Work Text:
Arthur thinks that if you die enough times it becomes a habit.
There's a clarity that comes with death, a simplicity, an assumption that the slate has been wiped clean. Death provides a sense of distance.
It's the times they don't die, the times they come out alive, still shaking off the memory of fractures and breaks and blood. The times their bodies are convinced they have survived even if they're just ghost echoes of relief. Imagined bruises and half-remembered blood.
It's the times they don't die that they end up, by mutual and unspoken agreement, in the first hotel they can find, and the name and the room number never matter.
There'll be no questions, Arthur doesn't want them, doesn't need them.
It doesn't mean there are no words though. Arthur lets Eames call him names. He doesn't protest a single 'darling' though they're strung through with bites and sharply hissed obscenities. Like the other man can't quite hide the viciousness of his need under the rush of blood. Left wanting Arthur in a way that's brutal and simple and desperate.
It's almost as if they need lay all the bruises on each other that the fall from a building, or the too hard slam of a body into a wall would leave. To recreate every moment of sharp, hard, greedy pain and make it real.
Arthur doesn't protest, not even when stitching pops and comes free under the pull of an impatient hand. Shirt and vest stripped off and tossed away - and the bed is always close enough.
Arthur knows enough about leverage, enough about pressure to have Eames on his back if he wants to. But he's the one kicking his pants free, lifting his hips for the slow draw of cotton down his legs. He's the one that ends up dragging his thigh against the rough side of Eames' face while he mouths the phantom sharpness of his hipbone, the naked dips of his pelvis and the hard, desperate weight of his cock.
Arthur shoves his fingers into Eames hair, nerves sparking too hard to make words. There's just a snarl in his throat and Eames laughs and slides up between his thighs, heavy and warm and solid. So real it almost hurts.
There are large hands on his wrists, pushing them up the bed. Arthur wraps his fingers round the sharp unforgiving metal of the headboard and lets Eames pull his legs over his shoulders, slick fingers already pressed into him in quick, unsteady pushes. Eames' words cut to pieces, mouth open against the curve of Arthur's knee. His eyes are dark, hot, blown wide and Arthur can't exhale without it shaking. Every inch of him is a shivering line.
Greedy.
The fingers are gone, knuckles brushing the back of his leg and he knows they're dragging tight and slick over the line of Eames' cock - Arthur hisses out a word, impatient, leg shifting.
Eames' exhale is a laugh on the edge of breaking, then breaking entirely on a groan when he pushes in, all the way up inside him. The steady burn of pressure steals Arthur's breath for a long, ragged moment, narrowing the world down to a point that's purely and utterly physical. It's vivid enough to leave a whine in his throat, heel digging into Eames back. Spread out and opened and breathing desperately through it.
Eames' hands slide on his thighs, and there's a a rush of words that's slow and soft and heavier than Arthur knows what to do with. He never asks for gentle - though there's something that feels like it underneath, the slow, steady search for depth and pressure that hits the edge of too much but never goes over.
Arthur doesn't have to think at all then.
He tightens his fingers and takes it, no matter how hard, no matter what's said, none of it matters.
None of it matters.
Eames curls over him and kisses him, wrecks his hair and bites at his mouth and the hard curve of his jaw, hissing words that no longer sound so pretty, or so meaningless, mixed in with the hard, almost guilty sound of his name.
Until there are no words, just breath and movement, the desperate clawing need to reach oblivion.
It's a moment of white-out, freefall.
Arthur will breathe out then, sprawled against the sheets, skin cooling, blood still an almost dizzying rush through his veins.
Eames' hand will rest wide and possessive across his stomach, fingers never entirely still, and Arthur will let it stay there.