Inception: Shift the World to Suit Us
Title: Shift the World to Suit Us (001 - 010)
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Arthur/Ariadne
Rating: PG-R
Word Count: bet. 200-400 words each
Summary: Careful the ones who twist and blur the edges of reality, for they will blur into each other as well.
001 - All Too Real
She is free with her kisses and free with her words -
(I love you, I love you, I -)
- but her heart hides behind the bruises that slide from limb to limb beneath her skin. She dreams vividly. She blurs the line between what's real and what's in her head, and sometimes she'll feel the repercussions, good and bad, long after she wakes. He's noticed what the dreaming often does to her, and only once has he asked if she was alright afterwards; she's not sure whether to be thankful or nervous that Arthur knows to let her decide when enough is enough.
(It does not do to dwell in dreams)
She wonders sometimes if he's something of her own creation, spun out of nothing from the middle of the maze, and her heart will race and her fingers will drop to the chesspiece in her pocket and only half the time is she placated by it. The other half fears she'll wake up.
(Hey. Hey, hey, look at me, you're okay. You're okay.)
The days feel so much like falling, like the bottom's dropped out of her stomach and her heart's all lodged up in her throat, and a part of her is afraid to wonder what would happen in her dreams if she gets too used to feeling the kick while conscious.
002 - Sound and Silence
He calls her Aria (precise, beautiful, emotive, creative) in the hours you'd find most people dreaming. They're often dreaming themselves, but in the end it never matters if they're lucid or alseep - the emotions and sensations are the same.
It's not a pet name, not by any means; Eames calls people by pet names. (darling, he's called her, and kitten, and pet, and she smiles at how it makes her lover bristle every time) Arthur, though, is much more private, even delicate, with his endearments.
Her name on his lips, a whisper, a butterfly kiss that's all at once as elegant and opulent as the rooms he's dreamt for them, sounds like a secret murmured from composer's lips to paper. There is music in his throat (an opera in her ears - don't wake, not yet) and he transcribes it against the inside of her wrists as if she's something fleeting and lovely, a song he'll forget like filigree curls of cigarette smoke if trusted to his memory alone.
His lips trace the staves her tendons raise beneath the skin and in her head he's a musician, better suited for listless languid art than for deception (he plays her like a violin, all deft and gentle fingers on her strings), but he'd rather play only to her audience of one, and she will keep his secrets spun like music in his breath against her ear.
003 - Lost Things
It was supposed to get easier after the Fischer job. He's supposed get used to people like he got used to sharing his headspace; you draw them in but keep that last iota of distance to protect yourself -
(from her, from him, from making Cobb's mistakes and maybe even from making his own)
- and keep your head your own. He swears there must be a way for the people he lets in to leave his dreams still holding to some minuscule piece of him-he never seems to notice things are missing until it's too late, and for all his research and care and precision he can't seem to prevent losing a little more to her every time he sleeps.
(she's stealing things he'll never get back)
Even in his rare organic dreams he'll find her, and most times his hand will seek the red die in his pocket, just to be sure. But he forgets it more often than he likes to think about.
(is reality ever really better than our dreams?)
He knows she's nothing more than his projection, her details a little too foggy, her body vague where his memories fail to flesh it out, but he'll dip his face into the curve where her neck meets her shoulder
(he's memorized the angle but the measurement escapes him)
and breathe in the lavender he imagines at the spot just behind her ear. He wants to pretend she's reality. He wants to get lost in her. He wants more than is safe to pursue.
(when you can dream anything, why return to what you have?)
004 - Grasp
The morning after, he stares after her brisk steps across the warehouse to the workbench. She busies her hands with her models and mockups and his eyes catch the sway of slender hips, the silky pale strip of bare flesh above her jeans as she slides onto one of the stools
(all he can think of is how the jut of her pelvic bones fit against his palms)
Too suddenly his world narrows to her lip caught between her teeth in concentration, and the way she's tossed an errant lock of hair behind her shoulder is far more inappropriate than it has right to be.
(he pushes his hands through her tumble of curls to hold the kiss to his throat)
He shuffles the case file rather more violently than is necessary and searches the table beside her for a pencil, ignoring the three that lay quite obviously within his easy reach.
