Keep the Car Running (22/31)
Feb. 11th, 2015 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - Keep the Car Running (22/31)
Author -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
earlgreytea68
Rating - Adult
Characters - Arthur, Eames, Sherlock, John, Mycroft, Moriarty, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Dom Cobb
Spoilers - Through "His Last Vow" in the Sherlock universe. This takes place post-movie, so I guess spoilers for "Inception"? But just for the basic fact that it's about dream thieves, nothing in this story depends overly much on the movie's plot.
Disclaimer - I don't own any of them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - If Mycroft Holmes lived in a world where people could steal information from the subconsciouses of others, tell me he wouldn't be all over that when he had Moriarty in custody.
Author's Notes - The theme for this chapter is this song. Which probably gives away what happens in this chapter. And typing that definitely gave away what happens in this chapter. Let's put this way: there are lots of run-on sentences in this chapter.
Chapter 22
“I suppose I should make tea,” offered John, resigned to the interrupted sleep, “and then you lot can clarify what’s going on.” John went into the kitchen, busying himself.
He heard Eames in the sitting room say, “You drink a lot of tea, don’t you?”
Sherlock said, “I’m not worried about Somnacin side effects.”
“Ignore him!” John shouted to Eames.
“No, ignore him!” retorted Sherlock petulantly.
Eames’s voice was honeyed with amusement as he said, “I’m going to sell my story to the tabloids on the two of you. ‘Working with the Great Holmes and Watson.’ If people only knew the clever level of banter that you so consistently maintain.”
“I can handle the Somnacin. I can even handle Moriarty if everyone would stop being an idiot. I should have been Mycroft’s first call, not you.”
“I’m not going to debate you on my lack of desire to be Mycroft’s first call for anything ever again,” said Eames.
John sighed at the tea as he made it and thought how he could have told Eames how pointless the entire conversation was. Sherlock was going to sulk, and John was going to have to be the voice of reason, and eventually he’d end up calling Lestrade to go for pints just to get out of the miasma of Sherlock’s pouting.
When he got back out into the sitting room, somehow Eames seemed to be telling Sherlock about American football. Sherlock looked properly horrified at this topic of conversation. John took note of this as a useful means to shut Sherlock up in the future.
“Now tell me what’s going on,” John said, delivering the cups of tea.
Eames took his and took a sip and said, “After the whole situation here, I got in touch with a chemist I know about the assertion that Somnacin can be made more effective. He got pretty worked up over the entire idea and told us to stop our chemist immediately.” Eames shrugged.
Sherlock stared at him. “So that’s it? Based on some hysterical email from some disreputable chemist—”
“Careful now, the best people I know are disreputable,” said Eames mildly.
“—you’re going to stop me from making an enormous breakthrough with Moriarty?” finished Sherlock.
“It’s not a breakthrough if it kills us in the process, is it?” asked Eames pointedly.
“Well, I don’t care,” Sherlock sniffed.
“Well, I do,” rejoined Eames.
“Does anyone care what I think?” asked John, annoyed.
“No,” Sherlock snapped at him. “You don’t get any say. You’re not going in people’s heads and no one is going in yours.”
John set his jaw and glared at him. “Oh, and that means that I must not have any stake in a situation where you might get yourself killed?”
Sherlock snorted as if John was being melodramatic and waved his hand about. “You’d be fine.”
John wanted to shout What makes you think that? at Sherlock. He didn’t understand how Sherlock could believe even for a second that John wouldn’t fall to pieces without him. But he supposed this was not a conversation to have in front of Eames, who had already read John’s relationship with Sherlock entirely wrong.
So John just turned to Eames, who was watching him shrewdly and knowingly, and said, “So who’s Arthur talking to now?”
“His dreamshare boyfriend,” Eames answered.
“No, he’s not,” Sherlock cut in swiftly.
Eames rolled his eyes a bit. “Fine, if you’re going to be pedantic about it, I suppose it’s his dreamshare partner. Either way, he’s been in the business for a while and if anyone knows the straight story about the tweaked Somnacin, it’ll be him.”
There were, on cue, footsteps on the stairs, but Arthur didn’t walk into the sitting room. He walked straight into the kitchen and began emptying every flask and vial and beaker down the sink. Sherlock made a sound of great distress and hurried into the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, trying to stop Arthur.
Arthur turned with a movement so swift that no one could react before Arthur had Sherlock pinned against the wall, blinking down at him in astonishment.
“Whatever training you’ve had, let’s just agree I’m better and let’s not settle this that way, hmm?” Arthur suggested politely.
Sherlock looked mutinous “I don’t think—”
Arthur twisted his hand a bit, which cut Sherlock off in wide-eyed pain, and John was suddenly by Arthur’s side, without having made a conscious decision to go there.
“Let him go,” he said quietly, which meant that he was two breaths away from forcing Arthur away from Sherlock violently.
Arthur said, “I’m getting rid of the Somnacin. Every drop of it. Because if I just tell you to stop, you won’t, will you? You’ll keep going. And you need to stop. Because do you know what happens to people who fuck with Somnacin the way you are? They go crazy and kill everyone around them, and then themselves.”
Sherlock blinked once. John looked from Arthur to Sherlock to the Somnacin on the table. And acknowledged Arthur’s very good point.
“Eames, get rid of the Somnacin,” Arthur said evenly, not shifting his attention from Sherlock.
“I’ll help,” John offered, and ignored Sherlock’s clear glare of traitor! being directed at him over Arthur’s restraining arm.
