undergrounds | backdated so hard/for eames

"Stop," Arthur says immediately, putting his hands on Eames' forearms to try and pry his hands off as he pulls his head back to dodge the attempt at a kiss. There's no doubt in his mind that this is just not happening tonight, unless Eames' fae powers include some kind of speedy healing for whatever happened to him at the party. Arthur somehow doubts that's the case.

"You're bleeding," he tell Eames impatiently, like he's chastising him, telling him why he's about to be put in time out. "Go sit down and I'll get my first aid."

Eames also reacts like he's being put in time out, sighing heavily as he walks through to Arthur's living room and sits on Arthur's couch with a frown and another sigh. Less because he's been turned down and more because he's obviously not covering up as well as he thought he was.

Tiredly, he drops his head and feels up his neck, pulling his hand back to look at the blood on his fingers with a little surprise. He thought he'd managed to stop that, but obviously pup bathrooms are hardly first aid stations.

Arthur disappears into his kitchen for a moment and comes back with a hard-sided case that he sets down on his coffee table. It's a little larger than one's run-of-the-mill first aid kit, and when he opens it he reveals the full gamut of things one might need after managing to survive any kind of violent attack. There are even prepackaged anesthetics neatly tucked beside the needles and thread for sewing up wounds.

He gives everything a look as if he's just reviewing where everything is, and then he looks up at Eames and tightens his jaw briefly, like he's preparing himself for an argument.

"Take off your shirt."

Yeah. Well. Eames raises an eyebrow at the case and then at Arthur, head lolling a little as he tries to fight how badly he wants to just sleep now he's sitting.

"It'll close on its own," is Eames' opinion on this, eyes slipping shut as he gestures to the case dismissively. The evidence would suggest otherwise, but Eames believes it.

Arthur huffs and narrows his eyes at him.

It will close on its own, eventually, maybe after Eames has lost enough blood that it'll take three times as long to recover, if he'll recover at all. Arthur's training left him too aware of what can happen when injuries go unchecked. On top of that, the longer Eames bleeds on his couch, the more his apartment becomes a beacon for local vampires looking for a meal. Arthur has no idea how strong the lure of fae blood is for a hungry vampire but he's not willing to find out tonight. So this is getting cleaned up.

"I don't want to have to ask three times. Take it off."

"Just can't wait to get me naked, hm?" Just let him have it, the joke makes him feel better about this entire shitty situation.

But ugh, he's wearing so many layers. Who said this many clothes was okay? He shrugs out of his jacket easily enough, but then it's the waistcoat and while he's dealing with those buttons he gets distracted by the chain for his pocketwatch-- he can't remember which way it went and can he just undo the waistcoat without worrying about it or...?

Arthur doesn't even dignify that with a response, patiently watching Eames undo his buttons. He considers trying to help for a moment - helping in this case meaning impatiently pushing Eames' hands away to do it himself - but he doesn't want to start a fight. Besides, that seems almost too intimate, ironically enough. He's taken Eames' clothes off before but never out of a desire to do anything other than sex. He doesn't want to make it seem like he cares or anything.

So he just waits, eventually raising an eyebrow at Eames to indicate how ridiculous any claims that he's okay would be just in case he looks up to make one.

They both know he's not okay and it's long past the point where he can try claiming othetwise. Eames just dutifully undoes his waistcoat once he's solved the chain issue and everything else comes off easily. He drops his clothes on the couch next to him, electing not to look at the blood on his shirt.

Not just laying down and going to sleep is a harder call, and Eames... Well, that's exactly what he's doing.

Arthur starts to make a sound of protest, but it dies when he realizes Eames is already halfway down. He sighs again, moving on the coffee table so he's at a better angle, and then he gives Eames' wounds a once over.

"Just don't fall asleep," he says, standing up and disappearing into the kitchen again. He returns a moment later with a damp cloth, which he uses to start wiping away some dried blood as well as the fresh stuff. It's not looking pretty and he is most definitely not trying to be gentle about it.

Eames makes a noise of general discomfort which could be to do with just about anything happening right now; the cleaning, the not falling asleep, or the fact that he's not exactly laying in the most comfortable position. At least one of those is his own fault though, so he can't complain much more about it.

He does, however, shift to be in a better position for Arthur to reach the worst of it; it's really not a pretty sight. The bites are more like tears and gouges given Eames' reluctance to hold still, and then there's just the general mess from the scuffle beforehand.

In the back of his mind he's fairly certain his jacket is ruined, which is a shame because it was expensive as fuck, but it's really the least of his worries right now.

He suspected that it was vampires as soon as he smelled the blood, but the bites confirm it. Arthur tries, he really does, to ask in a non-judgemental tone, but he's just not very good at it. His default voice is sharp.

"What happened?"

Well he does turn his head to give Arthur a look at that tone of voice, and it's surprisingly spot-on considering how short of the mark everything else he's been doing has fallen so far, but he just doesn't have the energy to fight Arthur about it. He knows the difference by now anyway. Mostly.

"Seems Harris never learned to take 'no' for an answer."

Arthur takes a moment to check his tone again. He focuses on the task at hand, pressing the cloth to each wound to stop the bleeding once he's satisfied with the clean-up job.