"Those not good enough for you?" she asks, her voice an upward lilt to match the half-smile, and nudges the Ticonderogas toward his hand.
(she laughs and he can feel the smile on her lips against his collarbone)
Arthur raises an eyebrow and steals the pencil tucked behind her ear.
(there's really very little else worthy enough to occupy his mind or his hands ever again)
"This one's sharper."
005 - Voids
Ephemeral music curls around her thoughts, like drops of blood bursting in delicate red tendrils through water, and though the song's the same it's always different
(different places, different dreams, different lives they've lived together in the abyss)
when it plays in dreams she shares with no one but herself. Odd, how they've become so like life, the dreams. Even to the point where she finds herself wanting to share a good number of them.
(A projection-it's him but it's not, his skin's not warm enough, his face not quite as defined)
The weeks since parting ways at LAX seem much longer than what's real. Days between them stretch out, linear and predictable and jarring like shards of glass beneath her feet, compared to the fluid, exponential lives she'd felt in that Paris warehouse. Time is cold.
(he presses into her, bodies flush and heartbeats shared-warm but not the raw heat she remembers)
He's dropped clean off the earth. He's left an ache in parts of her she hadn't known were empty, but she isn't surprised; there isn't much else to expect from a man bred to disappear, nor from the girl who shapes whole cities to suit her. He's dissolved into the blood and water of her dreams, and maybe it's safer that way.
(disappear with me, in the worlds I'll make for us)
The music sharpens; shrill and tinny and too real to be the same French from her memories. Non, je ne regrette rien - except it skrieks from her phone on the side table. His name blinks on the screen above the time-4:16 AM.
(disappear with me)
006 - From Whence We Came
They return to the hotel, his hotel - the second level, only this time their visit is as slow and unhurried as the first was a frenzy of nerves. She'd stop to admire every last detail, commit them to memory all over again for pure pleasure this time around if (his lips weren't against her ear and his breath against her neck not quite so warm) she wasn't so preoccupied.
He leads her to a different floor, different hallway, different room than the one she remembers, and this time his fingers tangle with hers on the way up the stairs (much better than elevators for stealing kisses between floors), and her hair tumbles down her back and the dream would feel surreal if it wasn't already so familiar.
Deja vu is a better term (hasn't she fallen into this bed before-? no, no, it's his mouth that feels the same), and Ariadne knows, and Arthur most definitely knows, that memory is an unsafe thing to play with. But this time seems to be a special case; after all, a place built for a dream can't be mistaken for reality. At least, not by the both of them.
"I'm happy," she says, infusing the kiss with her smile, and her nose nudges his and for just a single split second he thinks he could get used to the messy, ragged edges love is leaving on his heart. He could stay here because (this is reality for them in this moment) it is where she is. She, Ariadne, all of her, every inch of her body tangible and real in his hands, the one thing he would never even at his wildest dream differently.
(dangerous, dangerous, pull back from the edge before you fall and it's too late)
In the end it's the very feel of her, the arches and curves and sharp lines of his flesh against hers, that wrench him back to the truth. She is solid where the rest of this world is malleable, filling in all the gaps his mind would have left blank. Her starkness is what puts the dream to shame.
007 - Making Progress
Ariadne has gotten fairly proficient at avoiding his projections, and has learned to be more subdued while building in dreams that aren't her own. It draws less attention to her, and a smidgen of pride wells in him that she seems to have outfoxed him for the time being. Or, at least, he'd like to believe it's her skill rather than his willingness to share his headspace with her that's caused his defenses to slacken.
(he will lie awake later, wondering if loving Mal had done the same to Cobb)
For now, though, he appraises how she's reined herself in, keeping her creations subtle and careful while she gallivants around in someone else's head. The breeze, the way it winds around their bodies, dances through the wisps trailing from the edges of the clouds overhead and catches the flag she's replaced with the same paiseley print as her scarf...it's marvelous. The birds need work, though - no pigeon in a city is that skittish - and she notices just a minute too late that it's made him narrow his eyes.