Together, John and Eames poured every chemical compound in the kitchen down the sink.
Eames remarked, “That was a lot of money down the drain. Arthur must really like you.”
Arthur let go of Sherlock and straightened his jumper a bit. “I just don’t like fatalities on my jobs,” he said lightly.
Sherlock glared and bit out, “That was unnecessary.”
“I’m not fucking around here, Sherlock,” Arthur snarled at him. “I’ve seen dreamsharing drive people insane, and it’s a terrible thing to watch happen, and I’m not getting us in the middle of it.”
“Moriarty’s been using it and he’s—”
“Liable to shoot all of us and then himself,” John interrupted steadily. “Just like Arthur said.”
“You’ll never defeat Moriarty without me,” Sherlock bit out.
“I’ve somehow managed to carry out every single job of my life without you,” Arthur said stonily. “I think I’ll manage this one as well.” And then Arthur marched out of the flat.
They listened to his footsteps on the stairs, and then Eames said, “I suppose that’s my cue.”
“You should talk some sense into him,” Sherlock snapped at Eames.
“I only ever talk nonsense to Arthur; Arthur is the one with the sense, don’t you know?”
“You’re both idiots,” Sherlock fumed. “You’re both such idiots.”
“Only me—” began Eames.
“No,” Sherlock cut him off sharply, and John looked at him in surprise, because there was something unusual about his tone that John couldn’t place. “You are both idiots. Both of you. Both of you throwing everything away, when you could actually have it.”
Eames stared at him. “I…Is this about the Somnacin? Because we—”
“You should just tell him,” Sherlock spat out. “It would be fine, you know.”
Eames blinked at him for a very long moment, and John looked between them, trying to determine what was really going on. Them Eames turned to John and said tightly, “Thanks for the tea.”
Sherlock huffed his way out into the sitting room.
John said distractedly to Eames, “Yeah, no problem.” He tried to focus for a moment longer on the problem he was aware of—the Moriarty issue—and not whatever that whole exchange had just been about. “What’s your next move now, with Moriarty?”
“Arthur will formulate a plan. Arthur’s brilliant when it comes to plans.” Eames said it lightly, but John thought it sounded a bit forced.
“Right,” he said, hoping his skepticism about this didn’t come across. This whole thing, he thought, was a catastrophe, and Mycroft was so stupid not to just cut his losses and lock Moriarty up and throw away the key. “What was all that about just now?”
“Nothing,” answered Eames shortly, and left.
John, after a moment, turned and went into the sitting room, where Sherlock was curled up into a tight ball on the sofa. John, used to such things, would have ignored him as he had during so many other previous sulks, except that he wasn’t sure he knew everything there was to know about what was happening here. “Sherlock, what was all that about? What’s going on here? You need to tell me everything.”
Sherlock said, “I know something. About the two of them.”
“Something…?” John echoed, perplexed.
“If I told them. I mean, really told them. All of it. Just one of them. Should I tell them?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Something what? Something dangerous? Are they in danger?”
Sherlock sighed. “No, they’re…No.” There was a long moment of silence. Then Sherlock said, “I don’t know. Maybe sometimes it’s better not to tell.”
John cocked his head at the bundle of Sherlock on the sofa and thought that he sounded indecisive and that sounded unlike Sherlock. “You okay?” he asked.
And Sherlock sighed heavily again, but said, “Yes. Fine. Never mind. Go away.”
***
Arthur was plainly exhausted.
Eames watched him as he dropped into the taxi with him. He didn’t slump or lean or anything overt like that. He sat perfectly straight, with his beautiful posture, and he looked at London going by. His face was drawn tight, his lips pressed together in a thin line. Eames wanted to enfold him, because clearly Arthur was worrying.
He said, “We just have to avoid letting Moriarty get close enough to use his Somnacin. We’ve done stuff like this before, played hide-and-seek with the mark.”
“Gas masks,” Arthur said, without looking away from the window. “It’s the only thing I can think of. Because Sherlock was drugging us the whole time in the dream, it’s how he got to both of us. So. Gas masks.” Arthur rubbed at his forehead. Eames tried to think if he’d ever seen Arthur do that before.
Eames tried to think if he’d ever seen Arthur look so worried before. Arthur was the one who handled pressure. Arthur was the one who told the rest of them to calm down. He could be unrelentingly demanding of the people on his team, but he didn’t crack.
But normally Arthur had something to do in these situations. Indeed, normally Arthur was the one doing the most in these situations. And now he was just sitting in a cab worrying.
And Eames didn’t know what to do about that.
Eames looked out his window. It had started raining, and the lights reflected in the puddles all around. Eames thought of the doubt evident in both John and Sherlock that they would be able to get out of Moriarty’s head intact. He thought of Arthur and his silent worry next to him. Eames thought of the chemists that had apparently shot their entire teams. He thought of Mal, losing her grip on reality and condemning her husband to hell in the process. He thought of showing up in Sarah Miller’s head with Arthur already tied up, incapacitated, at a disadvantage, and how the gas mask idea was only going to work if Moriarty didn’t pounce on both of them immediately, and that seemed like a distinct possibility.
Eames thought of Sherlock. You should just tell him.
All of these things pressed heavily into Eames’s head, so much so that he found himself having to close his eyes to try to center himself. They should make a run for it, he thought. Fuck Mycroft and his sodding blackmail, they should take off, him and Arthur. They should flip the blackmail tables, find something on Mycroft instead. Maybe Sherlock would even help them. What they shouldn’t do was finish this job.
