fic: la petite mort (inception)
WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN. Yeah. I wrote Inception fic. ALREADY. Don't look at me like that. There was a thunderstorm tonight, I downed a better part of a bottle of reallllly bad Rose wine, and then I wandered over to the inception_kink meme, and WHOA HI. I HAD TO GO TO THERE. And then I realized I don't really know how to write fic that fits a comment box. HENCE THE NEED TO POST HERE.
So, um, the rest of this is under a cut. Namely to preserve the solemn spoiler-free zone the internet has kindly inhabited, haha. I'm sorry (I'm not sorry).
la petite mort (the little death machine)
inception. a kick can come in all forms; she’s learning fast. arthur/ariadne. rated r. 1224 words.
notes: sooooo, the prompt over at the aforementioned kink meme was: "3 layers down, 8 inches deep, and the orgasm is the kick." (I MEAN HOW DO YOU PASS THAT UP? I ASK OF YOU). and someone else has awesomely filled the prompt while I wrote this, and mine is a different take? as in, hey remember how Dom and Mal had to basically kill themselves via train to get out? I feel sort of strange writing this after only seeing the movie once (let's be real, I'm going again tomorrow), and I do have some giant mess of a fic already in the works, so, um, yeah. THIS IS FAR FROM QUALITY, FYI. as in, this is borderline embarrassingly bad and I've been debating the last 30 minutes posting it, hahaha. I JUST HAVE NO SENSE OF (FIC) WILLPOWER. Okay. Read and be merry.
This lesson comes later (pun possibly intended, it depends on the speaker: if it’s Ariadne, she wouldn’t mean it, if it was Eames, he definitely would mean it; if it’s Arthur, we’ve got a wildcard): orgasm can work as a kick, too.
First there was the ocean, and then they were farther up shore. And then they were kissing. Ariadne cannot decide which is the stranger part: how completely natural it feels - his hand cupping her jaw, the swift dive as his mouth met hers and she opened under him - or that she cannot remember how they got here. Arthur pushes her down into the sand, his weight braced on his free hand, the only parts of them touching their lips, his fingers caught in her hair, under her jaw.
It’s not like she was just going to dive into this job without any experience. While Cobb spent time with Yusuf, vials and chemicals, a drugged sleep to be created, Eames shadowed the Fischer heir, and Arthur showed her the lay of the land. Dead-end staircases gave way to concentric circles of mazes (hedgerows, she is unsure why her mind conjured hedgerows, but there they were, a royal garden; she was alone at the start and met him in the middle, clad only in the vest, no jacket, a watch held in his hand).
This time: Cobb and Eames were there. The first layer, a beach town somewhere on the East Coast, they left Cobb behind. The second layer, New York City, and there they left Eames. “You kids behave yourselves,” he said and then he laughed.
The third layer: a beach.
“This isn’t real,” she says into his mouth, an uptick on the final word, unsure whether she is asking him or telling him. He lowers his hips to hers and pushes her back. There is a wall behind her now.
He chuckles and she can taste him, feel his breath on her face.
“If you prefer to think so,” he says, and Ariadne doesn’t know what that means, doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean. This is her dream, he told her so, and she wonders if that makes this her responsibility (but this is him, she thinks, this isn’t a projection, this isn’t a shade, he put himself here, he put his mouth on her mouth, a hand between her thighs, and somewhere they are asleep, a dream within a dream within a dream, three levels down, “and this,” Eames said, “is when it gets tricky,” and when they told her on the second layer, when Arthur said, “we’re going lower,” she had asked, “but how do we leave?” and Arthur said, “I’m going to show you a trick,” and this is the trick, she thinks, his hands cradling her hips too tight, his cock straining against the front of his trousers, against the inside of her thigh, something wildly inevitable about the entire exchange, about the dream - he’ll fuck her, and then she’ll wake up, he’ll wake up, this is his dream, too).
He hisses a breath when her fingers skim against him, his own hands abandoning her hips and pulling at his belt, the zip, his trousers down and past his hips and she watches, wonders why she doesn’t feel more detached than this. “This isn’t real,” she told him, and he laughed. His fingers are rough and clumsy against her, pulling at the side of her panties, knuckles brushing over her, thumb finding her clit and she squirms. In a dream, she had always thought, there would be more finesse - in a dream, the muscles of her thighs wouldn’t ache, spread so far, tailbone already sore, her weight pressed strange as his weight presses down on her, as he presses into her. He thrusts in hard, fast, the first time, and she thinks she says his name - just once.
(“You ever talk in your sleep?” Arthur asked her once. She had arched an eyebrow.
“I’m asleep,” she said. “How should I know?”)
