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You get a little crazy two days before the draft of your master’s thesis is due, which is why Arthur finds himself in the library stacks at 9:30pm on a Saturday night, searching desperately for a book that he’s certain contains the information that will solve all of his problems and transform his thesis into a magnum opus. One book led him to another book, which led him to another book, which contained a reference to another book’s discussion of Cézanne and Baudelaire that Arthur absolutely needs to see immediately. And of course that book isn’t on the shelf; there’s a little gap where it should be, mocking him. (And okay, maybe Arthur’s gone a little too long without sleep if he’s attributing ill intentions to empty space.)
There’s no time for a recall, since that could take an entire week. Interlibrary loan is out of the question for the same reason. Arthur needs to get his hands on the book tonight. So he does what any normal grad student two days away from a deadline would do: he appeals to pity.
He approaches the checkout desk and, after some quick calculations, walks up to the spot manned by a cute female undergrad. He gives her the most dazzling smile he can manage on the two Pop Tarts that constituted his breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “I’m looking for this book,” he says, handing her a slip of paper with the author and title written on it. “But I can’t seem to find it on the shelf?”
She smiles back at him and says, “Let me just look it up.” After a small flurry of typing on her computer, she clicks her tongue and turns back to him. “Yeah, unfortunately it’s already been borrowed by another patron.”
“Well, damn,” Arthur says, feigning disappointed surprise. “I don’t— I mean, I know this is a lot to ask, but— I don’t suppose you could tell me who has it out?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the girl says apologetically. (“Sir”? Arthur has never felt so old in his life.) “I’m afraid I can’t give you that information.”
“Oh, I completely understand.” Apparently more subterfuge will be necessary. “You know, there’s a book on reserve that I think might do just as well.” He grabs the slip of paper back and turns it over, writing out a random call number that’s similar to the one he just asked for. “Could you maybe grab that for me instead?”
When she has disappeared into the stacks, Arthur furtively looks around to make sure no one’s watching before he turns the monitor slightly towards him, enough to see the screen. She left the entry up, thankfully. He manages to jot down the patron’s last name and home address, and is nudging the monitor back to its original position just as the employee emerges from the shelving with an apologetic look on her face. “I’m sorry, we don’t have anything under this call number.”
Arthur smiles embarrassedly. “Oh, I must have gotten it wrong. I’ll go double-check it.” He retrieves his slip of paper and jogs toward the library exit and into the night air.
***
It’s slightly rude to ring a stranger’s doorbell at 10pm, Arthur knows, but desperate times call for desperate measures. He waits a bit, but nobody answers. He can hear rap music thumping from beyond the door, so he knows someone must be home; he rings the doorbell again and pounds firmly on the door with his fist for good measure. He can hear the music turn off, and then a few seconds later the door opens to reveal a shirtless man covered in tattoos, wearing track shorts and holding a beer bottle.
(Ugh, is Arthur going to have to deal with someone’s thug boyfriend?)
The man raises his eyebrows inquiringly and Arthur starts his spiel, trying to sound as pathetic as possible. “Hi. My name is Arthur and I desperately need to look at a book from the library that I think’s been taken out by someone who lives here.”
“What book?” the guy asks, and— huh, he’s British, Arthur didn’t see that coming.
“Um, it’s a biography of Paul Cézanne? He’s a painter?”
“I know who Cézanne is. Yeah, I probably have that, but I’ll need to find it. Come on in.” The guy opens the door wider and steps aside to allow Arthur to enter.
“You’re… uh, Eames? Sorry, I didn’t get your first name,” Arthur says, stepping into the apartment.
“Everyone calls me Eames, anyway. And are you really apologizing for lacking information about me? What’d you do, bribe a librarian?”
Arthur looks at the floor while he turns a guilty shade of red. “No, I tricked her into leaving the desk and I looked at her computer.”
