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Look, it’s not what you think. It’s not like Arthur is some kind of philandering playboy who keeps a logbook of his “conquests.” There are no notches on his bedpost. He doesn’t brag about his escapades. Sex is a journey, not a destination, and all that.
He just likes it when things tie up nicely.
So when he realized that he’d slept with alumni of almost every Ivy League university, of course he was going to try to complete the set.
It’s not like he’s gone out of his way to check schools off the list; he just welcomes the opportunity when it arises. Columbia was the first to go, way back when he was a high school senior visiting his older sister; he lost track of her at a Third Eye Blind concert and instead discovered Brad and the questionable pleasures of sex in a public restroom. UPenn and Yale were easy, since he did his undergrad at the former and his PhD at the latter. He’s checked those two off many times over. He knocked out Harvard and Brown over one very enjoyable long weekend in Boston.
The academic conference scene has been an asset, what with the combination of alcohol-fueled parties and name tags that include institutional affiliations. Cornell was only moderately attractive, but he had an inferiority complex that translated into off-the-wall enthusiasm in bed. Princeton, on the other hand, was mind-numbingly hot but the world’s laziest lay.
And that leaves Dartmouth.
Really, it’s not a surprise that Dartmouth is the last university standing. Arthur knows that if he were really determined, he could cross it off the list easily, but that’s not how this works. He has dignity, for god’s sake. They need to fall into his lap, figuratively and sometimes literally. So he’s been biding his time, waiting for an opportunity to present itself.
He just wasn’t expecting it to present itself in this particular form.
He’s sitting in the department’s conference room, waiting for the weekly colloquium to start, eavesdropping on the visiting speaker’s conversation with the department chair, when Eames lopes into the room. Wearing a Dartmouth t-shirt.
Arthur blinks in surprise as Eames drops himself into a seat on the other side of the table. He can practically feel the gears in his head grinding to a halt while he struggles to compute.
It occurs to him that while he knows that Eames’s doctorate is from Cambridge, he never bothered to find out where Eames went for undergrad. They were hired at the same time three years ago, and since then Arthur has taken care to distance himself from Eames, trying to ensure that nobody will confuse the two young, gay, male assistant professors with one another. Not that Eames’s work is bad, just… Arthur knows how important it is to stake out one’s own territory when you’re setting out on the tenure track, and Eames is the kind of person who has gravitational force, the kind of person who seems to absorb others like some kind of scruffy British amoeba.
Now it turns out that there’s been a Dartmouth alumnus under his nose this entire time.
The colloquium begins but Arthur doesn’t pay very much attention to the talk, too busy weighing the pros and cons of the situation he’s been presented with. The questions at the end are just going to be the usual faculty posturing, anyway; all he has to do is churn out some bullshit about the Habermasian public sphere and nobody will be any the wiser.
Pro: Eames is not unattractive. Okay, fine, he’s hot, but…
Con: He’s also unbelievably smarmy. Like, off-puttingly so. Used-car-salesman levels of smarm. (And most of the time he dresses like a used car salesman, as well, with his gabardine slacks and his blazers that look like they were made from carpet samples. Of course he’s the department heartthrob anyway — some of the “secret” nicknames the undergrad girls have come up with for him are enough to make Arthur blush.)
Pro: Eames would almost certainly be up for it, given the relentless flirting he’s directed Arthur’s way since they were hired.
Con: Fucking him would provide positive reinforcement for said relentless flirting, giving Eames the impression that it has been effective.
Pro: Convenience. Arthur wouldn’t even have to leave the building.
Con: He’s a colleague. They’ll be working in the same department for the unforeseeable future. Could get awkward.
Pro: If Eames turns out to be a bad lay, Arthur will be able to feel superior to him. If Eames turns out to be a good lay… well, that’s a reward in itself, no?
Con: Not very professional to treat the department colloquium as a meat market.
In the end, it isn’t the pros or cons that make the decision for him, but the fact that spending twenty minutes contemplating the prospect of banging Eames has him more than half hard under the table. He’d be surprised by this discovery of latent attraction, but he learned long ago that the heart wants what it wants. Or, in this case, the dick wants what it wants, and it happens to have a controlling interest when it comes to the business of Project Ivy League Fuckathon. (Worth rethinking that name, Arthur tells himself. PILF isn’t the catchiest acronym. How about Doing Ivy Colleges… no, nothing starts with a K.)
Arthur is nothing if not decisive, so once he’s made his choice he sits back and half-listens to the end of the talk and the Q&A, sneaking looks at Eames, strategizing, and jiggling his leg in anticipation.