The cab stopped and Arthur paid and Eames opened his eyes and watched the transaction. Then he followed Arthur out of the cab and into the hotel and over to the lifts. He didn’t say a word as they stood on the lift together and waited for it to take them up to their penthouse. He didn’t say, Let’s just go. Let’s disappear somewhere, just you and I. Let’s take ourselves off the map, find a tucked-away corner in some tucked-away city in some part of the world where no one will ever find us. Everything froze in his throat, the impact of all of it, the crystallization of saying it all out loud.
But all the same, Arthur stepped off the lift and into the lobby and Eames stepped off next to him, and then Eames reached for him, no conscious decision-making, just reaching for him and pulling him in and up to him and kissing him, sloppy, messy, urgent. And if Eames had stopped to think about it, he would have cursed the lack of finesse in the kiss, but Eames didn’t stop to think about it because Arthur kissed him back immediately. Not even a moment of reaction time. Arthur kissed him as if he’d been expecting it, as if they always walked into rooms and fell on top of each other, as if it was their usual greeting. Arthur kissed him as if they’d kissed a million times before and would kiss a million times afterward and the momentary fumbling of teeth didn’t matter because it was one blip on a lifetime of kisses.
Arthur kissed him.
And Eames backed him against the wall blindly and kissed him harder and harder, determined to try to get his fill before Arthur came to his senses and pushed him away. But Arthur kept kissing him back, calling his bet every time he deepened the kiss, raising it even, and two things occurred to Eames’s fuzzy mind: One, that he was never going to get his fill of kissing Arthur. And two, that Arthur apparently had no intention of pushing him away. That Arthur, in fact, was trying desperately to pull him impossibly closer, like they weren’t flush up against each other, no room for breath, so close together that Eames couldn’t even get any friction because the angle was too close and all wrong.
Eames didn’t draw back from Arthur because everyone who’d ever wanted him dead could have walked off the lift behind him at that moment and he wouldn’t have drawn back from Arthur. But he did move his mouth just far enough away to mumble, “I have a terrible idea.”
Arthur kissed him again, with a desperate gasping sound as if not kissing Eames was going to suffocate him, and Eames actually shuddered with it. When Arthur spoke, it was so much into Eames’s mouth that Eames thought he must be gaining his understanding of the words through osmosis. “Does this idea involve the fact that we’re most likely going to lose our minds in the next few days and so we may as well fuck a lot until then?” He asked it in one desperate pant before recapturing Eames’s mouth.
“Yes, actually,” managed Eames.
“You’re a genius,” said Arthur, and shoved him away before also pulling him back in, but now they were walking forward—or backward in Eames’s case—and there was still a kiss going on but it was happening around stilted steps and clothing being shed.
“Am I?” Eames asked. “Really? Can you make a note of that in your notebook? That you said that to me?”
“Shut up,” Arthur said without heat, and shoved at his own jeans. “Your problem is you never know when to shut up.”
“We haven’t reached the shutting up portion of the evening yet,” Eames told him, and regarded the pinstripes on Arthur’s underpants. “Please, please, please tell me you coordinate your underpants with your ties.”
Arthur grinned at him. Arthur grinned at him, dimples set to stun, and Eames felt light-headed, and surely that was partly because of the rush of blood out of his brain, but probably it was mostly because this was how you felt when you were on the verge of shagging the person you’d fantasized about for ages and he wasn’t just shagging you, he was smiling at you, the way your fantasies had always gone, and Eames felt dizzy enough that he stopped moving, stopped kissing, stopped undressing, drew to a halt halfway through the bedroom door.
Arthur’s grin slowly faded, and he said hesitantly, “Eames?” as if he expected Eames to suddenly say, Why aren’t you dressed? Put your clothing on. What were we thinking? “If you think—”
“I don’t think,” Eames said suddenly, urgently, and reached to pull Arthur in. “I never think,” Eames said, and closed his hands into Arthur’s hair, dipped his head to bite at Arthur’s collarbone. Arthur swore and Eames said, “Arthur,” to remind himself of who it was.
And Arthur said, “Yes,” a little breathlessly, as if he knew that Eames needed the reminder.
“Arthur,” Eames repeated, and pressed his nose into the hollow of Arthur’s throat, felt his blood thrumming through his veins, thought of the vulnerability of Arthur with his jugular exposed and the fact that Arthur was trembling all over and that wasn’t fear, that was arousal, and Eames bit at him again, feeling ridiculously possessive considering the fact that neither one of them was even completely naked yet.
“Fuck,” said Arthur, definitely breathlessly this time, and then, “I don’t approve of the biting.”
Which amused Eames. Trust Arthur to make him work in bed as hard as he made him work out of it. “Yes, you do,” he said knowingly, and then swept Arthur’s legs out from under him, landing them in a heap on the floor, which he had only been able to do because of how very distracted Arthur had been by how very much he approved of the biting.
Arthur glared up at him. “The bed is that way,” he said, and moved his kiss-wrecked head in the vague direction of the bed.
Eames couldn’t help but grin at him. His Arthur, looking so hot and so disgruntled all at once. “Beds are overrated.”
“They definitely are not,” glowered Arthur.
“Darling, I think you’ve been leading a very boring sex life. Let me rectify that for you.”
“See, this is what I mean about your inability to shut up. Your mouth should so be fucking occupied with other things right now.”
“No need to say such romantic things, petal, I promise you, I’m a sure thing.”
