Disclaimer: I have no legal claim on Inception.
For the kinkmeme prompt:
Eames thinks Arthur has the prettiest mouth ever. Mouth/lip porn please.
He whiles away many a dull work half-hour stealing the tiniest snatches of glimpses of Arthur's mouth. Any more than a hurried glance makes Arthur raise his head and frown about the room, and useful as it is professionally to have a colleague with such paranormally attuned senses, it's damned annoying for his admirers. Eames isn't a Projection. He should be allowed to stare, if he likes. On especially brave days, he nearly does just that - tells himself not to look away, to wait so that Arthur will see him staring this time, see the quiet, patient hunger his face wears in hidden moments, and then Arthur will know. But Arthur knowing is something he's not brave enough to attempt. It's an empty challenge he issues himself perpetually.
It's the prettiest little mouth, even if Arthur isn't a pretty sort of man. Its beauty, like Arthur himself, is spare and understated. It suggests delayed, subtle pleasures and earned reward, method and discretion. Mouth of a man with a mind ticking over where others just talk - and capable, God, so capable. He knew that for a fact. He'd walked in on them before at work, Arthur and Ariadne, back when they were still dating. They were wrapped around each other like a tornado, her hair fisted in an inkstained hand as Arthur's mouth bruised her own, lust and possession whirling in a storm of seething, claiming, taking...her moans of excitement swallowed by his lips.
After, Eames enviously wondered what had happened to provoke it - or indeed if Arthur needed to be provoked into something like that. Perhaps being devoured in an ambush of furious kisses is just an occupational hazard of dating Arthur. Perhaps the tranquil amused line his lips make is a lie of biology and he's a creature of filthy lust deep down. Perhaps he fucks like a man going to his death in the morning, everytime.
Questions like this burn him.
In his dreams, (real ones, not those used for their professional scavenger hunts) Arthur has no gun. No visible weapon of any kind, even if pistols and rifles and grenades are all instruments which he's seen sing under those clever hands. What he brings are his lips, and they're fully loaded. Walls spring up out of nowhere in blank formless landscapes just so Eames can be slammed like a ragdoll against them, just so a slender man strapped into Dunhill armour can mutter Hey you, grip his biceps and then dive.
Like a knife through warm butter Arthur's tongue spears his lips apart, dives between them into the greedy welcoming cavern of his mouth, pushing deep.
A moan escapes him, desperate and choked as he wraps his arms around Arthur's shoulders to tug him close, body instinctive as it shifts to take this man in, everywhere, everyway, his legs already spreading for the tailored thigh pressing for entry.
His awareness is basement-level, primal from the second Arthur shoves fully against him and there's Arthur's cock, so heated and hard it's like fire-warmed steel, branding him through the twin layers of their trousers, the climbing heat of their bodies fusing, melding into one full burn. Arthur kisses, kisses and kisses and kisses and it's all he can manage dazedly kissing back. At their mouths they battle in lunges and sucks, Arthur's tongue winding round his, pushing at his in a dance of electric power, and never has it been like this, never never where his heart is pounding so hard it might burst from his chest, where his body can't remember any touch before this one.
Where he needs. Craves.
Hot lips tear brutally from his for seconds, and Arthur growls Kiss me, kiss me Alex, don't stop, almost drowned out under the ruined panting of their mingled breath, and as Eames nods, his collar's seized in Arthur's hands just so he can be tugged again into the wet ecstasy that is Arthur's mouth.
His mouth's taken at a different angle this time, his head tilting to accommodate, feeling fingers scraping across his stubbled jaw as though they might memorise his face and its secrets through touch alone. Clutching Arthur tighter, he groans, fever-tight, crushing-tight, every defence crumbling around him so loud it's almost deafening, biting at Arthur's lips, nipping til blood blooms on his tongue and Arthur hisses - til their mouths are ripped apart with a sucking sound. Breathing weakly, his eyes open. Wondering why Arthur has retreated.
Arthur looks wrecked. Spit-wet flushed lips, mussed hair, eyes black and glassy with desire. He's panting angry gasps, sharp little teeth gleaming from between those parted lips, and Eames must look like that as well, surely, the truth of what they've done together staining his face - no forging now. No hiding or denying or deflecting. Fuck.
"I..." Eames croaks. Thinks. He must say something, there must be something to say. Around them booms the white silence, mocking. well? it seems to shout, well? WELL?
I don't know. I never know, with you.
A man reliant on the artillery of words, suddenly he can't think of a single thing to say. Arthur has kissed him and robbed him, he can't. It's dangerous and heavy inside him, this trembling need for something, and it seems to thicken and spread the more Arthur stares into his eyes. What he wants to do is hold Arthur in a deathgrip and never let him go, let their bodies wind round each other, press cheek to cheek and heart to heart and fuse into something secret together. Until Arthur's in his veins like a compound and can never leave him again. His soul. Mind. Knowing.
"Arthur," he chokes, startling as a thin fingertip lifts to trace his lower lip as he speaks, "Arthur, I. I - I lo -" His tongue seems to catch. "I lo -"
Beautiful, the smile Arthur gives him. It's as sunny as a California morning, so happy and fond that he falls into silence, unable to remember if he's ever seen it before now. Not his usual lopsided smirk but a beam, a joyous beam. That mouth.
"Alex...it's okay. It's just a kiss," he's gently told, a warm hand cradling his face. "If that's what you want. Just a kiss."
"But...wait..."
Pulling away from him, Arthur throws a last small smile, and turns. He walks away into the distance as Eames mournfully watches. A small dark figure which decreases in size with every step until whiteness just swallows them whole. Eames slides helplessly down the wall, lands on the floor with a bump, as he does everytime, everytime this scenario happens, because Eames is actually a very stupid, frightened man, at heart.
Even in dreams Arthur is too much to cope with.
There's time to think, for all the good it does, now. It stings like a bite in his chest but he's emotionally masochistic enough to almost enjoy the sensation. The white is blinding him so he closes his eyes against it, shuts them up tight.
hey, you.
Hey You.
"Hey, you."
Eames comes to with a start, blinking up into Arthur's face. Arthur, Real Arthur, standing over him as he lounges in a lawn chair, magazine in his lap. Around them, the warehouse and a humming Ariadne fiddling with a whiteboard. Right. Okay.
"Y'know, I'd say 'we don't pay you to lie around sleeping', but we kind of do." Arthur smirks, peering down at him. An Arthur-joke.
Default-Eames springs into action, thankfully, and he replies with something apparently very amusing which makes Arthur and Ariadne snort laughter, even if seconds later he can't remember what it was. He's brought a coffee he didn't recall asking for, and watches Arthur leave, again, still achingly hot and hard beneath the masking magazine, all rubbed raw within.
Perhaps. Perhaps he will tell him tomorrow, he thinks. It only gets more difficult with every passing month, they mount up like bricks in a wall between them, so perhaps tomorrow he'll talk to, or text, or ring him. The words might come
.
It's just a kiss.
It isn't, and hasn't been for years, but Eames tries to believe it, coffee cold and bitter on his tongue. He tries.