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Arthur didn’t want to go to the conference. Arthur hated conferences. Arthur hated how everyone else at conferences knew everyone and knew where they were going and just generally knew things.

“So,” said the man standing outside with him also smoking. “Did you also develop a smoking habit just to have an excuse to get away from all the pretentiousness inside?”

The man was British, which surprised Arthur a little, because it wasn’t like this was any sort of internationally prestigious conference. Arthur didn’t get to go to those. Arthur went to the dull, drab, dreary conferences that no one else wanted to go to, and even in those he was dull and drab and dreary by comparison to everyone else. And now of course some dashing British man had decided to emphasize that by coming to stand next to Arthur.

Although at least he was appallingly dressed. Arthur could make out the loud, mismatched colors even in only the ambient light spilling through the doors behind them.

Arthur said honestly, “I’ve been trying to quit.” Arthur was perpetually trying to quit. He hated the habit. He’d picked it up as a terribly smug, hipster grad student and now he felt like it was tagging along with him, inexorably, unshakeable.

“But then what excuse would you have to get away?”

“I should probably be inside listening,” said Arthur reluctantly. He hated to do it, to be shown up by all the conversation going on around him that he barely understood.

“Oh, please,” scoffed the man. “They’re not saying anything worthwhile. They never will. Idiots, the lot of them.”

Arthur wondered how senior this man was. He didn’t seem much older than Arthur but maybe he’d been in the establishment longer. At any rate, Arthur envied him his calm sense of authority.

“You were the most interesting thing in the room,” said the man casually, flicking the end of his cigarette off into the night. “And then you left.” The man turned to look at Arthur head-on, all impressive bone structure and ridiculous mouth.

“Oh,” said Arthur, feeling tongue-tied with astonishment.

That mouth curled into a self-satisfied smirk. “Tell me if I’m barking up the wrong tree here, pet.” He took a step closer to Arthur. He really wasn’t very close to him at all, and yet Arthur felt weirdly cornered, uncomfortably trapped. “But I’d like it if you asked me back to your room.”

Arthur just stared at him. He thought he probably looked comical. But these sorts of things didn’t happen to Arthur. He didn’t get propositioned out of the blue by hot British men. No one ever looked twice at Arthur. He felt like his students had even a hard time noticing he was there. He seemed to always just work in the background of everything, cool and calm and capable, never the star.

Breath he hadn’t realized he was holding burst out of him in an anxious rush. “Yes,” he heard himself say, and hoped he didn’t sound too desperate.

The British man just smiled.

***

Arthur woke up alone.

For a very long moment, Arthur sprawled in bed and seriously contemplated the possibility that he had dreamed up an impossibly sexy British man who had invited himself up to Arthur’s hotel room simply to treat him to the most exquisite sex of his entire life. But no. Arthur was sore in all the right places and dreams didn’t make you feel like that.

Of course he was alone, he thought. Alone and he hadn’t even managed to catch the guy’s name. He had, feeling blissfully fucked-out, fallen asleep almost immediately. He had left clean-up to his one-night stand.

“What the fuck are you doing, Arthur?” he asked himself, muttering it into his pillow, and then he sighed and got up and showered himself out of post-sex disaster and into earnest, young academic mode.

He was frowning at his program of the day’s activities and trying to determine which panels would make him feel least inadequate when a voice purred in his ear, “Hello, darling,” and certain parts of Arthur’s anatomy apparently recognized that voice almost immediately, attempting to leap gamely to attention.

“Um,” said Arthur, stiffening his back self-consciously. He turned his head, and yes, there was his hot one-night stand, grinning at him. “Hi.”

He sat opposite him at Arthur’s table, cheerful and relaxed, and said, “Dreadfully poor manners of me this morning, but you were sleeping so adorably, I couldn’t bear to wake you, and I did want to attend the first panel.”

Arthur had slept straight through the first panel, so he supposed that made some sense. Even though the concept of “sleeping adorably” was clearly a patently ridiculous one. “I,” said Arthur, very intelligently, and then could think of nothing else to say.

The man smiled at him cheekily and leaned forward and said, “You’re keeping a lot of brilliant thoughts locked up in that head of yours. Someday I look forward to extracting them.”

“How?” asked Arthur stupidly, distracted by the man’s proximity, by the fact that his eyes were an indeterminate color and that was ridiculous, everyone had an eye color, no one had a “choose your own adventure” eye color.

“Keep up, love, I’m devastatingly charming. Haven’t you noticed?”

“Not so far, no,” said Arthur honestly, because, frankly, the only charm the man had had to exert was in the fact that Arthur liked men with muscled frames and British accents.

The man laughed, the kind of un-self-conscious whole-body laugh that Arthur wasn’t sure he’d ever laughed in his life. “I need to work harder on that, but it’ll have to be next conference.”

“Next conference?” Arthur echoed, confused.

“I’ve got to run. Lucky to run into you before I disappeared, though. Didn’t want you to think I was just a bloke who goes around picking up hot young academics.”

“I didn’t think that,” said Arthur, bewildered.

“You should have. You’re a hot young academic. You should watch out for us irresolute scoundrels. We will wreak havoc with your heart, my dear.”

Arthur didn’t know what to say to that. Arthur said something like, “Bumeiufe,” because he was an idiot.

The man winked at him and said, “See you around, darling,” and then left as suddenly as he’d arrived.

Arthur looked around him, and no one was paying attention to him, and Arthur thought, Oh, my God, I’ve hallucinated myself an imaginary hot lover.

***

Months later, on the trembling edge of sending around the first draft of a paper, Arthur was at another conference when a familiar voice said, sounding pleased, “Look who’s here. My hot young academic.”

“Look who’s here,” replied Arthur, trying to look suave while juggling his luggage and room key and registration materials. “My imaginary hot conference hook-up.”

The man looked openly amused. “Imaginary?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Need help, love?” asked the man, and stole Arthur’s room key out of his hand. “I’ll hold this.”

“Thank you,” said Arthur drily. “That is a great help.”

“Don’t mention it,” said the man, with cheerful good humor.

Arthur followed behind him, struggling with the rest of his stuff and telling himself that he was out of sorts and this man was being obnoxious and there was no need for this man to behave as if Arthur was some kind of sure thing who would just let him in his room and

then the man opened Arthur’s room door for him and Arthur tossed his luggage inside and grabbed the man by the front of his shirt and pulled him in and onto the bed so maybe there had been reason for the man to be acting like he was a sure thing.

***

“Darling,” said the man, into the skin of Arthur’s chest, “you are terribly pasty and pale.”

Arthur lit himself a cigarette, leaning against the headboard, which dislodged the man’s further attentions, and said, “Says the Englishman.”

The man, undeterred by Arthur tumbling him off of his chest, sprawled out over Arthur’s bed the wrong way, his head by Arthur’s feet, looking back at him. “I spent the summer in the South of France.”

“Of course you did,” said Arthur.

“You spent the summer in a library,” concluded the man, sounding disapproving, and then kissed Arthur’s ankle.

Arthur kicked at him a little bit, because what sort of one-night stand kissed your ankle? He said, “I had work to do.”

“Were you writing a brilliant paper?” asked the man. “What’s your speciality, anyway?”

“My ‘speciality’?”

“That’s a very sexy thing that I say,” said the man, matter-of-factly, running his hand up and down Arthur’s leg, “because I’m British.”

“Very sexy?” said Arthur.

“Very sexy.” The man nodded, watching his hand along Arthur’s leg.

Arthur wanted to tell him to stop stroking his leg, because that wasn’t a thing Arthur thought he wanted, but it felt unexpectedly good, the trail of the man’s caress up and down his leg. Arthur found his eyes drifting closed. He took a drag of his cigarette, letting the nicotine cloud up his brain, and thought that it was the recent orgasm that was making him feel so hazy with pleasure. Everything felt so good because his nerves were overloaded.

“Never mind,” said the man, his caress now turning into him walking his fingers up, up, up, up the crease in Arthur’s thigh, skirting over to his navel. Arthur felt him shifting to switch his angle, to face him more directly. “I’m going to guess.” He laid his palm flat against Arthur’s belly and lapped at the skin just above it, and Arthur thought he should tell him to stop because there was really no way Arthur was going to be up for another round so quickly. “Hmm,” mused the man against Arthur’s skin, humming against him, sending vibrations trailing through Arthur’s body, and Arthur rethought the possibility of another round. “You’d think I’d guess something spiky and modern because of how sleek you are—all of your carefully crafted suits and slicked back hair.” The man was punctuating his words with hot, wet, open-mouthed kisses, moving steadily up Arthur’s chest, and Arthur had sprawled himself into a weird uncomfortable angle to give him as much access as possible. “But I’ve only ever met you at conferences with a Romantic focus—and I know that underneath everything you have a romantic soul—and you really love luxury—and your hair would be all soft and dreamy if you let it.” The man’s tongue lapped at Arthur’s nipple, and Arthur thought, yes, definitely another round. “You’re made for drama, you are,” continued the man, and he was getting Arthur all wrong, Arthur was as dull as they came, except for this weird nameless one-night stand thing he had going on, and only he would have a regular one-night stand, didn’t that defeat the very purpose of a one-night stand? “You’re made for chivalry,” said the man, biting very unchivalrously at Arthur’s neck, and Arthur made a noise that would have been embarrassing if he was having thoughts other than, Fuck, how do you make everything feel so fucking good? “For the defending of honor,” said the man. “For storming castles—and slaying dragons—and stealing the fair maiden’s trinket and fucking your stableboy on the side.” He sounded amused now, dragging brushes of kisses up Arthur’s neck to his face. And then he murmured to him, “Baudelaire.”

Arthur’s eyes flew open. He wasn’t exactly right, but Arthur had certainly published on Baudelaire. Arthur had started with Baudelaire, before branching out.

The man’s face was filling his vision, so close that their breaths were mingled. Arthur said, in shock, “How’d you know?” wondering how much else this man knew about him, if he was laughing at his utter incompetence, his uninspired theses and droningly uninteresting papers.

The man’s obscene lips, wet and still swollen, twisted into an amused smile. “You lapse into French sometimes.”

Arthur was bewildered. “What? Do I? When?”

And now the smile was a grin, avaricious and beckoning. “Let me demonstrate.”

***

He was gone in the morning.

He was always gone in the morning.