At the reception after the talk, he has a fortifying glass of wine. He chats with a couple of his advisees about their research plans, but he keeps Eames in his peripheral vision, and when he sees Eames leave the lounge he waits a few minutes before making his excuses and slipping out after him.
The hallways are quiet; at this time of the evening, the people who aren’t at the reception have mostly departed for home or the library. Arthur knocks gently on the door to Eames’s office, and when he hears Eames’s voice shout “Come in!” he obeys, quietly pulling the door closed behind him.
Eames is sitting back in his chair with his feet up on his desk, looking over what appears to be a student paper. He’s wearing reading glasses. Arthur wonders how he made it to this point without realizing how desperately he wants to fuck this man.
When he looks up and sees Arthur, he takes off his glasses (shame, that) and removes his feet from his desk. “Hello, darling. What brings you to my humble abode?”
Arthur ventures further into the office and leans a hip against Eames’s desk. “I really liked the question you asked at the colloquium. She was definitely applying Althusser’s model of interpellation without taking preexisting power differentials into account.”
“Mm.” Eames leans back in his seat and looks at Arthur evaluatively, tapping his fingertips together where they’re interlocked atop his stomach. “So you stopped by to tell me that?”
“Well, I was wondering if you were drawing on Butler in your critique, and whether you’ve read the article about performativity and nationalism in the latest issue of Critical Inquiry.”
Eames continues to look at Arthur as though trying to see into his skull. “You were staring at me quite a bit during the talk.”
“Was I? You were sitting right across the table from me; you must have just been in my eye line.”
“Right.” Eames looks unconvinced. He sighs. “What’s this about, Arthur?”
Arthur drums his fingers on the desk and considers the appropriate course of action. He decides that being direct is the best approach. “To be honest, I’m just here to blow you.”
Eames’s eyebrows go up so high they’re practically at his hairline. “Are you.”
“Do you object?”
Eames pushes his chair back from his desk and spreads his legs wider, gesturing to his crotch with a flourish. “Be my guest.” Despite Eames’s studied insouciance, Arthur can’t help but notice how his mouth goes slightly slack when Arthur drops to his knees.
Eames is already sitting slouched with his hips shifted forwards (he always sits this way, looking as though he’s been poured into his chair), so it’s easy work for Arthur to unbuckle his belt and open his fly, dragging his pants and underwear down just enough to free his hardening cock. Arthur has never done this with an uncut guy before — his promiscuity has yet to cross national borders — but he’s watched enough porn to have a general idea of what to do.
“So what — ah — what brought this about?” Eames asks with obvious strain in his voice as Arthur gives him a tentative lick.
“It’s complicated,” Arthur says, and then — partially to forestall further inquiry and partially because, well, it is a rather nice cock — he sucks Eames down.
Eames is a surprisingly considerate blowjob recipient, Arthur thinks idly to himself with the small part of his brain not devoted to the current task. Eames puts a hand on Arthur’s head and Arthur is prepared to warn him not to be pushy, but he simply cradles Arthur’s jaw, running his fingers lightly along the crest of Arthur’s ear. He provides just enough feedback — in the form of whispered praise and bitten-off moans — to guide Arthur without being fulsome. Instead of leaning back and closing his eyes, he stares at Arthur with a lost expression, teeth digging into his lower lip. It’s such a far cry from his usual overconfident swagger that it throws Arthur’s rhythm off for a moment, but he rallies.
When the hand clenched in Arthur’s sleeve begins shaking with tension, Arthur ramps up his pace, pressing his tongue against the underside of Eames’s cock and increasing the suction. A minute later Eames manages a gasped warning before he’s coming in Arthur’s mouth.
Arthur waits for Eames to stop twitching before he pulls off and spits into the nearby garbage can, sending a silent apology to the cleaning staff. Eames, for his part, is drawing in lungfuls of air and expelling them in a string of filthy, incoherent encomium: “Bloody fucking Christ, Arthur, where did you—” “That was the hottest fucking thing, Jesus, your mouth—” “Is this a dream, when did my life become a porno film, am I about to wake up—” Arthur watches Eames's chest heave under the dark green t-shirt, and is mildly startled when his eyes snap open and lock on Arthur like heat-seeking missiles and he says, “Your turn, darling.”
Eames doesn’t bother tucking himself away before he hoists Arthur up from the floor and deposits him on the edge of the desk, and fuck if that isn’t a turn-on. Leaning forward in his chair, Eames makes quick work of Arthur’s flies, barely giving him time to orient himself before his cock is engulfed in warm, wet heat. Arthur flails at the desk for balance; he’s pretty sure he just crumpled up a student paper or two.