(he will push her farther tomorrow; be more careful, you can never be to careful)
"I'll fix it next time, then," she says, scanning his face for a yea or nay answer. "Maybe seagulls at a beach or something."
(he will have a difficult time scrutinizing the dream rather than the bows cinching her bikini to her hips)
008 - Dark of the Night
He's lean and wiry beside her in bed, and she could run her fingers over the ridges of muscle and bone (she will try to replicate each arch and angle later, and hope no one will recognize her dream-spun world for what it is) but gets distracted suddenly by the smoothness of his face.
His hair is a mess across his forehead and his closed eyes are peaceful, but what gets to her most is the absence of the little crease between his eyebrows - it transforms his whole face into someone else, someone younger and less hunted than the Arthur she knows. Ariadne hasn't the foggiest what monsters lurk in his past or under his bed (she knows precious little about him at all, and sometimes it scares her but mostly she accepts it for what it is) but her desire to know is outweighed by this new and marrow-deep need to coexist with him. Really it's quite a bit more than just coexistence at this point, but it's messy and the boundaries are sketchy and she has no better word for it.
The line of his pelvis is sharp where the sheets pool around him and she follows his contours with her fingertips, delights in the wave of shivers that arcs beneath his skin. He doesn't stir, and Ariadne can't decide if she's relieved or disappointed by it; lying awake at night is less distressing with company, and maybe if she were otherwise occupied she wouldn't be wondering what it is she's gotten herself into.
(she can't fathom why the darkness makes her worry when he's made her feel more alive than anything else)
009 - Limbo
There comes a day when his worst fears rear their ugly heads like a monster out of long-forgotten myth, and he washes up with her on that godforsaken shore and for the first time in years, he remembers what true panic feels like.
(the wash of ice and glass and acid through his veins, pumped by a hummingbird heart hell-bent on destroying what's left of him)
She gasps for air beside him. Fear spreads like a rumor and his mind kicks into fifth gear, reeling and cursing and what-have-I-done's chasing themselves in his head. He feels her against his side, wet and heavy like the clothes hanging off his body; he wants to grab her arms and help her up, but most of all he can't bear to look at her and see the accusation he anticipates splashed across her face.
(all those mistakes he'd researched away, he knew it was too far, dammit, he knew - but he was desperate and pushed til the levels rebelled and he damned himself and lost them anyway)
He takes her hands and helps Ariadne clamber to the sand. She coughs hard. Nothing stretches out until infinity before them. Nothing. Blank canvas and seas. Infinite potential - and in the creases of his mind where he doesn't dare elaborate, he staggers beneath the possibilities of what they might create here.
(there's a library in his imagination, full of dust and books with yellowed, curling edges, and she is curled up in his lap in a creaking leather armchair, basking a pool of light that drapes down from the windows)
He needs to get them out of here.
010 - Smile Lines
"I wish I got to see these more," she says, and fits her fingertip against the dimple in his cheek. "You don't smile nearly enough. Or laugh."
(maybe he does, maybe he doesn't - she is the only one who ever sees most of them)
"Just because I'm not smiling doesn't mean I'm not happy." Arthur props himself up on one elbow, takes the hand she's brought to his face and kisses her knuckles. "Right now, for instance, I am perfectly content to lie here with you until the world ends. It's not really a grinning-ear-to-ear kind of feeling."
(it's the kind that settles back behind his lungs, and spreads out through his chest with a sort of warmth that just might feel like peace, or damn close to it)
"Well, look at you, being all romantic." Ariadne gives him a smirk that's almost like she wants to hide the way her eyes are staring past him. He likes the way she looks all lost in thought.
(he loves how her eyes soften when they fall on him)
"I wasn't trying to be," he says, and laces their fingers together, rolls onto his back. "I was just stating a fact for the sake of my argument." She gives him a look, cheek braced on her palm, and half his mouth turns up at the corner.
(she leans over to press those smirking lips to his, her hair falls against his cheek and hides his face and Arthur smiles then, for real)
A/N: Yes? No? Maybe? Questions? Comments? Flamethrowers? Go easy on me, I've only seen the film once TT_TT I have to buy Inception the second the opportunity presents itself.