“I fucking hate you,” Arthur told him, then tackled him over onto his back and straddled him and kissed the absolute life out of him.
It was the opposite of the way you kissed a person you hated, was the thought that vaguely tried to form in Eames’s head, except that Arthur was busy kissing him in just that way and Eames groaned and destroyed Arthur’s hair and couldn’t even pull enough thought together to kiss him back properly. He was being completely and utterly undone by nothing more complicated than a kiss, but it was all about who was doing the kissing. Eames had known, had always known, that he would be lost forever if he ever let himself have Arthur, and he hadn’t even had him yet and the depths to which he was lost were terrifying. Eames thought he was never going to be able to kiss anyone ever again for the rest of his life, because nobody was ever going to kiss him the way Arthur was kissing him.
“Your fucking mouth,” Arthur murmured at him thickly, drugging him with slow, heavy kisses. “You never stop talking—and you say such ridiculous things—and I would stare at your fucking mouth—and just want to splay you under me—and kiss you—and kiss you—and kiss you—until you couldn’t say anything but more.”
And Eames was willing to say more, Eames was willing to beg for more, but some part of his brain was still functioning, some part that made him say, “Is that true? That’s not true.” Because he couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea that the entire time he’d been flailing around in sexual frustration over Arthur, Arthur had been having the same ideas about him.
Arthur stopped kissing him. Arthur looked down at him, and they hadn’t turned on lights, so his face was in shadow, and only his eyes were catching a bit of light, sending his lashes into silhouette. “Of course it’s true,” he said.
“But I would have noticed…” said Eames. “I never noticed…”
“I’m a better bluffer than you,” Arthur said, after a second.
Eames stared up at him and wished he could see him more clearly and was grateful Arthur couldn’t see him more clearly and wanted to turn this thought over in his head, but Arthur was mostly naked and Eames was mostly naked and Arthur was sprawled over him and Eames decided there would be time for everything else but right now there were more pressing matters. “Arthur,” he said hoarsely. “More.”
And Arthur gave him more. Arthur kissed and kissed, licked and sucked, breathed and bit. Arthur took off Eames’s pants with his teeth, giving Eames a kind of playful eyebrow-waggle as he did it, and the part of Eames that wasn’t killed by that was killed by Arthur’s mouth, which cajoled and then teased until Eames shuddered and then writhed and then blindly begged and when the white light of the climax receded, Eames heard the imprint of whatever he’d shouted lingering in the air over him.
He pushed Arthur off of him, onto his back, and loomed over him, and said, “I am really, seriously going to shut up now.”
And he did. And so did Arthur, at first. Arthur was the world’s politest blowjob recipient, and Eames supposed he should have expected nothing less, so Eames pushed him. Eames pushed until Arthur’s hands were tight fists in Eames’s hair and his breaths were gasping groans of half-formed words and Eames focused on not choking because Eames wanted to make Arthur fucking scream.
Eames squeezed his eyes shut, and Arthur’s hands were a painful twist on his head, and he thought, Please, God, let him say my name. Let him know it’s me, and no one else.
Arthur’s climax was a wordless shout, but when he’d settled back to earth, when Eames licked lazy lines of sweat off of Arthur’s stomach and Arthur’s hands pulled with uncoordinated good intentions through Eames’s damp hair, pushing it off of Eames’s forehead, he panted, “Fucking Christ, Eames,” which was good enough for Eames.
“Mmm,” Eames hummed in agreement, far too exhausted for anything more strenuous. He dropped his head onto Arthur’s ribcage and thought, This is Arthur underneath you. That is his heart beating. Eames closed his eyes and let it beat there, safe in Arthur, and used it to count his still-heaving breaths.
“If you fucking fall asleep on top of me,” threatened Arthur.
Eames wasn’t feeling inclined to believe any threat out of Arthur at the moment. “What will you do to punish me?” Eames asked, too tired to even put any effort into the double entendre.
“We should be in bed. This is why beds aren’t overrated. You’re going to fall asleep on top of me on this scratchy, uncomfortable carpet.”
Eames rubbed his head against Arthur’s chest. “Christ, you’re grouchy for someone who just had an earth-shattering orgasm.”
“It was okay,” said Arthur. “Let’s not get carried away.”
Eames made a protesting noise that sounded embarrassingly like a squawk and lifted his head up to frown at Arthur.
And Arthur wriggled out from under him and said, “Knew it. Surest way to energize you is always to insult your ego.” And then Arthur retreated to the bed.
“You’re such a terrible person,” grumbled Eames, dragging himself up and over to the bed. “You’re a ruiner of afterglow, you know.”
“I have that on my business cards,” said Arthur.
“I bet you do. Right under ‘Three Michelin stars.’”
“Three?”
“Did you actually give yourself four, you arrogant prat?” Eames collapsed into the bed next to Arthur.
“Are you getting into bed with me? Really?” asked Arthur.
Eames froze, his face half-smushed into the pillow, and wondered if Arthur thought he ought to sleep on the couch. Mutual blowjobs are all well and good, but let’s not get carried away.
“I thought beds were overrated,” continued Arthur, and Eames relaxed. Slowly.
“Fuck off,” he mumbled into the pillow.
“Not how you use that code word,” said Arthur.
Eames moved suddenly to turn the bedside lamp on and then turned to look at Arthur, blinking in the sudden brightness.
“What the hell,” Arthur complained.
Eames leaned forward and pressed a thumb to each of Arthur’s dimples. Arthur, in bed with him, post-coital and teasing him. Eames smiled at him. “Just checking,” he said, and when he went to sleep, it was right there in that bed.
