(no subject)
You really won't believe what happens under this cut.
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 2
PART TWO
"This is what I do," Eames rubs his thumb against the corner of Arthur's mouth. Arthur was about to wipe his face with a napkin, but Eames beat him to it. Arthur finishes his bagel as Eames licks the cheese off his own thumb.
"I know," Arthur replies after he's swallowed. Eames creates lives down to minutiae, unspoken details like favorite color and childhood traumas. They're standing together at the baggage claim at JFK, Arthur with a FP tucked under his arm and Eames all casual slouch with a hand in his pocket and the other wiping invisible crumbs off the front of Arthur's shirt. Arthur isn't sure how free of a hand he's going to give Eames here, but he's mostly just curious at this point.
*
They check into the Affinia because Arthur can view schematics of their suites' floorplans online. Eames hums approval of the layout, and that's that. Midtown is chaotic enough that he feels safe-ish. Not really safe, he'll never feel safe. He honestly can't remember how safe felt. When you are, you don't even know it, so it's a feeling felt more in the absence, like health.
"We need to go shopping," Eames tosses his cigarette on the sidewalk and stubs it out.
"My thoughts exactly." Arthur shops in the quiet spaces, like other people do yoga.
They get a cab and head to Rag & Bone.
Arthur trails behind Eames, fingering fabric and sighing internally.
He lets Eames dress him in grey chinos and sweaters, neutral button-ups. He looks like a very well dressed professor. That suits his role, he supposes.
When Eames tries on a leather jacket in John Varvatos, Arthur feels his pulse jump. Eames's already wearing obscene jeans that hug the curve of his ass emphasizing the breadth of his thighs, combining the sleek lines of the jacket with that turns obscenity into something aspirationally untouchable.
Eames watches him in the mirror. "That's yes to the jacket then," he hums to himself, running the zipper up and down slowly. "I never thought I'd see that look on your face. Of all people, Arthur, never you." His voice breaks softly around the words. "It's a good look on you."
Arthur meets his own eyes in the mirror and sees sex in the half-lidded eyes and way he's holding his bottom lip between his teeth unconsciously.
"Don't cut your hair," Eames says in a tone that's clearly not a request.
*
Arthur calls his mother.
"Sweetheart! Can you believe this weather?" She always ignores the fact that they haven't lived in the same state since he was eighteen.
"Yeah, pretty crazy. Are you at work?" Arthur acknowledges that his work makes him an asshole, but that doesn't mean he has to put undo stressors on people.
"What? No, no, I'm in Boston shopping. Why? Is something wrong? What's wrong?" That went from neutral to panic in a stereotypical fashion.
"Look, mom, I need to talk to you about something," he eyes Eames's cigarettes laying on the table in front of him.
"I KNEW IT I KNEW IT!" He can see her exact facial expression in his head. "They found a way to stop loss you."
"That only happens if you're still active duty, mom. And no, jesus, I told you that's not going to happen, just move on."
"Why should I listen to you? How much brainwashing did they do to you? I don't even know if you know what you're saying."
Aaaaaaaaaaaand cue the paranoid ramblings portion of the conversation. Arthur hears the shower stop and Eames humming to himself.
"Mom, it's not that."
"Oh! Finally, finally! I knew you'd make your mother happy."
"No, mom, I'm not going to law school, either."
"Oh." Exaggerated sadness.
"I'm getting married."
Dead silence. He knows he should have called his dad first. He just couldn't bring himself to live the rest of his life with his mother dragging it out on Mother's Day and her birthday that she'd been the second call when he'd gotten engaged. None of this is serious, of course, it's all an elaborate pantomime, a play that they're all players in, a way of communicating that has passed down to them from their ancestors like the dark curling hair and hatred for paying retail.
"Girl or boy?" This was never going to be an issue with her.
"Boy."
"Arthur?"
"Mom."
"Why do you do this to me? It's bad enough that you've been lying about it. Serious enough to get married--YOU of all people in this world, and you've never mentioned him? Then, eh. What should I expect. It's my own fault for not sending you to yeshivah."
The laughter comes organically. He just lets it out, bonelessly rolling his head on the back of the couch, jagged guffaws bouncing around the room until tears tumble out of his eyes. His mom laughs, too, both of them caught in a loop of it, feeding each other.
When he finally gets himself together enough to gasp around words he says "Do you want me to tell dad, or do you?"
"Oh no you don't! You'll give me my moment! WE'RE HAVING A WEDDING! But now you have to tell me all about him. Starting with his name maybe."
"Charles. But everyone calls him by his last name. Including you, mom. Eames"
"I'm not going to start doing what you want just because you're passing a life milestone, Jimjam."
Arthur closes his eyes and sighs. When he opens them back up, Eames is leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest with one bare foot resting on top of the other. The smirk pushes Arthur over the edge.
"Why don't you just talk to him yourself?" Arthur tosses the phone over before she can respond. She's going to humiliate him, so he'd rather rip the bandaid off. He thinks about all the gun fights and sieges he's survived, about the time in Fallujah. Why is the domestic kind of torture so much more raw? He didn't turn into a petulant fifteen year old when he was kidnapped by Chechens.
"Yes, I'm that Charles Eames. Thank you, I flatter myself that I've aged well."
On that note, Arthur pulls himself to his feet and decides to meticulously fold and hang all the shit they bought.
*
They go out for dinner. Arthur has a craving for something really hot. They wander around Chinatown in the spitting snow. Arthur used to have favorite places here, but that was years ago. He's stayed away from the east coast as much as possible since he became a career criminal. It's just easier to not have to explain your uncle Walt to Wall Street tycoons you're negotiating an extraction with.
Eames slips his arm through Arthur's, the contact through six or seven layers muffled but heavy. The tip of Eames's cold nose brushes Arthur's still sensitive bare cheek, his forehead skims Arthur's temple. Arthur's always enjoyed casual contact. He grew up in a family of aggressive huggers, people who have no concept of personal space.
His phone screams "RED ALERT RED ALERT" and he sighs. Eames's laughter boils around them, drawing the attention of people on street. "It's my sister," Arthur says as he answers the call. He pulls away from Eames slightly, enough to insulate himself, so Eames can’t hear her end of the call.
"Betrayer." The weight of Jewish guilt bleeds across cell transmissions.
"I was going to call you." He means this earnestly and hates that Eames hears that.
"You seriously fucking called mom first? Is this some kind of revenge for the cheese whiz incident?" Eames laughs. Clearly Arthur didn't move far enough away.
"Who the fuck is this guy? Is this some kind of performance art? The last time you were dating someone you called me with daily status updates. I had to talk you down from jewelry buying. But you're getting married and nothing? What the fuck is going on?"
This was something Arthur had worried about. He's kept Emma out of his lifestyle, but he's never been able to totally let her go. She's just too much of who he is. She knows more about what he does than is healthy for either of them.
"You're going to love him." He lets sincerity bleed into his voice.
She goes silent for a second. "This is about all that stuff."
"Yeah. Can I call you back? I'm out to dinner."
"I love you."
"Luckily."
She laughs around her bye, but he hears how tense it is.
"I'm going to have to tell her the truth," he says as he pockets the phone.
"Some version of it." Eames answers. Arthur turns to meet his eyes. Eames smiles easily and rests his hand on the small of his back.
"How much of this is really you?" Arthur is suddenly caught up in the way Eames is looking at him with openness, and he wants that to be real.
Eames's eyelids flutter a little, but not in a coy way, more like he's thinking. "It's all real, Arthur. It has to be. That's something you've never understood, I think. I don't put on a skin, I become someone."
He pauses as the light changes and they cross the street.
Eames turns his face away, looks down the sidewalk. "I'll fall in love with you, it will be real. But I knew what I was agreeing to, so enjoy it instead of getting twisted over it."
Arthur lifts an eyebrow at the back of Eames's head.
"Are you already in love with me?" His job is to ask the hard questions, and sometimes he crosses lines in interpersonal relationships because of it. Or maybe it's the other way around, maybe he's always been the asshole who asks the unspeakable questions so he found a career to make that work for him. It doesn't matter which way around in the end.
Eames turns back to him, plucks at his bottom lip with his gloved fingers. "What do you think?"
Arthur thinks it's time to get out of the cold.
*
They eat pho on Mott street, Eames humming pleased to himself around mouths full of cilantro-heavy soup. "I suppose we need to get some kind of PR scoundrel to maximize the damage in the press," Eames says.
"And by that you mean you have someone in mind." Arthur sips tea watching the door.
"When do I not? The question is why don't you?" He stretches back, his arm on the surface of the table and his shoulders tipped down to the right. He's wearing a plaid cowboy style shirt that should be utterly ridiculous on him but somehow works. He hasn't shaved the beard yet. It's trendy, so it's probably calculated, but Arthur's pretty impressed by how much it ratchets up his butch, hard man factor.
"Several, but that's not really the point, is it?" Why beat around the bush on that. "That's not who we are, is it?"
Eames's eyes drop half closed and his hand flashes out to grab Arthur by the wrist. He leans over the table smiling big and lazy in Arthur's face. "You're very self-aware, sweetheart. That was fast."