His hips are slim in between her own, his skin still wet from the sea under her hands, muscle trembling at his stomach, and there’s music - there is the crash of the surf, but there is also music, the sound of the sea fading, a woman’s voice rising above it.
“Do you hear that?” she asks, her voice rough and out of breath with the question. There is no sand under them, only unforgiving marble, a dome over their heads that had not been there a moment before, and is she doing that? Is she building this place? Is the woman still singing?
Arthur grunts, the sound opening into a gasp broken and caught in the back of his throat. His hand is hot under her bare thigh, hoisting her leg higher against him, and her eyes tear, body bent in half, his body leaning heavy over hers, and he’s deep, too deep (she thinks, I’m going to feel this for days, and then she thinks, no, no, when she stands, when she awakens, she won’t feel a thing, like phantom limbs, phantom fucking, and if she wasn’t already so far gone - his hips moving desperately now, cock hitting her just right inside her, rightthere rightthere rightthere - she would probably laugh).
His hand reaches between them, fingers back on her clit, and she keens, but Arthur does not laugh. He leans down, face tense, and, “Tell me you’re close,” he says, “tell me you’re close.” And she would, she really, really would, but when she opens her mouth, there is no sound, just the ocean, loud and near, just the woman, still singing, and the wall begins to give behind her as she grounds out a shaky yes, and Arthur sighs, he tells her to come, he says, “do it, come for me, come now,” and she can feel it - she feels herself clench around him once, the involuntary rise of her hips, the corded muscle of his neck under her fingers, she feels it, she feels him, and he says, “come,” and she and she and she -
She wakes on a gasp, back arched away from the reclining lawn chair, face red and flushed. It’s funny, she will think later (and as an aside, she will think a lot of things later: she’ll think of winding staircases that never end, the game Mouse Trap, the name M.C. Escher, not the name ripe on her lips, his cock pushing into her, she’ll be blushing then too, and she’ll think about seeing him the next day, she’ll think about fucking him again, the divide between reality and the imagined still standing), it’s funny how strange the shock of loneliness had felt, the first flicker of her eyelids and then all that daylight, the vaulted empty ceiling, her scarf still warm around her neck.
Arthur is already awake beside her, his chair toppled over. He clears his throat, a small pull at the already loosened tie at his neck, and he stands.
“You’re a fast learner,” he says, high color on his cheeks quickly fading. Ariadne still hasn’t moved. He pulls his hand from his pocket and tosses a red die into the air, catching it neatly. “Same time tomorrow?” he asks. From across the room Eames laughs.
And then he winks.
fin.
So, um, the rest of this is under a cut. Namely to preserve the solemn spoiler-free zone the internet has kindly inhabited, haha. I'm sorry (I'm not sorry).
la petite mort (the little death machine)
inception. a kick can come in all forms; she’s learning fast. arthur/ariadne. rated r. 1224 words.
notes: sooooo, the prompt over at the aforementioned kink meme was: "3 layers down, 8 inches deep, and the orgasm is the kick." (I MEAN HOW DO YOU PASS THAT UP? I ASK OF YOU). and someone else has awesomely filled the prompt while I wrote this, and mine is a different take? as in, hey remember how Dom and Mal had to basically kill themselves via train to get out? I feel sort of strange writing this after only seeing the movie once (let's be real, I'm going again tomorrow), and I do have some giant mess of a fic already in the works, so, um, yeah. THIS IS FAR FROM QUALITY, FYI. as in, this is borderline embarrassingly bad and I've been debating the last 30 minutes posting it, hahaha. I JUST HAVE NO SENSE OF (FIC) WILLPOWER. Okay. Read and be merry.
This lesson comes later (pun possibly intended, it depends on the speaker: if it’s Ariadne, she wouldn’t mean it, if it was Eames, he definitely would mean it; if it’s Arthur, we’ve got a wildcard): orgasm can work as a kick, too.
First there was the ocean, and then they were farther up shore. And then they were kissing. Ariadne cannot decide which is the stranger part: how completely natural it feels - his hand cupping her jaw, the swift dive as his mouth met hers and she opened under him - or that she cannot remember how they got here. Arthur pushes her down into the sand, his weight braced on his free hand, the only parts of them touching their lips, his fingers caught in her hair, under her jaw.
It’s not like she was just going to dive into this job without any experience. While Cobb spent time with Yusuf, vials and chemicals, a drugged sleep to be created, Eames shadowed the Fischer heir, and Arthur showed her the lay of the land. Dead-end staircases gave way to concentric circles of mazes (hedgerows, she is unsure why her mind conjured hedgerows, but there they were, a royal garden; she was alone at the start and met him in the middle, clad only in the vest, no jacket, a watch held in his hand).
