Archive of Our Own ^beta

Early on Friday morning, Arthur stopped Eames as he was walking through the conference room they had booked for the job.

“Long week.”

“Yeah, sure has been,” replied Eames. “Pretty grateful that we don’t have to work through the weekend, though.”

“I could do with some relaxation tonight,” Arthur said. His casual expression belied his tone, which was laden with purpose. “I doubt you need help relieving the tension of the work week, seeing as you do next to nothing all day anyway – ”

“Oi!” Eames exclaimed, putting on his best affronted expression. “You wound me, darling.”

“Please, Eames, it’s pretty obvious that you’re just napping, not working, if everyone can see that your PASIV line isn’t actually connected to anything,” Arthur retorted, a tiny hint of a smile peeking out at Eames. “As I was saying, I don’t suppose you have any trouble winding down, but perhaps you’d care to assist me anyway.”

“Why Arthur, I would be delighted to be of service.” Eames smirked.

They had had this conversation before, of course, and there was basically no risk involved – Eames would always say yes, and Arthur was never just teasing him – but Eames loved the little rush it gave him anyway. If there was anything he missed now that he was dating someone (properly seeing them whenever geography allowed, rather than just fooling around for once), it was flirtation. He always did love the chase aspect, and the racy implications of every seemingly-innocent turn of phrase were thrilling.

“Excellent. I will see you after work, then, Mr. Eames,” Arthur said. He slapped his hand against Eames’s hip before turning to leave. It wasn’t the tenderest gesture, but it gave Eames a frisson of pleasure. He liked to know that Arthur was a little possessive of him. It made him feel deliciously wanted.

Eames walked over to his chair and sat down. He felt his left pocket bunch oddly, so he shoved his hand into it, and came back up with a keycard for room 208.

That cheeky fucker, he thought, grinning a little to himself. Oh, how he did enjoy that about Arthur – everything he did, every commanding touch, was carefully planned. They were never meaningless gestures; they always served some purpose. He felt warm at the thought of it all. Arthur had known what he’d wanted tonight, so he had taken control, and, within minutes, Eames had been almost bursting with his desire to give it to him. He loved the way that Arthur could be so irresistibly powerful.

And, he loved the way that, this evening, Arthur would let that control melt away under Eames’s touch.

++

By the time Eames arrived at Arthur’s hotel room, Arthur was already splayed out on his bed with his shoes, tie, and jacket all removed and his shirt untucked with the top few buttons undone. He put down the book he was reading as Eames closed the door behind him.

“Hello,” Arthur said, his tone casual, as Eames slipped off his shoes and coat and left them by the doorway.

“Hi darling,” Eames said while making his way over to the bed, where Arthur had clearly been waiting for a while.

“You’ve had dinner and everything?” Arthur inquired.

“Yeah, I thought it best not to stop mid-sex for snacks.” Arthur grinned in response. “You good and ready?”

“Yes,” Arthur responded, grabbing at Eames’s shirtsleeves and pulling him onto the mattress.

Eames leaned on one elbow and looked down into Arthur’s eager eyes. “Safe word?”

“Baccarat.”

“Brilliant,” Eames grinned. He paused to rake his eyes up and down Arthur’s body, lying there waiting for him.

“Well, anytime you’d like to get started…”

Eames needed a moment to decide on his course of action – plans weren’t as instinctive for everyone else as Arthur seemed to think.

“If you’re impatient now, Arthur, I can’t even imagine how you’ll be begging by the end of the night.”

Arthur shivered a little and then looked up at Eames through his lashes, his eyes open wide, and pouted.

“Okay,” Eames relented, and pressed his lips to Arthur’s.

Eames’s kisses always started off chaste, but Arthur certainly wasn’t wanting for contact. Eames tangled one of his large, calloused hands in Arthur’s hair and held on to his shoulder with the other. His touch felt good. Arthur always missed this when he and Eames were apart. He would ache for human contact, but it had to be from someone special, not just a casual hug between acquaintances. He reveled in the feeling of Eames’s body pressing against his now as he arched upwards and deepened the kiss, letting his tongue slip between his lips and play carefully with Eames’s.

Eventually, Eames redirected his interest towards the tender expanses of skin behind his ears. Arthur hummed a little in approval as Eames licked and nibbled, sucking sweet kisses along the upper part of his neck. He made his way slowly down towards the base of Arthur’s throat, filling the dip of it with his tongue and nipping around his collarbone.

But, as he paid more attention to Arthur’s exposed skin, the touch of his hands grew lighter and lighter. It felt like they were merely teasing at Arthur’s body, little ghosts of touches and perhaps hints of more to come. Promises, Arthur hoped.