"Give me some fucking credit. I'm a grown man, not some teenaged boy you have to lead to water."
"So," Eames says settling back into a sprawl. "Is spanking strictly off the table, or do I have free rein?"
"You're an idiot," Arthur rolls his eyes.
"Tell yourself that, love, if it makes the medicine go down easier." His tone is lighthearted, but he's not really kidding.
*
They both wear suits to see Eames's PR hack, but Arthur's wearing a sweater vest under his tightly fitted, stream-lined jacket and Eames is in a slick, fitted navy number that makes Arthur almost drool. Off the rack, but what can you do?
Eames pushes Arthur's hair behind his ear as he presses close to him in the elevator. "You're beautiful," he whispers and Arthur elbows him in the stomach.
"Cut it out." The doors ping open to Arthur's disapproving frown and Eames's chuckle. There's an assistant standing on the other side of the door with a smart phone in her hand. She manages to maintain her haughty boredom, but just barely. Arthur adjusts his tie and smirks.
Eames cuts her an appraising look. Arthur waits to see if Eames decides he's the jealous type or not. He briskly steps out of the elevator all casual smile and pats the girl on the back. So, no, he's Mr Charming then.
"Charles Eames," he offers her his hand.
"I know who you are." The girl gives him nothing, which is Arthur's own preferred way of handling the man himself. Preferred, but these days his life has turned into an inside-out circus.
"Mr. Da Costa, this way." The assistant takes off down the corridor and Arthur slides his hand to the inside of Eames's wrist and follows.
A blond man dressed just as well as they are meets them halfway down the hall with a smile that's probably reassuring to civilians but that reminds Arthur of a particularly vicious sadist he once knew in Malaysia.
"This is going to be a cake walk," pronounces Micah Pitt, PR God of Coming Out.
"Yes, it's fortunate that we're not inauspiciously deformed." Eames's voice is ice down Arthur's spine, it's the sarcastic, bitter tone that he'd used on Arthur for years.
Arthur clears his throat. Eames narrows his eyes at him. "Do you mean to tell me that it's not demeaning to everyone we served with who lost limbs or eyes or lives to be assessed by how telegenic we are?" He spits this out in Arthur's face.
"If you don't want to do this…" Arthur doesn't miss beats, that's why he's the best. "I told you we don't have to…"
"Oh, your conscience is clear, darling, I'll do my part to drag your pathetically backwards country into the current century, but don't expect me to like one second of it." He sniffs condescendingly.
Pitt watches them openly. Eames just gave the guy something to manage, so they aren't too obviously constructed for perfection.
Arthur smiles wanly at Pitt and shrugs one shoulder. "You know how it is."
"Do not manage me!" Eames grates.
*
Arthur is fucking exhausted by the time they get back to their suite. Pitt is the proverbial pig in shit over the upcoming media blitz and Arthur is having cold feet.
"Realized finally what you've gotten yourself into, I see." Eames hands him a drink.
"I always knew. The concept isn't the issue, it's the mental exhaustion of being something manipulated rather than someone manipulating." His drink is single malt instead of the scotch he normally drinks, too sharp and peaty, but he drinks it and hands the glass back for a second. "You, on the other hand, appear to be enjoying the fuck out of being a pain in the ass. I'd pretend to be surprised, if I had the energy."
"Arthur." Eames's commanding field voice is a surprise. Arthur's head snaps up, instantly alert. He swallows the booze in his mouth and his hand goes to the holster he's not wearing. Eames briskly downs his own drink and strides across the room. He knocks Arthur's phone out of his hand--it goes flying somewhere unseen--and straddles his hips, riding him down so they're laying on the couch tangled up. "Kiss me," he whispers against Arthur's chin. Arthur's eyes drop closed.
Eames brushes the hair under his mouth across Arthur's bottom lip until Arthur opens up and catches him with his tongue. He gets a hand behind Eames's head to move them both so that he can drag his teeth over Eames's bottom lip, pluck it into his mouth and suck. Eames doesn't let Arthur kiss him for long, he pulls back and repositions himself so that he can bear down and hold Arthur while he basically fucks his mouth with tongue. Arthur's fairly immobilized, unless he wants to do real damage, by Eames's weight and the way he's positioned himself.
Arthur doesn't struggle.
Eames finally pulls back just as Arthur gets a rhythm going with his hips. They stay pressed together, and Eames lays his cheek to Arthur's to pant next to his ear. "I never let myself think about you this way," the words are punctuated with grunts and his own hips thrusting down. "I just couldn't, Arthur, I knew it would wreck me. I knew you'd…" he breath catches and he produces a groan that's more of a vibration. "Oh fuck, fuck…" He tenses and Arthur finally does struggle a little, to get a hand down his pants so he can come. He has to right now. Rightnowrightnow.
"Eames, let me," he rocks his shoulders to get an arm free.
Eames sighs right into his ear, wet and open. "I always knew you're," and he lifts up enough to jerk Arthur through his pants, "the kind of lover that you never escape." He sounds liquid, bleary, honest.
Arthur doesn't know if it's the touch that gets him off at all.
*
The sex makes the situation more real than telling his mother did. He thinks that makes him broken in a way he's never realized before. It occurs to him that he and Eames need to have a brass tacks conversation about commitment, fidelity, and how Arthur didn't really mean married, but he doesn't even want to deal with that right now. He's not a complete coward, though, so he calls Dom to have that complete clusterfuck of a convo.
"Where're you?" Dom asks in greeting.
"New York."
Dom's quiet for a few seconds. "What's up?" The man has his faults, but he absolutely has a nose for trouble.
"I'm about to tell you a story that you're going to think is a distress plea. It's not. Every bit of it is true. Please wait for me to finish before booking your airline tickets."
"I'm agreeing with more than a few reservations."
"For reasons I can't get into over this line, Eames and I are getting married."
Dom laughs, a joyful untinted laugh that Arthur hasn't heard in a long time. "Shit, you had me fucking scared, you asshole."
Arthur lets Dom laugh himself out. "I'm serious. Rewind the whole conversation."
"What happened?" Dom's all business now. Arthur can see him pulling up Orbitz with a squinting frown.
"A fuckton of shit I can't get into."
"I thought you were retiring." Dom's chastising now.
"So did I. Have you ever seen a movie where someone's going to just do one more job then get out? Well, the plot to an action movie happened to me. In the waking world. Hindsight."
"Shit doesn't just happen to you, Arthur. Particularly, Eames's shit doesn't just happen to you. I need an explanation."
That pisses Arthur off, he's embarrassed like some kind of authority figure is chewing him out for poor performance when he actually performed quite brilliantly--it feels exactly like the marines. "Fuck off, Dom. I did what I had to do. Which is what I always do. I'm continuing in the same vein. " Arthur's not going to say you of all people, because he's not the kind of dick who brings up loyalty or respect when none is offered to him. He comports himself with honor because that's who he is, not because he expects respect in return.
"I'm sorry, jesus! That came out wrong. I'm just in shock." Dom's a good guy, but he's also judgmental.
"Apology accepted." It's not really, not all the way yet, but it will be. Arthur always forgives the people he loves anything. This becomes a problem from time to time.
"Can I ask you something?"
"No, we're not really getting married."
"I assume this is part of a longer con?"
Eames yells at the tv in the other room.
"Yeah, a much longer one."
"I trust you." Dom sighs. Now Arthur feels like a world class dick for getting so self-righteous a minute ago.
"I know." He does. Dom trusts him implicitly, and that's why Arthur was compelled to give up a good chunk of his life to be Cobb's point man and watch his six.
"Keep me apprised. And send me an invitation. I assume your mom and Emma have their hooks in this. Please tell me they do."
"You're an asshole." Arthur hangs up on him.
"How did dad take it?" Eames calls from the other room.
"That was…shut the fuck up, I own several guns!"
"Hot!"
*
The problem with sex is that as soon as you start having it, there can't be enough of it in the world. It's a lot like coke that way.
The trouble is that Arthur's orchestrating a series of fairly high profile hits on Ukrainian mobsters while juggling his mother and sister (dealing with that alone is a full time job) and a politically motivated coming out event. He has to delegate some of the chores to Eames.
"Let me do the wedding planning," Eames says around a mouthful of yoghurt and banana.
"No fucking way." No one could ever accuse Arthur of being anything less than a psychotic micromanager. He's already at his wit's end with his mother campaigning for a full-on Jewish wedding with dancing and a band and every single thing he'd ever loathed. Monogrammed kippahs! Meanwhile Emma wants a huge pre-wedding blow out ("You can't have a bachelor party without me!" "I don't want one at all!").
"Dear, I believe I can pull off a suitably classy affair, considering." Eames cuts him The Look, the regal snob look.
"Why can't you deal with the asshole?" Arthur really hates Micah Pitt.
"Do I need to deign that?" Eames rolls his eyes.
Arthur just wants to read wikileaks and feed some angry birds. "Six months ago I honestly thought all I'd be doing right now is figuring out how to manipulate World of Warcraft teams into doing my bidding."