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Arthur/Ariadne
Rating: PG-R
Word Count: bet. 200-400 words each
Summary: Careful the ones who twist and blur the edges of reality, for they will blur into each other as well.
001 - All Too Real
She is free with her kisses and free with her words -
(I love you, I love you, I -)
- but her heart hides behind the bruises that slide from limb to limb beneath her skin. She dreams vividly. She blurs the line between what's real and what's in her head, and sometimes she'll feel the repercussions, good and bad, long after she wakes. He's noticed what the dreaming often does to her, and only once has he asked if she was alright afterwards; she's not sure whether to be thankful or nervous that Arthur knows to let her decide when enough is enough.
(It does not do to dwell in dreams)
She wonders sometimes if he's something of her own creation, spun out of nothing from the middle of the maze, and her heart will race and her fingers will drop to the chesspiece in her pocket and only half the time is she placated by it. The other half fears she'll wake up.
(Hey. Hey, hey, look at me, you're okay. You're okay.)
The days feel so much like falling, like the bottom's dropped out of her stomach and her heart's all lodged up in her throat, and a part of her is afraid to wonder what would happen in her dreams if she gets too used to feeling the kick while conscious.
002 - Sound and Silence
He calls her Aria (precise, beautiful, emotive, creative) in the hours you'd find most people dreaming. They're often dreaming themselves, but in the end it never matters if they're lucid or alseep - the emotions and sensations are the same.
It's not a pet name, not by any means; Eames calls people by pet names. (darling, he's called her, and kitten, and pet, and she smiles at how it makes her lover bristle every time) Arthur, though, is much more private, even delicate, with his endearments.
Her name on his lips, a whisper, a butterfly kiss that's all at once as elegant and opulent as the rooms he's dreamt for them, sounds like a secret murmured from composer's lips to paper. There is music in his throat (an opera in her ears - don't wake, not yet) and he transcribes it against the inside of her wrists as if she's something fleeting and lovely, a song he'll forget like filigree curls of cigarette smoke if trusted to his memory alone.
His lips trace the staves her tendons raise beneath the skin and in her head he's a musician, better suited for listless languid art than for deception (he plays her like a violin, all deft and gentle fingers on her strings), but he'd rather play only to her audience of one, and she will keep his secrets spun like music in his breath against her ear.
003 - Lost Things
It was supposed to get easier after the Fischer job. He's supposed get used to people like he got used to sharing his headspace; you draw them in but keep that last iota of distance to protect yourself -
(from her, from him, from making Cobb's mistakes and maybe even from making his own)
- and keep your head your own. He swears there must be a way for the people he lets in to leave his dreams still holding to some minuscule piece of him-he never seems to notice things are missing until it's too late, and for all his research and care and precision he can't seem to prevent losing a little more to her every time he sleeps.
(she's stealing things he'll never get back)
Even in his rare organic dreams he'll find her, and most times his hand will seek the red die in his pocket, just to be sure. But he forgets it more often than he likes to think about.
(is reality ever really better than our dreams?)
He knows she's nothing more than his projection, her details a little too foggy, her body vague where his memories fail to flesh it out, but he'll dip his face into the curve where her neck meets her shoulder
(he's memorized the angle but the measurement escapes him)
and breathe in the lavender he imagines at the spot just behind her ear. He wants to pretend she's reality. He wants to get lost in her. He wants more than is safe to pursue.
(when you can dream anything, why return to what you have?)
004 - Grasp
The morning after, he stares after her brisk steps across the warehouse to the workbench. She busies her hands with her models and mockups and his eyes catch the sway of slender hips, the silky pale strip of bare flesh above her jeans as she slides onto one of the stools
(all he can think of is how the jut of her pelvic bones fit against his palms)
Too suddenly his world narrows to her lip caught between her teeth in concentration, and the way she's tossed an errant lock of hair behind her shoulder is far more inappropriate than it has right to be.
(he pushes his hands through her tumble of curls to hold the kiss to his throat)
He shuffles the case file rather more violently than is necessary and searches the table beside her for a pencil, ignoring the three that lay quite obviously within his easy reach.