Arthur tried not to be annoyed about that. It was straightforward, no-strings-attached sex, and it was spectacular sex, and why did he have to go and ruin it? He was always ruining things. He could never just leave well enough alone. It was like his papers. He was always fiddling with them, never content that they were done. His “mentors”—Arthur would never have called them mentors, since he didn’t like them and he was fairly sure they didn’t like him, but they had been given the formal title anyway—said it was going to be the curse of his academic career, his inability to just churn the publications out.

And he ought to have been thinking about his publications and not about whatever crazy one-night stand conference thing he was developing because he was an idiot.

The next day was a long, exhausting rash of people criticizing his paper and his brain and every thought that had ever entered in his head, nitpicking at word choices and disputing his translations and generally saying other things that missed the entire point. Arthur skipped the dinner he was supposed to go to in favor of dragging himself back to his room and ordering himself a bottle of wine and drowning his sorrows in peace.

The mysterious man was in his room when he got there, sprawled on the bed, shoes still on, watching television.

“What the fuck,” Arthur said when he saw him, because he really wasn’t in the mood. “How the fuck did you get into my room?”

“They gave you two keys, you know. I took the liberty of taking one.”

Arthur dropped his bag to the floor and looked at the crumpled papers peeking out of it with their scribbled notes. He needed to organize everything. He needed to get this man out of his room.

“Why do you have your shoes on the bed?” he complained. “And what are you watching?” On the television, people were yelling at each other and throwing things. Arthur knew how they felt.

“Something terrible,” said the man with glee, and then pulled Arthur onto the bed.

“Stop it,” Arthur said, annoyed. “I am not in the mood.”

“I ordered dinner,” the man said. “Watch this with me. The blonde girl kissed the bearded bloke’s girlfriend. Now everyone is sexually confused and furious, but I’m thinking that the solution is threesome.”

“Is this porn?” Arthur said, inexplicably settling deeper into the bed with the man. “Did you order porn and charge it to the hotel room my school is paying for?”

“It isn’t porn. This is what you Americans classify as entertainment.” The man had shifted so that he could dig his thumbs into the pressure points along the base of Arthur’s neck, over into his tight shoulders, and Arthur had to admit that that felt so heavenly that he didn’t even take issue with the “you Americans” comment.

“Who’s that?” was what he said, as a Latina woman burst onto the scene.

“The girlfriend’s best friend. Helping her sort through the sexual confusion.”

“Are they going to start making out, too?”

“There is a possibility. Oh, the bearded bloke is a chef, did I mention? That’s his restaurant. It’s named after his ex-wife. That’s a point of contention between him and the girlfriend.”

“How long have you been watching this show?”

“A while. You were longer than I thought you’d be. Your patience is infinite. I would never have made it as long as you did.”

“It’s why I’m here, isn’t it?” asked Arthur sourly, feeling defensive. “To learn.”

“There’s nothing that says they’re cleverer than you. In fact, I’m fairly sure they’re not. Sorry, darling, I didn’t mean to make you tense up again,” said the man, and shoved mercilessly at a knot in Arthur’s muscle until the pain dissolved into pleasure.

“What is it that you come to these conferences to do, then?” asked Arthur, still annoyed despite the ministrations on his behalf.

“Pick up hot young academics and feed them dinner and remind them of the world outside all this.”

“A fairy godfather?” drawled Arthur sarcastically.

The man chuckled and pressed a kiss to Arthur’s back, through the shirt and jacket he was still wearing. “I come here to work. Same as you. Only I don’t think I do anything as diligently as you.”

“I agree with that,” said Arthur bitterly, because clearly this man was just coasting through life, all fucking natural brilliance, and Arthur hated him, although not enough, apparently, to kick him out.

“Outside of bed,” protested the man, sounding a little indignant. “I’m pretty fucking diligent in bed.”

“Well, you have your priorities straight,” remarked Arthur.

The man laughed, and then there was a knock on the door and he happily proclaimed, “Dinner!” and bounced himself off the bed to retrieve the room service.

He’d ordered them steaks and salads and a decent bottle of red, and he insisted they eat it on the bed while continuing to watch the marathon of the terrible television show. And Arthur had to admit there was something weirdly relaxing about watching something so mindless. Or what was relaxing was the wine he was steadily drinking and the warmth of the man next to him on the bed, making ridiculous comments about the ridiculous show.

Arthur found himself just staring at the man, at his profile, at his pouting full lips, at the stubble across his jaw and cheek, at the slope of his nose and the furrow of his brow, at the ruthless part of his hair and how much Arthur preferred it after sex, when it stuck up every which way and seemed to suit his easy grin so much better. And finally Arthur said, “Why are you doing this?”

The man paused with a bite of salad halfway to his mouth, looking at Arthur. “Doing what?”

“I don’t know,” said Arthur helplessly. “I mean, the dinner and the—”

“Darling, I’m doing it because you ask questions like that and genuinely mean them. You had a long day that you didn’t especially enjoy, and I’d rather you be happy than un-, so I ordered you dinner and a bit of relaxation, and you’re suspicious. Maybe I’m just being nice,” offered the man.

Arthur felt like a terrible person but in his experience people weren’t usually just nice for no reason. And at the same time he wanted a break from that, a little period of relief where he could just pretend that this man meant what he said, that he was just being nice. “Okay,” said Arthur, hoping he didn’t sound uncertain, and as a display of his trust he rested his head against the man’s shoulder and watched the terrible television show and thought how any minute now, as soon as the man was done eating, he’d straddle his lap and reward him for being so patient while he unwound from his day. Really any minute now. In the meantime, Arthur would just close his eyes and try to dissect why the man’s shoulder was so unexpectedly comfortable.

And the next thing he knew a voice in his ear was saying his name. “Arthur,” the voice said, but it didn’t say it right, it swallowed up the r’s and truncated the vowels and Arthur wanted to hear his name said like that more often, he thought, muzzily, opening his eyes.

The man was standing over him, and the room was in dim semi-darkness. “I’ve got to run, pet,” he said, and he looked like he was smiling ruefully but Arthur was tired and the room was dark and he couldn’t be sure.

“What?” he said, feeling drowsy and confused. He was in bed, and the covers were over him, and he didn’t remember getting into bed, didn’t remember tucking himself in, and he tried to blink himself past his haziness, back to what his last memory was.

“Please take care of yourself,” the man was saying, his voice low. “Leave the library every so often. Frown at that mysterious light in the sky and wonder what it is. I shall give you a name for it: the sun.”

“Fuck you,” Arthur was awake enough to grumble, vaguely offended.

“At the next one,” said the man, sounding amused. “I’ll look forward to it, mon cher.” He pressed a quick kiss over Arthur’s mouth, too quick for Arthur to even respond in his sleep-drugged state, and it was only when the man had almost reached the door that it suddenly occurred to Arthur.

He sat straight up in bed and said, “How do you know my name?”

The man opened the hotel room door and looked back at Arthur and then picked up his conference ID tag where he had left it on top of his bag when he’d come in that night. He tossed it to Arthur on the bed, and then he winked and left.

Arthur looked down at his own name on the tag and thought, Fucking great. He’ll go look up my work and never talk to me again.

***

Arthur was stranded in O’Hare on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and wanting to die. He’d commandeered himself a tiny table in a bar that was packed to the gills with similarly stranded travelers, and he was trying desperately to grade papers while every small child in the universe screamed displeasure up and down the terminal. Arthur would have liked to join them, but instead he stubbornly made marks on student papers and grimly told himself that he was being totally and utterly fair and not in such a terrible mood that these grades were hopelessly corrupted and useless.

The waitress slid a glass of champagne in front of him and then immediately scurried off.

Arthur looked at it in surprise and then waited patiently until he could catch the waitress’s attention again.

“You’ve made a mistake,” he said, nudging the champagne over to her. “This isn’t mine.”

She looked blank. “It isn’t?”

“I didn’t order it,” he clarified politely, because it was busy and she was understandably harried and he’d get through to her eventually.

“Oh!” Understanding dawned on her face. “That’s right! You didn’t! That guy at the bar ordered it for you.”

“Guy at the bar?” echoed Arthur blankly.

The waitress waved vaguely and then hurried off, seeing another table beckoning at her.

Arthur peered toward the bar, even more perplexed by the mysterious champagne, and then his conference one-night stand waved cheerfully at him from the end of the bar.

Arthur stared and blinked and stared some more, but he stayed absolutely materialized, there, real. Apparently.

He stood up, holding his own glass and wending through the crowded tables and sea of luggage toward Arthur, until he had reached his table, where he beamed beneficently down at him.

“Hello, darling,” he said, as if this was utterly expected.

“Um,” said Arthur stupidly. He’d given away his table’s extra chair, because he hadn’t been expecting the guy he sometimes randomly fucked to show up.

“I like the way you always warm up to your brilliant witticisms,” said the man, sounding almost fond. “Gives me time to ease in to that mouth of yours.”

“I don’t…” said Arthur in confusion. “What are you doing here?”

“Stalking you, naturally. Terminal 3 of O’Hare is normally my preferred location for scenes of seduction. Excuse me, could I have this?” he asked the table next to them, who appeared to be vacating.

They made go for it gestures, and the man easily pulled a chair up and settled himself opposite Arthur. “And I assume Terminal 3 of O’Hare is normally your preferred location for grading papers.”

“I’m stranded,” Arthur said, because it was the only thing he could think of to say. “The snow.” He gestured at the crowded terminal. They were all stranded because of the snow.

“It’s a bloody terrible time to travel,” said the man. “I don’t know why I’m doing it. It’s not even my holiday.” He took a sip of whatever he was drinking.

Arthur suspected it was something like whiskey and felt like a child over the fact that he had never developed a taste for whiskey. “Are you going home?” he asked.

“Christ, no. I am, God willing, going to the Caribbean for a bit of sun. I like sun, if you recall. Have you discovered sun yet?”

Arthur scowled at him.

“Ah, there it is!” said the man, as if a long-lost friend had just shown up. “I always feel better when your frown shows up to the party. Now we must wait for your dimple to decide to replace him. What shall I do to amuse you? Whatever can we do to pass the time while we wait to die in this abysmal airport?” The man took another sip of his drink, rolling the liquid around in his mouth, and gave Arthur a very innocent look.

Which was how Arthur somehow managed to find himself blowing an anonymous stranger in a men’s room stall at O’Hare.

The man bit his own hand to keep from crying out, which was gratifying, and then he dragged Arthur up and panted, “Look at you. So neat. Not a hair out of place.”

“Plenty of hair out of place,” said Arthur, because the man had been fisting his hands in it. He tried to smooth it back.