"One of the reasons I love you is that from time to time I cannot for the life of me determine if you're above board." Eames traces his bottom lip with his thumbnail and tips his chin down. "World of Warcraft?"
Arthur doesn't tell him he's joking, he'll keep his veil of mystery for now. Angry birds and pressing international policy issues have been banished from his thoughts by the way Eames's legs fall open suggestively.
When Arthur sends Eames out to leave him alone, Eames picks up a tail and has to loop through Queens and Brooklyn then out to Long Island to lead him someplace isolated enough to hide the body.
*
The Great Coming Out Interview ("Were you ever IN the closet, darling? With the way you dress?" "I had a superhero identity, Charles.") is scheduled for Anderson Cooper pretty much immediately. Arthur's picked up a healthy paranoia and he doesn't want to risk another incident.
The CNN people are pros, reassuring and unobtrusively ruthless. They "prep" Arthur and then Arthur plus Eames, and Arthur finds them almost endearing in a very condescending way. Even if they know nothing about his criminal background or that dream sharing even exists, on paper he's a battle hardened combat vet, he can do without the tissue box, thanks.
Anderson is handsome, chipper, he shakes Arthur's hand and says "You're very brave" before they go over the talking points of the interview. Arthur's used to hypocrites so he doesn't get inflamed over the double standard here.
"Thank you, I'm honored to be here." Arthur is reflexively polite.
"The honor is mine." The smile comes with a dip of his head. Anderson is flirting with him. Arthur smiles wide enough for dimples. His life is, as ever, patently absurd.
"I have a fiancé, you know." Arthur wags his head disarmingly.
"Doesn't hurt to try," Anderson whispers with a wink.
Arthur's glad Eames decided against the jealous boyfriend route, because a live brawl on CNN would be awkward.
Promo, cameras roll, Anderson looks appropriately righteous and focused on the matter at hand.
"I'm here tonight with decorated retired Marine Corps Sergeant Arthur Da Costa, a combat veteran of both Afghanistan and Iraq. He's come here tonight to make a statement."
Off camera, Arthur's cued to speak.
"Hello, Mr Cooper, mom and dad." He smiles and laughs in his head at Eames's insistence on that. ("It's wholesome, and you have to counteract the fact that you are decidedly not. Not with that hair.") "I'm here tonight in support of all of the current and former soldiers and sailors, airmen and marines who have had to suffer under the draconian legislation called Don't Ask Don't Tell. Repealing the law does not alter the shame and humiliation of being considered second class citizens in a country that we, as an all-volunteer military, fight and die to defend. I've come here tonight to speak in solidarity for all my uniformed brothers and sisters who worry that their honor and service will be besmirched by coming out. Your sexual orientation has no influence whatsoever over your ability to serve your country, and more importantly, to watch the six of your brothers and sisters. I'm a proud gay man and so is my fiancé, himself a former Royal Marine officer."
"Thank you for your service, Sergeant Da Costa." Anderson intones gravely.
"Call me Arthur, please." He's retired, and that life was a long time ago, more than his age marks because of how much time he's spent dream-sharing.
"Arthur," Anderson smiles. "Call me Anderson." Arthur figures that's played for laughs, so he smiles. "You're not just the run of the mill marine, isn't that the case?"
"No, I am. I'm just the one who got singled out when they needed a face for the news." That's his genuine opinion.
"I've heard that from other servicemen and women, Arthur. Your modesty aside, you did some pretty spectacular things during your time in uniform, didn't you?"
"I did what I was trained to do, the same as everyone else serving. In the heat of battle, instincts take over. I was unlucky enough on a couple of occasions to become involved in battle situations. You're not a hero because you happen to be where the IED goes off, you're fucked." The word slips out because he's pissed off.
Somewhere he hears Eames's raised voice.
"On that note, we'll be right back." Anderson smiles around a small laugh. He turns to Arthur immediately with a frank expression that might be real. "I didn't mean to push it. I know the topic is sensitive. My producer is informing me in my ear that your partner might need to be sedated. Should we just bring him out, or do you want to call this off?"
"Just bring him out before he starts breaking things."
Cue utter chaos as the set is picked up by an army of interns or whatever the hell works on these programs. Eames strides out from behind one of the cameras, out of blackness for Arthur since the lights have stunned him momentarily. There's a makeup person trailing Eames. A chair is produced and Eames settles in it waving the girl off. "I'm sure you can't fix what time has ravaged, dear."
"Arthur," Eames brushes his hand over his arm but there's no time.
Lights up, Anderson cued, and they're back. "We're joined now by Sergeant Da Costa's--I'm sorry-Arthur's partner."
"I'm never that." Eames injects with the bored drawl he affects with Americans he's unimpressed by. "I'm his fiancé."
Anderson laughs that off with the aplomb of the unflappable reporter. "Fiancé, Captain Charles Eames, himself a decorated battle veteran."
"Indeed," Eames agrees. Arthur almost has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.
"You were famously involved in…"
"Oh, let's not," Eames cuts him off. "I'm here in a strictly supporting capacity." He waves his hand dismissively. "Yes, yes, I'm infamous for a variety of reasons, let's not dwell."
Eames's Wikipedia page probably just got ten thousand simultaneous hits while at the same time guaranteeing that half of the conversation about Arthur's big gay reveal will be about the character of his cad of a boyfriend. The slouch and feral sexuality of the beard/shoulder combination won't hurt, either.
"Alright, we'll skip your greatest hits, Captain Eames." Eames doesn't beg off from the honorific, which is another perfect touch--every inch the upper-class dick who thinks he deserves automatic deference while Arthur is the humble enlisted man who wouldn't even allow lauding for saving the lives of his friends. Eames is so effortlessly brilliant sometimes Arthur allows himself to wallow in it. "Arthur, where is the wedding, if you don't mind me asking?" Anderson breaks into Arthur's musing about Eames's proficiency.
No, he doesn't mind since that's one of the carefully negotiated queries Micah Pitt worked out with the CNN producers.
"In Massachusetts, where I was raised and my parents still live. Unlike the majority of same-sex couples, my home state recognizes that marriage is marriage. Even if the federal government disagrees." Arthur frowns.
"And how does that make you feel?" Anderson seems so genuine. Another con man, just one with a legit paycheck.
"Are you kidding?" Eames huffs. Arthur quells him with his hand on his arm.
"How do you think it makes me feel, Anderson? Would you like to see my scars?" Arthur's getting genuinely angry again.
"How would you feel if you'd liberated your platoon-mate from being tortured by Taliban and sustained four gunshot wounds doing so only to have sanctimonious rich bastards who've never done anything more patriotic than wearing a lapel pin tell you that just because you've sucked a cock or two you're a second class citizen?" Eames barks out.
Live tv.
*
Needless to say they don't exactly get out of the CNN studios in an orderly way. Not in the day and age when people record every second of their lives on cellphones and upload them to social networking sites and YouTube. The video goes viral before they can get back to the hotel. There's no longer a way to manage these kinds of events unless the precipitating event is avoided.
"You can't say the mission didn't go absolutely smashingly." Eames strips down as he walks through the room, tossing clothes everywhere and disappearing into the shower as Arthur calls his mom.
"Arthur." It's his dad who answers. "We're so proud of you."
Arthur didn't expect to get choked up by such a simple statement. But, after all, this is what they've never said before, so maybe it's human nature.
"Your mom's spamming facebook. Her son's suddenly a civil rights icon. She has arrived." The dry tone is so quintessentially his father that Arthur suddenly feels grounded again. His life is some kind of carnival, he's a cold blooded killer and possible sociopath, but his parents love him. Sometimes you have to reduce things to basics.
"Your boyfriend seems like he's quite a handful. Not that I'd know since I haven't met him." There's no ahem tacked on, but Arthur hears it loud and clear.
"I don't know which way I don't want the infection to go."
"Both. Quit lying. I'm sure your mom and I can take a few fuck-laden conversations."
They both let the silence stretch out for a few seconds and start laughing at exactly the same moment. "Let us never speak of this again," his dad says and hangs up.
He's got texts from Dom, his mom, Emma, Eames from backstage and in the cab on the way home, but he opens the one from the unlabeled French number.
7321 it reads.
Two more of the men who need to be are dead.
*
He falls asleep on the couch that night, sitting near the outlet because he'd killed his phone battery and had to plug the thing into the wall. He wakes with a startle to Eames's fingers on his chin. Eames's sitting next to him and also has a hand in Arthur's hair. He's shaved the beard off.
"You've gotten accustomed to my noise pollution and can sleep through it." Eames lets his weight sag so that he's laying with his chest on Arthur's, a comfortable sprawl. "You don't notice me any longer." He affects a fake pout.
"Yes I do." Arthur's voice comes out sandpapered at the edges.
Eames leans in and kisses him. A soft press of lips followed by a glide of them side to side on Arthur's parted mouth. He pulls back.
"Micah, that tit, called. We're flying to LA tomorrow to do Ellen the day after."
"I want to fuck your mouth," Arthur responds.
"Yes," Eames says simply. "That's my favorite pick up line, it works every time."
