Work Text:
The first time Eames sees Arthur, he wants to fuck him. He's all prim and proper and calm and courteous and Eames wants to rip it all out of him, have Arthur hot around him and forgetting the very meaning of propriety.
He manages it, eventually, the both of them looped on a failed mission and on several drinks too many, and Arthur is exactly like he thought he would be, exactly the same, going rough and wanting, untangling into something real.
Well spotted, Eames thinks, and gives himself a mental pat on the back.
*
He doesn't see Arthur for six months after that, and Arthur seems exactly the same when he does see him, still prim and proper, perfectly courteous and not interested in going beyond that measure of cool courtesy with him.
Eames tries to fuck him again, and fails spectacularly at every attempt. It only makes Eames want it more.
*
Eames is not very good with wanting things. It seems, generally, that the things he wants tend to fall into his lap. He wants Arthur. He wants Arthur until it becomes bitter in his throat.
There is something about wanting something and then receiving it. There is the exact moment when you realise the thing you wanted and the thing you got are both the same and not, and that there is no taking it back.
Eames had wanted to be able to feel since he was old enough to know it would be best not to. He hadn't really managed to.
It isn't until he does that he realises maybe he shouldn't have wanted it at all.
*
Arthur seems supremely uninterested in his existence. It annoys him, at first, but then it only stings, low in the chest. Eames has found himself with a glorified crush on the only person who won't have him. The thought makes him want to laugh.
He can't quite manage to.
*
He doesn't see Arthur much. That's probably for the best, because every time he does he turns into a spoiled child who isn't allowed a toy, tugging at imaginary pigtails and kicking over chairs and generally losing control of himself entirely.
It's on a job that has taken up far too much time and too many hours, the days and nights stretching into an interminable length of time where Eames slept alone in a room not so far from Arthur's. It's on a job that pushes the longing to his throat.
It's late, probably, and he's feeling petulant, watching Arthur work. And then he's moving, without thought, shoving at Arthur's precise diagrams, the things he pays attention to instead of Eames. He makes a spectacular mess of the floor.
"This isn't a game," Arthur says, and calmly picks the papers up, smoothing them out.
It isn't. If it were a game, Eames would be having fun.
*
Eames fucks Arthur on the night of Mal's funeral. It's another case of wanting something and realising you don't know the first thing about your wants.
Arthur comes alive beneath him, but it's ugly, Arthur miserable and angry and full of wanting to hurt someone, wanting to hurt anything. Eames lets Arthur bite him and scratch his short nails into his skin and huff out breaths that are almost sobs.
Sweetheart, Eames says to him, helpless, love. He means everything he says.
*
He doesn't see Arthur after that until the Fischer job, and he knows if it was up to Arthur, he'd have never seen him again.
*
Arthur isn't perfectly courteous and proper when he sees him again. He's tense and he's mean, biting under Eames' skin, and Eames wonders just how hard it must have been to be Cobb's point man for the time after, watch the man go slowly mad. Because he is mad, and he's taking Arthur with him in slow, measured steps.
Eames doesn't offer comfort, because he isn't good at it, and he knows Arthur would never accept it. Instead he needles him the way he always has, and Arthur reacts, sharp and tense and all wrong, but at least he's finally reacting.
He's honestly a little afraid of wanting anything when it comes to Arthur. It never turns out the way it should.
*
Eames calls him darling because he can't help himself. He calls him darling because it means something, because the word both sticks in his throat and rushes out of him, all at the same time.
Arthur gives him a look, something Eames can't puzzle out, and he wonders if he knows this man at all. If he even wants this man at all.
He does.
*
He watches the realisation on Arthur's face when they succeed, watches it dawn on him that he's free, that he will no longer need to follow Cobb through the netherworld like a shadow. It's a supremely complicated expression, and Eames doesn't entirely know what to make of it. All he knows is that it suits his face beautifully.
He follows him after mostly to find out what that expression leads to, joy or regret.
*
"You're following me," Arthur says before he's even made a fair chase of it, doesn't even turn around. Eames must be losing his touch. That, or he desperately wanted to be caught.
"Drinks?" Eames asks.
"I'm not going to fuck you," Arthur says. "I'm telling you that now."
"You're so very presumptuous," Eames tells him, and when Arthur turns around to look at him, eyebrow raised, Eames raises one right back.
*
He does fuck him in the end, the both of them just past tipsy, and Eames watches the expression melt into him, a little bit of joy and a little bit of regret and all of it flushed and panting and his, if only for the night. It isn't even close to enough.
"Stay," Eames says, after, the sheets pooling around his hips as he shifts up to sitting, watching Arthur's back flex as he pulls on his trousers.
"Mr. Eames," Arthur says. "I didn't know you cared."
"You did so," Eames says.
Arthur turns to face him. He turns to face him, and then he drops his trousers and crawls back into bed, tucks his face into Eames' chest.
"You cuddle?" Eames asks, after a moment of breathing, a moment where he fights the urge to check his totem, a moment of silence. "Deal's off, get out of bed."
"Way to ruin the moment," Arthur says, and against his skin, Eames feels the imprint of a smile.
"Oh, it's a moment now," Eames says. "How dramatic."
"Go to sleep," Arthur says, and Eames does.
*
When he wakes, Arthur is still asleep beside him, mouth slightly ajar. He's snoring, and Eames never wanted that in particular, but it's fine.
It's fine.