“Sorry, darling,” said the man blurrily, and pulled him in for a sloppy kiss, and Arthur distantly thought he could taste whiskey on the man’s mouth and maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. “Let me repay the favor.” His hands were already working at Arthur’s pants.

“I owed you,” said Arthur, suddenly abruptly mortified. Strange how he hadn’t thought to be mortified before, but, then again, he’d been fully dressed and in control before.

“Shh, love,” murmured the man at him, dropping to his knees. “Stop talking nonsense. Keep quiet now.”

And then Arthur wasn’t mortified anymore. Arthur listened to toilets flushing and faucets running and hand dryer machines roaring on, listened to people talking to each other about flights and delays and destinations, listened to the distant turmoil of the terminal beyond, the loud speaker droning out flight information that no one seemed to be paying any attention to. Arthur tried to determine how this was his life, when he had never done anything like this before, nothing even close, and this was reckless beyond belief and it didn’t matter because it felt so fucking amazing and he came with an accidental flail that hit the door of the stall, not that he cared.

“There, there, petal,” the man hushed against his cheek, standing and tucking him away, refastening his pants for him.

Arthur wanted to tell him that he could manage that on his own but he wasn’t entirely sure that he could at that moment.

“Feeling better now?” asked the man, looking smug. “Better mood in which to grade those papers?”

Arthur wanted to say something irritated, but the truth was he was far from irritated and he was thinking that this was the best layover of his life. So instead he said something incredibly stupid, which was, “I don’t think anyone’s ever bought me a drink before.”

“How can that possibly be true?” The man was nuzzling against Arthur’s neck, his low words rumbling into Arthur’s ear. “It’s because you always spend all your time in the library, isn’t it? How fortunate for me, that no one else has discovered your hotness and snatched you up. I would find it unforgiveable, if you were snatched up already. Are you all snatched up?”

“I keep fucking you, don’t I?” said Arthur, too muzzily content to filter. And then it suddenly burst on him: Maybe this man had a perfectly respectable boyfriend somewhere. Maybe he was jetting off to join him for a Caribbean vacation. Or a girlfriend, even. And Arthur had known, of course, that this wasn’t anything serious, it wasn’t a relationship, but still, he felt like an idiot for oddly assuming that this man was, like Arthur, uncommitted.

The man chuckled against him and said, “Lucky me.” Then he straightened. “Ready to stand, are you?”

Arthur nodded. “Should you exit first?”

“We’re both going to exit together, casual as you please. We’ve nothing to hide.”

“Actually,” Arthur pointed out, “we’ve got a lot to hide.”

“That attitude is why people are going to think we’ve got stuff to hide. Nothing to hide, Arthur, play your role, hmm?” And the man sauntered out as if this was all perfectly natural.

And Arthur thought they got a few looks but Arthur willed the blush off his face and repeated to himself, It’s fine, nothing to hide, who cares anyway, all these people are jealous you just walked out of that stall with a guy who looks like that. He washed his hands carefully and the man was waiting for him back out in the terminal and said, sounding amused, “Your ears are ever so slightly pink, it’s adorable.”

“Shut up,” said Arthur, self-conscious.

“This was quite a lovely bonus,” said the man. “I will forever be fond and sentimental over O’Hare, from this day forward. But I really must run now. Until next time?”

Arthur tried to feel used and betrayed, but instead he felt a lot of post-coital bliss and a little bit of disappointment that they weren’t going to hang out and talk and Arthur was going to have to go back to his grading. He said, “This is ridiculous.”

The man looked surprised. “Is it?”

Probably he fucked random nameless people at conferences all the time, Arthur thought sourly. Probably this was just another day for him. “Yes,” said Arthur shortly, his post-coital bliss now beginning to dissipate. “I don’t even know your name.”

The man managed to still look surprised. “Don’t you? It’s Eames. See you around, Arthur.” And then he waved and was gone, into the crowd.

***

“A fake name,” Arthur told Ariadne. “After all that, he gave me a fucking fake name.”

Arthur had met Ariadne two hours before, at the registration table for the conference, and probably he should not already be telling her all about the saga of his Mysterious Conference Lover. But Ariadne was, like him, new to the establishment, friendly, welcoming, a little lonely, willing to get drunk at the bar and not talk shop, and Arthur was apparently incapable of remembering normal social boundaries at conferences.

Ariadne frowned a bit and mused. “Eames. I don’t know. It sounds familiar.”

“It’s a chair,” Arthur said. “It’s some…fucking artsy chair that people pay fucking millions for or some fucking thing. Fuck.”

Ariadne looked at him critically. “You’re really upset about this.”

Arthur blinked with the exaggerated accuracy required by his level of drunkenness. “Of course I’m upset about it! Wouldn’t you be upset?”

Ariadne shrugged. “I don’t know. You said the sex was good, and he never forced himself on you, right?”

Arthur was aghast. “Not even a little.”

“Then, I don’t know. It seems to me if you’d wanted some serious relationship type of thing, you should have asked more questions about him, from the very beginning. Did you ever ask him anything?”

“I…No,” Arthur admitted. “But—”

“So you just took him to your room and fucked him, is what you’re saying. Without asking for his name.”

“Right,” said Arthur, feeling confused now, “but that’s not—”

“And now you’re upset that, when you finally think to ask for his name, months later, he gives you a fake one. I mean, maybe he’s annoyed with you that you never cared what his name was before that. The guy waits in your room, orders you dinner, watches TV with you, never even has sex with you. And you don’t say, ‘Hey, what’s your name? What’s your specialty? What do you want out of life?’”

Arthur opened and closed his mouth, feeling off-kilter.

“Uh-huh,” said Ariadne, sounding smug, and popped a martini olive in her mouth.

“Hang on,” said Arthur. “That’s not what I meant.”

“How do you know he knows that?” asked Ariadne.

Which silenced Arthur.

All through the conference, when he should have been networking and listening and learning, he looked for the man who had given his name as Eames. Arthur wanted to say, I’m sorry. Can we start over? What’s your name? What school do you work for? I think I kind of like you and does that make me an idiot? Actually, of course he didn’t want to say anything like that, didn’t want to admit how much he’d been hoping Eames would be at the conference, how crushed he was that he wasn’t.

I like you a lot, Arthur wanted to say, as long as Eames wasn’t going to laugh in his face. That’s how fucking lonely I am, that you’re possibly my favorite person and I don’t even really know your name and we’ve barely spoken. I just like you a lot.

Arthur hated his life a lot of the time.

***

The next time he saw Eames was at a bar again. A dismal, dingy hotel bar for a conference in the late spring, when Arthur’s attention was split between finals and the next excruciating draft of his article. So of course that was when Eames would walk back into his life.

Except that Arthur spotted him first this time, which never seemed to happen. And Eames looked terrible, which he never did, because he was ridiculously good-looking. And he still was ridiculously good-looking but he looked tired. Exhausted, really. And a little bit sad. Dejected. Downtrodden. Lonely.

Projecting, thought Arthur. He was clearly projecting all of his own jumbled emotions onto Eames.

Arthur took a deep breath. Arthur walked over. Arthur couldn’t think of a line any smoother than, “Hi.”

Eames looked up, and then a smile creased his face. Arthur’s heart beat faster and he went a little light-headed over the fact that apparently just the sight of him delighted Eames that much. It couldn’t be true. It was too damn dangerous to even imagine that being true.

Eames said, “Darling. What a lovely, pleasant surprise. I didn’t think it was your sort of conference.”

“It isn’t, really,” Arthur admitted. “My department chair is presenting at it and so I thought I should…” Arthur waved his hand around.

Eames kept smiling, caught the hand, pressed a ridiculously chivalrous kiss to Arthur’s knuckles. He said, “My night’s looking up.”

Arthur heard himself blurt, “Can we do something different?”

Eames tipped his head quizzically.

“Dinner,” Arthur clarified hastily. “Can we go to dinner?”

Eames turned Arthur’s hand over, pressed a kiss to the center of his palm, said, “Absolutely.”

***

They sat at a table like two people who were actually on a date.

They ordered drinks like two people who were actually on a date.

They looked across at each other like two people who were actually on a date.

The world’s most awkward date.

“Oh, fuck,” said Arthur suddenly.

Eames lifted his eyebrows. “This is off to a good start,” he remarked.

“I should have ordered a bottle of wine. It didn’t even occur to me to—”

“It’s fine,” said Eames, looking a little bit bemused.

But Arthur felt like an idiot. He’d wanted to be smooth and suave about this whole thing. Which he never was, about anything. He was a disaster. He blurted out, “I don’t do this a lot.”

“Socialize?” asked Eames.

No, date, Arthur wanted to say. Arthur wanted to say, I’m trying to have a date with you.

Eames took his hand abruptly, held it across the table, played with Arthur’s fingers. He said, “You know, darling, you are incredibly hard on yourself.”

“I’m…” Arthur didn’t know what to say.

“I had resigned myself to a terrible evening,” Eames continued, watching their intertwined hands. “I should have been hiding in my room but the rooms are hideous here and only get two television channels and I couldn’t bear the truly dreadful watercolor they have up on my wall, I couldn’t determine if it was meant to be an orchid or a clown and it was terrifying me so I went to the bar even though I was convinced that one of my colleagues would find me and pull me into a tedious conversation and I was trying to drink as much as I could before that happened. And then you were there, and you suggested we go to dinner. So honestly, darling, you’ve already improved my evening just by being here. We can sit in silence and eat and it will be utterly delightful.”

Arthur admitted, “I do want to talk to you. I just never know what to say.”

“So you fall upon me in a frenzy of lust,” said Eames. “It’s been known to happen. I provoke that response.”

Eames was teasing and Arthur knew he was teasing and still he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “It’s your mouth.” And then he wanted to sink into the ground. He knew he was blushing furiously.

Eames grinned and said, “Your mouth isn’t too shabby, either.”

Then the waiter arrived with their drinks. Arthur, a little embarrassed, pulled his hand out of Eames’s and tried to hide behind his menu and thought that this was why he didn’t date, he really shouldn’t be let out of his house, ever. The waiter babbled off specials that Arthur didn’t pay attention to and he watched the words on the menu swim unseeingly in front of his eyes.

Eames said, after the waiter moved away, “Should we start with the oysters?”

“I don’t really like oysters,” said Arthur without thinking, and then was horrified anew by himself. “I mean, if you like oysters, though, you should—”

“Darling,” said Eames casually, still perusing his menu, “if you don’t relax, I’m going to duck under this table and blow you just to get you to uncoil a bit.”

