always keep an edge on your knife, and other romantic notions
always keep an edge on your knife, and other romantic notions
by templemarker
Notes: foxxcub hosted a Valentine’s Day meme on Monday, and pyrimidine posted an amazing picture and caption. I got some ideas, and ended up with this filthy, complex little thing. Thanks to ilovetakahana for beta. Originally posted here.
If there was one bloody idea Eames had learned from his stint in the Royal Marines, it was this: travel light, travel swift, and leave nothing behind.
Boy, had he bollocksed that last one up.
He winced as another of his dishes crashed into his countertop. “That’s marble, Arthur,” he protested.
“I’m giving it character!” Arthur shouted at him, throwing a well-shaped juice glass onto the unforgiving stone and watching it shatter.
“I’ll give you character,” Eames muttered, which of course didn’t make sense but he couldn’t be arsed to care when his entire china set was being summarily destroyed before his eyes.
“When I say,” crash “‘make certain you’ve got everything, Mr. Eames,'” crash “I do not mean,” smash smash smash “‘leave our fucking passports in the building I am about to decimate with Molotovs!'”
Crash.
Eames reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet of Very Useful Things. “I could make you another,” he offered weakly.
Arthur stalked out of the kitchen, and Eames couldn’t help but appreciate the sight–Arthur mussed and flushed with anger, sleeves rolled up to reveal his forearms, expensive oxfords crunching on the bits of glass that had been flung to the floor.
“I do not want another passport,” Arthur seethed. “That was a perfectly clean identity that will take me weeks to reestablish properly.” As he came closer, Eames noticed a cut on Arthur’s temple. Of his own making of course, but he would get blood matted in his hair if he didn’t do anything, and Arthur hated having blood in his hair.
“Darling, come here,” he said, pulling his kerchief from his left trouser pocket. “You have a bit of–”
“And now I’m stuck in the Italian Riveria for who knows how long!” Arthur shouted, throwing up his hands. “I needed to be on a plane, Eames!”
Eames grasped his wrist and drew him in, dabbing at the cut carefully. Arthur breathed harshly next to him, and Eames ran his other hand down Arthur’s back, callouses catching on the fine weave of the jumper. “Now, Arthur,” he chided, “you know I can get you out of the country if you really need it.”
“I know you can,” Arthur said. “That’s not the point. The point is that I shouldn’t have to worry about getting out of the country, but instead–”
“Instead you’ll simply have to enjoy a nice meal with me, imbibe a great deal of wine, and allow me to worry about replacing your passport,” Eames replied, pushing Arthur in the direction of his purple velvet chaise. Arthur sat, deflating, and Eames tucked his kerchief back into his pocket. “There’s a love,” he said approvingly. “Now let me see if you’ve left anything in which to drink that chianti.”
Eames returned with a chipped coffee mug, a martini glass, and a decent bottle of wine he’d picked up at the shop ’round the corner. The proprietor’s teenaged son had the most delightfully obvious crush on Eames, and he’d taken to going there once or twice a week when he was in town just to give the young man a taste of hope. And to perhaps indirectly encourage him to move to Roma at the earliest available opportunity; god knew the poor fellow wasn’t going to have much luck in this little hidden corner of the world, and every bloke deserved a chance to get fucked.
Arthur was still on the chaise, legs crossed at the knee, chin angrily resting on his hand. He even accepted the martini glass of chianti when Eames offered, and Eames settled down in the barcalounger opposite him. He kicked up his feet and sipped from his mug; it wasn’t too terrible, honestly. Reminded him of University.
Eames withdrew his wallet again and slipped his knife from his trousers. He snapped open the buttons and pulled out the spare passport blank he kept in the hidden envelope within the wallet. This one was French, from just before the EU had begun to enforce passport regulation. It wouldn’t be long before this passport would no longer be accepted, but there was a window of at least one or two years before he’d need another sort of surety.
“Be a love and fetch your spare ID photos, will you Arthur,” Eames said absently, flicking open his knife and carefully wedging the very sharp, very agile blade into the corner of the passport that hadn’t been ironed down yet.
Arthur made a rude noise but arose and went to his bag, pulling out his folio and digging out the spares.