This time: Cobb and Eames were there. The first layer, a beach town somewhere on the East Coast, they left Cobb behind. The second layer, New York City, and there they left Eames. “You kids behave yourselves,” he said and then he laughed.
The third layer: a beach.
“This isn’t real,” she says into his mouth, an uptick on the final word, unsure whether she is asking him or telling him. He lowers his hips to hers and pushes her back. There is a wall behind her now.
He chuckles and she can taste him, feel his breath on her face.
“If you prefer to think so,” he says, and Ariadne doesn’t know what that means, doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean. This is her dream, he told her so, and she wonders if that makes this her responsibility (but this is him, she thinks, this isn’t a projection, this isn’t a shade, he put himself here, he put his mouth on her mouth, a hand between her thighs, and somewhere they are asleep, a dream within a dream within a dream, three levels down, “and this,” Eames said, “is when it gets tricky,” and when they told her on the second layer, when Arthur said, “we’re going lower,” she had asked, “but how do we leave?” and Arthur said, “I’m going to show you a trick,” and this is the trick, she thinks, his hands cradling her hips too tight, his cock straining against the front of his trousers, against the inside of her thigh, something wildly inevitable about the entire exchange, about the dream - he’ll fuck her, and then she’ll wake up, he’ll wake up, this is his dream, too).
He hisses a breath when her fingers skim against him, his own hands abandoning her hips and pulling at his belt, the zip, his trousers down and past his hips and she watches, wonders why she doesn’t feel more detached than this. “This isn’t real,” she told him, and he laughed. His fingers are rough and clumsy against her, pulling at the side of her panties, knuckles brushing over her, thumb finding her clit and she squirms. In a dream, she had always thought, there would be more finesse - in a dream, the muscles of her thighs wouldn’t ache, spread so far, tailbone already sore, her weight pressed strange as his weight presses down on her, as he presses into her. He thrusts in hard, fast, the first time, and she thinks she says his name - just once.
(“You ever talk in your sleep?” Arthur asked her once. She had arched an eyebrow.
“I’m asleep,” she said. “How should I know?”)
His hips are slim in between her own, his skin still wet from the sea under her hands, muscle trembling at his stomach, and there’s music - there is the crash of the surf, but there is also music, the sound of the sea fading, a woman’s voice rising above it.
“Do you hear that?” she asks, her voice rough and out of breath with the question. There is no sand under them, only unforgiving marble, a dome over their heads that had not been there a moment before, and is she doing that? Is she building this place? Is the woman still singing?
Arthur grunts, the sound opening into a gasp broken and caught in the back of his throat. His hand is hot under her bare thigh, hoisting her leg higher against him, and her eyes tear, body bent in half, his body leaning heavy over hers, and he’s deep, too deep (she thinks, I’m going to feel this for days, and then she thinks, no, no, when she stands, when she awakens, she won’t feel a thing, like phantom limbs, phantom fucking, and if she wasn’t already so far gone - his hips moving desperately now, cock hitting her just right inside her, rightthere rightthere rightthere - she would probably laugh).
His hand reaches between them, fingers back on her clit, and she keens, but Arthur does not laugh. He leans down, face tense, and, “Tell me you’re close,” he says, “tell me you’re close.” And she would, she really, really would, but when she opens her mouth, there is no sound, just the ocean, loud and near, just the woman, still singing, and the wall begins to give behind her as she grounds out a shaky yes, and Arthur sighs, he tells her to come, he says, “do it, come for me, come now,” and she can feel it - she feels herself clench around him once, the involuntary rise of her hips, the corded muscle of his neck under her fingers, she feels it, she feels him, and he says, “come,” and she and she and she -
She wakes on a gasp, back arched away from the reclining lawn chair, face red and flushed. It’s funny, she will think later (and as an aside, she will think a lot of things later: she’ll think of winding staircases that never end, the game Mouse Trap, the name M.C. Escher, not the name ripe on her lips, his cock pushing into her, she’ll be blushing then too, and she’ll think about seeing him the next day, she’ll think about fucking him again, the divide between reality and the imagined still standing), it’s funny how strange the shock of loneliness had felt, the first flicker of her eyelids and then all that daylight, the vaulted empty ceiling, her scarf still warm around her neck.
Arthur is already awake beside her, his chair toppled over. He clears his throat, a small pull at the already loosened tie at his neck, and he stands.
“You’re a fast learner,” he says, high color on his cheeks quickly fading. Ariadne still hasn’t moved. He pulls his hand from his pocket and tosses a red die into the air, catching it neatly. “Same time tomorrow?” he asks. From across the room Eames laughs.
And then he winks.
fin.