Arthur swallowed thickly and said, “Oh.”

Eames looked up at him, smiling brightly, pushed his menu aside, and said, “Tell me your earliest memory.”

Startled, Arthur thought he mustn’t have heard correctly. “My what?”

“Earliest memory.” Eames looked nothing but fascinated by whatever Arthur’s answer might be to that.

Arthur flailed to find the motive behind the question. “Is this some kind of Freudian…thing?”

“It’s this concept called ‘conversation,’” Eames told him, smiling. “You should try it sometime, you know. I have it on very good authority that at least one person is pining away for the opportunity to steal you away and converse with you endlessly.”

“Who?” asked Arthur stupidly.

“Darling,” said Eames, his smile widening.

Arthur blushed again and said, “This is why I don’t do conversation.”

“You’re so delightful you shouldn’t be real,” was what Eames said, sounding awed.

“Stop it,” Arthur said. “Me?”

“I’d tell you what I see when I look at you but I don’t think you’d believe me.”

The waiter arrived back. Eames ordered the trout. Arthur blindly picked some sort of chicken dish.

When the waiter moved away he said, “My little sister being born. That’s my earliest memory.”

“It’s mine as well,” said Eames. “Look how much we have in common already. Pesky little sisters.” Eames clinked their glasses together and smiled.

***

Eames talked about his childhood. He was the middle of three. He had a brother who was older by five years, Gerald, who he found terribly dull. He had a sister who was three years younger, Millie, who he found delightful. His father had died when he was five and his mother had raised all of them with the help of a far-flung extended family. Eames was the middle child so he had acted out a lot and made himself a general nuisance.

“And now I live the wastrel life of an academic, as you see,” said Eames, gesturing with his fork and digging into the trout.

Eames was such a good storyteller, Arthur had barely noticed the wait for the food. Or that he had eaten half of his meal. He said, “It’s not a wastrel life. It’s very respectable.”

Eames chuckled and said, “Shh. You’ll destroy my familial reputation as the rebellious one. Haven’t you seen my tattoos, darling?” He winked across the table at Arthur.

Arthur had, of course, seen the tattoos. Arthur kind of had the tattoos memorized, if he was going to be honest. “Which was your first one?”

“How can you not tell? ‘The true man wants two things: danger and play.’” Eames shook his head. “Christ, it’s embarrassing. You know how you are as a teenager.”

“Nietzsche,” said Arthur. “You read Nietzsche when you were a teenager? And you were the rebel of the family? What the fuck was your brother reading as a teenager? Kant?”

“Dickens,” said Eames. “Lots and lots and lots of bloody Dickens. You have no idea how relieved I am you’re not a Dickens scholar.”

“My sister went through a Tale of Two Cities phase.” Arthur paused and admitted. “I went through a Les Miz phase.” He paused again. “Oh, my God, why did I say that out loud?”

Eames laughed, full-throated, throwing his head back. Arthur blushed a little and suppressed his urge to peek around the room and see if everyone had noticed that he’d made this very attractive man laugh like that.

When he was done laughing, Eames said, “Can there be a concert later?”

“No,” said Arthur into his drink, but he was smiling as he said it.

“I’m fairly confident I’ll be able to convince you otherwise,” said Eames, and pressed his foot up against Arthur’s.

That was all, just the press of their shoes against each other, but still Arthur shuddered a little bit and took a larger-than-intended gulp of his drink.

Eames was smirking into his own drink and Arthur chose to ignore him.

But when Eames put the drink down he said, “So tell me about you.”

“I…” said Arthur, at a loss.

“Is your sister still a Dickens fan?”

“No,” said Arthur. “I don’t think so. We don’t talk much. She, you know, I mean there’s five years between us and we were never especially close, it’s a decent age gap and I was out of the house when she was barely a teenager, and then she got married and moved away—”

“So it’s just the two of you and you’re the oldest,” remarked Eames, thankfully cutting off Arthur’s babbling. “Yes. Oldest child. I can see that. Terribly responsible. On the surface. A seething rebel underneath it all.”

Arthur could feel the pink tips of his ears. “There’s really nothing rebellious about me. I do exactly what I’m supposed to do. Always.” He tried not to sound bitter when he said it.

“Darling, you blew me in an airport bathroom,” Eames pointed out.

“Shh,” hissed Arthur, glancing around them, but nobody seemed to be paying any attention to them.

Eames looked amused and pleased with himself.

Arthur said honestly, “It’s just with you. You just…I’m just like that with you.” And then he wondered why he said it. Why did he keep saying ridiculous things? Why couldn’t he control what was coming out of his mouth?

Eames looked gravely across at him, and Arthur would have fidgeted a little bit except for the fact that he genuinely couldn’t look away.

Eames said hoarsely, “Lucky me.”

Arthur swallowed, and pressed his shoe back against Eames’s because of how desperately he wanted to be touching him.

Eames leaned across the table a little bit. “Should we get out of here?”

Arthur called for the check.

***

The thing was that Arthur considered himself a little bit awkward at most things. Maybe at all things. Certainly at things that involved other human beings. But there was nothing awkward about sex with Eames. It should have been, probably. It probably should have been awkward when a little old lady had to clear her throat because they were making out in the corner of the elevator, but Arthur dragged Eames back down to him when he would have moved away and trapped him into place with a leg hooked around his and arched a slow drag against him that made Eames shudder and groan.

The elevator dinged and Eames pressed him harder against the wall, kissed him harder, his tongue filthy enough that Arthur gasped into the thrust of it.

“Is she gone?” Arthur managed, dragging his mouth away from Eames’s long enough to manage it.

Eames turned his head to look. Arthur only knew that because he had his hands tight in Eames’s hair. His eyes were closed. “Uh-huh,” said Eames. “Are we done putting on a show?”

“Christ, we’re just getting started,” said Arthur, and rolled his hips in earnest.

“Fuck,” Eames said, and followed his rhythm. “This elevator—probably has—a surveillance camera.”

Arthur banged his head against the wall behind him, trying to find air, even as his hips kept riding against Eames’s and pulling him into frantic gasps. “You’re so fucking good at this,” Arthur said, because he should be stopping this, they were in an elevator in a conference hotel, they could run into anyone, and it didn’t matter, because the weight of Eames against him, the friction of his body, the heat of his mouth against his neck, made him shudder with pleasure, made him want nothing more than moremoremoremoremore—

“I’m good at this?” Eames managed, his hands grasping Arthur’s hips, shifting to line them up into an even better position.

“Oh, fuck, yes,” said Arthur, using his hands in Eames’s hair to pull him back up for a kiss.

Which was when the elevator dinged again, and Arthur didn’t know how he and Eames were still with it enough to notice that, but he heard it and Eames said, “That’s our floor. Unless you want to ride up and down giving more people a show.”

“Get me into a room right now,” Arthur growled at him.

Arthur was glad he’d opened his eyes so he could see the look that went into Eames’s eyes at the command. And then Eames dragged him off the elevator and down the hall. And down the hall. And down the hall.

“Fuck, are you in the fucking last room?” Arthur demanded.

“Yes,” Eames responded shortly.

“What the fuck,” Arthur complained. “Why didn’t you switch rooms?”

“You’re right,” said Eames. They had finally reached his room, apparently. He was fumbling with his key card. “I should have called down to the front desk.” Arthur, suddenly fascinated by the way Eames’s hair was cut on the nape of his neck, reached out to brush a finger over it. Eames shivered. “‘Excuse me, this room is quite unsatisfactory.’ ‘What’s the issue, sir? Is it not clean? Does it have a peculiar odor? Is the climate control not working?’” Arthur leaned forward to trace Eames’s hairline with his tongue, to see if he could make him shiver again. He could. “‘No, you see, it’s just that I know this bloke who is a very demanding shag,’ fucking Christ, Arthur.”

Arthur, his hand in Eames’s pants now, smiled against the back of Eames’s neck as Eames sagged heavily against the door. “Stop talking,” Arthur said, “and get me in the fucking room.”

Eames managed to open the door and said, as he swung Arthur in, “That was good banter, though, you’ve got to admit.”

Arthur backed him up against the door as it swung closed. “Can you make me come in my pants?” he panted into Eames’s open mouth.

“Fuck,” said Eames, and it should have been awkward, Arthur supposed, when they lost their balance and crashed into a heap on the floor and brought a lamp with them but instead mostly what happened was Arthur saying, “Oh, my God, yes, yes, yes, like that, there,” and Eames gasping, “Fuck—you—say it in French,” and Arthur tried to oblige him but was distracted by the fact that nothing about what was happening was awkward so he only got out half-formed syllables and most of them were oui anyway, and when he came he wasn’t entirely in his pants but he definitely wasn’t entirely out of them.

“Bloody hell,” Eames gasped, and collapsed on top of Arthur.

He was hot and heavy and covered in slick sweat, and they were gross and sticky where they were pressed together, and still Arthur lifted up his arms and wrapped them up and around Eames, his hands back in Eames’s hair. Eames’s face was pressed in the curve of Arthur’s shoulder, his lips against Arthur’s neck, and Arthur kissed the side of Eames’s head and felt silly until he felt an answering brush of lips against his pulse point.

“I’m not one for idle flattery,” Eames managed, still catching his breath.

Arthur snorted.

“But please don’t dismiss this as hyperbole when I say: That trout I had at dinner was the best trout I’ve had in at least the past year.”

Arthur laughed. Arthur laughed until Eames lifted his head and planted a kiss on his chin.

“Get up,” Arthur told him, and he knew he sounded helplessly fond. “You’re filthy.”

“I am,” Eames said, and leered at him, and then kissed him, not filthy at all. He pulled back from the kiss, rubbed his nose against Arthur’s, and said, “Want to have a bath?”

***

Arthur had vaguely thought that Eames might mean something more than just a simple bath, but no, he meant a bath.

The room was a nice room, with a soaker tub that was tucked up against a wide window looking over the city, and Arthur freaked out a little when he saw it. Eames ran the bath, chattering happily about the advantages of a good bath and a nice tub and the invention of hot water being proof of civilization or something, and then he said, “Darling, get in, you’re looking chilled.”

Arthur was feeling chilled. He was feeling ridiculous, frankly. He missed the lack of awkwardness when they had been in the middle of having sex.

He let Eames urge him into the tub and he looked out over the twinkle of the city lights and Eames joined him a couple of minutes later with flutes of champagne.