“Turn on the hi-fi, too, darling, I need Thelonious for this,” Eames said, holding out his hand for the photos. Arthur rolled his eyes but did as he was asked, taking another sip from his martini glass before messing about with the vinyl that Eames had left in a haphazard stack by the turntable.
Eames hid his smile, running a thumb over Arthur’s photos. He looked predictably solemn in all of them. Eames withdrew his notebook from his suit pocket and set the photos down atop it, carefully running his knife along the white edge of the photo. “Well You Needn’t” flowed out into the room, and Eames absently tapped his foot to the shuffling beat.
He slid one of the photos into the space he’d made; it fit perfectly. Of course, he’d done it before, once or twice, so he’d had a bit of practice. Always handy to have a spare. There was a travel iron in the laundry that should do well for the sealing, and Arthur would pass as a Frenchman, especially if he kept that sour look on his face. Sparing a quick glance in Arthur’s direction–he’d moved from Eames’ records to Eames’ books–he slipped the other photo into his notebook and set it on the table next to him, knife atop it.
“Tu aurai besoin de rafraîchir ton française, chéri,” Eames said, waving the new passport about. “And we’ll need to see my friend Marcelo about an entry stamp or five, and possibly change a bit on the printing, but we can do that tomorrow. Either way, this should get you back to your flat in London. I’m sure you have a cache there.”
“Je ne vous pardonne pas,” Arthur said from his position in front of Eames’ bookcase, “but I am slightly less pissed at you now.”
“Excellent,” Eames said, pouring a bit more wine into his mug. “Now, seeing as you’ve no choice but to wait until the morrow, how about we get buggered and then get buggered?” He put a wide, slightly hopeful smile on his face.
Arthur looked up at the ceiling, as if searching for strength, but then his shoulders sagged. Now, this was one of Eames’ favorite scenes–watching Arthur give in to the things he wanted but didn’t really want to want. Funny how they managed so frequently to get into situations where Arthur had little choice but to spend time with Eames. Quite funny, that.
“I could think of better things to do,” Arthur said flatly, as he turned and walked over to Eames. “But I guess you’ll have to do.” In one swift motion he threw a leg over Eames and crawled up to straddle Eames’ hips on the lounger, bracing his hands against Eames’ head.
“Wonderful,” Eames said. “I know just the thing.” He threaded his fingers through Arthur’s sticky hair and drew him down, pressing his lips against the seam of Arthur’s mouth and giving a pleased sigh when Arthur opened to his tongue.
Arthur’s hands slipped to Eames’ shoulders, and Eames threw his wallet and the passport to the floor so he could better put his hands on Arthur. Arthur mumbled his approval as Eames rucked up his shirt from his trousers; it was caught beneath Arthur’s waistcoast and the frame of his braces, but there was just enough room that Eames could slide in one lucky hand, palming the hot skin he found there.
Arthur widened his knees as much as he could on the chair and ground down a bit; Eames shifted up to meet them, and it wasn’t enough but it was still lovely, the firm press of Arthur’s hips against his.
“I know you must have a bed in here,” Arthur muttered between kisses. Eames’ hands had wandered, one mapping the column of Arthur’s spine and the other rubbing along the seam of Arthur’s trousers, lightly pressing into the crease of his bum.
“It’s so far away,” Eames bemoaned, but when Arthur pulled back and vaulted himself off the chair Eames did the only logical thing and followed.
He turned for a moment, to move his wallet from the floor to the side table, and when he turned back Arthur held his wallet–his other wallet, his important wallet–in his curious hands.
“Give that back,” Eames said stiffly, reaching out a hand to take it back, but Arthur ducked out of reach.
“I recognize this,” Arthur said, focus in his voice. Eames stepped forward and reached again for his wallet, or Arthur’s wrist, or whatever was nearest to Eames’ grasp, but again Arthur stepped back and ran his inquisitive fingers over the locking mechanism Eames had painstakingly built into the leather.
“Not that I don’t appreciate a good lift, Arthur,” Eames said, hearing his own voice turn a bit dark, “but I’d really rather have that off you now.”
“I bought this,” Arthur said, with no appreciation for Eames’ displeasure. He couldn’t turn the lock, for which Eames was silently grateful, but he turned it over and over again in his hands as though holding a memory. “It was for the secret santa Mal made us all do, during that job in Barcelona.”