Author -
earlgreytea68Rating - Adult
Characters - Arthur, Eames, Sherlock, John, Mycroft, Moriarty, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Dom Cobb
Spoilers - Through "His Last Vow" in the Sherlock universe. This takes place post-movie, so I guess spoilers for "Inception"? But just for the basic fact that it's about dream thieves, nothing in this story depends overly much on the movie's plot.
Disclaimer - I don't own any of them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - If Mycroft Holmes lived in a world where people could steal information from the subconsciouses of others, tell me he wouldn't be all over that when he had Moriarty in custody.
Author's Notes - The theme for this chapter is this song. Which probably gives away what happens in this chapter. And typing that definitely gave away what happens in this chapter. Let's put this way: there are lots of run-on sentences in this chapter.
Chapter 22
“I suppose I should make tea,” offered John, resigned to the interrupted sleep, “and then you lot can clarify what’s going on.” John went into the kitchen, busying himself.
He heard Eames in the sitting room say, “You drink a lot of tea, don’t you?”
Sherlock said, “I’m not worried about Somnacin side effects.”
“Ignore him!” John shouted to Eames.
“No, ignore him!” retorted Sherlock petulantly.
Eames’s voice was honeyed with amusement as he said, “I’m going to sell my story to the tabloids on the two of you. ‘Working with the Great Holmes and Watson.’ If people only knew the clever level of banter that you so consistently maintain.”
“I can handle the Somnacin. I can even handle Moriarty if everyone would stop being an idiot. I should have been Mycroft’s first call, not you.”
“I’m not going to debate you on my lack of desire to be Mycroft’s first call for anything ever again,” said Eames.
John sighed at the tea as he made it and thought how he could have told Eames how pointless the entire conversation was. Sherlock was going to sulk, and John was going to have to be the voice of reason, and eventually he’d end up calling Lestrade to go for pints just to get out of the miasma of Sherlock’s pouting.
When he got back out into the sitting room, somehow Eames seemed to be telling Sherlock about American football. Sherlock looked properly horrified at this topic of conversation. John took note of this as a useful means to shut Sherlock up in the future.
“Now tell me what’s going on,” John said, delivering the cups of tea.
Eames took his and took a sip and said, “After the whole situation here, I got in touch with a chemist I know about the assertion that Somnacin can be made more effective. He got pretty worked up over the entire idea and told us to stop our chemist immediately.” Eames shrugged.
Sherlock stared at him. “So that’s it? Based on some hysterical email from some disreputable chemist—”
“Careful now, the best people I know are disreputable,” said Eames mildly.
“—you’re going to stop me from making an enormous breakthrough with Moriarty?” finished Sherlock.
“It’s not a breakthrough if it kills us in the process, is it?” asked Eames pointedly.
“Well, I don’t care,” Sherlock sniffed.
“Well, I do,” rejoined Eames.
“Does anyone care what I think?” asked John, annoyed.
“No,” Sherlock snapped at him. “You don’t get any say. You’re not going in people’s heads and no one is going in yours.”
John set his jaw and glared at him. “Oh, and that means that I must not have any stake in a situation where you might get yourself killed?”
Sherlock snorted as if John was being melodramatic and waved his hand about. “You’d be fine.”
John wanted to shout What makes you think that? at Sherlock. He didn’t understand how Sherlock could believe even for a second that John wouldn’t fall to pieces without him. But he supposed this was not a conversation to have in front of Eames, who had already read John’s relationship with Sherlock entirely wrong.
So John just turned to Eames, who was watching him shrewdly and knowingly, and said, “So who’s Arthur talking to now?”
“His dreamshare boyfriend,” Eames answered.
“No, he’s not,” Sherlock cut in swiftly.
Eames rolled his eyes a bit. “Fine, if you’re going to be pedantic about it, I suppose it’s his dreamshare partner. Either way, he’s been in the business for a while and if anyone knows the straight story about the tweaked Somnacin, it’ll be him.”
There were, on cue, footsteps on the stairs, but Arthur didn’t walk into the sitting room. He walked straight into the kitchen and began emptying every flask and vial and beaker down the sink. Sherlock made a sound of great distress and hurried into the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, trying to stop Arthur.
Arthur turned with a movement so swift that no one could react before Arthur had Sherlock pinned against the wall, blinking down at him in astonishment.
“Whatever training you’ve had, let’s just agree I’m better and let’s not settle this that way, hmm?” Arthur suggested politely.
Sherlock looked mutinous “I don’t think—”
Arthur twisted his hand a bit, which cut Sherlock off in wide-eyed pain, and John was suddenly by Arthur’s side, without having made a conscious decision to go there.
“Let him go,” he said quietly, which meant that he was two breaths away from forcing Arthur away from Sherlock violently.
Arthur said, “I’m getting rid of the Somnacin. Every drop of it. Because if I just tell you to stop, you won’t, will you? You’ll keep going. And you need to stop. Because do you know what happens to people who fuck with Somnacin the way you are? They go crazy and kill everyone around them, and then themselves.”
Sherlock blinked once. John looked from Arthur to Sherlock to the Somnacin on the table. And acknowledged Arthur’s very good point.
“Eames, get rid of the Somnacin,” Arthur said evenly, not shifting his attention from Sherlock.
“I’ll help,” John offered, and ignored Sherlock’s clear glare of traitor! being directed at him over Arthur’s restraining arm.
Together, John and Eames poured every chemical compound in the kitchen down the sink.