"Those not good enough for you?" she asks, her voice an upward lilt to match the half-smile, and nudges the Ticonderogas toward his hand.
(she laughs and he can feel the smile on her lips against his collarbone)
Arthur raises an eyebrow and steals the pencil tucked behind her ear.
(there's really very little else worthy enough to occupy his mind or his hands ever again)
"This one's sharper."
005 - Voids
Ephemeral music curls around her thoughts, like drops of blood bursting in delicate red tendrils through water, and though the song's the same it's always different
(different places, different dreams, different lives they've lived together in the abyss)
when it plays in dreams she shares with no one but herself. Odd, how they've become so like life, the dreams. Even to the point where she finds herself wanting to share a good number of them.
(A projection-it's him but it's not, his skin's not warm enough, his face not quite as defined)
The weeks since parting ways at LAX seem much longer than what's real. Days between them stretch out, linear and predictable and jarring like shards of glass beneath her feet, compared to the fluid, exponential lives she'd felt in that Paris warehouse. Time is cold.
(he presses into her, bodies flush and heartbeats shared-warm but not the raw heat she remembers)
He's dropped clean off the earth. He's left an ache in parts of her she hadn't known were empty, but she isn't surprised; there isn't much else to expect from a man bred to disappear, nor from the girl who shapes whole cities to suit her. He's dissolved into the blood and water of her dreams, and maybe it's safer that way.
(disappear with me, in the worlds I'll make for us)
The music sharpens; shrill and tinny and too real to be the same French from her memories. Non, je ne regrette rien - except it skrieks from her phone on the side table. His name blinks on the screen above the time-4:16 AM.
(disappear with me)
006 - From Whence We Came
They return to the hotel, his hotel - the second level, only this time their visit is as slow and unhurried as the first was a frenzy of nerves. She'd stop to admire every last detail, commit them to memory all over again for pure pleasure this time around if (his lips weren't against her ear and his breath against her neck not quite so warm) she wasn't so preoccupied.
He leads her to a different floor, different hallway, different room than the one she remembers, and this time his fingers tangle with hers on the way up the stairs (much better than elevators for stealing kisses between floors), and her hair tumbles down her back and the dream would feel surreal if it wasn't already so familiar.
Deja vu is a better term (hasn't she fallen into this bed before-? no, no, it's his mouth that feels the same), and Ariadne knows, and Arthur most definitely knows, that memory is an unsafe thing to play with. But this time seems to be a special case; after all, a place built for a dream can't be mistaken for reality. At least, not by the both of them.
"I'm happy," she says, infusing the kiss with her smile, and her nose nudges his and for just a single split second he thinks he could get used to the messy, ragged edges love is leaving on his heart. He could stay here because (this is reality for them in this moment) it is where she is. She, Ariadne, all of her, every inch of her body tangible and real in his hands, the one thing he would never even at his wildest dream differently.
(dangerous, dangerous, pull back from the edge before you fall and it's too late)
In the end it's the very feel of her, the arches and curves and sharp lines of his flesh against hers, that wrench him back to the truth. She is solid where the rest of this world is malleable, filling in all the gaps his mind would have left blank. Her starkness is what puts the dream to shame.
007 - Making Progress
Ariadne has gotten fairly proficient at avoiding his projections, and has learned to be more subdued while building in dreams that aren't her own. It draws less attention to her, and a smidgen of pride wells in him that she seems to have outfoxed him for the time being. Or, at least, he'd like to believe it's her skill rather than his willingness to share his headspace with her that's caused his defenses to slacken.
(he will lie awake later, wondering if loving Mal had done the same to Cobb)
For now, though, he appraises how she's reined herself in, keeping her creations subtle and careful while she gallivants around in someone else's head. The breeze, the way it winds around their bodies, dances through the wisps trailing from the edges of the clouds overhead and catches the flag she's replaced with the same paiseley print as her scarf...it's marvelous. The birds need work, though - no pigeon in a city is that skittish - and she notices just a minute too late that it's made him narrow his eyes.