“Clever. Fewer loose threads that way.” Arthur ventures a glance at Eames’s face and discovers that he’s grinning. His teeth are tremendously crooked; they look dangerous and sharp, at odds with the softness of his lips. “Which one are you looking for, Danchev or Rewald?”
“Hm?” Arthur moves his gaze a few inches upward and realizes Eames is looking at him expectantly. “Oh, Danchev.”
“All right, I’ll see if I can dig it up. Have a seat.” Arthur sits himself delicately on the couch while Eames disappears into another room. “Do you want a drink?” Eames calls from what is presumably the kitchen. Arthur hears the sound of a bottle being cracked open.
“No thanks. I have a lot of work to do tonight.”
“Fair enough,” Eames says, reentering the living room with a second bottle in hand. “I’ll just leave this here, in case you change your mind.” He plunks it down on the coffee table and wanders over to a bookshelf to begin scanning the titles.
It looks like a nice beer — a Belgian ale, which Arthur admittedly has a fondness for. It would be a shame to waste it, really, so Arthur leans forward to retrieve it. As he drinks from it, he looks around the cozily-furnished room. It looks like your standard grad student bachelor pad: a couple of mismatched couches, a coffee table that has probably been passed down through dozens of cohorts of whatever department Eames is part of, a big TV hooked up to a Wii, and, of course, books. Lots and lots of books. Overflowing the plentiful bookshelves, stacked on all the flat pieces of furniture, livened up with a rainbow of post-it flags sticking out from every side.
Some of them are chemistry textbooks, but the vast majority of them are humanities, and as Arthur examines them he starts to feel a weird sense of deja vu. Biographies of Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Gaugin, Van Gogh. Books about symbolism, impressionism, post-impressionism, expressionism. Coffee table books full of art reproductions.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve been looking for, like, 70 percent of these books,” Arthur says, taking another sip of beer. It really is quite good.
“Yeah?” Eames has moved on to another bookshelf, where he has to pull out each volume one at a time because they’re stacked two-deep. “What are you working on?”
“My master’s thesis. The first draft is due in two days. It’s about the influence of symbolist literature on the post-impressionists.” Arthur has recited that description so many times he could probably do it in his sleep. Or while tipsy, which he is admittedly getting. He isn’t normally such a lightweight, but he’s so exhausted and he’s barely eaten anything, so he’s feeling delightfully tingly.
“Ah, that makes sense. Looking for references about Cézanne reading Baudelaire?”
“Yeah,” Arthur says, impressed. He picks at the label on his bottle while he casts an evaluative eye over Eames, who is still absorbed in the task of shuffling books around. Eames’s biceps bulge in a not altogether displeasing way as he shifts a load of books to one arm so that he can unselfconsciously scratch his belly with his free hand. Arthur doesn’t usually go for the musclebound, inked-up type, but something about the contrast between the hypertrophied toughness and the apparent intellectualism is twigging the lizard part of Arthur’s brain. Arthur would pay good money to watch Eames recite from Les Fleurs du Mal.
He redirects his gaze to the coffee table as Eames moves away from the bookshelves and toward a pile of books on the floor next to the other couch. “I’d apologize for making you go to all this effort, but I see at least ten books on this coffee table that were recalled when I had them out.”
“Ah.” Eames pauses in his search and looks up at Arthur “Yes, that was probably me.”
“What do you need all of these for?”
“I’m in the theater program,” Eames says, sliding a book out from the stack to look at it more closely. “A friend and I are putting on a play as part of our master’s project. It’s a dramatization of Vincent Van Gogh’s correspondence with his brother.” Eames pronounces Van Gogh correctly. Arthur tries to tell himself that that isn’t a turn-on.
“So you needed… all these books?”
“Well, I wanted to make sure I’d done my research, y’know?” Eames moves to a stack on the other side of the couch.
“Wow. I am impressed.”
“No need to be condescending, Arthur. You art historians don’t have a monopoly on effort, you know.”
“I wasn’t being condescending!” Arthur splutters. “I didn’t mean to be, anyway.”