Eames remarked, “That was a lot of money down the drain. Arthur must really like you.”
Arthur let go of Sherlock and straightened his jumper a bit. “I just don’t like fatalities on my jobs,” he said lightly.
Sherlock glared and bit out, “That was unnecessary.”
“I’m not fucking around here, Sherlock,” Arthur snarled at him. “I’ve seen dreamsharing drive people insane, and it’s a terrible thing to watch happen, and I’m not getting us in the middle of it.”
“Moriarty’s been using it and he’s—”
“Liable to shoot all of us and then himself,” John interrupted steadily. “Just like Arthur said.”
“You’ll never defeat Moriarty without me,” Sherlock bit out.
“I’ve somehow managed to carry out every single job of my life without you,” Arthur said stonily. “I think I’ll manage this one as well.” And then Arthur marched out of the flat.
They listened to his footsteps on the stairs, and then Eames said, “I suppose that’s my cue.”
“You should talk some sense into him,” Sherlock snapped at Eames.
“I only ever talk nonsense to Arthur; Arthur is the one with the sense, don’t you know?”
“You’re both idiots,” Sherlock fumed. “You’re both such idiots.”
“Only me—” began Eames.
“No,” Sherlock cut him off sharply, and John looked at him in surprise, because there was something unusual about his tone that John couldn’t place. “You are both idiots. Both of you. Both of you throwing everything away, when you could actually have it.”
Eames stared at him. “I…Is this about the Somnacin? Because we—”
“You should just tell him,” Sherlock spat out. “It would be fine, you know.”
Eames blinked at him for a very long moment, and John looked between them, trying to determine what was really going on. Them Eames turned to John and said tightly, “Thanks for the tea.”
Sherlock huffed his way out into the sitting room.
John said distractedly to Eames, “Yeah, no problem.” He tried to focus for a moment longer on the problem he was aware of—the Moriarty issue—and not whatever that whole exchange had just been about. “What’s your next move now, with Moriarty?”
“Arthur will formulate a plan. Arthur’s brilliant when it comes to plans.” Eames said it lightly, but John thought it sounded a bit forced.
“Right,” he said, hoping his skepticism about this didn’t come across. This whole thing, he thought, was a catastrophe, and Mycroft was so stupid not to just cut his losses and lock Moriarty up and throw away the key. “What was all that about just now?”
“Nothing,” answered Eames shortly, and left.
John, after a moment, turned and went into the sitting room, where Sherlock was curled up into a tight ball on the sofa. John, used to such things, would have ignored him as he had during so many other previous sulks, except that he wasn’t sure he knew everything there was to know about what was happening here. “Sherlock, what was all that about? What’s going on here? You need to tell me everything.”
Sherlock said, “I know something. About the two of them.”
“Something…?” John echoed, perplexed.
“If I told them. I mean, really told them. All of it. Just one of them. Should I tell them?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Something what? Something dangerous? Are they in danger?”
Sherlock sighed. “No, they’re…No.” There was a long moment of silence. Then Sherlock said, “I don’t know. Maybe sometimes it’s better not to tell.”
John cocked his head at the bundle of Sherlock on the sofa and thought that he sounded indecisive and that sounded unlike Sherlock. “You okay?” he asked.
And Sherlock sighed heavily again, but said, “Yes. Fine. Never mind. Go away.”
***
Arthur was plainly exhausted.
Eames watched him as he dropped into the taxi with him. He didn’t slump or lean or anything overt like that. He sat perfectly straight, with his beautiful posture, and he looked at London going by. His face was drawn tight, his lips pressed together in a thin line. Eames wanted to enfold him, because clearly Arthur was worrying.
He said, “We just have to avoid letting Moriarty get close enough to use his Somnacin. We’ve done stuff like this before, played hide-and-seek with the mark.”
“Gas masks,” Arthur said, without looking away from the window. “It’s the only thing I can think of. Because Sherlock was drugging us the whole time in the dream, it’s how he got to both of us. So. Gas masks.” Arthur rubbed at his forehead. Eames tried to think if he’d ever seen Arthur do that before.
Eames tried to think if he’d ever seen Arthur look so worried before. Arthur was the one who handled pressure. Arthur was the one who told the rest of them to calm down. He could be unrelentingly demanding of the people on his team, but he didn’t crack.
But normally Arthur had something to do in these situations. Indeed, normally Arthur was the one doing the most in these situations. And now he was just sitting in a cab worrying.
And Eames didn’t know what to do about that.
Eames looked out his window. It had started raining, and the lights reflected in the puddles all around. Eames thought of the doubt evident in both John and Sherlock that they would be able to get out of Moriarty’s head intact. He thought of Arthur and his silent worry next to him. Eames thought of the chemists that had apparently shot their entire teams. He thought of Mal, losing her grip on reality and condemning her husband to hell in the process. He thought of showing up in Sarah Miller’s head with Arthur already tied up, incapacitated, at a disadvantage, and how the gas mask idea was only going to work if Moriarty didn’t pounce on both of them immediately, and that seemed like a distinct possibility.
Eames thought of Sherlock. You should just tell him.
All of these things pressed heavily into Eames’s head, so much so that he found himself having to close his eyes to try to center himself. They should make a run for it, he thought. Fuck Mycroft and his sodding blackmail, they should take off, him and Arthur. They should flip the blackmail tables, find something on Mycroft instead. Maybe Sherlock would even help them. What they shouldn’t do was finish this job.