Arthur shoves him back and grips him by the collar, twisting it up so that it constricts enough to turn Eames's face red. He presses on the top of his head with enough force that if Eames wasn't compliant he'd have been injured. Eames unfastens Arthur's pants with hands that flatteringly seem to almost shake. Nicotine poisoning probably.
His pants and underwear out of the way, Arther grabs the back of Eames's head and presses up and into yielding heat, the soft slickness so sweet that Arthur can't actually look. After all this time, he gets the full show, and he has to press his cheek to the cool leather of the couch and count to ten backwards just to hang on with his fingernails to not embarrass himself.
Eames yanks away, his fingers back on Arthur's chin, but this time hard. Arthur grabs his wrist and glares down at him. "Don't."
"You better watch this, we've both been waiting bloody long enough. You're not going to take your hair trigger away from me, I own it now."
Arthur smacks him softly on the face and keeps his eyes wide open as he angrily fucks into Eames's mouth all the way down. Three times and his spine siezes and balls tighten, and he comes in almost painful jerks, Eames holding him forcefully by the hips so he can't pull out as Eames sucks him hard.
Arthur's aching faintly from over stimulation when Eames finally lets him go to collapse to get his breath. He stands and peels his sweatpants down, but just in the front, the fleece clinging to the round swell of his ass. He brackets Arthur's thighs with his knees and grabs Arthur's hair. Arthur goes, unresisting, his tongue coming out to run over the edge of Eames's foreskin.
Eames hisses and presses against Arthur's mouth. "Take it," he rumbles. Arthur looks up at him through his eyelashes and lets his mouth drop open. The sound Eames makes then, guttural and shattering, causes a twitch low in Arthur's belly that goes straight to his ass. Eames's head lolls back. "That face," he moans.
Arthur sucks as he goes down and drools as much as he can, making it as messy as possible. He rubs behind Eames's balls and bobs, but the angle's bad and his jaw's going to break any second.
Eames thrusts too hard, Arthur gags, and suddenly there's groaning and come everywhere.
Arthur topples Eames over violently. "Did you really just blow your load in my eyes and hair?"
"Can't speak as yet," comes from by Arthur's foot followed by a warm wet brush on the bone of his ankle. Arthur realizes Eames is tongue kissing it.
*
Up until that night, they'd slept in regimented sections of the king. They both had their sides, and that was that. They'd spent enough time in military billets that sleeping in close quarters wasn't an issue. They'd shared a bed--actually not in any way a new phenomenon--but hadn't been sleeping together until then.
Arthur wakes up to his alarm on his side with Eames draped over his back, his wide palm spread low on Arthur's stomach, his fingers nestled in his pubic hair like this is a completely normal way to sleep. He's breathing on the back of Arthur's neck, mouth open in sleep where Arthur's neck and shoulder meet. If he was eighteen this would be a distinct invitation to roll over. At thirty he has pressing urination needs and has to brush the sleep out of his mouth.
When Arthur kicks away, Eames sits bolt upright running his palm over his head then scratching his cheek. "Fuck, why'd I shave?"
Arthur doesn't speak at this time of day. He grunts and shuffles to the bathroom. They have to check in for their flight in two hours. Arthur doesn't bother to offer Eames the first shower. He's an eye-comer and deserves no charity.
Arthur dries off and leaves his towel on the floor, another one wrapped about the hair that's starting to get to the ridiculous level. Eames is laying on the bed on his back naked watching a cooking show. "You'll pack for me, love?"
Arthur isn't speaking yet, still. Coffee first.
The shower kicks off while he's starting the coffee going in the living room.
He feeds some angry birds while he half watches CNN. Eames is currently looping through the news cycle. Instantly a polarizing figure in the culture war.
Eames bangs around in the bedroom. When Arthur finishes his coffee, he discovers that Eames has packed for both of them and left an outfit laid on the bed like a deflated paper doll while he finishes up in the bathroom. Arthur dresses in the skinny cords and a soft cotton button up and plaid vest. He runs his hands through it to pull his hair back and catches his reflection in the mirror over the dresser. The reflection staring back at him could blend into the crowd on the street as a NYU student. He tries to convince himself that it would at least be a grad student but can't.
"I hope you know I'm on to you!" He shouts.
"I only stole the one wallet!"
*
"I don't know if you know it or not, but there're talking pictures of you on the internet where you have a potty mouth." Ellen telegraphs comical naiveté.
"It's photoshopped, I assure you," Eames purrs.
"I think that's just for pictures," Ellen pretends to think about it.
"Trust me, doctoring video is a bit of a specialty of mine, darling. I know of what I speak," Eames winks at her.
"You're a very naughty man!" Ellen wags a finger at him. "You better watch out or you'll get spanked."
"You should listen to her, you know," Arthur contributes. The audience explodes. Ellen pretends not to get the joke.
*
The LA gay community practically (maybe literally, but he doesn't want to think about it) comes at the very idea of Arthur and Eames. They're put up in a stereotypically decadent house in Malibu that's more glass than not. Arthur's spent too much time contemplating architecture to find it aesthetically pleasing. He agrees to one anti-Prop 8 event that turns into keynoting a huge repealing-of-DADT soirée.
"You get to wear a tux," Eames informs him when Arthur's frowning at his email and silently cursing Micah Pitt to the furthest circle of hell.
"I do at the wedding, too. I loathe these people. Of course I have sympathy for their cause…"
"About that, Arthur." Eames interrupts. He's wearing swim trunks and has a lemonade with some kind of booze lacing it in his hand. He's been swimming in the heated pool as Arthur surfs online and composes an entry for his fucking blog.
"About what?"
"About the fact that you have a very sincere investment in what is a social cause that until a few weeks ago I'd only once heard you mention, and only then in light of a clever exit strategy for a messy job. "
Arthur looks up at him, his hair falling across one eye to obscure the blinking cursor on his computer screen. "I didn't realize I was invested before."
"Your reactions at the canned patter from Mister Cooper were genuine. Denying that to me is as useless as holding your breath to top yourself, and you know it." Eames drinks half of his drink in one gulp.
Arthur doesn't really feel like having a heart to heart over this. "You're pressing on a boundary right now, back off."
"I see. Loud and clear. We're fucking but sharing our internal lives is off the table. Perhaps you should have mentioned that earlier." Eames honest to fucking god breaks the glass by throwing against the wall before stalking away.
Arthur almost gets up and chases after him to apologize, but the overreaction pisses him off. Eames has always misinterpreted his motivations. Classically so. Arthur has always been a blind spot for him, a fact that Eames has historically manipulated. What wire Arthur crossed this time is a mystery. He looks towards the door, though, a guilty niggle in his belly.
*
Eames finds him later when Arthur is reading wikileaks (he shuts the window really fast) on his phone. It's dark and the lights out the window twinkle in a fetchingly romantic way if you were raised on sentimental movies set in Los Angeles like most of the Western world.
Eames flops down bonelessly with a sigh. "I apologize for my simian display. I suppose I could have completed the scene by pulling my trousers down and shaking my posterior in your face before flinging excrement, but, really, who can go to so much effort when belligerently angry?"
"It just seemed out of character. You're usually so glacial with your temper." Arthur's already forgiven him, which is all he needs to know about where Eames stands in his affections, something very frightening when looked at directly.
Eames pins him in place with his eyes, a little of the controlling command that Arthur knows is the appeal of the man. "That's because previously my annoyance with you was purely academic and related to your work habits. I wasn't in love with you before. All the commensurate personality alterations, etcetera etcetera." He looks away and waves his hand in the air over his head. "Don't seize. I don't expect a poetic declaration of reciprocal endearments." He runs a hand over his face. "I did warn you."
"You did," Arthur whispers. He's not ready for this.
"This too shall pass, as my mother always said. I couldn't leave it unsaid anymore since I'm liable to escalate in my boorish acts of vile possessiveness. Be forewarned."
"I told you, I have many guns." Arthur says. He slowly breathes out and says, because he's not a coward, "I love you back, though."
Eames laughs then sighs. "I'm sure you do, like the fresh, trembling bloom of a delicate flower in early spring. Your love is potential, something unknown that may or may not blossom." His face is in full shadow when he turns back to look at Arthur. "I love you with the kind of abandon that causes a man to lose himself because all he is anymore is his lover."
Arthur has seen that kind of love before, so he doesn't deny it exists. His mouth goes dry.
"I knew what I was doing when I said yes to your proposal, Arthur. I wanted to feel this, to have it be mine, I've seen it on others and always wondered. Now I know."
Eames's entire life is a endless hedonistic quest towards self destruction, so Arthur takes him at his word in this.
"You are completely fucking insane," Arthur finally pronounces. "And you're not going to tell me how I feel about you or anyone else. I'm tired of being treated like my feelings are the least important in a room."
"Good, I was wondering when that self-realization would strike you." He pauses, and it feels like the poetic pregnant silence. "I have to sleep now. I'm profoundly drunk."
Eames isn't even slurring his words. Arthur's impressed.
The last way Arthur expects to end his evening is being shot.