Soon, Eames’s movements became so soft that they almost started to tickle. It felt like torture. Arthur strained upward a bit, his hips pushing towards where Eames’s hand had just been, but he came away with nothing.

“I need more, Eames,” Arthur said, his tone deliberate but clearly not completely unaffected.

Eames rolled back onto his side. “Patience is key, darling. We’ll get there soon. First, though, we should divest you of these horrific articles.” Eames lifted up the bottom hem of Arthur’s shirt, as if to show him the offender.

“I’m sorry. Whose clothing exactly do you feel you have the right to criticize, Mr. Houndstooth-with-Floral?” Arthur raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“These clothes,” Eames replied, pausing just to build a moment of suspense (the kind Arthur claimed was ridiculous but hopefully secretly found endearing), “may be considered conventionally beautiful, I will grant you that. But they hide something entirely lovelier. It’s a crime if I’ve ever seen one.”

Arthur rolled his eyes, smiling in spite of himself. Eames took the opportunity and pressed a quick kiss to Arthur’s left dimple before slipping his more dominating tone back on.

“The shirt first, Arthur. Hurry up.”

Arthur complied, slowly unbuttoning it as he remained lying flat on his back. He tossed the shirt over the side of the bed and then looked back to Eames for further instruction. Eames leaned forward and reached for Arthur’s socks first, slipping them off his feet and knotting them together into a dark grey ball before casting them aside.

“Trousers now, darling.”

Arthur could feel Eames watching as he lifted his hips off the bed to slide his trousers down over himself. He kicked them off gracelessly.

“These too,” Eames finished, hooking a finger into the side of Arthur’s underwear. Arthur removed them. “Now spread your legs. Just a little bit, like that. Wonderful.”

Eames climbed back on top of Arthur and started kissing and licking down Arthur’s torso. He lingered over his nipples, first running his finger in light circular paths around them. The circles got smaller and smaller but never closed in. Finally, he leaned down and lapped at them gently, teasing them to peak sensitivity before playing with them using his fingers. He gently rolled one between his thumb and index finger until Arthur made a small humming noise, and then he pinched them for a sweet second before retreating completely to kiss down his stomach.

Arthur was fully hard now, licking his lips with anticipation as Eames skated the tip of his tongue down the length of his body. He sighed as Eames came to his hips, pressing kisses to the side before hovering over his cock. He couldn’t wait to be touched.

“What do you want, Arthur?” Eames drawled, his voice sweet and low and dangerously sexy.

“Your mouth,” Arthur answered. He closed his eyes and relaxed.

Eames hesitated, as if deep in thought, before responding, “You’ll get that soon, darling, I promise.”

“Eames. I’ve been waiting.”

“Don’t be greedy, Arthur. I’m calling the shots tonight, so just listen. And keep your eyes closed,” he added. “First, I’m going to kiss and nibble at you here. I so rarely get the chance to appreciate how lovely you look, as splayed out before me like this, hard and wanting, so I’m going to take my time. I’ll run my hands all over you, then, feeling every muscle beneath your skin. I want you to be aching for me when I finally decide to touch you. First with my hands. Eventually with my mouth. And then, darling, I’ll open you up, so slowly you’ll be begging for more. I want you to feel the care and attention that you so often give, so I’ll go slowly until you’re relaxed around my fingers. And then, they’ll nudge upwards into that spot that makes you moan so beautifully for me.”

“And then?” Arthur asked, almost whispering. His eyes were open now, and he was blushing fiercely.

“Don’t worry, darling, I have more plans for you. But I shouldn’t like to spoil the surprise.”

Eames pressed his lips to Arthur’s hip and started to lick around them again, moving slowly down to his thighs. He carefully avoided his cock, sometimes drawing teasing lines in towards it but then snaking them gently away back to more neutral territory. At least, his legs had seemed neutral until he felt Eames’s velvety lips against them, the perfect foil to the rough scratch of his stubble against his now-sensitive skin. Eventually, his touch moved downwards, and Eames pushed on Arthur’s shins until he bent at the knees, his feet now planted on the bed.

Eames laid delectably light kisses on the underside of Arthur’s knees, and then trailed downwards along his inner thighs, nibbling a little. He was tantalizingly close to him now. Arthur shifted his hips forward in suggestion, hoping to feel Eames’s hands on him, even if just for a second to assuage the overwhelmingly potent arousal coursing through him.

“Not yet,” Eames laughed. Then, his hands were suddenly all over Arthur’s arms and chest, groping and firmly grasping at every taut line of muscle in his body. Arthur lost his ability to focus when Eames started lightly teasing the fingertips of one hand down Arthur’s side, tracing up from his hips up to just under his arms, while squeezing at his upper thighs with his other.