Eames’s technique is sloppy and undignified and it feels like his tongue is somehow managing to be everywhere at once. Arthur knows that if he looks at Eames’s lips stretched around him this will be over far too quickly, so he clamps his eyes shut and tries not to hyperventilate. His orgasm still hits him too soon — although Arthur’s pretty sure that anything earlier than the apocalypse would be “too soon” — and he hisses a chain of profanity interspersed with Eames’s name as he comes.
He has a vague sense of Eames pulling his glorious mouth away and taking a swig of water. He thinks he might be having an out-of-body experience. Or maybe the opposite of an out-of-body experience, if such a thing is possible. Like he’s so much in his body that nothing else in the world exists.
Eames’s chair rolls away as he stands up and leans over Arthur’s slouched form, murmuring, “Your face when you came, Arthur. I am carrying the image of that face with me to the grave.” And kisses him far too gently for someone who’s just had Arthur’s cock in his mouth. Arthur wants to laugh at the disconnect, at the bizarreness of kissing someone delicately on the lips when you’ve just exchanged hasty, unexpected blow jobs in the workplace, but he’s still catching his breath. And it’s kind of nice.
“So,” Arthur eventually manages to croak as the two of them set their clothing to rights, “They teach you how to do that at Dartmouth?”
“Huh?” Eames looks down at his shirt. “Oh, I didn’t go to Dartmouth. This was a gift from my brother.”
“…Ah.” Arthur feels a pang of guilt, but because he’s not a very nice person he also feels a bit disappointed.
Eames’s face cycles through confusion, concern, contemplation, and surprise before settling, unexpectedly, on smugness. “Oh, Arthur. You naughty boy. Going for a complete set?”
Half of Arthur’s brain wants to blanch in shock and the other half wants to turn bright red; the two halves cancel each other out, leaving Arthur with his normal complexion but gaping like a fish. “How on earth could you know about that?”
“I did the same thing with the ancient universities. The day I finally crossed Aberdeen off my list was a proud day indeed.”
“So you’re not… offended, then.”
“Well, I’ll admit that I’d rather have seduced you with my good looks and charm, but this way I got to learn that beneath your stodgy exterior there’s a superficial sex maniac. So all things considered, I regret nothing.”
Arthur would take issue with the “superficial sex maniac” label, but he realizes that he doesn’t exactly have a leg to stand on at the moment. So he shrugs and gives Eames a half-smile. “Where did you go to college, then?”
“Oxford. Which, yes, is where I developed my fellatio skills. One of the disciplines where Oxbridge truly excels.” Eames checks his watch. “You on your way out? Not sure I can get any more work done this evening.”
“Hm? Oh, sure.” Arthur picks up his laptop bag and double-checks his clothing before exiting the office; Eames follows close behind.
As they amble toward the exit, walking close together but not quite touching, Arthur asks in a mock-thoughtful tone, “So how old is your brother? And does he look like you?”
“Fuck off,” Eames snorts. “He’s married. To a woman.”
“Shame.” A few steps later, he says, “How many ‘ancient universities’ are there, by the way?”
Eames pauses and looks up at the ceiling, counting off on his fingers. By the time he reaches the mid-thirties, Arthur is staring at him in disbelief. Eames takes one look at him and bursts out laughing.
“There’s only seven, love, but the look on your face just now is something I will treasure always.”
“No, sorry, you only get to keep one of my facial expressions from the past twenty minutes to put in your mental scrapbook.”
“Hmmm.” Eames scratches his stubbled chin in an exaggerated expression of thoughtfulness. “Well, let’s play the odds here. I put the chances of seeing your ‘bewildered’ face again at roughly five percent. Whereas the odds of my seeing the other face again, I put at…” Eames puts his hands on Arthur’s shoulders and peers at him intently. “…Twwwweeeenty… five? …Thirty percent? …Forty?”
Arthur rolls his eyes and resumes walking.
“Am I being too optimistic or too pessimistic here?”
Arthur turns back as he pushes the front door of the building open. “We make our own luck, Dr. Eames.”
Eames jogs to catch up. “That happens to be a specialty of mine, actually. I’m banned from every casino in Atlantic City.”
Arthur is examining Eames’s face and trying to decide whether he’s telling the truth when Eames adds, “I don’t know what your plans for the evening are, but d’you want to go grab some dinner? I actually would like to discuss that article in Critical Inquiry.”
Arthur shrugs and says “Sure,” and they set off for the main strip.
“You know, I have been to Dartmouth before,” Eames muses as they crunch through the leaves fallen from the quad’s maple trees. “Does that count?”
And Arthur, deciding that he can indulge Eames for once, says, “I’m willing to check it off in pencil.”