Part 3a
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 2
PART TWO
"This is what I do," Eames rubs his thumb against the corner of Arthur's mouth. Arthur was about to wipe his face with a napkin, but Eames beat him to it. Arthur finishes his bagel as Eames licks the cheese off his own thumb.
"I know," Arthur replies after he's swallowed. Eames creates lives down to minutiae, unspoken details like favorite color and childhood traumas. They're standing together at the baggage claim at JFK, Arthur with a FP tucked under his arm and Eames all casual slouch with a hand in his pocket and the other wiping invisible crumbs off the front of Arthur's shirt. Arthur isn't sure how free of a hand he's going to give Eames here, but he's mostly just curious at this point.
*
They check into the Affinia because Arthur can view schematics of their suites' floorplans online. Eames hums approval of the layout, and that's that. Midtown is chaotic enough that he feels safe-ish. Not really safe, he'll never feel safe. He honestly can't remember how safe felt. When you are, you don't even know it, so it's a feeling felt more in the absence, like health.
"We need to go shopping," Eames tosses his cigarette on the sidewalk and stubs it out.
"My thoughts exactly." Arthur shops in the quiet spaces, like other people do yoga.
They get a cab and head to Rag & Bone.
Arthur trails behind Eames, fingering fabric and sighing internally.
He lets Eames dress him in grey chinos and sweaters, neutral button-ups. He looks like a very well dressed professor. That suits his role, he supposes.
When Eames tries on a leather jacket in John Varvatos, Arthur feels his pulse jump. Eames's already wearing obscene jeans that hug the curve of his ass emphasizing the breadth of his thighs, combining the sleek lines of the jacket with that turns obscenity into something aspirationally untouchable.
Eames watches him in the mirror. "That's yes to the jacket then," he hums to himself, running the zipper up and down slowly. "I never thought I'd see that look on your face. Of all people, Arthur, never you." His voice breaks softly around the words. "It's a good look on you."
Arthur meets his own eyes in the mirror and sees sex in the half-lidded eyes and way he's holding his bottom lip between his teeth unconsciously.
"Don't cut your hair," Eames says in a tone that's clearly not a request.
*
Arthur calls his mother.
"Sweetheart! Can you believe this weather?" She always ignores the fact that they haven't lived in the same state since he was eighteen.
"Yeah, pretty crazy. Are you at work?" Arthur acknowledges that his work makes him an asshole, but that doesn't mean he has to put undo stressors on people.
"What? No, no, I'm in Boston shopping. Why? Is something wrong? What's wrong?" That went from neutral to panic in a stereotypical fashion.
"Look, mom, I need to talk to you about something," he eyes Eames's cigarettes laying on the table in front of him.
"I KNEW IT I KNEW IT!" He can see her exact facial expression in his head. "They found a way to stop loss you."
"That only happens if you're still active duty, mom. And no, jesus, I told you that's not going to happen, just move on."
"Why should I listen to you? How much brainwashing did they do to you? I don't even know if you know what you're saying."
Aaaaaaaaaaaand cue the paranoid ramblings portion of the conversation. Arthur hears the shower stop and Eames humming to himself.
"Mom, it's not that."
"Oh! Finally, finally! I knew you'd make your mother happy."
"No, mom, I'm not going to law school, either."
"Oh." Exaggerated sadness.
"I'm getting married."
Dead silence. He knows he should have called his dad first. He just couldn't bring himself to live the rest of his life with his mother dragging it out on Mother's Day and her birthday that she'd been the second call when he'd gotten engaged. None of this is serious, of course, it's all an elaborate pantomime, a play that they're all players in, a way of communicating that has passed down to them from their ancestors like the dark curling hair and hatred for paying retail.
"Girl or boy?" This was never going to be an issue with her.
"Boy."
"Arthur?"
"Mom."
"Why do you do this to me? It's bad enough that you've been lying about it. Serious enough to get married--YOU of all people in this world, and you've never mentioned him? Then, eh. What should I expect. It's my own fault for not sending you to yeshivah."
The laughter comes organically. He just lets it out, bonelessly rolling his head on the back of the couch, jagged guffaws bouncing around the room until tears tumble out of his eyes. His mom laughs, too, both of them caught in a loop of it, feeding each other.
When he finally gets himself together enough to gasp around words he says "Do you want me to tell dad, or do you?"
"Oh no you don't! You'll give me my moment! WE'RE HAVING A WEDDING! But now you have to tell me all about him. Starting with his name maybe."
"Charles. But everyone calls him by his last name. Including you, mom. Eames"
"I'm not going to start doing what you want just because you're passing a life milestone, Jimjam."
Arthur closes his eyes and sighs. When he opens them back up, Eames is leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest with one bare foot resting on top of the other. The smirk pushes Arthur over the edge.
"Why don't you just talk to him yourself?" Arthur tosses the phone over before she can respond. She's going to humiliate him, so he'd rather rip the bandaid off. He thinks about all the gun fights and sieges he's survived, about the time in Fallujah. Why is the domestic kind of torture so much more raw? He didn't turn into a petulant fifteen year old when he was kidnapped by Chechens.
"Yes, I'm that Charles Eames. Thank you, I flatter myself that I've aged well."
On that note, Arthur pulls himself to his feet and decides to meticulously fold and hang all the shit they bought.
*
They go out for dinner. Arthur has a craving for something really hot. They wander around Chinatown in the spitting snow. Arthur used to have favorite places here, but that was years ago. He's stayed away from the east coast as much as possible since he became a career criminal. It's just easier to not have to explain your uncle Walt to Wall Street tycoons you're negotiating an extraction with.
Eames slips his arm through Arthur's, the contact through six or seven layers muffled but heavy. The tip of Eames's cold nose brushes Arthur's still sensitive bare cheek, his forehead skims Arthur's temple. Arthur's always enjoyed casual contact. He grew up in a family of aggressive huggers, people who have no concept of personal space.
His phone screams "RED ALERT RED ALERT" and he sighs. Eames's laughter boils around them, drawing the attention of people on street. "It's my sister," Arthur says as he answers the call. He pulls away from Eames slightly, enough to insulate himself, so Eames can’t hear her end of the call.
"Betrayer." The weight of Jewish guilt bleeds across cell transmissions.
"I was going to call you." He means this earnestly and hates that Eames hears that.
"You seriously fucking called mom first? Is this some kind of revenge for the cheese whiz incident?" Eames laughs. Clearly Arthur didn't move far enough away.
"Who the fuck is this guy? Is this some kind of performance art? The last time you were dating someone you called me with daily status updates. I had to talk you down from jewelry buying. But you're getting married and nothing? What the fuck is going on?"
This was something Arthur had worried about. He's kept Emma out of his lifestyle, but he's never been able to totally let her go. She's just too much of who he is. She knows more about what he does than is healthy for either of them.
"You're going to love him." He lets sincerity bleed into his voice.
She goes silent for a second. "This is about all that stuff."
"Yeah. Can I call you back? I'm out to dinner."
"I love you."
"Luckily."
She laughs around her bye, but he hears how tense it is.
"I'm going to have to tell her the truth," he says as he pockets the phone.
"Some version of it." Eames answers. Arthur turns to meet his eyes. Eames smiles easily and rests his hand on the small of his back.
"How much of this is really you?" Arthur is suddenly caught up in the way Eames is looking at him with openness, and he wants that to be real.
Eames's eyelids flutter a little, but not in a coy way, more like he's thinking. "It's all real, Arthur. It has to be. That's something you've never understood, I think. I don't put on a skin, I become someone."
He pauses as the light changes and they cross the street.
Eames turns his face away, looks down the sidewalk. "I'll fall in love with you, it will be real. But I knew what I was agreeing to, so enjoy it instead of getting twisted over it."
Arthur lifts an eyebrow at the back of Eames's head.
"Are you already in love with me?" His job is to ask the hard questions, and sometimes he crosses lines in interpersonal relationships because of it. Or maybe it's the other way around, maybe he's always been the asshole who asks the unspeakable questions so he found a career to make that work for him. It doesn't matter which way around in the end.
Eames turns back to him, plucks at his bottom lip with his gloved fingers. "What do you think?"
Arthur thinks it's time to get out of the cold.
*
They eat pho on Mott street, Eames humming pleased to himself around mouths full of cilantro-heavy soup. "I suppose we need to get some kind of PR scoundrel to maximize the damage in the press," Eames says.
"And by that you mean you have someone in mind." Arthur sips tea watching the door.
"When do I not? The question is why don't you?" He stretches back, his arm on the surface of the table and his shoulders tipped down to the right. He's wearing a plaid cowboy style shirt that should be utterly ridiculous on him but somehow works. He hasn't shaved the beard yet. It's trendy, so it's probably calculated, but Arthur's pretty impressed by how much it ratchets up his butch, hard man factor.
"Several, but that's not really the point, is it?" Why beat around the bush on that. "That's not who we are, is it?"
Eames's eyes drop half closed and his hand flashes out to grab Arthur by the wrist. He leans over the table smiling big and lazy in Arthur's face. "You're very self-aware, sweetheart. That was fast."