And then, finally, his hand curled around Arthur’s cock. Arthur let out a pleased sigh almost immediately, and, with the help of a bit of lube, Eames began to move, stroking it up and down. His ministrations were slow and deliberate. Every few strokes, his thumb swiped gently over the sensitive head, causing Arthur to buck upwards into Eames’s fist.

“That feels nice,” Arthur murmured between panted breaths. He could see Arthur’s cheeks burn red as he neared his climax, and as soon as he started moaning, Eames realized he needed to take action.

“Yes, that’s just it – ahh, fuck,” he groaned as Eames squeezed him gently to arrest his impending orgasm and then removed his hand completely. Arthur threw his head back petulantly against the pillow.

“You look so gorgeous, all flushed and close like this, darling.”

“I always forget how the first edge feels,” Arthur grumbled. He kicked his heels a little against the bedspread and then huffed out a breath.

“Oh, but you do look so lovely – the anguish of denial, I’d paint you like this and call it that.”

“If you stop right now to do a painting, I will sully your name in the dreamshare community so fast that you’ll never work another day in your life.”

“Excellent, we’d never be working on opposite sides of the world again,” Eames mused. “Then we could do this constantly.”

“We could still do that,” Arthur said, speaking slowly and carefully, “if we only took jobs as a pair. Which I would be happy to do on the condition that you shut up and put your mouth on me right fucking now, Eames.”

Eames paused for a moment. “Do you really mean that?” he asked, his voice gone a bit quiet.

Eames knew he wouldn’t be able to stand it if Arthur were joking. Lying for one’s living came with concomitant trust issues, so, sometimes, Eames needed to look into Arthur’s eyes and see that he was being honest. It was just complicated, for Eames. It was hard to allow himself to believe that this – whatever they had between them – might be real, might be something more. It felt too good to be true.

Arthur blinked. “Yes, I do. We work well together, and we could spend a lot more time just the two of us that way, too.” He looked straight at Eames, like that was that. Simple.

“You’re not just saying that because of how brilliant I am in the sack, are you?”

Eames regretted the quip almost as soon as he’d made it – it was a reflexive impulse, to tease in case he was being played, but he really owed Arthur better than to doubt him that way. Arthur always told him the truth. Arthur always had his back. Arthur trusted him, he realized.

Luckily, Arthur took the question humorously, and he swatted it down.

“Eames, are you forgetting that I’m experiencing the anguish of denial? I’m currently trying to think about anything besides my dick, not with it. So, what do you think?”

Arthur looked up at him earnestly and Eames suddenly felt as if his heart were smiling. He took a deep breath.

“I’m all in,” Eames responded, leaning down to kiss Arthur, long and slow and deep, and melting into the ease of it. “Please accept the following as a vote of affirmation, darling.”

“Oh, yes,” Arthur moaned out as Eames crawled back to lie between Arthur’s parted legs. Eames stopped for a moment, poised with his head just above Arthur’s erection and his forearm pressing down on his right hip, and then swallowed him down about halfway. He bobbed his head a few times before lifting his mouth off completely to lick at the head for a while.

“Fuck, Eames, that’s good,” Arthur groaned.

Eames smiled up at him before returning to his work, now just suckling around the head. He could feel Arthur’s hips trying to thrust upwards under his left arm. Arthur was into it now, emitting breathless, needy little moans that encouraged Eames to take him deeper. He worked incrementally, taking his cock a little further in every few strokes.

When he was as far in as Eames could comfortably take him, Eames wrapped his free hand around the rest of his cock, hollowed out his cheeks, and began to suck him in earnest, hard and fast and wet. Arthur moaned again, another long, beautiful plea for more.

“Yes, Eames, yes yes yes, keep doing just that,” Arthur rambled, moving his hand to stroke along the one Eames had resting on his stomach. When Eames looked up through his lashes, he saw Arthur’s other hand tangled in his own hair and his face scrunched up in ecstasy. “God, Eames, fuck this feels so good.”

Eames bobbed his head up and down for a few more minutes until he heard Arthur start to draw quick, sharp breaths. When he felt Arthur’s hand firmly grasping his own, he slid his mouth off of Arthur’s cock.

Arthur arched up off the bed, his hips jumping into the air in a fruitless effort to chase the last few moments of stimulation he needed. “Oh!”

Eames just watched Arthur, completely transfixed as he squirmed around breathlessly, his eyes squeezed shut and his hips still stuttering slightly.

When Arthur calmed, he looked up at Eames, his eyes almost pleading. “I’m not sure how much longer I can – I need to, Eames.”

