templemarker

To Continually Descend
by templemarker

Notes: For xxxholiclover in the dream_holiday Inception holiday ficathon. Thanks to samjohnsson for beta! Happy holidays!

***

He smelled like the cigarette he had that morning on the way to the coffee shop, a whiff of espresso mixed with the cologne he favored, a bit like hair wax but mostly like himself. Eames was clean like park air with fresh dew, musty like well-loved but forgotten books. Arthur reeled him in, running his nose along the column of Eames’ throat.

“Arthur, what–” Eames said, amusement evident in his voice.

“You smell like you,” Arthur breathed, tongue darting out to taste.

“Arthur,” Eames said on the short end of a laugh, hands bracketing Arthur’s shoulders, as if he couldn’t decide whether to hold him close or push him away. “We do have a job, you know.”

“Fuck the job.”

“Language,” Ariadne admonished, giving them a fool’s grin as she passed them to enter the small house where they were doing prep for this job. Arthur flipped her off, hiding his responsive grin at her trill of a laugh, and pressed the edge of his teeth against Eames’ pulse-beat. It earned him a sharp intake of breath and a hot, somewhat reproving look when Arthur stepped back.

“Later,” Eames murmured,”I’ll nail you against the wall of the bedroom, as you’ve so kindly asked for, and not let you come until you’re desperate for it.”

Arthur let the heat flood his face, let his desire show, and was gratified at the effect it had on Eames, as much as Eames’ words ever did on him.

A conference, an IV cannula, and a walk-through of the dreamstate later, there was still a half an hour on the clock and nowhere to be. Arthur’s own favorite pastime was bringing to life the various logic puzzles and paradoxical mathematics he devoured as a particularly nerdy hobby. The Penrose stairs, his own personal cliché, remained a favorite.

It would have been–not shameful, but something of a secret pleasure, how engrossed he could be when walking the stairs. There was some freedom of it, something in the quiet repetition of the even measure of the steps, the certainty that every stride would fall on its dreamed target. It was something like the treadmill, only of his own invention and therefore better, inherently.

Most people couldn’t find him, when he hid himself in the nameless office building or mid-century lakehouse he created to house his steps, tucked away in whatever dream he was in, somewhere just for him. In general, he would only take people–pupils–once and then leave them to their own devices. The stairs were of little interest to anyone but him. Mal could find him. So could Eames.

He was caught in reflection when Eames came up behind him, wound arms around Arthur’s waist, let loose a long breath against Arthur’s face. “The stairs, again?” he asked, fond.

This thing they had between them, untempered by distance or time, flared like a magnesium flare with only the slightest provocation. It didn’t matter where, or why, or how, only that they inhabited the same space and were left in relative solitude for the space of a minute or five. Eames met him with all the passion and drive Arthur had come to first know so well when he was too young to know what he was getting into, and when he was older he couldn’t bother caring any longer.

“Some people have bonsai,” Arthur countered, turning in Eames’ arms to meet him in a kiss.

Eames laughed into the kiss, and Arthur smiled reflexively. “I want to suck you off,” Arthur said, and delighted in the flush of Eames’ ruddy skin even as he worked his fingers at the clasp of Eames’ waist.

“You want to defile your precious stairs?” Eames asked, taunt and disbelief together.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Arthur lied blithely, and pushed Eames to recline only partly awkwardly against the stairs as he dropped to his knees.

Blowing Eames was always a remarkably gratifying experience; he was never reserved with his reactions, always willing to moan appreciation or provide guidance as necessary. Arthur had missed this cock, Eames’ cock. It had never been something Arthur had ever successfully been able to reconstruct, not to his satisfaction, in the dreamstate with a simulacrum of Eames. He only did it to see if he could, and the imagined in no way lived up to the reality. Arthur didn’t blame that on his so-called lack of imagination; rather, there was only one such man in the world, and he would prefer the genuine article to any construct he could develop.

If there was one thing that scared him, truly scared him about the dreamstate, it was the thought of getting lost in a poor copy of the beloved original.

Putting that aside, he concentrated on Eames, with him now for the first time in months. The particular smell, some distilled variation on Eames’ scent that lit him up; the weight in his mouth; the contortions of Eames beneath the firm pressure of Arthur’s hands. Arthur’s eyes fell closed, and he dug his fingers into Eames’ strong hips. He loved leaving the bruises as much as Eames loved seeing them there the following day.

“Arthur,” Eames said, in the desperate high whine he couldn’t avoid whenever he got to the knife’s edge of his pleasure. There were any number of things that Arthur could use to drive him over that edge, but his favorite was simple and slightly cruel, their favorite mix: he ran the edge of his teeth along the fine skin of Eames’ cock, with only the lightest trail of his tongue, the slight reminder of Arthur’s earlier assault. Eames went tense as a bowstring, locked into a painful arch, and with a choked cry he came, spilling over Arthur’s lips and chin, messy and wonderful and terrifically real.

Arthur stood, unzipping his pants with economical motions, drawing out his dick and stripping it quickly. Eames was a sprawl beneath him, thick, powerful body braced between Arthur’s brogues, and he watched Arthur, looking dazed and smirky all at once. With a firm swipe of his thumb at the slit of his cock, Arthur came, hunching over with the power of it, watching it stain the silk of Eames’ shirt, watching Eames run a finger through it and bring it to his mouth.

Still shocky, Arthur lowered himself over Eames, tucking his face again into the heady curve of Eames’ throat. In the dreamstate, he smelled like salt and chocolate, the tang of sulfur, and Arthur put his tongue to the pulse-beat and closed his eyes.