"Give me some fucking credit. I'm a grown man, not some teenaged boy you have to lead to water."
"So," Eames says settling back into a sprawl. "Is spanking strictly off the table, or do I have free rein?"
"You're an idiot," Arthur rolls his eyes.
"Tell yourself that, love, if it makes the medicine go down easier." His tone is lighthearted, but he's not really kidding.
*
They both wear suits to see Eames's PR hack, but Arthur's wearing a sweater vest under his tightly fitted, stream-lined jacket and Eames is in a slick, fitted navy number that makes Arthur almost drool. Off the rack, but what can you do?
Eames pushes Arthur's hair behind his ear as he presses close to him in the elevator. "You're beautiful," he whispers and Arthur elbows him in the stomach.
"Cut it out." The doors ping open to Arthur's disapproving frown and Eames's chuckle. There's an assistant standing on the other side of the door with a smart phone in her hand. She manages to maintain her haughty boredom, but just barely. Arthur adjusts his tie and smirks.
Eames cuts her an appraising look. Arthur waits to see if Eames decides he's the jealous type or not. He briskly steps out of the elevator all casual smile and pats the girl on the back. So, no, he's Mr Charming then.
"Charles Eames," he offers her his hand.
"I know who you are." The girl gives him nothing, which is Arthur's own preferred way of handling the man himself. Preferred, but these days his life has turned into an inside-out circus.
"Mr. Da Costa, this way." The assistant takes off down the corridor and Arthur slides his hand to the inside of Eames's wrist and follows.
A blond man dressed just as well as they are meets them halfway down the hall with a smile that's probably reassuring to civilians but that reminds Arthur of a particularly vicious sadist he once knew in Malaysia.
"This is going to be a cake walk," pronounces Micah Pitt, PR God of Coming Out.
"Yes, it's fortunate that we're not inauspiciously deformed." Eames's voice is ice down Arthur's spine, it's the sarcastic, bitter tone that he'd used on Arthur for years.
Arthur clears his throat. Eames narrows his eyes at him. "Do you mean to tell me that it's not demeaning to everyone we served with who lost limbs or eyes or lives to be assessed by how telegenic we are?" He spits this out in Arthur's face.
"If you don't want to do this…" Arthur doesn't miss beats, that's why he's the best. "I told you we don't have to…"
"Oh, your conscience is clear, darling, I'll do my part to drag your pathetically backwards country into the current century, but don't expect me to like one second of it." He sniffs condescendingly.
Pitt watches them openly. Eames just gave the guy something to manage, so they aren't too obviously constructed for perfection.
Arthur smiles wanly at Pitt and shrugs one shoulder. "You know how it is."
"Do not manage me!" Eames grates.
*
Arthur is fucking exhausted by the time they get back to their suite. Pitt is the proverbial pig in shit over the upcoming media blitz and Arthur is having cold feet.
"Realized finally what you've gotten yourself into, I see." Eames hands him a drink.
"I always knew. The concept isn't the issue, it's the mental exhaustion of being something manipulated rather than someone manipulating." His drink is single malt instead of the scotch he normally drinks, too sharp and peaty, but he drinks it and hands the glass back for a second. "You, on the other hand, appear to be enjoying the fuck out of being a pain in the ass. I'd pretend to be surprised, if I had the energy."
"Arthur." Eames's commanding field voice is a surprise. Arthur's head snaps up, instantly alert. He swallows the booze in his mouth and his hand goes to the holster he's not wearing. Eames briskly downs his own drink and strides across the room. He knocks Arthur's phone out of his hand--it goes flying somewhere unseen--and straddles his hips, riding him down so they're laying on the couch tangled up. "Kiss me," he whispers against Arthur's chin. Arthur's eyes drop closed.
Eames brushes the hair under his mouth across Arthur's bottom lip until Arthur opens up and catches him with his tongue. He gets a hand behind Eames's head to move them both so that he can drag his teeth over Eames's bottom lip, pluck it into his mouth and suck. Eames doesn't let Arthur kiss him for long, he pulls back and repositions himself so that he can bear down and hold Arthur while he basically fucks his mouth with tongue. Arthur's fairly immobilized, unless he wants to do real damage, by Eames's weight and the way he's positioned himself.
Arthur doesn't struggle.
Eames finally pulls back just as Arthur gets a rhythm going with his hips. They stay pressed together, and Eames lays his cheek to Arthur's to pant next to his ear. "I never let myself think about you this way," the words are punctuated with grunts and his own hips thrusting down. "I just couldn't, Arthur, I knew it would wreck me. I knew you'd…" he breath catches and he produces a groan that's more of a vibration. "Oh fuck, fuck…" He tenses and Arthur finally does struggle a little, to get a hand down his pants so he can come. He has to right now. Rightnowrightnow.
"Eames, let me," he rocks his shoulders to get an arm free.
Eames sighs right into his ear, wet and open. "I always knew you're," and he lifts up enough to jerk Arthur through his pants, "the kind of lover that you never escape." He sounds liquid, bleary, honest.
Arthur doesn't know if it's the touch that gets him off at all.
*
The sex makes the situation more real than telling his mother did. He thinks that makes him broken in a way he's never realized before. It occurs to him that he and Eames need to have a brass tacks conversation about commitment, fidelity, and how Arthur didn't really mean married, but he doesn't even want to deal with that right now. He's not a complete coward, though, so he calls Dom to have that complete clusterfuck of a convo.
"Where're you?" Dom asks in greeting.
"New York."
Dom's quiet for a few seconds. "What's up?" The man has his faults, but he absolutely has a nose for trouble.
"I'm about to tell you a story that you're going to think is a distress plea. It's not. Every bit of it is true. Please wait for me to finish before booking your airline tickets."
"I'm agreeing with more than a few reservations."
"For reasons I can't get into over this line, Eames and I are getting married."
Dom laughs, a joyful untinted laugh that Arthur hasn't heard in a long time. "Shit, you had me fucking scared, you asshole."
Arthur lets Dom laugh himself out. "I'm serious. Rewind the whole conversation."
"What happened?" Dom's all business now. Arthur can see him pulling up Orbitz with a squinting frown.
"A fuckton of shit I can't get into."
"I thought you were retiring." Dom's chastising now.
"So did I. Have you ever seen a movie where someone's going to just do one more job then get out? Well, the plot to an action movie happened to me. In the waking world. Hindsight."
"Shit doesn't just happen to you, Arthur. Particularly, Eames's shit doesn't just happen to you. I need an explanation."
That pisses Arthur off, he's embarrassed like some kind of authority figure is chewing him out for poor performance when he actually performed quite brilliantly--it feels exactly like the marines. "Fuck off, Dom. I did what I had to do. Which is what I always do. I'm continuing in the same vein. " Arthur's not going to say you of all people, because he's not the kind of dick who brings up loyalty or respect when none is offered to him. He comports himself with honor because that's who he is, not because he expects respect in return.
"I'm sorry, jesus! That came out wrong. I'm just in shock." Dom's a good guy, but he's also judgmental.
"Apology accepted." It's not really, not all the way yet, but it will be. Arthur always forgives the people he loves anything. This becomes a problem from time to time.
"Can I ask you something?"
"No, we're not really getting married."
"I assume this is part of a longer con?"
Eames yells at the tv in the other room.
"Yeah, a much longer one."
"I trust you." Dom sighs. Now Arthur feels like a world class dick for getting so self-righteous a minute ago.
"I know." He does. Dom trusts him implicitly, and that's why Arthur was compelled to give up a good chunk of his life to be Cobb's point man and watch his six.
"Keep me apprised. And send me an invitation. I assume your mom and Emma have their hooks in this. Please tell me they do."
"You're an asshole." Arthur hangs up on him.
"How did dad take it?" Eames calls from the other room.
"That was…shut the fuck up, I own several guns!"
"Hot!"
*
The problem with sex is that as soon as you start having it, there can't be enough of it in the world. It's a lot like coke that way.
The trouble is that Arthur's orchestrating a series of fairly high profile hits on Ukrainian mobsters while juggling his mother and sister (dealing with that alone is a full time job) and a politically motivated coming out event. He has to delegate some of the chores to Eames.
"Let me do the wedding planning," Eames says around a mouthful of yoghurt and banana.
"No fucking way." No one could ever accuse Arthur of being anything less than a psychotic micromanager. He's already at his wit's end with his mother campaigning for a full-on Jewish wedding with dancing and a band and every single thing he'd ever loathed. Monogrammed kippahs! Meanwhile Emma wants a huge pre-wedding blow out ("You can't have a bachelor party without me!" "I don't want one at all!").
"Dear, I believe I can pull off a suitably classy affair, considering." Eames cuts him The Look, the regal snob look.
"Why can't you deal with the asshole?" Arthur really hates Micah Pitt.
"Do I need to deign that?" Eames rolls his eyes.
Arthur just wants to read wikileaks and feed some angry birds. "Six months ago I honestly thought all I'd be doing right now is figuring out how to manipulate World of Warcraft teams into doing my bidding."
