affairs in order--one call, always--before he hopped the flight to Frankfurt. He thinks about calling Dom in the lead up to the op, but doesn't. He'll live or he won't, and there's no reason to get anyone else involved at this point.
They hop a four-seater flying under radar surveillance right after dark on the day before Thanksgiving.
"We're coming," the copilot informs them in an accent very much like Eames's real one. Arthur immediately balks. He doesn't know these guys, and eleventh hour plan changes are what kills you way too often. Eames glances down at his boots then quickly back up to Arthur's face as the engines whine to life. He leans forward and says low and fast. "These are my squaddies, yeah?"
"You should have said something," Arthur bites back.
"He had no say in the matter," the pilot informs him before the sound in the cabin is too thunderous for conversation. Eames leans back in a deceptive sprawl, his arms over his chest. It doesn't deceive Arthur whose blood has gone cold from the litany in his head he trained himself to in the army.
I will not let my men die. I will live so they also live. I will not let my men die.
*
They land in an abandoned field, Arthur's contact is waiting with an SUV and a debrief. And also a lot of complaints.
"This is suicide. Even if you survive, they'll come for you. Thought you were smarter than this." Pender's red hair's going grey at the temples but his freckles are as livid as ever. East Texas still crawls out of his mouth when he speaks even after ten years in eastern Europe.
"Do you have the transport or not?" Arthur starts his pre-mission check, opening his pockets and cataloging his gear.
"Don't treat me like a bitch." Pender turns back around in a huff.
"Americans are so delightful," Eames's friend Morris informs them all in a bright, cheerful voice.
"Fuck off," Arthur says snapping his switchblade open and closed again in one fluid motion.
"By delightful he means rude and boorish and somehow still sexually appealing, of course," Eames whispers into Arthur's ear around a laugh. Eames is already keyed up, ready for his boots to hit the ground, Arthur recognizes the battle lust.
*
They park in a garage a block from the target. They're met by Pam Ludlow and another chick Arthur doesn't know.
"You're INTERPOL, I can smell it on you," Eames accuses and attempts to skewer Arthur with a look.
"Yes, and I know who you are, too. If you weren't playing the Good Samaritan to rape victims, I'd have my knee in your back and zip ties around your wrists right now." Pam pops the snap on her hip holster.
"You could bloody well try, but I doubt you'd be quite so smug after the attempt," Eames growls.
"For fuck's sake, can we tighten up this abortion of discipline?" Arthur shoves Eames, who luckily allows it, and wheels around to face Pam. Everyone in the room is suddenly bristling with pre-mission jitters and serious trust issues. "We're all here for one reason. There will be no civilian casualties. Not one." He looks around the room and makes eye contact with each person. "Enemies are to be dropped on sight and left where they fall. Has everyone memorized their personal mission objectives?" He goes from person to person again getting nods from each one. "I'm on point, Eames is on Pam's six. Are we clear?"
He gets a mixed whoop of various forms of affirmation.
"We do this clean and tight, and we scatter. Pam will deal with the fallout on the girls' side. Pender will blow the building. Hoorah?"
*
From there, it's just instinct and training. Arthur sweeps in the front door and expects someone to have his back. Someone does. He takes down three goons, poppopop his suppressor singing them a dirge, and hears bullets singing past him when he crouches to check for pulses.
It goes pretty much textbook except for the fact that they all hesitate when they get to the room where the girls are tied up. Eames and Arthur sweep through the room cutting bonds efficiently as everyone else starts fireman carrying drugged bodies out of the building. Arthur's mind is blank besides I will not let my men die. I will live so they also live. I will not let my men die.
His mind is blank, but he'll remember later. He always remembers later.
*
Arthur hops into the back of the SUV as the first blast goes off. He's covered in gunpowder, sweat, and other people's blood. Eames's expression is grim, he has the kind of spray pattern on his face and neck that come from slitting someone's throat. He's not wiping himself down or making any move to clean himself up, just staring straight ahead with his jaw locked.
Arthur hasn't asked why Eames took this so personally. He has no plans to. He knows what he needs to about him, and the time has long come and passed when he needed to pry into Eames's secret history for leverage or insurance.
They bump along to the makeshift airstrip in silence.