“I know,” Eames said through the thing in his throat, “but there’s no need to take a skip down memory lane, just give it here and we can carry on with our previous business.”
Arthur held it up between two fingers of his left hand and met Eames’ eyes. “You keep all your secrets in here,” he said, no question in his tone.
Eames debated answering for half a tick before giving in to impatience, arousal, and the instinct to hide all his soft bits. “Well done, Arthur, you’ve read me like a book,” he said, dry and dangerous and all sorts of things he made only surface pretence at hiding. “I carry a safe in my rear trouser pocket, for light-fingered men to nick from me in the throes of passion. Clearly I am the greatest dolt.”
Arthur blinked, and in that moment Eames snatched his wallet back, tucked it into his pocket once more and buttoned the pocket for good measure. Not that Eames thought it would make much good in the long run–Arthur was a tricky bugger when he got his teeth in something, and this was just the sort of thing he’d never let go until he knew all the bits inside and out.
But Eames could certainly distract him for a little while.
Before Arthur had the breath to protest, Eames sealed his mouth to Arthur’s, shoving him roughly back towards the bedroom and pushing him onto the mattress. The bedclothes were unmade, still a mess from the night before, and Arthur looked good on them–sprawled and mussed and the start of a dozen or more of Eames’ subconscious desires. Eames was still a bit wroth with Arthur, nimble-fingered as he was, and ripped the buttons off his shirt with no mind paid to Arthur’s shocky gasp. He took only slightly more care with Arthur’s trousers, hearing the stitching in the zip groan at his rough treatment, but Arthur was watching him with wide, dark eyes and didn’t seem to notice.
Having Arthur’s cock in his mouth was very high on Eames’ personal list of favorites, and as he heard the starting strains of “Ruby, My Dear,” he sucked Arthur down to the root and tried to pull the breadth of Arthur into himself.
Arthur’s high whine and hitched breath warned Eames, but he dug his fingers into the cloth of Arthur’s trousers and brought his ass in closer, running the index finger of his right hand again along the seam. Arthur bucked once, twice, and came, bitter like he always was and wrung out with it.
Eames crawled over him, undid the zip on his own trousers and pulled himself out of his pants. He copped off to the sight of Arthur, messy and indolent and supine in Eames’ bed. Eames memorized every line of him, ruined beneath Eames’ own hands, and it was a hot breath and a suppressed moan and he was coming all over the subtle line of Arthur’s chest and the torn tails of his shirt. He watched, heaving breath, as Arthur ran his fingers through Eames’ mess and drew them into his mouth. Eames fell to all fours atop him, and thrust his tongue into Arthur’s mouth, hitting the pads of Arthur’s fingers and chasing the taste of himself on Arthur’s tongue.
He didn’t notice himself falling half asleep as he pressed Arthur down into the mattress, and Arthur didn’t protest his weight or the short, hopping breaths he took.
Some time later Eames resurfaced to the buzzing sound of the hi-fi, his record finished and fuzzy silence in its wake. He pushed himself off Arthur, and Arthur turned to lie facing him. When Arthur’s hands came into Eames’ line of sight, there was that particular wallet again, folded in Arthur’s fine grasp.
“Arthur,” he said, as intimidating as he could make himself sound after a rather satisfying climax, “kindly give that back to me.”
“Only if you say ‘please,'” Arthur said absently, trying again to work the lock that kept the wallet safely shut.
Eames took Arthur’s cock in hand, and was gratified to see him immediately bow his body in shock; Eames plucked his wallet from Arthur’s hands for the second time, and vowed to find a better place to hide it on his person. He set it on the floor, and reached his hand into his pocket, pulling out his kerchief again.
“Darling, you have a spot,” he said in a filthy voice, and started jacking Arthur off again, slowly, the kerchief wrapped around Arthur’s cock, a bit of Arthur’s blood in the corner.
Arthur looked at him with hooded eyes, and pushed himself up over Eames, straddling him as he had before and shrugging out of his shirt. “Well,” he said, running a hand through his hair to push it back from his face, “perhaps I can stay one more day.” He reached down towards the floor, but Eames caught his hand before he could reach for the wallet yet-a-bloody-gain and said, “Stay as long as you like,” before pulling Arthur down once more.