"Why were you talking to Harris?"

"He wanted an alliance with the fae," Eames says with the tone of a man who is rapidly falling asleep, curling an arm under his head to try and get comfortable. Right now is probably the most forthcoming he's going to be, far too out of it to think about what he's saying, but he's probably not going to say anything he'll regret. Probably.

"Don't fall asleep, I might need you to move," Arthur says as he sees Eames trying to get comfortable. He moves slowly from wound to wound, starting with the largest and deepest to make sure the bleeding is stopped there first. Eames seems to have started to dry up for the most part anyway, but Arthur's slow and methodical about it. Once he doesn't see any more blood seeping out of the man on his couch, he grabs some antibiotic ointment and starts applying it with a cotton pad. You never know what some of those vampires have had in their mouth, after all.

"What did you do?"

He assumes Eames didn't just say a polite no and leave.

Why can't he just sleep? He'll be fine after sleeping, it's fine. He doesn't understand why Arthur can't understand that he should just be able to curl up and sleep for 18 hours. He sighs into his forearm and turns his head to look at Arthur, maybe looking at his face will help keep him awake.

"Told him the Court would never go for it." Maybe he wasn't exactly polite, but it was far from the kind of thing that'd inspire a reaction like this in most people. In fact Eames would go so far as to describe it as a 'gross overreaction.'

"You should have avoided him," Arthur says, dry and matter-of-fact. He still doubts that's all that went on, considering what he knows about Eames, but he leaves it at that. Eames is in too much of a state for Arthur to be chastising him or properly interrogating him about the exchange anyway.

In any case it's time to start actually applying some bandages, so Arthur gets to work on that.

Well, if it hadn't been Harris who invited him, maybe he would've. Either way, Eames has entirely checked out of this conversation. He closes his eyes again and nestles his head in the crook of his arm.

"Your voice has a really great timbre," is Eames' input on this topic instead, "when you're not being a prick."

Deep breath. The backhanded compliment doesn't test his patience too much, but he's having a hard time not pressing this Raymond Harris issue, and Eames is making it difficult to have a conversation given the fact that he seems to be passing out as they speak.

"I'm trying to make sure you don't bleed out," he says, "I think that cancels out me being a prick."

Eames hums softly, a quiet "mm" that does sound a little like he agrees, though Eames may just be hearing what he wants at this stage, who's to say?

"Why?" He asks after another moment or two, because now Arthur's said it in so many words, Eames doesn't exactly understand why he'd bother with this. The injuries might be serious but they're not fatal; as far as Eames can tell, just sending him on his merry way or even taking him home would've been a lot easier.

Arthur's busy smoothing down a bandage over one of the milder gouges. It's one of the last that might need one, the rest won't open back up too badly, and if they do they'll dry up quickly. He waits a moment for Eames to elaborate and then glances at his face, raising an eyebrow.

"Why what?"

"Why are you helping?" It's not that he doesn't understand basic decency, it's something Eames banks on quite regularly, but they've never operated in a way that would make him expect it from Arthur. They're not friends, they've never been anything approaching kind to eachother... but maybe that just says a lot about Eames instead of Arthur.

Arthur frowns as if the question is strange for him and he draws back a little. He supposes it's partly a holdover from the army - you can't let a teammate keep bleeding because they need to be in fighting form the next day. He almost says that Eames would do the same for him, but he doesn't know that to be true, and once he thinks about it he supposes it's probably not. Eames has seen many humans come and go, so he probably wouldn't put any extra effort into making sure one of them didn't go a little earlier than expected. The thought of that makes him feel a little small, so he takes a deep breath and finds something else to say.

"It would take a lot of work to find another contact as high up in the courts as you," he says. He can tell it's cold as soon as it comes out of his mouth, but right now he resents Eames a little for the hypothetical lack of help he would receive if the tables were turned, and he doesn't elaborate or take it back.

It gets a small chuckle out of Eames, evidently not feeling hard done by by the chilliness of it. He doesn't know if he believes it entirely — he knows Arthur well enough to know he rarely shares the entirety of his feelings on any topic without being pushed — but it's also hard to think of another way to ask him about it.

"The first time we had sex," he continues on after a moment, and it's an inelegant way to pursue tge topic but really he's just saying things as they occur to him, "you said you wanted to be able to trust me."

It's a question, even if he doesn’t phrase it like one, curiosity about what that meant and why he'd want it. Mostly if it's a human thing or an Arthur thing.

Arthur still feels small, suddenly so aware that he has an immortal being laid out on his couch. Sometimes it's easy to forget that Eames is as old as he is, that he doesn't look at life or relationships or anything quite the same, and it's making Arthur uneasy right now.

"I did," he says, trying to keep his voice level. He's done bandaging for now but he doesn't pack up, too anxious about what's to come. He knows Eames is asking for more information, but he has to brace himself, compose it in his head first.

"I guess I just wanted to know that at least one thing about you was sort of human," he says with a shrug, "that you were subject to some of the same... needs."

He knows that sounds dumb, so he elects to start packing away his things then, focusing on putting everything neatly back in its place rather than the conversation they're having right now.

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