"One of the reasons I love you is that from time to time I cannot for the life of me determine if you're above board." Eames traces his bottom lip with his thumbnail and tips his chin down. "World of Warcraft?"
Arthur doesn't tell him he's joking, he'll keep his veil of mystery for now. Angry birds and pressing international policy issues have been banished from his thoughts by the way Eames's legs fall open suggestively.
When Arthur sends Eames out to leave him alone, Eames picks up a tail and has to loop through Queens and Brooklyn then out to Long Island to lead him someplace isolated enough to hide the body.
*
The Great Coming Out Interview ("Were you ever IN the closet, darling? With the way you dress?" "I had a superhero identity, Charles.") is scheduled for Anderson Cooper pretty much immediately. Arthur's picked up a healthy paranoia and he doesn't want to risk another incident.
The CNN people are pros, reassuring and unobtrusively ruthless. They "prep" Arthur and then Arthur plus Eames, and Arthur finds them almost endearing in a very condescending way. Even if they know nothing about his criminal background or that dream sharing even exists, on paper he's a battle hardened combat vet, he can do without the tissue box, thanks.
Anderson is handsome, chipper, he shakes Arthur's hand and says "You're very brave" before they go over the talking points of the interview. Arthur's used to hypocrites so he doesn't get inflamed over the double standard here.
"Thank you, I'm honored to be here." Arthur is reflexively polite.
"The honor is mine." The smile comes with a dip of his head. Anderson is flirting with him. Arthur smiles wide enough for dimples. His life is, as ever, patently absurd.
"I have a fiancé, you know." Arthur wags his head disarmingly.
"Doesn't hurt to try," Anderson whispers with a wink.
Arthur's glad Eames decided against the jealous boyfriend route, because a live brawl on CNN would be awkward.
Promo, cameras roll, Anderson looks appropriately righteous and focused on the matter at hand.
"I'm here tonight with decorated retired Marine Corps Sergeant Arthur Da Costa, a combat veteran of both Afghanistan and Iraq. He's come here tonight to make a statement."
Off camera, Arthur's cued to speak.
"Hello, Mr Cooper, mom and dad." He smiles and laughs in his head at Eames's insistence on that. ("It's wholesome, and you have to counteract the fact that you are decidedly not. Not with that hair.") "I'm here tonight in support of all of the current and former soldiers and sailors, airmen and marines who have had to suffer under the draconian legislation called Don't Ask Don't Tell. Repealing the law does not alter the shame and humiliation of being considered second class citizens in a country that we, as an all-volunteer military, fight and die to defend. I've come here tonight to speak in solidarity for all my uniformed brothers and sisters who worry that their honor and service will be besmirched by coming out. Your sexual orientation has no influence whatsoever over your ability to serve your country, and more importantly, to watch the six of your brothers and sisters. I'm a proud gay man and so is my fiancé, himself a former Royal Marine officer."
"Thank you for your service, Sergeant Da Costa." Anderson intones gravely.
"Call me Arthur, please." He's retired, and that life was a long time ago, more than his age marks because of how much time he's spent dream-sharing.
"Arthur," Anderson smiles. "Call me Anderson." Arthur figures that's played for laughs, so he smiles. "You're not just the run of the mill marine, isn't that the case?"
"No, I am. I'm just the one who got singled out when they needed a face for the news." That's his genuine opinion.
"I've heard that from other servicemen and women, Arthur. Your modesty aside, you did some pretty spectacular things during your time in uniform, didn't you?"
"I did what I was trained to do, the same as everyone else serving. In the heat of battle, instincts take over. I was unlucky enough on a couple of occasions to become involved in battle situations. You're not a hero because you happen to be where the IED goes off, you're fucked." The word slips out because he's pissed off.
Somewhere he hears Eames's raised voice.
"On that note, we'll be right back." Anderson smiles around a small laugh. He turns to Arthur immediately with a frank expression that might be real. "I didn't mean to push it. I know the topic is sensitive. My producer is informing me in my ear that your partner might need to be sedated. Should we just bring him out, or do you want to call this off?"
"Just bring him out before he starts breaking things."
Cue utter chaos as the set is picked up by an army of interns or whatever the hell works on these programs. Eames strides out from behind one of the cameras, out of blackness for Arthur since the lights have stunned him momentarily. There's a makeup person trailing Eames. A chair is produced and Eames settles in it waving the girl off. "I'm sure you can't fix what time has ravaged, dear."
"Arthur," Eames brushes his hand over his arm but there's no time.
Lights up, Anderson cued, and they're back. "We're joined now by Sergeant Da Costa's--I'm sorry-Arthur's partner."
"I'm never that." Eames injects with the bored drawl he affects with Americans he's unimpressed by. "I'm his fiancé."
Anderson laughs that off with the aplomb of the unflappable reporter. "Fiancé, Captain Charles Eames, himself a decorated battle veteran."
"Indeed," Eames agrees. Arthur almost has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.
"You were famously involved in…"
"Oh, let's not," Eames cuts him off. "I'm here in a strictly supporting capacity." He waves his hand dismissively. "Yes, yes, I'm infamous for a variety of reasons, let's not dwell."
Eames's Wikipedia page probably just got ten thousand simultaneous hits while at the same time guaranteeing that half of the conversation about Arthur's big gay reveal will be about the character of his cad of a boyfriend. The slouch and feral sexuality of the beard/shoulder combination won't hurt, either.
"Alright, we'll skip your greatest hits, Captain Eames." Eames doesn't beg off from the honorific, which is another perfect touch--every inch the upper-class dick who thinks he deserves automatic deference while Arthur is the humble enlisted man who wouldn't even allow lauding for saving the lives of his friends. Eames is so effortlessly brilliant sometimes Arthur allows himself to wallow in it. "Arthur, where is the wedding, if you don't mind me asking?" Anderson breaks into Arthur's musing about Eames's proficiency.
No, he doesn't mind since that's one of the carefully negotiated queries Micah Pitt worked out with the CNN producers.
"In Massachusetts, where I was raised and my parents still live. Unlike the majority of same-sex couples, my home state recognizes that marriage is marriage. Even if the federal government disagrees." Arthur frowns.
"And how does that make you feel?" Anderson seems so genuine. Another con man, just one with a legit paycheck.
"Are you kidding?" Eames huffs. Arthur quells him with his hand on his arm.
"How do you think it makes me feel, Anderson? Would you like to see my scars?" Arthur's getting genuinely angry again.
"How would you feel if you'd liberated your platoon-mate from being tortured by Taliban and sustained four gunshot wounds doing so only to have sanctimonious rich bastards who've never done anything more patriotic than wearing a lapel pin tell you that just because you've sucked a cock or two you're a second class citizen?" Eames barks out.
Live tv.
*
Needless to say they don't exactly get out of the CNN studios in an orderly way. Not in the day and age when people record every second of their lives on cellphones and upload them to social networking sites and YouTube. The video goes viral before they can get back to the hotel. There's no longer a way to manage these kinds of events unless the precipitating event is avoided.
"You can't say the mission didn't go absolutely smashingly." Eames strips down as he walks through the room, tossing clothes everywhere and disappearing into the shower as Arthur calls his mom.
"Arthur." It's his dad who answers. "We're so proud of you."
Arthur didn't expect to get choked up by such a simple statement. But, after all, this is what they've never said before, so maybe it's human nature.
"Your mom's spamming facebook. Her son's suddenly a civil rights icon. She has arrived." The dry tone is so quintessentially his father that Arthur suddenly feels grounded again. His life is some kind of carnival, he's a cold blooded killer and possible sociopath, but his parents love him. Sometimes you have to reduce things to basics.
"Your boyfriend seems like he's quite a handful. Not that I'd know since I haven't met him." There's no ahem tacked on, but Arthur hears it loud and clear.
"I don't know which way I don't want the infection to go."
"Both. Quit lying. I'm sure your mom and I can take a few fuck-laden conversations."
They both let the silence stretch out for a few seconds and start laughing at exactly the same moment. "Let us never speak of this again," his dad says and hangs up.
He's got texts from Dom, his mom, Emma, Eames from backstage and in the cab on the way home, but he opens the one from the unlabeled French number.
7321 it reads.
Two more of the men who need to be are dead.
*
He falls asleep on the couch that night, sitting near the outlet because he'd killed his phone battery and had to plug the thing into the wall. He wakes with a startle to Eames's fingers on his chin. Eames's sitting next to him and also has a hand in Arthur's hair. He's shaved the beard off.
"You've gotten accustomed to my noise pollution and can sleep through it." Eames lets his weight sag so that he's laying with his chest on Arthur's, a comfortable sprawl. "You don't notice me any longer." He affects a fake pout.
"Yes I do." Arthur's voice comes out sandpapered at the edges.
Eames leans in and kisses him. A soft press of lips followed by a glide of them side to side on Arthur's parted mouth. He pulls back.
"Micah, that tit, called. We're flying to LA tomorrow to do Ellen the day after."
"I want to fuck your mouth," Arthur responds.
"Yes," Eames says simply. "That's my favorite pick up line, it works every time."