The cab stopped and Arthur paid and Eames opened his eyes and watched the transaction. Then he followed Arthur out of the cab and into the hotel and over to the lifts. He didn’t say a word as they stood on the lift together and waited for it to take them up to their penthouse. He didn’t say, Let’s just go. Let’s disappear somewhere, just you and I. Let’s take ourselves off the map, find a tucked-away corner in some tucked-away city in some part of the world where no one will ever find us. Everything froze in his throat, the impact of all of it, the crystallization of saying it all out loud.
But all the same, Arthur stepped off the lift and into the lobby and Eames stepped off next to him, and then Eames reached for him, no conscious decision-making, just reaching for him and pulling him in and up to him and kissing him, sloppy, messy, urgent. And if Eames had stopped to think about it, he would have cursed the lack of finesse in the kiss, but Eames didn’t stop to think about it because Arthur kissed him back immediately. Not even a moment of reaction time. Arthur kissed him as if he’d been expecting it, as if they always walked into rooms and fell on top of each other, as if it was their usual greeting. Arthur kissed him as if they’d kissed a million times before and would kiss a million times afterward and the momentary fumbling of teeth didn’t matter because it was one blip on a lifetime of kisses.
Arthur kissed him.
And Eames backed him against the wall blindly and kissed him harder and harder, determined to try to get his fill before Arthur came to his senses and pushed him away. But Arthur kept kissing him back, calling his bet every time he deepened the kiss, raising it even, and two things occurred to Eames’s fuzzy mind: One, that he was never going to get his fill of kissing Arthur. And two, that Arthur apparently had no intention of pushing him away. That Arthur, in fact, was trying desperately to pull him impossibly closer, like they weren’t flush up against each other, no room for breath, so close together that Eames couldn’t even get any friction because the angle was too close and all wrong.
Eames didn’t draw back from Arthur because everyone who’d ever wanted him dead could have walked off the lift behind him at that moment and he wouldn’t have drawn back from Arthur. But he did move his mouth just far enough away to mumble, “I have a terrible idea.”
Arthur kissed him again, with a desperate gasping sound as if not kissing Eames was going to suffocate him, and Eames actually shuddered with it. When Arthur spoke, it was so much into Eames’s mouth that Eames thought he must be gaining his understanding of the words through osmosis. “Does this idea involve the fact that we’re most likely going to lose our minds in the next few days and so we may as well fuck a lot until then?” He asked it in one desperate pant before recapturing Eames’s mouth.
“Yes, actually,” managed Eames.
“You’re a genius,” said Arthur, and shoved him away before also pulling him back in, but now they were walking forward—or backward in Eames’s case—and there was still a kiss going on but it was happening around stilted steps and clothing being shed.
“Am I?” Eames asked. “Really? Can you make a note of that in your notebook? That you said that to me?”
“Shut up,” Arthur said without heat, and shoved at his own jeans. “Your problem is you never know when to shut up.”
“We haven’t reached the shutting up portion of the evening yet,” Eames told him, and regarded the pinstripes on Arthur’s underpants. “Please, please, please tell me you coordinate your underpants with your ties.”
Arthur grinned at him. Arthur grinned at him, dimples set to stun, and Eames felt light-headed, and surely that was partly because of the rush of blood out of his brain, but probably it was mostly because this was how you felt when you were on the verge of shagging the person you’d fantasized about for ages and he wasn’t just shagging you, he was smiling at you, the way your fantasies had always gone, and Eames felt dizzy enough that he stopped moving, stopped kissing, stopped undressing, drew to a halt halfway through the bedroom door.
Arthur’s grin slowly faded, and he said hesitantly, “Eames?” as if he expected Eames to suddenly say, Why aren’t you dressed? Put your clothing on. What were we thinking? “If you think—”
“I don’t think,” Eames said suddenly, urgently, and reached to pull Arthur in. “I never think,” Eames said, and closed his hands into Arthur’s hair, dipped his head to bite at Arthur’s collarbone. Arthur swore and Eames said, “Arthur,” to remind himself of who it was.
And Arthur said, “Yes,” a little breathlessly, as if he knew that Eames needed the reminder.
“Arthur,” Eames repeated, and pressed his nose into the hollow of Arthur’s throat, felt his blood thrumming through his veins, thought of the vulnerability of Arthur with his jugular exposed and the fact that Arthur was trembling all over and that wasn’t fear, that was arousal, and Eames bit at him again, feeling ridiculously possessive considering the fact that neither one of them was even completely naked yet.
“Fuck,” said Arthur, definitely breathlessly this time, and then, “I don’t approve of the biting.”
Which amused Eames. Trust Arthur to make him work in bed as hard as he made him work out of it. “Yes, you do,” he said knowingly, and then swept Arthur’s legs out from under him, landing them in a heap on the floor, which he had only been able to do because of how very distracted Arthur had been by how very much he approved of the biting.
Arthur glared up at him. “The bed is that way,” he said, and moved his kiss-wrecked head in the vague direction of the bed.
Eames couldn’t help but grin at him. His Arthur, looking so hot and so disgruntled all at once. “Beds are overrated.”
“They definitely are not,” glowered Arthur.
“Darling, I think you’ve been leading a very boring sex life. Let me rectify that for you.”
“See, this is what I mean about your inability to shut up. Your mouth should so be fucking occupied with other things right now.”
“No need to say such romantic things, petal, I promise you, I’m a sure thing.”
“I fucking hate you,” Arthur told him, then tackled him over onto his back and straddled him and kissed the absolute life out of him.