“Raided the mini-bar,” he said, handing one to Arthur.

Arthur looked over at him and said, “No, seriously, who are you?”

Eames looked surprised and then wary. “I told you—”

“Eames, this is some kind of suite.”

“There was a mix-up with the reservation,” Eames said, sounding annoyed. “I ended up here. And I told you exactly who I am, Arthur. I’ve never lied to you.”

Arthur wanted to say, I tried to stalk you online, but I got nowhere, but that didn’t make him sound good. So instead he rubbed his foot against Eames’s ribcage in what he hoped would serve as an apology. They were facing each other in the tub, and although the conversation was awkward, their bodies had managed to settle into sharing the space comfortably.

Eames looked across at him and sipped his champagne and then said, “Thank you for dinner.”

“Yeah.” Arthur felt embarrassed. “I just thought, you know—”

“Arthur, listen very carefully,” Eames said.

Arthur listened very carefully.

“Thank you,” Eames said, and then picked up Arthur’s foot and kissed his big toe.

Arthur wrinkled his nose. “Don’t kiss my toe, what is the matter with you? You kiss the weirdest places on my body.”

Eames laughed. “Darling, that’s such a ridiculous thing to say, considering the places on the human body I’m supposed to kiss during sex. If I put my mouth on your cock, you’d say, ‘Yes, darling, go for it,’ but I kiss your toe and you wrinkle that adorable nose at me.”

“I’ve never once called you ‘darling,’” said Arthur, because he wanted to get them off this ridiculous topic of conversation.

“I’ve noticed,” said Eames, looking amused.

“It’s not a thing I do,” said Arthur, feeling embarrassed again.

“The wrinkling of the nose thing? Or the mouth on the cock thing?”

“Stop it,” Arthur said, and used the position of his foot to kick Eames’s ear a little.

Eames laughed. “I don’t understand how you can be as filthy as you just were in that lift, and then go all pink in the ears now.”

“The endearment thing,” said Arthur. “I don’t do the endearment thing.”

“I do enough endearments for the two of us, tulip.”

“You just pick words at random.”

“I do. I collect them. You know how Romantic poetry is. Ought I to call you my flea in the heat of passion?”

“Please don’t. Please definitely don’t. And he was a metaphysical poet, anyway. And British. You know I prefer French.”

“To British? Really? I think the British are gaining a bit, no?” Eames grinned at him and lifted up his foot to kiss his big toe again. Arthur didn’t protest this time. Eames put his foot down and said, “You’re looking well.”

Arthur didn’t know what to make of that. “Am I?”

“Well enough to have dinner before the therapeutic sex.”

“Oh, is that what the sex is?”

“Undoubtedly. What adjective would you attribute to the sex?”

Arthur pretended to consider, sipping his champagne. “Adequate.”

“Prick,” Eames accused, laughing.

“Another term of endearment?” asked Arthur, and realized he was teasing, which was a thing he never did. Had he picked that up from Eames? Where was this coming from?

Eames said, “You’re as bad as a bloody teaching evaluation. ‘What do you think of his technique?’ ‘I don’t feel strongly one way or the other. Let’s go with threes, right down the line.’”

Arthur chuckled and said, “Don’t sweat the evaluations. Get back to me after you’ve presented your scholarship.”

“What delicious thing are you using that as a euphemism for?” asked Eames, sounding delighted.

Arthur smiled and sipped his champagne and then said hesitantly, “Are you okay?”

Eames had leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Darling, I am magnificent at this moment.”

“Right,” said Arthur, feeling awkward. “I mean, good. It’s just…I’m sorry you were having a bad day.”

“It happens,” Eames said, with a little shrug.

Arthur just hadn’t considered that bad days happened to Eames. He always seemed…too otherworldly to have a bad day. And Arthur, thinking of how wonderful Eames had always been with his bad days, said, “Can I help?”

Eames opened his eyes and looked across at him and smiled. “You already did.”

***

They toweled off by moonlight and fell into bed together.

Arthur said awkwardly, looking across at Eames, “Should I—”

“Shh,” Eames said. “Hush. I’m asleep.”

Arthur debated with himself. Should he spend the night? They’d never done this in Eames’s room before. Eames always left before Arthur woke up. Should Arthur sneak out—

“Stay,” Eames said, and he did sound sleepier. He snagged Arthur’s wrist in one of his hands.

So Arthur let himself stay.

And Eames opened his eyes and looked across at him in the moonlight and said, “You’re my favorite thing about conferences. I look forward to you desperately.” Then he smiled.

Arthur stared at him, trying to think if he’d ever been anyone’s favorite anything before. He didn’t even think he was any of his students’ favorite professors. To be looked forward to, like there was something noteworthy and remarkable about him, instead of just…something ordinary and middle-of-the-road and mediocre and decidedly unremarkable.

Arthur had no idea what to say.

No. Not true. Arthur looked across at Eames and knew exactly what to say, knew it with the blinding clarity that comes in the middle of the night when you’re too tired to lie to yourself anymore. Fuck, thought Arthur. When did I fall in love with you?

And then Eames started snoring and it was too late to say anything at all. Certainly not that.

***

Arthur woke to an empty room and a note on Eames’s pillow.

He reached for it, looking at Eames’s hurried, scrawling handwriting, at the way it formed the letters of his name.

Darling, darling Arthur, mon cher – Sorry to run. Enjoy the room. Know that you salvaged my conference for me. Until next time, de l’heure fugitive, hâtons-nous, jouissons. Yours, E.

Arthur smiled at the French, which was a quote from Alphonse de Lamartine, a poem that Arthur knew, a poem that Arthur had translated for himself. The line Eames had quoted translated roughly to the fleeting time, let us hasten to enjoy, but Arthur knew that the full line contained an exhortation to love as well. Eames had omitted it in his quote, but had Eames meant to highlight it by its absence, or had Eames meant to make Arthur think of it.

Arthur traced his hand over yours, E. and wondered what made him his.

And if he was losing his mind because he was lying in bed mooning over a love note.

From a man who had once again ducked out before they could have a proper good-bye.

***

Arthur didn’t recognize the number. And Arthur wasn’t an idiot. He didn’t answer calls from numbers he didn’t recognize.

They left a message, and he listened to it out of curiosity, expecting it to be some random persistent telemarketer.

It wasn’t.

Arthur listened to the message with his eyes wide and then he stepped out of his office, left the building, went to his car, and drove himself home. He knew he was being paranoid but he didn’t want the possibility of anyone overhearing the conversation he was about to have.

He called Ariadne.

“Hey, stranger,” she said brightly as she picked up. “You’re a terrible friend, you know. Horrible at keeping in touch.”

“I just got a call about a job,” Arthur blurted out.

“What?” asked Ariadne. “You didn’t tell me you were looking for a job! See, this is what a terrible friend you are.”

“I’m not looking for a job. I mean, no, I’m always looking for a job, but I didn’t apply or anything.”

“Then how the hell are they calling you? They’re just…calling you out of the blue?”

“I…Yeah, I guess, I…Does this happen to people?” Arthur was bewildered.

“I don’t know,” said Ariadne. “Maybe they read your work and—”

“And thought I was the most brilliant scholar they’d ever read? I mean, seriously, Ari, there’s no way.”

“Well, your stuff is good, Arthur—”

“It’s good, it’s not…call with a job offer out of the blue.” Arthur fiddled with the books he’d left scattered on his dining room table. Because it wasn’t like he actually ate on his dining room table.

“So it’s an actual offer? What are the terms?”

“No, it’s just an invitation to go interview.”

“Well, that’s a little more normal.”

“How’d they know I was looking for a job? I mean, how’d they know I’m unhappy here? Am I that obvious?”

Ariadne was damningly silent.

“Ari.” Arthur sank into his dining room chair and wished he could sink straight through the ground.

“Look, you’ve got people around you in your department who are hard on you. It’s undeserved. It’s no wonder you’re…a bit tense and defensive.”

“Christ,” groaned Arthur, and banged his head gently on the table.

“If these people like you enough to do this, maybe they’ll appreciate you. And that’d be good for you, Arthur. You’d be happier.”

Arthur was silent for a long moment, considering, his head on the table. “So you think I should do this?”

“Why wouldn’t you do this?”

Ariadne had a point, but…well, it was effort, to go and be social and ask to be judged for the exhausting two-day period of an interview.

But they had called him. They must want him. Maybe there was…hope? Maybe he could get out from under this department chair who had made up his mind not to like him from the very beginning, from the weird way no one else in the department had ever liked him because he hadn’t been their first choice.

The truth was that Arthur was unhappy, and he’d wrapped himself up in some ridiculous fantasy about Eames, some living from conference to conference, which made no sense. What he could actually do was take this job opportunity that had been presented to him and shake the unproductive mire of being infatuated with Eames.

“Yeah,” said Arthur. “Yeah, I’m going to do this.”

***

Arthur hated job interviews. Job interviews were primarily exercises in charm, and Arthur, for whatever reason, didn’t strike people as charming. Arthur had been told continuously that he was prickly, unapproachable, cold. Arthur hated having to meet masses of people and try so hard to be his best, to be likeable, and to know that people still thought he was…not nice. He didn’t get it, and he hated it, because he was otherwise good at his job, he was a decent professor and decent at research, thorough and well-prepared, and why did jobs have to be like running for fucking homecoming king?

So Arthur was already tense and stressed and trying desperately not to show it when he went down to meet his contact, Professor Messerley, to be driven to the interview dinner.

And there in the lobby of the hotel, rising to meet him, with an easy smile on his face, was Eames.

Arthur stopped short and stared.

“Hello, darling,” said Eames, walking up to him. “Lovely suit.” His gaze ran familiarly down Arthur’s body, practically a leer.

“What are you doing here?” Arthur asked, horrified. He couldn’t have Eames here distracting him, he was supposed to be interviewing for a job, why was Eames showing up and being Eames.

Eames looked bemused. “I’m taking you to dinner.”

“You’re…” Arthur blinked at him. “What?”

“Did they not tell you? Did they not give you a schedule?”

“Professor Messerley,” Arthur gasped breathlessly. “I’m supposed to meet Professor Messerley.”

“Right,” Eames said slowly, and then extended his arms a little bit, in a ta-da! gesture.

Arthur kept staring at him.

Then Eames said, “Do you not know who I am?”

“Yes,” protested Arthur. “You’re…Eames.”

“E.A. Messerley,” Eames said drily. “I’m E.A. Messerley.”

