(no subject)
Along the same lines of the dickpunching fic, kind of...but not really...
For this prompt: You know that thing where a woman drops something down her cleavage, well Eames does it with something Arthur absolutely needs, but down his pants.
“Two broken thumbs and a fractured ankle,” Allyson states. “I’m torn between admiring his follow-through and being annoyed at the fact that my theory about him being a flake continues to be false.”
“He likes to cultivate that idea in people just to prove them wrong,” Arthur says mildly. “That’s what I used to think, anyway, but him showing up in this state seems like more of an inferiority complex-type thing.”
“I can hear you so clearly that it’s like you’re in the very same room. Funny, that,” Eames says without looking up, but then he does so because he can feel Arthur studying him. He scratches his involuntary beard -- consequence of the broken thumbs -- and says, “Get me a glass of water, will you?”
“Allyson, that useless sack of skin you hired is talking,” Arthur says.
“Do you have that medical file about which anesthetics she’s allergic to?” Allyson directs toward Eames, smoothly ignoring Arthur.
“In the printer, still. And seeing as how I only need to be useful within the dream, this useless sack of skin will be taking a nap. Call if you need me,” Eames says lightly.
He feels a strange satisfaction when Arthur smiles down at his paperwork.
*
“They managed to do a little damage, but I chanced it with the window instead,” Eames explains later.
“If you landed wrong, your femur could have stabbed up into your own organs,” Arthur tells him. “Getting impaled by your own thigh bone seems worse than whatever the Yakuza would have done with you.”
He unscrews a bottle of water and hands it to Eames, who holds it between both palms like he’s wearing oven mitts.
“Ha,” he says after a careful sip, even though it does sound plausible -- then again, Arthur likes to pull out the deadpan kind of humor every now and again.
He proffers the bottle at Arthur, who takes it back and screws the cap on before placing it on the desk. “Thank you,” Eames says.
Arthur nods absently, focused once more on his laptop. A year ago, Eames would have felt a very obvious flare of annoyance if he so much as looked at Arthur, but he now admits that they started off on the wrong foot. Nowadays they treat each other with an antagonism that seems mostly disingenuous.
(Arthur had messed up the rendezvous point and Eames had accidentally set off the C4 just a tiny bit too early -- it was both their faults, really.)
*
The upside of coming into a job while injured is that he doesn’t have to pretend to care about his presentation. As such, he’s wearing some avant garde-ish sweatshirt he found in the back of the closet that he’s pretty sure he’s never seen before, but it drapes comfortably and is a nice charcoal gray, which means it hides stains better than anything else he owns. His bottoms are track pants that are loose enough to slide up over the walking boot.
Eames is picking idly at a loose thread while Allyson is out getting sandwiches and Arthur is messing around with hacking into a server. “Arthur,” he begins, with no idea what he’s going to say next, but something’s bound to come.
“Shit,” Arthur says shortly, scrambling to sit upright. Eames stops talking and watches as he types impossibly long strings of code or whatever the hell, all while staring intently at the screen.
“What’s going on?”
“They’re booting me out of the system. Fuuuuck,” Arthur says almost under his breath. He punches in another block of letters before pausing abruptly, hands still hovering above the keys. “Okay. Okay, toss me that flash drive in my bag.”
“Oh. Right.” Eames fumbles around in Arthur’s satchel, which is pretty much an endless abyss folded into the form of an Italian leather bag.
“Hurry, please,” Arthur says, strained.
Eames uncaps the flash drive with his teeth, but ends up dropping the important end onto his stomach. “Shite,” he mutters. When he tries to pick it up, chopsticking his fingers in awkward swipes, he only succeeds in chasing it further down his torso until it’s sitting against the waistband of his sweats.
“Eames,” Arthur starts, already halfway up.
“No, hold on, hold on, I’ve got the damn thing, it just -- oh.”
Arthur repeats, “Oh.”
“It’s -- it went, down.”
“Down where?”