Eames responded by taking Arthur’s cock back into his hands to set about jerking him off again. Eames repositioned himself so that he and Arthur were face to face so they could kiss as he stroked him. Arthur groaned into Eames’s mouth, and Eames let him set a rhythm, more just allowing him to fuck into his fist than anything else.

And, when Arthur’s pace became erratic, Eames broke the kiss, looked at the expression of desperation on his face, and knew what he should do.

“Not yet, Arthur,” Eames drawled, the words flowing from his lips like molasses. He let Arthur slip out of his touch and rolled away for a moment to allow Arthur to get ahold of himself.

“Fuck, Eames, please,” he cried out, groaning.

“Oh darling, you look so gorgeous when you beg. It’s a wonder I can deny you anything,” Eames said wistfully.

Arthur had his hands covering his face now as he tried to come down from the thwarted excitement. His legs were trembling a little.

Eames took it as a cue to move things one step further.

“I’m going to open you up now, okay? You don’t have to say anything, just nod or shake your head.”

Arthur gave his consent, and Eames gently parted his legs again after grabbing the lube, settling in so he could see Arthur’s most intimate area. He slicked up his index finger and traced it around Arthur’s entrance, coaxing it to relax into his touch a little bit. Then, he slid it in slightly, just up to the first knuckle, and fucked it in and out gently so Arthur could get used to the sensation.

Once he felt Arthur start to relax, Eames moved his finger in deeper, keeping his rhythm slow and steady.

“More, Eames, please,” Arthur said. Eames carefully lubed up another finger and, on the next thrust, let both probe in at once. He looked up to gauge Arthur’s reaction, moving them very gently until the winces of pain stopped and Arthur’s eyes fluttered closed in pleasure instead.

He removed his fingers after a few minutes to lick into him for a bit, until Arthur was gasping and begging for more. Then, Eames slid his fingers back in, angled them upwards, and stroked them inside Arthur until he moaned, long and low.

“Oh, fuck, more there please, Eames,” Arthur whined. Eames was happy to continue, nudging and rubbing against Arthur’s prostate while Arthur writhed around his fingers. His pleased moans escalated in volume until he shouted when Eames moved his fingers in a deft, smooth circle on his sweet spot.

“So close, just please touch me, Eames,” Arthur cried, his face as red as ever now and gleaming with a hint of sweat.

“Touch yourself,” Eames replied, looking up to smile snarkily at Arthur.

Arthur looked – well, Eames would say he looked confused, if he had to venture a guess. Eames had never actually seen Arthur confused before, but he wasn’t usually mistaken about what he read on people’s faces. Dazed, Arthur’s hand suddenly lurched forward and wrapped firmly around his own cock, only getting in about half a stroke before Eames pulled it away.

“I never said to touch yourself there, darling,” he said, his tone sharp. He replaced Arthur’s hand so that it was lying just above his pubic bone. He laid his own hand on top of Arthur’s and pressed down. Continuing to finger him, Eames then began to inch their hands up Arthur’s lower abdomen, pushing against it until, about halfway up towards his navel, Arthur groaned deeply at the pressure, now both from inside and out.

“Fuck, Eames, Eames,” he whispered, uttering his name like a benediction, all at once both sweet and sinful.

Eames pushed against Arthur’s hand on his stomach one last time and then removed his. “Keep pressing just there, okay, darling?” Arthur nodded jerkily.

Eames scissored his fingers once inside of him before returning to rubbing his prostate, and then he wrapped his free hand around the base of Arthur’s cock. “This time, you can come.”

Then, he took the tip of it into his mouth so he could suck him and stroke him at the same time. Arthur didn’t last long under Eames’s siege of stimulation. He squirmed, trying to both buck upwards into his touch and push forward onto his fingers, and then moaned and panted hard until he came. His orgasm shuddered through him, his body arching up off the bed, seemingly for ages. His mouth was wide open, but he was suddenly silent. Eames watched in awe as he shook and quivered, his body somehow still moving under the force of it long after he had finished coming over Eames’s hand.

Slowly, Arthur came down from his peak, trembling every so often in delicious post-orgasmic aftershocks. He seemed to collapse into the mattress, every muscle in his body relaxed and loose. Finally, he opened his eyes and smiled lazily up at Eames.

“Arthur, that was beautiful.”

Arthur only hummed a little in response. Then, he beckoned weakly with his hand for Eames to come join him. Eames did, crawling up the bed to cradle Arthur in his arms. Arthur sighed and rested his head on Eames’s shoulder.

“That was incredible, Eames,” he whispered.

Eames kissed his nose.

“I really did mean what I said earlier,” Arthur continued, his voice still soft. His words were only for the two of them. “We should stick together. Form a pair.”

Eames agreed.

“Yes, let’s.”

It was that simple.