*
Serbia isn't short on forged passports and the kind of shady people who don't ask questions about very specific requests. Arthur's exit plan had been to dust his hands and go back to Chicago where his greatest danger was political robocalls. He rapidly puts together a new strategy when Eames is uncharacteristically pliant and silent about Arthur's planning.
"Where's your safe house?" Arthur won't bluster about this.
"I was a bit caught up in the moment and didn't exactly plan that out," Eames has finally showered. They have to burn Belgrade. Yusuf's already amscrayed and Arthur feels like they're sitting right out in the open.
Arthur isn't going to rip the guy a new one for something Arthur's already figured out on his own. This was an emotion-fueled job, something he can't really bitch about all things considered.
"Ok, let's go," Arthur grabs his coat, his attaché, and the bag with his papers and cash. "Do you have your real passport?"
"Excuse me?" Eames seems interested in a way he hasn't the past several hours.
"We're floating up to the top." Arthur jerks his thumb towards the door and inclines his head that way. "Let's hit it before I leave your sorry ass flapping in the wind."
"We both know my ass is anything but sorry."
*
Here's the thing--Eames and Arthur are both decorated war vets. Arthur is actually famous in the mundane world of talk shows and press junkets because he won a Bronze Star before he went black ops. Well, not exactly before, but that doesn't matter. Eames was the face all over the news in the UK after the clusterfuck in Kabul. He single-handedly saved an entire squad of Americans and pulled the full "It wasn't me, it was my men." routine that just endeared him to the hearts of the nation even more.
These facts link them in ways that they've always avoided talking about. Eames works internationally for reasons that do not need further explanation.
"We're getting married," Arthur explains once they're settled in first class on British Airways.
"Could you repeat that, I think I misunderstood you," Eames pauses with his drink halfway to his mouth.
"You don't need to commit juvenile crimes to pay for your gambling habit or for the thrill of it. You're getting too old for that shit anyway." Arthur combs a hand through his hair. "I know how much money you have. At least the caches you let me know about, and I know the payout on the Fischer job."
Eames pops nuts into his mouth and chews while squinting one eye at him. "Do continue."
"You know what'll happen if we popped up in the media married. This is a big story right now in the States, you know that. We'd be untouchable by a gang of Ukrainian sex traffickers with CNN is sitting on the lawn."
"You're skipping the part where we wouldn't be able to work anymore."
"Bullshit. You can still work in dreams, no one would ever have to see your real face if you didn't want them to. As for me, I can pass as a projection in a dream if we're famous enough." He takes a drink of his scotch and looks across the aisle at the sleeping businessman with The Wall Street Journal over his face. "I've been thinking about retiring anyway," he adds because there's no reason not to mention that.
"What about when the media circus blows into another town and we've been left exposed?" Eames regards him with his work face, calculating.
"I've already handled that. They'll all be dead. The dead can't get much retribution aside from in dreams."
Eames leans on his elbow and moves his mouth so that it knocks against Arthur's ear. "Couldn't you at least have bought me roses?"
Arthur can't believe that Eames is acquiescing to this plan so readily.
"We'll have to have a pre-nup, of course. For verisimilitude." He taps a finger on his bottom lip and Arthur can almost see the pieces of the mural he's constructing in his mind. "I get to pick the rings."
"No." Arthur answers. Eames laughs, and Arthur realizes it's even the first time he's smiled since Sevastopol.
*
"Do you have people to warn?" Arthur asks as Eames strolls out of the bathroom off the living room of their suite.
Eames smooths his hand down the front of his tasteful white and purple striped oxford. "It's touching that you're still pretending to not know those things. I think we can drop the charade."
Shuh-rahd. Arthur smiles and shakes his head.
"You know I can't wait for them to twist in the wind." He lifts an eyebrow.
Arthur kicks back in the armchair and cocks a foot up on his knee. "Bitterness becomes you, which is unfortunate for your digestion." He's feeling pretty loose, still riding the come-down from a perfectly executed job. Inception was his peak, but doing something for righteous justice in the real world has a particular flavor in his soul. He only has a sliver of the idealistic youth who dared to be all he could be, but some aspects of a man's nature dog him.
"You, I believe, have a very different reality." Eames doesn't hide the schadenfreude. Why would he?
