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In all the years they’ve known one another, Eames has never seen Arthur move with anything short of feline grace and unbending conviction, whether he’s walking or fighting – or fucking. He’s smooth on his feet and infallible with his aim, both with his Glock and his cock.
Turns out, dancing is an entirely different beast. Dancing with Arthur, Eames suspects, is like dancing with a cross between a teenager who’s picked last in every sport and a baby giraffe. It’s enough to make any sane person run for the hills, but, coincidentally, Eames isn’t sane. He’s delighted, in fact, by this side of Arthur that’s surfaced like long-lost treasure, imperfect but still altogether dazzling. His willingness to suffer every manner of abuse for Arthur is just an added convenience.
“Ow,” he says understatedly after Arthur’s forehead bashes him on the nose. “Keep your eyes on me, darling, not on your feet. I assure you they won’t go anywhere you haven’t told them to go.”
When Arthur steps away, he gingerly feels around for broken bones.
“This isn’t working. This is – fuck,” Arthur says, miserable, cheeks colored delicately with embarrassment, before turning around and dragging his hands down his face. “I can’t believe I let Sarah talk me into this. It’s an amateur dance competition, Arthur. I have no one else to turn to, Arthur. It’ll help you let loose and have some fun, Arthur. I’m not equipped for this kind of fun. If I wanted to let loose, I’d take shots of tequila.”
Then he spins around, eyes a little crazy, crazier than they’ve ever been in the face of a botched job or bad men with big guns.
“Maybe it’s not too late to bow out. I can find her another partner, I can find her the best fucking partner – ”
“Hey, hey, hey,” Eames soothes, laying his hands on Arthur’s shoulders and kneading the cords of muscle. Not that he isn’t perfectly content to let Arthur babble and wear his heart sloppily on his sleeve – if he had to choose, he’d rank this version of Arthur in his top three – but he’s running point on this one and he’ll be damned if he lets it get away from them. “You’re not going to bow out. You’re going to do this for her and you’re going to see it through because you know exactly why you let her talk you into it.”
Arthur breathes through his mouth and stares at Eames like he’s wondering how Eames knows him so well when he hasn’t even handed over half his secrets. When he tracked down Eames two days ago without so much as a text in advance and ground out his request through his teeth, Eames already had an inkling. He’d said you never told me you had a sister, to which Arthur had replied, does it matter?, and it was stupidly beautiful how obvious it was that Arthur would do anything for her, that he’d plate the world in gold for her if that could hide its ugliness.
“It’s feeling impossible right now,” Arthur says, blinking at him with something that looks like fear.
“Ah,” Eames beams, “well, you’re in luck, because that sort of thing, pet, is my speciality.”
*
It’s not a dance studio or a ballroom he builds for them. It’s Buenos Aires. San Telmo, the city’s oldest barrio with Plaza Dorrego at its heart, not a soul in sight but suffused with the noise of vendors peddling their wares and mouthwatering smells of asado and empanadas staining their wrappers.
Last time he was here, he’d lost a tail in the crowd and wound up in a tango exhibition partnered with a young, nubile thing whose eagerness almost broke his back. Come to think of it, he’d looked a bit like Arthur, all twilight eyes and moon-white skin. But not half as tempting, or dangerous.
“I don’t think sticking me in Argentina will make me any better at the Argentine tango,” Arthur says with a healthy dose of skepticism, so predictable it’s endearing.
“Well, we know it won’t make you any worse,” Eames says, just so he can marvel at Arthur’s unique talent for glaring with his entire being. “Relax, I have a plan.”
“Be still my beating heart,” Arthur mutters.
“A dream gives us abilities we don’t have topside, right? We can ski the Swiss Alps without ever having skied in our lives, or pilot a fighter jet and blow shit up. These are obviously extreme scenarios, but what if, with practice, some of that knowledge sticks with us after we wake up? It’s like learning any new skill, except the dream helps you pick it up faster, better. An untested theory, granted, but not a crazy one.”
Arthur presses his lips together and looks around them at the smoothed-down cobblestone, the vestiges of Spanish colonialism resonating like a living narrative of a people throwing off their chains.
“Why not. What’s the worst that could happen,” he shrugs, turning back to Eames.
“Ah, now there’s the optimist I know and love,” Eames says off-handedly, unthinking until Arthur stills, for just a beat, the way he does when he’s been wrong-footed but he can’t afford to show it because there’s a gun trained on his heart. And Eames, whose self-preservation instinct could give Arthur’s a run for its money any day, presses on like he didn’t just give himself away at the drop of a hat. “Sarah’s right, darling. You need to loosen up a little.”