Eames smirks at him from his spot on the floor. “It’s okay. Most of my classmates are lazy idiots, anyway.”
Arthur laughs while Eames heaves himself up to standing and crosses the room to the television, where he crouches down to check out the books on the TV stand. His shorts are hanging low on his hips and Arthur can see just a hint of the curve of his ass, which Arthur stares at intently as though he can make the shorts fall off through sheer will.
“Aha!” Eames says, holding a book aloft triumphantly. Arthur admires the way his abs ripple as he straightens up, the way the shitty CF bulbs in the Ikea floor lamp cast a warm yellow glow on his chest as he draws near. “Here you go. One biography of Paul Cézanne.” Arthur looks up and discovers the coveted biography dangling in front of his face in Eames’s hand. He grabs it, but Eames doesn’t let go.
“Were you checking me out, Arthur?” He practically purrs Arthur’s name, and the lack of rhoticity goes straight to Arthur’s cock.
“I. Um.” Eames does sound a lot more positive about the prospect than Arthur would have expected, but he’s not sure how honest he’s supposed to be.
“I don’t mind it if you were.” Eames raises an eyebrow. “In fact, I rather hope you were.”
“Fine. I was. Checking you out.” Arthur stares at Eames defiantly, refusing to look away in embarrassment. He gives the book a petulant tug while Eames matches him glare for glare, a look in his eyes that makes Arthur shiver involuntarily. The muscles in Eames’s jaw twitch.
Eames finally lets go of the book only to follow it toward the couch, straddling Arthur with a knee on either side of his lap. Arthur freezes, his arms stiff at his sides.
“This okay?” Eames murmurs, placing a hand on Arthur’s chest. It’s warm through Arthur’s shirt. Eames is warm, and heavy on Arthur’s thighs, and he smells fantastic.
“I should put my beer down, probably,” Arthur ventures.
Eames laughs and grabs the bottle from Arthur’s hand, leaning back momentarily to place it on the coffee table. Then he returns to Arthur, moving even closer to him so that he’s pressing Arthur against the couch. Arthur can feel him hard against his stomach. It is, bar none, the sexiest thing he has ever felt. He summons just enough coordination to grab Eames’s face and push their lips together.
He has kissed with more finesse, for sure, but in terms of sheer mind-melting hotness it seems impossible to beat the sensation of Eames’s plush lips moving against his own, sucking desperately at his lower lip and then his tongue. It seems impossible to beat until Eames starts groping at him through his pants, that is. “I thought I was dreaming when you showed up at my door in these tight little trousers,” Eames growls, hands scrabbling at the trousers in question.
“I thought — fuck — thought you were a thug — Jesus, Eames” Arthur manages to gasp against Eames’s neck.
“I could still be a thug for all you—“ Eames trails off with a moan as Arthur grabs his cock through his shorts, rubbing the slippery fabric against him. Eames doesn’t appear to be wearing anything underneath them — a suspicion that Arthur confirms when he dips his hand under the waistband and encounters heated flesh. Eames sucks in a breath through his teeth and his fingers stutter on Arthur’s zipper, but he soon rallies and yanks Arthur’s pants and boxers down far enough to get a hand on him.
The sudden sensation of Eames’s hand around Arthur’s cock, skin on skin, makes his own hand tighten around Eames, which makes Eames tighten his grip, which leads to a wonderful escalating chain reaction of frantically-moving hands and mouths gasping against sweaty skin.
Eames comes first with a deep, practically soul-baring groan, and the contrast of the milky white against black ink is so beautiful Arthur could cry. Instead he tucks his face into Eames’s neck as Eames finishes bringing him off, rather thoughtfully angling Arthur’s cock towards himself in order to spare Arthur’s clothing. For a minute or two they just pant against one another, catching their breath. Eventually Arthur collapses backward into the couch. He feels more relaxed than he has in ages, anchored by Eames’s weight, warm down to his bones and buzzing with contentment.