Arthur shoves him back and grips him by the collar, twisting it up so that it constricts enough to turn Eames's face red. He presses on the top of his head with enough force that if Eames wasn't compliant he'd have been injured. Eames unfastens Arthur's pants with hands that flatteringly seem to almost shake. Nicotine poisoning probably.
His pants and underwear out of the way, Arther grabs the back of Eames's head and presses up and into yielding heat, the soft slickness so sweet that Arthur can't actually look. After all this time, he gets the full show, and he has to press his cheek to the cool leather of the couch and count to ten backwards just to hang on with his fingernails to not embarrass himself.
Eames yanks away, his fingers back on Arthur's chin, but this time hard. Arthur grabs his wrist and glares down at him. "Don't."
"You better watch this, we've both been waiting bloody long enough. You're not going to take your hair trigger away from me, I own it now."
Arthur smacks him softly on the face and keeps his eyes wide open as he angrily fucks into Eames's mouth all the way down. Three times and his spine siezes and balls tighten, and he comes in almost painful jerks, Eames holding him forcefully by the hips so he can't pull out as Eames sucks him hard.
Arthur's aching faintly from over stimulation when Eames finally lets him go to collapse to get his breath. He stands and peels his sweatpants down, but just in the front, the fleece clinging to the round swell of his ass. He brackets Arthur's thighs with his knees and grabs Arthur's hair. Arthur goes, unresisting, his tongue coming out to run over the edge of Eames's foreskin.
Eames hisses and presses against Arthur's mouth. "Take it," he rumbles. Arthur looks up at him through his eyelashes and lets his mouth drop open. The sound Eames makes then, guttural and shattering, causes a twitch low in Arthur's belly that goes straight to his ass. Eames's head lolls back. "That face," he moans.
Arthur sucks as he goes down and drools as much as he can, making it as messy as possible. He rubs behind Eames's balls and bobs, but the angle's bad and his jaw's going to break any second.
Eames thrusts too hard, Arthur gags, and suddenly there's groaning and come everywhere.
Arthur topples Eames over violently. "Did you really just blow your load in my eyes and hair?"
"Can't speak as yet," comes from by Arthur's foot followed by a warm wet brush on the bone of his ankle. Arthur realizes Eames is tongue kissing it.
*
Up until that night, they'd slept in regimented sections of the king. They both had their sides, and that was that. They'd spent enough time in military billets that sleeping in close quarters wasn't an issue. They'd shared a bed--actually not in any way a new phenomenon--but hadn't been sleeping together until then.
Arthur wakes up to his alarm on his side with Eames draped over his back, his wide palm spread low on Arthur's stomach, his fingers nestled in his pubic hair like this is a completely normal way to sleep. He's breathing on the back of Arthur's neck, mouth open in sleep where Arthur's neck and shoulder meet. If he was eighteen this would be a distinct invitation to roll over. At thirty he has pressing urination needs and has to brush the sleep out of his mouth.
When Arthur kicks away, Eames sits bolt upright running his palm over his head then scratching his cheek. "Fuck, why'd I shave?"
Arthur doesn't speak at this time of day. He grunts and shuffles to the bathroom. They have to check in for their flight in two hours. Arthur doesn't bother to offer Eames the first shower. He's an eye-comer and deserves no charity.
Arthur dries off and leaves his towel on the floor, another one wrapped about the hair that's starting to get to the ridiculous level. Eames is laying on the bed on his back naked watching a cooking show. "You'll pack for me, love?"
Arthur isn't speaking yet, still. Coffee first.
The shower kicks off while he's starting the coffee going in the living room.
He feeds some angry birds while he half watches CNN. Eames is currently looping through the news cycle. Instantly a polarizing figure in the culture war.
Eames bangs around in the bedroom. When Arthur finishes his coffee, he discovers that Eames has packed for both of them and left an outfit laid on the bed like a deflated paper doll while he finishes up in the bathroom. Arthur dresses in the skinny cords and a soft cotton button up and plaid vest. He runs his hands through it to pull his hair back and catches his reflection in the mirror over the dresser. The reflection staring back at him could blend into the crowd on the street as a NYU student. He tries to convince himself that it would at least be a grad student but can't.
"I hope you know I'm on to you!" He shouts.
"I only stole the one wallet!"
*
"I don't know if you know it or not, but there're talking pictures of you on the internet where you have a potty mouth." Ellen telegraphs comical naiveté.
"It's photoshopped, I assure you," Eames purrs.
"I think that's just for pictures," Ellen pretends to think about it.
"Trust me, doctoring video is a bit of a specialty of mine, darling. I know of what I speak," Eames winks at her.
"You're a very naughty man!" Ellen wags a finger at him. "You better watch out or you'll get spanked."
"You should listen to her, you know," Arthur contributes. The audience explodes. Ellen pretends not to get the joke.
*
The LA gay community practically (maybe literally, but he doesn't want to think about it) comes at the very idea of Arthur and Eames. They're put up in a stereotypically decadent house in Malibu that's more glass than not. Arthur's spent too much time contemplating architecture to find it aesthetically pleasing. He agrees to one anti-Prop 8 event that turns into keynoting a huge repealing-of-DADT soirée.
"You get to wear a tux," Eames informs him when Arthur's frowning at his email and silently cursing Micah Pitt to the furthest circle of hell.
"I do at the wedding, too. I loathe these people. Of course I have sympathy for their cause…"
"About that, Arthur." Eames interrupts. He's wearing swim trunks and has a lemonade with some kind of booze lacing it in his hand. He's been swimming in the heated pool as Arthur surfs online and composes an entry for his fucking blog.
"About what?"
"About the fact that you have a very sincere investment in what is a social cause that until a few weeks ago I'd only once heard you mention, and only then in light of a clever exit strategy for a messy job. "
Arthur looks up at him, his hair falling across one eye to obscure the blinking cursor on his computer screen. "I didn't realize I was invested before."
"Your reactions at the canned patter from Mister Cooper were genuine. Denying that to me is as useless as holding your breath to top yourself, and you know it." Eames drinks half of his drink in one gulp.
Arthur doesn't really feel like having a heart to heart over this. "You're pressing on a boundary right now, back off."
"I see. Loud and clear. We're fucking but sharing our internal lives is off the table. Perhaps you should have mentioned that earlier." Eames honest to fucking god breaks the glass by throwing against the wall before stalking away.
Arthur almost gets up and chases after him to apologize, but the overreaction pisses him off. Eames has always misinterpreted his motivations. Classically so. Arthur has always been a blind spot for him, a fact that Eames has historically manipulated. What wire Arthur crossed this time is a mystery. He looks towards the door, though, a guilty niggle in his belly.
*
Eames finds him later when Arthur is reading wikileaks (he shuts the window really fast) on his phone. It's dark and the lights out the window twinkle in a fetchingly romantic way if you were raised on sentimental movies set in Los Angeles like most of the Western world.
Eames flops down bonelessly with a sigh. "I apologize for my simian display. I suppose I could have completed the scene by pulling my trousers down and shaking my posterior in your face before flinging excrement, but, really, who can go to so much effort when belligerently angry?"
"It just seemed out of character. You're usually so glacial with your temper." Arthur's already forgiven him, which is all he needs to know about where Eames stands in his affections, something very frightening when looked at directly.
Eames pins him in place with his eyes, a little of the controlling command that Arthur knows is the appeal of the man. "That's because previously my annoyance with you was purely academic and related to your work habits. I wasn't in love with you before. All the commensurate personality alterations, etcetera etcetera." He looks away and waves his hand in the air over his head. "Don't seize. I don't expect a poetic declaration of reciprocal endearments." He runs a hand over his face. "I did warn you."
"You did," Arthur whispers. He's not ready for this.
"This too shall pass, as my mother always said. I couldn't leave it unsaid anymore since I'm liable to escalate in my boorish acts of vile possessiveness. Be forewarned."
"I told you, I have many guns." Arthur says. He slowly breathes out and says, because he's not a coward, "I love you back, though."
Eames laughs then sighs. "I'm sure you do, like the fresh, trembling bloom of a delicate flower in early spring. Your love is potential, something unknown that may or may not blossom." His face is in full shadow when he turns back to look at Arthur. "I love you with the kind of abandon that causes a man to lose himself because all he is anymore is his lover."
Arthur has seen that kind of love before, so he doesn't deny it exists. His mouth goes dry.
"I knew what I was doing when I said yes to your proposal, Arthur. I wanted to feel this, to have it be mine, I've seen it on others and always wondered. Now I know."
Eames's entire life is a endless hedonistic quest towards self destruction, so Arthur takes him at his word in this.
"You are completely fucking insane," Arthur finally pronounces. "And you're not going to tell me how I feel about you or anyone else. I'm tired of being treated like my feelings are the least important in a room."
"Good, I was wondering when that self-realization would strike you." He pauses, and it feels like the poetic pregnant silence. "I have to sleep now. I'm profoundly drunk."
Eames isn't even slurring his words. Arthur's impressed.
The last way Arthur expects to end his evening is being shot.
Part 3a