Arthur looks down. The three-piece he always insists on, buttoned up as tight as Queen Victoria, is gone, and in place of it there’s loose black trousers held up by sinfully red silk braces over a crisp white Oxford, open in a tantalizing V down to the middle of his chest.
“Oh, hell no.” Bared skin is instantly replaced by a tie – red, a concession if Eames ever saw one. He’s found that for all Arthur’s intransigence, bargaining with him is just like bargaining with anyone else. Set a price you know you’ll never get, and if you play your cards right, you still end up with something you want.
“I can live with that,” Eames murmurs, stepping forward to slip two fingers under each brace, feeling cool silk on one side and body heat on the other but not tempted for a second to slip them off. What Arthur does to him and how, the way he wants Arthur in his clothes as much as he wants Arthur out of them, he’ll never figure out, but right now he’s just content with wanting. “I reckon we could try something a bit more conventional down here. It’s painfully heteronormative but it might do the trick. My usual blonde? No, you probably want a brunette. How tall is Sarah? I haven’t – ”
“No,” Arthur interrupts firmly, frowning, and Eames blinks. “No, I want you. No one else. Just you.”
Eames waits and lets the revelation coalesce, momentarily blindsided because he doesn’t remember ever hearing it like this, in broad daylight and removed from the bedroom, without his hands and his cock wringing it from Arthur’s mouth.
And then when he’s sure, fairly sure, that Arthur can’t mean anything else, he says, “okay,” and the music starts to play.
Dreams are where you can measure the true quality of a memory, but Eames already knows how deep this one goes. He listens to Piazzolla’s nuevo tango surging through the dream like water from a broken dam and thinks for a moment about the fantasy his parents created whenever they danced, fooling the world into thinking they were in love.
Then Arthur’s slipping a hand across his back, pulling him in firmly so they’re chest-to-chest, body pliant but sure like it’s in his blood, like the fumbling, red-faced Arthur topside was all a cunning act.
“How am I doing so far?” he murmurs, breath fanning Eames’s cheek as he cups Eames’s hand, palm calloused and warm.
“If you’re trying to sweep me off my feet, you’ll have to try a little harder than that.”
Arthur just smiles, dimples an outrageous tease, and starts them off in a parallel walk to the opening percussion, inserting a contrapaso as soon as the accordion joins in.
“I can’t remember why I ever thought this was impossible,” he wonders as he initiates a series of crosses, voice a good half octave lower than normal, smoky and thickening with want. Not that Eames isn’t already hard from the way Arthur’s leading, moving, so bloody cocksure there’s nothing for Eames to do but respond.
When the violin begins its lengthy seduction, Arthur quickens their pace, pushing Eames away and into a giro, eyes bright, mouth twitching like he’d laugh out loud if he didn’t think it would ruin the moment, and Eames is finding it hard to breathe.
“You’re enjoying this,” he says, a little dazed as Arthur pulls him back into a close embrace and drags his foot along the ground. “You’re having fun.”
Arthur doesn’t respond, just twists their bodies and wraps his right leg around Eames’s left, sliding a hand down Eames’s spine, torturously slow, before cupping his arse and giving it a firm squeeze. The cheeky bastard. Well, what is it they say – it takes two to tango.
“You know, this is quickly becoming a sordid fantasy of mine,” Eames murmurs as they go into another series of crosses punctuated with kicks. “The two of us fully clothed, pressed together so tight I can feel your heart beating, so close I can smell your aftershave and flick my tongue out to taste the bead of sweat sliding down your neck.”
He raises one leg to rub his calf down the back of Arthur’s leg from arse to ankle, and feels Arthur swallowing thickly.
“The intimacy is incredible, isn’t it? So exquisite it’s excruciating,” he continues as Arthur makes him sink down and arch with one leg splayed behind him, mouth parting above his, damp and sweet and so fucking tempting he thinks this could be the end of him if he doesn’t get a taste. “Every turn, every touch makes your blood run hot until you can’t bloody breathe and all you can do is let the music move you, make you dance.”
When the music finally draws to a close, their cheeks are pressed together, chests heaving, and Arthur’s shuddering, holding onto him like Eames just split him in two.
“Jesus, Eames,” he starts, then stops, mouth hot against Eames’s ear.
Eames draws in one breath, then two, until the earth stops spinning. “This might be the most fun I’ve ever had with my clothes on.”
Which is when Arthur finally laughs, the sound emptying from deep in his belly, before he says, eyes dancing, “I think I could do with a little more practice.”