“My,” Eames clears his throat, “my track pants. Sorry,” he adds. “I can get it, I just need some -- is there maybe another one, because I know that your love for redundancy makes you carry triple backups of everything.”
Arthur is already stalking over. “We don’t have time for this,” he announces. Then he leans down and grabs Eames’s unelevated ankle, hefting his leg up by his own waist before yanking the sweats off one leg at a time. Surprisingly, he’s capable of pulling quite hard and the force makes Eames slide forward a bit, leaving him slouching in the chair, lower half covered only by boxer briefs.
The flash drive, against all odds, has somehow nestled itself in the crease of Eames’s hip joint. Arthur grabs it without preamble, leaning close enough for Eames to catch a hint of some very sheer cologne, and then he goes right back to the laptop and plugs it in as if nothing happened.
“All good?” Eames calls after a pause, legs still splayed out, heart pounding fast from delayed adrenaline.
Arthur doesn’t answer for a few moments, but finally says, “Yes. I think so. Hopefully the computer saved all the building layouts correctly. I’m estimating we got about 70% of it.”
“Yes, alright.” The back of the chair is making a mess of Eames’s hair, he can feel it. He’s just about to sit up when Arthur glances over; he’s leaning over the table, one forearm lined up alongside the laptop to support his weight.
“Sorry,” he says, belatedly. It might be the angle of the sun coming in through the windows, but his ears are colored a faint red. “Was that out of line?”
“Of course not. Right,” Eames breathes out, then wonders how long he’s going to be speaking in vaguely nonsensical answers.
“You can get dressed again now,” Arthur points out. “Unless you need help?”
“Well, if you’re offering,” Eames says. He waits until Arthur shakes his head, then says, “This part is always the least fun.”
“I’m surprised you’ve never been arrested for indecent exposure.”
Of course Arthur would know. Eames just grins and scoots to the edge of the chair. His thumbs still haven’t set yet, and he’s been operating on a steady undercurrent of pain for the past week, but all that narrows into a tiny focal point of negligible stress when he considers the newly realized fact that he might, just might be wildly attracted to Arthur.
For this prompt: You know that thing where a woman drops something down her cleavage, well Eames does it with something Arthur absolutely needs, but down his pants.
“Two broken thumbs and a fractured ankle,” Allyson states. “I’m torn between admiring his follow-through and being annoyed at the fact that my theory about him being a flake continues to be false.”
“He likes to cultivate that idea in people just to prove them wrong,” Arthur says mildly. “That’s what I used to think, anyway, but him showing up in this state seems like more of an inferiority complex-type thing.”
“I can hear you so clearly that it’s like you’re in the very same room. Funny, that,” Eames says without looking up, but then he does so because he can feel Arthur studying him. He scratches his involuntary beard -- consequence of the broken thumbs -- and says, “Get me a glass of water, will you?”
“Allyson, that useless sack of skin you hired is talking,” Arthur says.
“Do you have that medical file about which anesthetics she’s allergic to?” Allyson directs toward Eames, smoothly ignoring Arthur.
“In the printer, still. And seeing as how I only need to be useful within the dream, this useless sack of skin will be taking a nap. Call if you need me,” Eames says lightly.
He feels a strange satisfaction when Arthur smiles down at his paperwork.
*
“They managed to do a little damage, but I chanced it with the window instead,” Eames explains later.
“If you landed wrong, your femur could have stabbed up into your own organs,” Arthur tells him. “Getting impaled by your own thigh bone seems worse than whatever the Yakuza would have done with you.”
He unscrews a bottle of water and hands it to Eames, who holds it between both palms like he’s wearing oven mitts.
“Ha,” he says after a careful sip, even though it does sound plausible -- then again, Arthur likes to pull out the deadpan kind of humor every now and again.
He proffers the bottle at Arthur, who takes it back and screws the cap on before placing it on the desk. “Thank you,” Eames says.
Arthur nods absently, focused once more on his laptop. A year ago, Eames would have felt a very obvious flare of annoyance if he so much as looked at Arthur, but he now admits that they started off on the wrong foot. Nowadays they treat each other with an antagonism that seems mostly disingenuous.