"I mostly ignore them anyway. They know I fuck guys, that was established in an incident I have yet to have scrubbed clean from my memory. Maybe you can incept me to forget it in the near future. This issue is something else entirely." Arthur's good mood has evaporated.
"Normally I'd let you dangle and make random, mean-spirited guesses until you were worked up into a full strop, but I think we understand each other a little better these days. I already know they're going to hate me because I'm not Jewish and pretend otherwise to be polite." Eames flops down on the couch and swings his legs up.
"The polite part you have completely wrong."
*
"I always knew I'd end up in a loveless dynastic match. What I didn't reckon on was doing it to myself." Eames puts his cigarette out in a cup of cold coffee.
"This's hardly dynastic. " Arthur pauses. "What is it about you that makes me act pedantic. You know I'm never like that but around you."
Eames sits up and watches him for a calculatedly uncomfortable amount of time. His eyes flutter over the open collar of Arthur's shirt and how he's holding the phone in his hand, appraising. "You know, I know that's an act," Arthur tells him.
Eames meets his eyes. "Do you now?"
Arthur shakes his head and smiles down at the angry birds on his phone screen.
Suddenly, Eames is all action. He bustles up off the couch and hauls Arthur up out of his seat. Arthur hangs as dead weight until he mercurially decides to just go with what Eames's is up to. "There's something we have to do. It's vital to our plans." He frog marches Arthur towards the bathroom and deposits him on the toilet.
"I'm not going to bother telling you to trust me." Eames rolls up his sleeves in neat, efficient movements to just above his elbows. Ink peeks out at Arthur on the right hand side. Eames drops one of the hand towels into the sink and turns on the hot tap. "You already do trust me, don't you?" Eames's voice drops on the interrogative part of the comment and he turns his face towards the sink pretending he didn't see the shock on Arthur's face.
Eames puts the hot towel on Arthur's face and leaves. He comes back with a straight back chair he sets in front of Arthur. He grabs the shaving cream off the sink basin and winks. "Ready?"
Arthur just stares. He's decided he's not going to talk right now. He feels the die in his pocket, his fingernails pushing into the indentations. Eames is the kind of person to take silence as consent, so Arthur is shortly lathered up.
He stands up to lean over Arthur to root around in his toiletry bag producing an old fashioned hard leather case. Inside is a safety razor, ancient but rust free. "I promise the blade is fresh," Eames whispers as he leans back. His eyes linger over Arthur's cheeks and don't meet his eyes. He has to press one of Arthur's knees between his to get close enough to get the right angle to make the first drag of the razor against Arthur's cheek.
Arthur feels dazed, perhaps drugged. The pads of Eames's fingers feel huge on his jaw. He closes his eyes and listens to Eames rinse the razor in the sink, his chest pressed to Arthur's as he stretches around him. Arthur counts backwards from ten and focuses on settling his pulse.
"It's ok to enjoy this," Eames whispers in his ear and any improvement that Arthur had achieved in his heart rate evaporates. He bites the inside of his lip to keep from gasping then realizes it's really pointless with Eames's knee brushing the inside of his thighs. He tries to keep still and not lean forward to arch his hips up. Eames makes a deep sound in his throat. "Exactly so," his cigarette rough voice feels like another hand on Arthur's skin.
Eames peels away and Arthur's eyes flutter open. He lets Eames pull him around so that the back of his head is resting on the muscle of Eames's belly. Two fingers tip his head back so Eames can stretch out his neck. This is the vulnerable moment when Arthur's heart hits the bottom of his feet and every instinct he has tells him to slither to the ground and get the guy's arms behind his back. Arthur stretches his neck further back and swallows.
"Watching that thought process work through your head was akin to my first sexual experience, I'll have you know," Eames sounds almost pained. The clatter of metal on tiles rings through the room. "The rest will wait for later." He spins Arthur around and Arthur gets his hands wrapped in Eames's shirt as he falls to his knees between Arthur's. Arthur leans down to pull Eames's head back in an echo of how his own just was. He smears shaving cream all over his face in his haste and gets it in both of their mouths.
They both fly apart when the distinctive sound of the hammer of a gun clicks in the next room.
The guy's an amateur. Eames takes him out with an elbow to the temple and has him trussed up in thirty seconds. They don't spend time interrogating or killing him.
They're in New York ten hours later.
part two