“E.A. Messerley,” Arthur repeated. “Eames.”

“You never figured this out?”

“Well, what the hell, Eames, it’s some kind of fucking word puzzle, why can’t you have a name like a normal person?”

“What did you think this whole time? Didn’t you try to Internet stalk me?” Now Eames looked openly amused.  

“Of course I did,” Arthur snapped. “I didn’t get anywhere. I thought you’d made Eames up. I thought you really loved those stupid chairs.”

“Chairs?”

“Eames chairs. You know.”

“I know. I think they prefer to be called Eames lounges. I’ve had to become an expert on Eames lounges.”

“Fuck you,” Arthur said furiously.

The amusement finally blessedly started to fade off of Eames’s face. “Wait,” he said, “are you upset?”

“I got a call out of the blue for a job? And it’s amazing, and I’m excited, and I show up here, and it’s all you? Fuck, yes, I’m upset.”

Eames glanced around the lobby. There was a possibility they were attracting attention. Arthur didn’t fucking care.

“Let’s go to dinner,” Eames said.

“If you wanted to take me to dinner, you could have called me up and asked me out like a normal person.”

“Can you get in my car with me?” Eames hissed at him.

“Is there even a job interview?” Arthur demanded. “Or is this just some kind of…booty call?”

“Yes, there’s a job interview, and I recommend you not use the term ‘booty call’ during the job interview. Now can you come with me? We’re going to be late. For your job interview.”

Arthur considered him, chewing nervously on his lower lip. He didn’t really know what to make of this sudden turn of events. But he knew he felt like an idiot standing here in the lobby. And he also knew that apparently people were waiting for him to show up at an interview dinner.

“Fine,” Arthur said finally. “But not because I’m happy.”

“Perish the thought,” said Eames, voice dust dry, and Arthur narrowed his eyes at him and brushed past him and outside.

And then of course had to stop and say, “Where’s your car?”

Eames held up his keys, and a car beeped in reaction, and Arthur headed toward it confidently and slid into it.

Eames made a big show of adjusting his rear-view mirror, as if he hadn’t just driven the car over here.

Arthur sighed and said, “So you’re behind this.”

Eames made another big show of checking elaborately for traffic before pulling out into the street. And then he said, “Yes. I didn’t think you’d be upset.”

“I thought I was getting a call for a job, Eames.”

“You are getting a call for a job.”

“What did you tell everyone? That you were in the mood for a good fuck and you’d appreciate them getting me to town?”

“No.” Eames sent a scowl in Arthur’s direction. “Arthur. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You think I’m the one being ridiculous? You’re trying to get your one-night stand hired at your school.”

“First of all, you’re not my one-night stand.”

“Are you playing semantics with me right now?”

“It’s more than just semantics. I went and read your papers. They were good. They were all really good. Your department isn’t quite my department, you know, but as you also know, we’re similar enough that we overlap. They’ve got an eye out for a really great candidate, tenure-track, with experience, but not at tenure yet. That’s you. I read your stuff and it was all so good and, forgive me, but you don’t seem especially happy where you are, and I mentioned your name to them, and people in the department knew you, of course, because your stuff is good and I said I thought it might be worth reaching out to you and so they did.”

Arthur looked out the window, at the unfamiliar buildings slipping past them as Eames maneuvered the car. He didn’t know what to make of this. He didn’t know what to make of being…wanted. Which sounded pathetic, but this wasn’t how job interviews went. This wasn’t how his career went.

He said eventually, “What do they call you?”

“Eames, Arthur.” Eames sounded amused. “They call me Eames.”

“Is that your actual name?”

“No, my name is Edward. Edward Alexander Messerley. Eames was just me being clever. Because Edward is a horrible name.”

“Edward is a normal name.”

“Exactly. Is ‘normal’ an adjective you would use to describe me?” Eames sent Arthur a wink.

Arthur rolled his eyes. “So what did you tell these people about me?”

“That you give truly exceptional head and have an admirable arse.”

“Eames.”

“Well, at least you didn’t believe that’s what I told them. At least you give me some credit.”

“I just don’t understand what else about me you could have told them.”

Eames stopped the car in front of a restaurant and looked at Arthur and said, “You actually wound me with that. There’s lots for me to tell them. You’re lovely. I told them you were lovely. I told them you’re clever and kind and generous and curious. And I told them your scholarship was brilliant and promising and that you’d make an excellent colleague who would increase the school’s reputation. That’s what I told them.”

Arthur stared at Eames, a little stunned. He hadn’t expected Eames to give x-rated information about him, but he also hadn’t expected Eames to say…that.

“And also your chili pepper hotness rating on RateMyProfessors.com is pretty outstanding.”

Arthur barely even registered the joke. He was still too hung up on…all the rest of it.

Eames leaned over, not inappropriately but still a little closer to Arthur’s personal space. He said, “Can you do something for me, Arthur?”

“I…” Arthur was annoyed that he sounded breathless. Arthur was annoyed that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to say yes or no to the question.

Eames said, “I know you don’t believe me. I know I said all that just now and you’re marveling at this tall tale I’ve spun. But for the length of this dinner—for the length of this job interview—let’s pretend I’m telling the truth. For the length of this time, why don’t you forget about what it is you think you see when you look in the mirror? Why don’t we pretend that I’m the one who sees the real you? And it’s just you and me, in a bed somewhere, and you’re being brilliant.”

“I…I don’t think I should conduct a job interview as if I’m in bed,” Arthur managed.

Eames smiled at him, sweet and soft, and Arthur’s stupid heart fell at his feet. Arthur’s poor, confused crush wasn’t being helped by this crazy situation. “You’re wrong, darling. You should. Because you should conduct this job interview by just being you. Just be you. You’re going to dazzle everyone.”

“You’re delusional,” said Arthur, but his tone made it sound like You really think so?

“Yeah,” said Eames, still smiling, as if he was answering that very question. Then he leaned back. “Deep breath, mon cher.”

Arthur found himself obeying.

“There you go. I’m going to be right there with you, and I’m in your corner. Remember that.” Then Eames got out of the car.

Arthur took another deep breath, then followed.

***

There were three other professors at the interview dinner. Eames introduced them and said their specialties and Arthur was trying so desperately to remember all of this new information that he felt he was already tripping over his own introduction in reply, shaking hands around the table, and probably they were all already thinking that this was a terrible idea and Eames was a lunatic to have suggested him as a candidate.

They sat at the table and one of the other professors was ordering wine and asking Arthur if he preferred white or red and Arthur said, “White,” when what he really wanted to say was, Let’s just forget about this, it was a nice gesture on your part, but it’s okay, you can stop pretending you really want me.

“Arthur here is nervous at having to impress you. Somehow you’ve dazzled him,” said Eames next to him.

Arthur stared at him and wanted to kick him. How was that going to help matters?

All of the professors laughed, and the female professor—Allison or Danielle, fuck, how had Arthur managed to forget that already—said, “Nonsense, I have been looking forward to this for weeks, I wanted to talk to you about that paper you did on poetic architecture.”

“Oh,” said Arthur, caught off-guard by that. “Yes. That was—”

“So few people make the connection between poems and buildings, houses for the soul. I thought that was incredible,” continued Allison-slash-Danielle.

“Oh,” said Arthur, and then as it occurred to him, “Thanks.”

“Allison’s been going on and on about the way you connected the final rhyming couplet to the overhang of eaves,” said Eames.

“I’d never thought about it that way before,” Allison gushed—Arthur wanted to thank Eames for that confirmation. “How did you come up with it?”

“I spent a summer in England,” Arthur began.

“Did you?” said Eames, openly delighted, and Arthur realized that for all the time they’d spent together, they hadn’t really ever gotten to know each other like this. Yes, they’d had that one dinner, and somehow Arthur hadn’t talked during that dinner about England.

“Oh, no,” said one of the other professors (his name was possibly Mark), laughing. “Now you’ve gone and done it. We’ll be talking about England the rest of the night.”

“A place with incredibly bad weather and really, really big spiders,” said Arthur, just to try to wipe the smirk off of Eames’s face, and then wondered, horrified, if he sounded like a terrible person.

But Eames laughed, and so did the other professors, and Allison said, “Don’t even get me started about the badgers.”

“The badgers aren’t that bad,” said Eames.

“I watched one corner you on the hood of your car.”

“That’s an exaggeration,” Eames told Arthur.

“You were crouched on the hood calling for help,” said Allison.

“It isn’t true.”

“I filmed it on my phone.”

“I then destroyed the phone,” said Eames.

Arthur laughed. Everyone laughed. The dinner had an atmosphere of a bunch of friends out for a good time. And, oddly, even Arthur felt it, like he was part of a group who was enjoying each other’s company. There was something dangerous about sitting right beside Eames in an environment like this. It was probably all in his head but he imagined that Eames was attentive to him, attuned to the conversational topics Arthur would prefer, and Arthur knew this was an interview dinner, but it was hard to remind himself of that. Arthur wanted it to be a date. Which was so fucking annoying because Eames was a fucking asshole who had tricked him into this weird job interview that Arthur didn’t even know what to make of and it definitely wasn’t a date but Arthur wanted it to be. Arthur wanted it to be the two of them, together, a couple, against the world, and sometimes they went out with friends, and Eames told dazzling stories that made everyone laugh and smiled at Arthur and left conversational openings for him and so everyone could imagine that Arthur belonged, just there, in that space at the table.

Arthur suddenly wanted this life with a fierceness that took him by surprise, made him feel short of breath, made him have to take a quick sip of his wine to try to regain his composure. Arthur wanted every night, just like this. And it wasn’t just the Eamesness of Eames beside him, it was that he was having a good time, he was enjoying himself, he did feel part of the conversation, and he didn’t feel judged, he felt like he had things to contribute and everyone was taking him seriously and including him and liking him and Arthur hadn’t drunk nearly enough to be drunk but he felt bewildered in a way that he wished he could excuse on alcohol.

They lingered over coffee and dessert until Mark or Ted said (Arthur had never really determined which was which), “Eames, you’re being a terrible host, Arthur has a long day tomorrow and look how late you’ve kept him out.”

Arthur glanced at his watch and was startled by the time. He did have a long day ahead of him, and his job talk wasn’t really done, and fuck.

“Oh, sure, blame everything on me,” said Eames, as he gestured for the check, and then the other professors were inquiring about the next day’s schedule, giving him pointers, handing across business cards so he could get in touch with them if he had any questions.