(Arthur had messed up the rendezvous point and Eames had accidentally set off the C4 just a tiny bit too early -- it was both their faults, really.)
*
The upside of coming into a job while injured is that he doesn’t have to pretend to care about his presentation. As such, he’s wearing some avant garde-ish sweatshirt he found in the back of the closet that he’s pretty sure he’s never seen before, but it drapes comfortably and is a nice charcoal gray, which means it hides stains better than anything else he owns. His bottoms are track pants that are loose enough to slide up over the walking boot.
Eames is picking idly at a loose thread while Allyson is out getting sandwiches and Arthur is messing around with hacking into a server. “Arthur,” he begins, with no idea what he’s going to say next, but something’s bound to come.
“Shit,” Arthur says shortly, scrambling to sit upright. Eames stops talking and watches as he types impossibly long strings of code or whatever the hell, all while staring intently at the screen.
“What’s going on?”
“They’re booting me out of the system. Fuuuuck,” Arthur says almost under his breath. He punches in another block of letters before pausing abruptly, hands still hovering above the keys. “Okay. Okay, toss me that flash drive in my bag.”
“Oh. Right.” Eames fumbles around in Arthur’s satchel, which is pretty much an endless abyss folded into the form of an Italian leather bag.
“Hurry, please,” Arthur says, strained.
Eames uncaps the flash drive with his teeth, but ends up dropping the important end onto his stomach. “Shite,” he mutters. When he tries to pick it up, chopsticking his fingers in awkward swipes, he only succeeds in chasing it further down his torso until it’s sitting against the waistband of his sweats.
“Eames,” Arthur starts, already halfway up.
“No, hold on, hold on, I’ve got the damn thing, it just -- oh.”
Arthur repeats, “Oh.”
“It’s -- it went, down.”
“Down where?”
“My,” Eames clears his throat, “my track pants. Sorry,” he adds. “I can get it, I just need some -- is there maybe another one, because I know that your love for redundancy makes you carry triple backups of everything.”
Arthur is already stalking over. “We don’t have time for this,” he announces. Then he leans down and grabs Eames’s unelevated ankle, hefting his leg up by his own waist before yanking the sweats off one leg at a time. Surprisingly, he’s capable of pulling quite hard and the force makes Eames slide forward a bit, leaving him slouching in the chair, lower half covered only by boxer briefs.
The flash drive, against all odds, has somehow nestled itself in the crease of Eames’s hip joint. Arthur grabs it without preamble, leaning close enough for Eames to catch a hint of some very sheer cologne, and then he goes right back to the laptop and plugs it in as if nothing happened.
“All good?” Eames calls after a pause, legs still splayed out, heart pounding fast from delayed adrenaline.
Arthur doesn’t answer for a few moments, but finally says, “Yes. I think so. Hopefully the computer saved all the building layouts correctly. I’m estimating we got about 70% of it.”
“Yes, alright.” The back of the chair is making a mess of Eames’s hair, he can feel it. He’s just about to sit up when Arthur glances over; he’s leaning over the table, one forearm lined up alongside the laptop to support his weight.
“Sorry,” he says, belatedly. It might be the angle of the sun coming in through the windows, but his ears are colored a faint red. “Was that out of line?”
“Of course not. Right,” Eames breathes out, then wonders how long he’s going to be speaking in vaguely nonsensical answers.
“You can get dressed again now,” Arthur points out. “Unless you need help?”
“Well, if you’re offering,” Eames says. He waits until Arthur shakes his head, then says, “This part is always the least fun.”
“I’m surprised you’ve never been arrested for indecent exposure.”
Of course Arthur would know. Eames just grins and scoots to the edge of the chair. His thumbs still haven’t set yet, and he’s been operating on a steady undercurrent of pain for the past week, but all that narrows into a tiny focal point of negligible stress when he considers the newly realized fact that he might, just might be wildly attracted to Arthur.