It was the opposite of the way you kissed a person you hated, was the thought that vaguely tried to form in Eames’s head, except that Arthur was busy kissing him in just that way and Eames groaned and destroyed Arthur’s hair and couldn’t even pull enough thought together to kiss him back properly. He was being completely and utterly undone by nothing more complicated than a kiss, but it was all about who was doing the kissing. Eames had known, had always known, that he would be lost forever if he ever let himself have Arthur, and he hadn’t even had him yet and the depths to which he was lost were terrifying. Eames thought he was never going to be able to kiss anyone ever again for the rest of his life, because nobody was ever going to kiss him the way Arthur was kissing him.
“Your fucking mouth,” Arthur murmured at him thickly, drugging him with slow, heavy kisses. “You never stop talking—and you say such ridiculous things—and I would stare at your fucking mouth—and just want to splay you under me—and kiss you—and kiss you—and kiss you—until you couldn’t say anything but more.”
And Eames was willing to say more, Eames was willing to beg for more, but some part of his brain was still functioning, some part that made him say, “Is that true? That’s not true.” Because he couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea that the entire time he’d been flailing around in sexual frustration over Arthur, Arthur had been having the same ideas about him.
Arthur stopped kissing him. Arthur looked down at him, and they hadn’t turned on lights, so his face was in shadow, and only his eyes were catching a bit of light, sending his lashes into silhouette. “Of course it’s true,” he said.
“But I would have noticed…” said Eames. “I never noticed…”
“I’m a better bluffer than you,” Arthur said, after a second.
Eames stared up at him and wished he could see him more clearly and was grateful Arthur couldn’t see him more clearly and wanted to turn this thought over in his head, but Arthur was mostly naked and Eames was mostly naked and Arthur was sprawled over him and Eames decided there would be time for everything else but right now there were more pressing matters. “Arthur,” he said hoarsely. “More.”
And Arthur gave him more. Arthur kissed and kissed, licked and sucked, breathed and bit. Arthur took off Eames’s pants with his teeth, giving Eames a kind of playful eyebrow-waggle as he did it, and the part of Eames that wasn’t killed by that was killed by Arthur’s mouth, which cajoled and then teased until Eames shuddered and then writhed and then blindly begged and when the white light of the climax receded, Eames heard the imprint of whatever he’d shouted lingering in the air over him.
He pushed Arthur off of him, onto his back, and loomed over him, and said, “I am really, seriously going to shut up now.”
And he did. And so did Arthur, at first. Arthur was the world’s politest blowjob recipient, and Eames supposed he should have expected nothing less, so Eames pushed him. Eames pushed until Arthur’s hands were tight fists in Eames’s hair and his breaths were gasping groans of half-formed words and Eames focused on not choking because Eames wanted to make Arthur fucking scream.
Eames squeezed his eyes shut, and Arthur’s hands were a painful twist on his head, and he thought, Please, God, let him say my name. Let him know it’s me, and no one else.
Arthur’s climax was a wordless shout, but when he’d settled back to earth, when Eames licked lazy lines of sweat off of Arthur’s stomach and Arthur’s hands pulled with uncoordinated good intentions through Eames’s damp hair, pushing it off of Eames’s forehead, he panted, “Fucking Christ, Eames,” which was good enough for Eames.
“Mmm,” Eames hummed in agreement, far too exhausted for anything more strenuous. He dropped his head onto Arthur’s ribcage and thought, This is Arthur underneath you. That is his heart beating. Eames closed his eyes and let it beat there, safe in Arthur, and used it to count his still-heaving breaths.
“If you fucking fall asleep on top of me,” threatened Arthur.
Eames wasn’t feeling inclined to believe any threat out of Arthur at the moment. “What will you do to punish me?” Eames asked, too tired to even put any effort into the double entendre.
“We should be in bed. This is why beds aren’t overrated. You’re going to fall asleep on top of me on this scratchy, uncomfortable carpet.”
Eames rubbed his head against Arthur’s chest. “Christ, you’re grouchy for someone who just had an earth-shattering orgasm.”
“It was okay,” said Arthur. “Let’s not get carried away.”
Eames made a protesting noise that sounded embarrassingly like a squawk and lifted his head up to frown at Arthur.
And Arthur wriggled out from under him and said, “Knew it. Surest way to energize you is always to insult your ego.” And then Arthur retreated to the bed.
“You’re such a terrible person,” grumbled Eames, dragging himself up and over to the bed. “You’re a ruiner of afterglow, you know.”
“I have that on my business cards,” said Arthur.
“I bet you do. Right under ‘Three Michelin stars.’”
“Three?”
“Did you actually give yourself four, you arrogant prat?” Eames collapsed into the bed next to Arthur.
“Are you getting into bed with me? Really?” asked Arthur.
Eames froze, his face half-smushed into the pillow, and wondered if Arthur thought he ought to sleep on the couch. Mutual blowjobs are all well and good, but let’s not get carried away.
“I thought beds were overrated,” continued Arthur, and Eames relaxed. Slowly.
“Fuck off,” he mumbled into the pillow.
“Not how you use that code word,” said Arthur.
Eames moved suddenly to turn the bedside lamp on and then turned to look at Arthur, blinking in the sudden brightness.
“What the hell,” Arthur complained.
Eames leaned forward and pressed a thumb to each of Arthur’s dimples. Arthur, in bed with him, post-coital and teasing him. Eames smiled at him. “Just checking,” he said, and when he went to sleep, it was right there in that bed.