They said good night to each other in a cloud of condensed breath in the frigid cold that had descended with the late hour, and when Arthur got into Eames’s car Eames said, “Brr,” and immediately turned up the heat to full blast.

Arthur sat in Eames’s car and looked out the window and tried to make sense of the way he was feeling. He felt…like the world’s most fragile thing and so also the world’s most precious thing all at once.

Eames was already driving, was already out on the main road, before he ventured, “You’re quiet.”

“I’m okay,” Arthur said, because he was.

There was another moment. “You’re not still angry with me, are you?”

Arthur laughed. “Fucking furious,” he said. “I am always fucking furious that you exist.”

He felt the confused glance Eames sent him. “I’m not sure what to make of that.”

“They were nice,” Arthur said.

“They are, yes.”

“They like you.”

“They like you,” Eames corrected him.

“Thank you,” said Arthur.

“For what?” asked Eames, concentrating on taking a left.

For not letting me be an asshole, Arthur wanted to say.

Because he was silent for too long, Eames glanced at him and said, “You know that you did this all yourself, right? This wasn’t me. There’s nothing to thank me for. I really do wish you’d internalize that. I’m going to have to send you texts about it at least once a day.”

Arthur stopped staring out the window and let himself look at Eames, at the devastation that was his profile, the pout of his lips, the way he filled the space in the drivers’ seat, the way he filled every space he was given, but the way he left careful space for Arthur. The way he stepped aside and indicated the space beside him as if there was something remarkable to see.

“Maybe I’m getting there,” Arthur said hoarsely.

Eames caught his tone and looked at him, and Arthur wished it wasn’t dark so he could see Eames’s expression.

Take me home, Arthur wanted to say, even though they were nowhere near his home. Make this be home, Arthur wanted to say. Maybe you could be my home, Arthur wanted to say.

And everything about that was insane, there was something wrong with him, in the scheme of things he barely knew Eames. And yet Eames had, during every encounter, made him happier than he could ever remember being. Made the constant thrum of low-level anxiety in his bloodstream, the persistent voice whispering that he was never going to be good enough, never going to accomplish anything, fade for just a little while into the background.

Eames said eventually, “We’re…here.”

When Arthur didn’t say anything, Eames clarified, “At the hotel, I mean.”

“Walk me up,” was what Arthur finally managed to say.

“Arthur.” Eames shifted, and Arthur marveled at the oddity of Eames being clearly awkward and uncomfortable. Eames wasn’t awkward; Arthur was the awkward one. Arthur was only ever not awkward when he was with Eames. “You don’t have to—That’s not what this was—”

Arthur shook his head to cut him off. “Walk me up,” he repeated simply.

“I…” Eames took a breath. “I can’t leave the car here. I’d have to park it properly. If I were going to be staying a while…?”

“Well,” Arthur pretended to consider, “we could be quick about it, but I think it’s probably better to take our time and have a nice long fuck, yes?”

“Oh,” said Eames, sounding strangled.

Arthur said, “Room 428. Park the car. Meet me there.”

***

Arthur was preternaturally calm when he got to his room. He stripped off his suit jacket and left it negligently over the room’s desk chair. Negligent. He was never negligent with his clothing but he felt as if he’d finally discovered the thing more important than appearance. The thing more important than looking like you didn’t need to be worried about was actually feeling like, for once, you didn’t need to be worried about. You were under control. You were actually happy.

Arthur followed the suit jacket with his tie and waited for Eames to show up. Because Eames would. Because Arthur had invited him. Which was unusually forward of him, but, again, it was Eames, and he never behaved in an ordinary Arthurian way when he was with Eames. Eames was right: When he was the person he was with Eames, life was, well, incredible.

He was halfway through unbuttoning his shirt when there was a knock on the door.

Arthur opened it.

Eames lifted his eyebrows and surveyed him. “Hello there,” he said.

“Hi,” said Arthur, and smiled at him helplessly.

“Arthur,” said Eames, staying stubbornly in the hallway, “I meant what I said. You don’t have to—”

Arthur shook his head at him again. “I don’t know why you think suddenly that I feel obligated to have sex with you.”

“Maybe because you accused me of using this job interview as a ‘booty call,’” Eames reminded him gently.

“I thought we weren’t allowed to use that term anymore.”

“No, you can’t use it. I can use it because I make it sound sexy. It’s my accent.”

“Shut up,” Arthur said, still helplessly smiling at him, and pulled him into the room.

“Mmm,” said Eames, and tangled his hands very deliberately in Arthur’s hair to ruck it up, and then he kissed him, long and slow, taking his time about it.

Arthur had missed him. Impossibly. Amazingly. No, wait, nothing about it was impossible or amazing, Arthur knew he missed him when he wasn’t with him, Arthur had just refused to let himself think of it with exactly that word. But Arthur was in love with him, and that was what happened when you walked away from the person you were in love with, you missed him. So Arthur had missed the way he kissed, the way his mouth tasted, the way his tongue felt, the way those lips felt.

Eames’s hands finished unbuttoning Arthur’s shirt, slid inside to rest against the skin of Arthur’s ribcage. He nipped at Arthur’s mouth once, twice, smiling, and murmured, “Hello,” against him.

“Hi,” Arthur replied, also smiling. “Haven’t we had this conversation already? Aren’t you supposed to be good with words?”

“I’ve just been wanting to do this all night,” Eames replied, and his smile was like a secret that Arthur could tuck in his pocket. He pushed Arthur’s shirt off of him. “So forgive me if I’m tongue-tied. I was tongue-tied the instant you showed up in this suit. I was a goner the first time I saw you, at the first conference, let’s be frank. I never get used to the sight of you.”

Liar, Arthur wanted to say, but he said instead, “Really? Wish I could say the same, but you’re nothing great to look at.”

Eames laughed and pushed Arthur onto the bed lightly. “You’re such an arsehole.”

“I’m sorry,” Arthur said, as Eames spread out over him.

Eames looked surprised. “For what? Don’t be. I like it.”

“I showed up and you wanted to kiss me and instead I yelled at you.”

“I startled you. I understand that now. It never occurred to me you didn’t know who I was, know what you were walking into here.” Eames’s expression turned grave, serious, earnest. “Darling, I really didn’t—”

“I know. I get it now,” Arthur said. And he did. Eames hadn’t meant this as an ambush. He hadn’t even meant it as a condescending favor. He had meant it as what he thought was Arthur’s due. It was part of what made Eames amazing.

“You’re glorious when you’re furious, you know,” Eames said, smiling again and kissing the tip of Arthur’s nose. “Maybe I’ll make you furious more often.”

“So we can have make-up sex?”

“Oh, is that what this is?” asked Eames. “Make-up sex?”

“No,” said Arthur, suddenly very serious. He pushed at Eames, and Eames gave him some room, looking confused, and Arthur pushed Eames the rest of his way onto his back and looked down at him. “No,” he said softly, and traced the lush line of Eames’s mouth.

Eames looked up at him, exhaled in a rush of air across the thumb Arthur had pressed into his lower lip. “Darling,” he said questioningly.

Arthur shook his head. Arthur studied words because Arthur never had the right words himself. Never mind the perfect words, the way all the great writers did. Arthur wanted to give Eames all of the loveliest words in every language that existed but he didn’t have them at his disposal, so instead he kissed him. He kissed him slowly, thoroughly. He kissed his mouth and his cheekbones and his chin and the line of his jaw. He pulled off Eames’s tie and pushed off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt and kissed every inch of Eames’s tattoos, and then kissed every inch that wasn’t a tattoo. Arthur pressed his nose into Eames’s skin to inhale him, licked him with the flat of his tongue to engrain his taste upon him, closed his teeth around him when he couldn’t stand the idea of not marking him in some way. Eames was panting and murmuring things and Arthur worshipped the trail of hair below Eames’s navel and let the cadence of Eames’s voice wash over him. He had no idea what he was saying but he was okay with that because he understood the meaning, the way he hoped Eames understood the meaning of what he was doing. Arthur sank onto Eames, and Eames muttered an oath, Eames’s hands were tight in Arthur’s hair, and Arthur brought the most amazing man he’d ever encountered up to the edge of pleasure and then nudged him over it, and then afterward looked pleased down at the debauched spent half-dressed pile of him.

Eames opened his eyes for a second before letting them slide closed again. “Look at you,” he panted, around a smile.

“Look at me?” echoed Arthur, surprised.

“I’ve never seen anyone look so satisfied over the giving of a blowjob. Impressed with yourself, are you?”

Arthur looked down at Eames, Eames, his Eames, and tried to breathe. “I’m just happy I made you happy,” he said, feeling raw with honesty. Eames opened his eyes, stared up at him. “Because you—I mean, you—”

“Hey.” Eames reached out, cupped his hand around the back of Arthur’s head. “Hey, hey, hey. Don’t—”

“Shh,” Arthur said, shaking his head, leaning down to kiss Eames. “Stop it. Let me make you happy.”

“That’s never been contingent on a blowjob, darling,” Eames whispered up at him. “That was never…You just make me happy.”

“I know,” said Arthur, amazed and astonished, because he did. He made Eames happy. Happy enough that Eames thought he was worth telling other people about. Not about how good he was in bed. About him. “I know.”

And Eames rolled him over and bent his head over him and brought him off slowly and achingly and Arthur spoke French to him because of course he did.

Afterward Eames sprawled out next to him and put his chin on Arthur’s shoulder and yawned and said, “Want me to listen to your job talk for you?”

“Yeah,” Arthur mumbled, leaning his head up against Eames. “In a second.” He was warm and drowsy and more content than he could ever remember feeling in his life. He didn’t want to act like an adult for a little while.

“Then I’ll get up and leave you alone so you can get a good night’s sleep,” said Eames.

“Uh-huh,” Arthur agreed.

***

Arthur woke to his phone’s alarm blaring at him and had to fight his way out from underneath Eames’s arm. “Fuck,” he said. And then, as full horrifying realization hit him, “Oh, no. Oh, fuck.”

“We fell asleep,” Eames said, rubbing his hands into his eyes.

“Obviously,” Arthur said, and rolled out of bed.

Eames glanced at his watch and said, “You’ve got plenty of time—”

“I am going on a job interview! My job talk wasn’t even done yet, oh, my God.” Arthur grabbed haphazardly at clothing. He felt off-balance and out-of-sorts and anxious and he wished that he could get back how incredibly calm he’d felt while drifting off next to Eames and at the same time how the fuck had he let that happen?