“You have the worst fucking tattoos,” he mumbles, reaching out and smearing a streak of come into the tragedy and comedy masks on Eames’s chest. Eames just chuckles and leans his head on Arthur’s shoulder drowsily.
They’re just drifting off, Arthur with his head tipped back into the couch cushions and Eames snuffling into his clavicle, when the front door swings open.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, mate!” The man standing in the entranceway brings a hand up to cover his eyes while Arthur scrambles to get his junk back in his pants. Eames calmly yanks up the waistband of his shorts.
“Hello, Yusuf. You’re home earlier than I expected.”
“I thought you said you were going to keep this shit in your room after the last time.”
“The ‘last time’? You’re making me sound like a manslut and giving Arthur here entirely the wrong impression. This has only happened once before.”
“I’m just saying, I don’t need to see my housemate covered in jizz. His own or someone else’s.”
“Technically it’s bo—“
Arthur slaps a hand over Eames’s mouth. “Sorry, I was just going.” Eames makes a noise into Arthur’s palm.
“Nah, no rush. Any friend of Eames is a friend of mine. A very different kind of friend, though. I’ll just, uh, let you two get cleaned up.” Yusuf removes his hand from his face but averts his eyes as he walks through the living room and disappears into a hallway.
Arthur knows he should feel mortified, but he can’t bring himself to do more than giggle. Eames joins in, and the giggling turns into outright laughter. Eames rotates out of Arthur’s lap and collapses into the couch next to him. The laughter fades and is replaced by contemplative, only-slightly-awkward silence.
After a while, Eames breaks it.
“You know, on second thought, I’m not sure I can let you take that book with you.”
Arthur turns his head to look at Eames, who is gazing off toward the ceiling. “Seriously?”
Eames nods solemnly. “I couldn’t possibly bear to part with it.” He rolls his head along the cushions to meet Arthur’s gaze. “But you’re welcome to look at it here.”
Arthur notices Eames’s barely-suppressed smirk. He suspects that it was meant to be noticed. “That’s very generous of you.”
“In fact,” Eames says, gesturing grandly around the room, “I hereby grant you access to my entire library of reference materials.”
The invitation makes Arthur feel a bit giddy, though whether it’s the sentiment behind it or the sheer volume of tremendously useful literature being offered up that does it, he’s not sure. He thinks about his bleak desk at home with its bleak police-interrogation-style lamp, and he thinks about his laptop sitting in his bag several feet away. He thinks about how comfortable this couch is and how little he wants to move.
“Will you let me actually work?”
“With occasional pleasant interruptions, yes.”
“Do you have a coffee maker?”
“I have a very good coffee maker.”
“Can we order takeout?”
“I can go get the menus right now.”
“You have yourself a deal,” Arthur says, reaching out a lazy hand for a shake. Eames grabs it and brings it to his mouth, biting a knuckle and then brushing a kiss across it. Then he stands up and heads for the kitchen.
“Thai sound good?”
“All I’ve eaten today is two Pop-Tarts,” Arthur calls after him. “They were different flavors. I found them in two open packets at the back of the pantry. I don’t remember ever buying Pop-Tarts.”
“I assume that’s a ‘yes’ to Thai,” Eames says, returning with a menu in one hand and a damp kitchen towel in the other, which he’s using to wipe down his torso.
“Thai sounds good. Thai sounds amazing. I could eat the fuck out of some Thai food right now.”
Eames gives him the kind of fondly amused look that you don’t usually give someone you’ve known all of an hour. “How about you take a nap now and I wake you when the food arrives?”
Arthur lets himself collapse sideways onto the couch in a puddle of tipsy, grateful relief. “Oh my god, Eames, this is the greatest night of my life, you have no idea.”
Eames murmurs a response, too quiet for Arthur to make out, but he's pretty sure it ends with "darling." The last thing Arthur feels before sleep overtakes him is the sensation of a warm hand gently combing once through his hair.