(he will push her farther tomorrow; be more careful, you can never be to careful)
"I'll fix it next time, then," she says, scanning his face for a yea or nay answer. "Maybe seagulls at a beach or something."
(he will have a difficult time scrutinizing the dream rather than the bows cinching her bikini to her hips)
008 - Dark of the Night
He's lean and wiry beside her in bed, and she could run her fingers over the ridges of muscle and bone (she will try to replicate each arch and angle later, and hope no one will recognize her dream-spun world for what it is) but gets distracted suddenly by the smoothness of his face.
His hair is a mess across his forehead and his closed eyes are peaceful, but what gets to her most is the absence of the little crease between his eyebrows - it transforms his whole face into someone else, someone younger and less hunted than the Arthur she knows. Ariadne hasn't the foggiest what monsters lurk in his past or under his bed (she knows precious little about him at all, and sometimes it scares her but mostly she accepts it for what it is) but her desire to know is outweighed by this new and marrow-deep need to coexist with him. Really it's quite a bit more than just coexistence at this point, but it's messy and the boundaries are sketchy and she has no better word for it.
The line of his pelvis is sharp where the sheets pool around him and she follows his contours with her fingertips, delights in the wave of shivers that arcs beneath his skin. He doesn't stir, and Ariadne can't decide if she's relieved or disappointed by it; lying awake at night is less distressing with company, and maybe if she were otherwise occupied she wouldn't be wondering what it is she's gotten herself into.
(she can't fathom why the darkness makes her worry when he's made her feel more alive than anything else)
009 - Limbo
There comes a day when his worst fears rear their ugly heads like a monster out of long-forgotten myth, and he washes up with her on that godforsaken shore and for the first time in years, he remembers what true panic feels like.
(the wash of ice and glass and acid through his veins, pumped by a hummingbird heart hell-bent on destroying what's left of him)
She gasps for air beside him. Fear spreads like a rumor and his mind kicks into fifth gear, reeling and cursing and what-have-I-done's chasing themselves in his head. He feels her against his side, wet and heavy like the clothes hanging off his body; he wants to grab her arms and help her up, but most of all he can't bear to look at her and see the accusation he anticipates splashed across her face.
(all those mistakes he'd researched away, he knew it was too far, dammit, he knew - but he was desperate and pushed til the levels rebelled and he damned himself and lost them anyway)
He takes her hands and helps Ariadne clamber to the sand. She coughs hard. Nothing stretches out until infinity before them. Nothing. Blank canvas and seas. Infinite potential - and in the creases of his mind where he doesn't dare elaborate, he staggers beneath the possibilities of what they might create here.
(there's a library in his imagination, full of dust and books with yellowed, curling edges, and she is curled up in his lap in a creaking leather armchair, basking a pool of light that drapes down from the windows)
He needs to get them out of here.
010 - Smile Lines
"I wish I got to see these more," she says, and fits her fingertip against the dimple in his cheek. "You don't smile nearly enough. Or laugh."
(maybe he does, maybe he doesn't - she is the only one who ever sees most of them)
"Just because I'm not smiling doesn't mean I'm not happy." Arthur props himself up on one elbow, takes the hand she's brought to his face and kisses her knuckles. "Right now, for instance, I am perfectly content to lie here with you until the world ends. It's not really a grinning-ear-to-ear kind of feeling."
(it's the kind that settles back behind his lungs, and spreads out through his chest with a sort of warmth that just might feel like peace, or damn close to it)
"Well, look at you, being all romantic." Ariadne gives him a smirk that's almost like she wants to hide the way her eyes are staring past him. He likes the way she looks all lost in thought.
(he loves how her eyes soften when they fall on him)
"I wasn't trying to be," he says, and laces their fingers together, rolls onto his back. "I was just stating a fact for the sake of my argument." She gives him a look, cheek braced on her palm, and half his mouth turns up at the corner.
(she leans over to press those smirking lips to his, her hair falls against his cheek and hides his face and Arthur smiles then, for real)
A/N: Yes? No? Maybe? Questions? Comments? Flamethrowers? Go easy on me, I've only seen the film once TT_TT I have to buy Inception the second the opportunity presents itself.