Arthur fled to the bathroom and stepped in the shower and spent a little while just standing directly under the spray, eyes closed, contemplating his life. He was on a job interview, maybe the most important job interview of his life, and he’d lost track of time and was under-prepared because he’d been cuddling and what was he even doing?

But that was a question he could answer. He was in love. He was in love with the man in the other room, and being in love with him made this job interview about so much more than just the job. This was about Eames, and what Eames wanted, and whether Eames wanted… Nothing about this felt like the booty call he’d accused Eames of the night before, everything about it felt like more than that, but was Arthur reading into it? Arthur didn’t know what to make of it. What Arthur knew was that he wanted this, all of it. He wanted this dazzling job with these nice people and he wanted Eames to fall asleep with and wake up with every morning. The job was in his grasp, amazingly, in his power, but Eames was…something else entirely.

Arthur shut off the shower and shaved carefully and then dressed carefully and then brushed his teeth and his hair carefully and when he stepped out of the bathroom he fully expected Eames to be gone. Eames, after all, was very good at slinking away.

But Eames was still in the room. He’d dressed himself in his clothes from the night before and was sitting at the desk chair, looking bleary and somber.

“I got you coffee,” he said, before Arthur could say anything. “I got you coffee and I don’t want to fuck this up for you but we have time before you have to get to the breakfast meeting, if you wanted to try out your job talk, I said I would listen, but if you’d rather I—Fuck. Listen.” Eames tore his hands through his hair. Arthur stared at him, trying to remember if he’d ever seen Eames so off-kilter. “I didn’t want to fuck this up for you.” He put his hands down and looked at Arthur very seriously. “I wanted you to—I wanted you to come here and—You’d be really good at this job, Arthur. This school deserves you, and I knew you could rock it, and that’s why I—But it’s not entirely why I—And I don’t want to fuck this up for you, by getting into all of this, right now, I didn’t even intend to come up with you, even if you asked, and I wasn’t sure you would ask, but then you did and you’re you and I’m so fucking bad at resisting you but I really meant not to—”

“You didn’t think I would ask?” Arthur interrupted, feeling wide-eyed in shock over this. Arthur thought he was transparent in how much he wanted Eames, all the time.

“I didn’t know if you wanted this. This is very different from…It’s very different from…Darling, I want to have a serious conversation with you, but I can’t, not now, not with—Just know that whatever you want this to be—whatever you want this to be—I’m okay with it. Okay? I’m okay with it. Wherever we end up.”

Arthur kept staring at him. Arthur felt too dazed to say anything. Arthur thought that what he wanted to say was as simple as I love you, and then Eames would know everything Arthur wanted, and whether Eames was okay with that…Was Eames saying he was okay with that?

“So,” said Eames, and tried a crooked smile. “I can get the hell out of your way right now, if that’s what you want, or I could listen to your job talk, if you want.”

Arthur hesitated, and then knew for sure that what he wanted was Eames, around, always. So he’d keep whatever he could get of Eames. Which might actually help him get the job and get all of Eames. Somehow. Maybe.

Arthur said, “Listen to my job talk. Be mean to me about it.”

Eames’s smile widened in obvious relief. As if Arthur was ever going to kick him out. “Have your coffee first, darling,” he said.

***

Arthur stood in a suit that he knew he looked good in, hair freshly combed, cheek freshly kissed by Eames, who had sent him on his way with a Knock ‘em dead, petal, I’ll see you at your job talk.  Arthur stood, about to take the last step that would lead him to the lobby, where he was meant to meet two more of Eames’s colleagues, who would take him to breakfast and start this day, and Arthur took a deep breath, and Arthur thought, Be who you are with Eames. You can do that. That’s you.

Arthur took his last step.

And Arthur had an amazing day. Everyone was nice, and kind, and insightful, and when they asked questions Arthur didn’t feel attacked, he felt like they were all genuinely interested in him and what he was saying, they wanted to know more. No one mentioned Eames, all day, they mentioned Arthur’s work, which they were all familiar with, and his teaching evaluations, which apparently were excellent, although Arthur had always assumed they were about average. They wanted to know more about his newest areas of research, in a way that didn’t make Arthur feel like they were stupid but rather that they were excellent.

And Arthur felt incredibly relaxed and at-ease. Arthur felt charming. He even felt like the department chair liked him. The department chair laughed when Arthur made a joke. Arthur’s department chair always frowned at him disapprovingly.

Arthur gave his job talk. Eames went and didn’t say a word, just sat and looked encouraging, but everyone else sat and looked encouraging, too, and when he got questions and comments they were full of praise and enthusiasm. Arthur wondered if he was dreaming and then decided he didn’t want to wake up.

“I’ve got to get you back to Eames,” said his last interviewer of the day, “and then it’s Eames’s job to get you back to the hotel so you can freshen up before dinner tonight. Sorry, I know it’s a lot, but you’re almost at the end now.”

“It’s fine,” said Arthur, because it was. He was exhausted but that went without saying when you were interviewing. Other than that, Arthur felt…hopeful. Arthur felt…

“Hello,” Eames said from behind his desk, looking up with a smile when Arthur’s escort knocked on his door.

“I have Arthur for you,” Arthur’s escort said. “All in one piece.”

“I can see that.”

“It was a pleasure meeting you, Arthur, let me know if you have any questions,” said Eames’s colleague—what was her name? Arthur was still terrible at names—and shook his hand one more time.

Arthur said, “Thank you so much,” and then tuned to Eames, who was lounging his desk chair, smiling at him.

“How’s your day gone?” Eames asked.

Arthur, feeling a little dazed, closed Eames’s office door, and then he sat and swallowed and said seriously, “Eames, I like it here.”

Eames’s smile turned quizzical. “Good. That’s what I hoped would happen.”

“No.” Arthur shook his head faintly. “You don’t understand. I might get this job, and I hope I get this job, but I can’t take this job unless…”

Eames cocked his head. “Unless?”

“There’s you,” Arthur blurted out.

“There’s me?”

“I can’t work here, every day, with you, and not…I’m in love with you, okay? I was going to wait and say it really smoothly, not so stupidly, not here in your office, but I’ve had this incredible day with these incredible people and I really want this job but I also really want you and it’s all tangled up and this won’t work if you think that I can just come here and not be with you, because I can’t, because I really love you, it hasn’t been this light, no-strings-attached thing for me, you make me feel the best I’ve ever felt and I miss you so much when I’m not with you and I want you around all the time, there’s so much I feel like I need to tell you, and I know this makes me insane, but I can’t deal with the idea of this dream job when I’m worrying so much about the idea of you and I just felt like I needed to be honest and get that out there because I don’t know if I can do the rest of this if you’re not…you know.” Arthur trailed off, feeling spent now, and looked at Eames, who was staring across at him. “Say something,” Arthur said, bereft at being met with silence.

Eames didn’t say anything. Eames stood and walked around his desk and leaned down and kissed Arthur fiercely.

“Idiot,” he said thickly, pulling back for a second, before kissing him again.

Arthur felt as if gravity had abandoned him. He tried to escape from Eames’s lips long enough to manage, “That’s a good ‘idiot’?”

“Yes.” Eames refused to fully relinquish contact between his lips and Arthur’s skin. “I didn’t want to tell you—and then make you feel pressured—like you could only—take this job—if you also took me—but I want you to move in—fuck, I want you to marry me—is that moving too fast?”

“I didn’t even know your name until yesterday,” Arthur pointed out.

“Does that really matter?” asked Eames.

“No,” Arthur said, because it didn’t, he would have married him even if he still thought Eames was a fake name.

Eames caught Arthur’s face up, kept dotting kisses over it. “I talked to the department chair—before I brought your name up—and I told her.”

“Told him what?” asked Arthur, caught between mortified and amused. “That we had a standard conference sex thing going on?”

“That I’m in love with you—you silly goose—that I’m in love with you and I didn’t know how you felt—”

Arthur drew back, out of Eames’s embrace. “So everybody here is being nice because—”

Eames shook his head. “No one knows but her. I told her it wasn’t like that, that I didn’t want it to be like that, that I wasn’t demanding some kind of spousal hire or something, I just wanted her to know, before I put your name forth, that I might be compromised and biased. But I think we’ve all proven that I’m not.”

Arthur stared at him. Arthur tried to come to terms that everything that was happening. It wasn’t exactly easy: a lot was happening. Arthur said, “You’re in love with me?”

Eames gave him that crooked smile Arthur adored. Maybe Arthur could fall asleep every night to that crooked smile. “Desperately. I think I was in love with you the first time I saw you. I have no other explanation for why I felt like I would claw out of my own skin if I didn’t get to talk to you. You lovely man.” Eames’s smile turned impossibly soft as he combed his fingers through Arthur’s hair; Arthur could feel himself blushing in the face of it. “You don’t have to come work here if you don’t want to. Don’t come here for me. We’ll work this out, no matter what, okay? I didn’t want to influence your decision—”

“I like it here,” Arthur said honestly. “I like it a lot. You’re just…a bonus.”

“Exactly how I like to think of myself: a cherry on top of a very delightful sundae.”

“You know what I mean,” said Arthur.

“I do. Because I thought I had a pretty good life, before I met you. I thought I was happy. Objectively, to an outside observer, my life was excellent. You, sitting here, telling me you’re in love with me…you’re the very definition of a bonus.”

Arthur tried to smile as beautifully as Eames was smiling at him, was sure he was failing. “I’m not sure I’m good at this.”

“Stop it with your imposter syndrome, you’re excellent at—”

“I’ve never been in an actual relationship before. I mean, that’s what we’re doing? A relationship?”

Eames lifted his eyebrows. “I think I may have asked you to marry me. So I feel safe calling it a relationship.”

“Right. See? I’m bad at this. I won’t know what to do. Am I supposed to take you home to meet my parents? Are we supposed to divide up the household chores? I’m going to be very bad at this.”

“You’re going to be excellent at this. The answers are: Only if you wish to; yes, but you will doubtless be appalled at how I do household chores; and absolutely, whenever you want, strongly encouraged.”

Arthur thought back. “What question is that the answer to?”

“The one you didn’t ask but I could see in your eyes: ‘Am I allowed to kiss you in your office?’”

“Oh,” said Arthur stupidly.

But Eames smiled at him like he wasn’t stupid and kissed him. “You know how this goes, darling. You’re very good at it. It starts with you asking me back to your room.”

“And how does it end?” asked Arthur.

Eames grinned. “Happily ever after.”

The end.