Inception: Shift the World to Suit Us (021-030)
Title: Shift the World to Suit Us (021 - 030)
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. Ten more ficlets, this time with a few actually in chronological order. ~*le gasp!*~
(001 - 010)
(011 - 020)
021 - Protective
Tonight, it’s Eames rather than Arthur who’s the last to leave the warehouse before her. He lingers around the opposite side of her workbench, aimlessly paging through some dossier or other until by chance she glances up and locks her eyes with his.
(he holds himself loosely, relaxed and at home as a cat in the sun, but that face of his has whole worlds buried in his eyes and not all of them are ones she’s keen to visit)
“I’d be careful with Arthur, if I were you,” he says, and Ariadne feels her ears heat with the shame of a child caught with her finger in a tub of frosting. Eames spares her the indignity of staring at her, and for that she isn’t sure whether to feel slighted or thankful; he wanders off toward the door, all interest in her personal life seemingly lost, as languid and nonchalant as ever.
(it’s the same coiled, wild-cat elegance she imagines is what keeps Eames alive in the dreams, as it’s doubtful that that easy, devil-may-care attitude of his is useful while being assaulted by projections)
“There are skeletons in that man’s closet even he’s not prepared to face.” He grabs his jacket, slings it over his shoulder. “Watch yourself.”
(part of her is still shrinking from embarrassment, but another small and strong-willed little part flares in defiance at being treated like a child-when none of this team would be anywhere without her)
“I appreciate the concern, Eames,” her exacto knife cuts the model foam board a bit more violently than necessary, “but I’m a big girl.”
(he faces her and there’s a sudden hard-edge to his eyes, and a narrow smile Ariadne doesn’t quite understand)
“I didn’t say it for your benefit only, darling.” And with that puzzling smile, the Forger strides away.
022 - Trials & Condemnation
(her presence is as much a comfort to him as it is immense pressure weighing on his chest; she is his breath while he’s left gasping desperately, a Salem witch condemned and crushed beneath stones without any crimes to confess)
He’s up early-too early, but despite the dreamless night there’s a heavy rush of adrenaline singing in his veins like fears through a dying man’s head. His die rests on the side table and he casts it once, just to be sure; the brush of skin on skin sets his every nerve alight and he needs a double-take, again just to be sure. Ariadne’s cheek is pillowed on his shoulder, fast asleep, and her arm draped across his chest and his fingers tangled with hers seem far too delicate, too intimate a thing for a man like him to wake up to.
(you’ll break her; you’ll ruin her, take everything from her, and then what? apologize?)
Mostly he wants to run. But it’s his bed and his flat and his arms he can’t seem to unfasten from her body, and the black monster growling in his stomach says to hell with it, she’s chosen you this way and if you fall, she’s falling too, she’s made her choice, so be it.
(how long are you intending to pretend this can go on?)
But when he thinks of pushing her away he can’t, it aches, and it may just condemn him all the same. There is no answer that will not end in wreckage for them both. He’s been jealous all his life of people blessed with her kind of devotion, and now that he’s found his own wretched self blessed he doesn’t know how to accept it.
(she murmurs in her sleep, soft sounds against his skin that make him pull her close as if it could protect her from himself)
023 - Taken Care Of
She must be dreaming. This is just far too bizarre to be reality.
(she would even laugh but she’s pretty sure it’ll make her cough up her insides, so she holds it in and ends up coughing anyway from the strain)
“Stop dying over there,” he calls from her tiny kitchen, “I’m doing this for your health, not mine.”
(he sounds so disgruntled and looks so out of place that this time Ariadne has to laugh, she simply can’t help herself, sick or not)
“I never pegged you for the domestic type, Arthur, this is new and exciting information to me,” she croaks past a weak smile. He doesn’t even need to turn around for her to know he’s rolling his eyes.
(there’s clanging and a crash and she thinks he may have broken something from the swearing under his breath, but waking up to extra blankets and him cooking in her kitchen is more than worth the eventual clean-up)
“You act like it’s a wonder I know how to use a stove,” he puts the steaming soup down on the side table and sits beside her badger den of blankets on the couch. It smells fantastic, but the thought of food right now just makes her want to retch. “I’ve lived alone for years, Ari, how else do you think I’ve survived this long?”
(it’s a side of him she’s never seen before and it makes her swell inside that he’s allowed her in as far as he has, if only inch by inch)
“I don’t know,” she coughs again, and forces a spoonful of soup down into her protesting stomach. “I figured you for a typical bachelor living out of his microwave.”
(he leans over and kisses her forehead, and it seems far more intimate than a kiss on the forehead should be)
“Oh ye of little faith,” he says, and smiles into her hair, an arm around her shoulders as she burrows against his side.
024 - Crossfire
(he is totally, unflinchingly, and desperately in love with her and god, oh god, oh god, anything but this to make him realize-)
There’s a lot of blood. She’s coughing and trying so hard not to cry and he wants this to be a dream so badly he would tear out his own heart to make it so, but he forces down the bile in his throat and puts pressure on the wound.
(vaguely he can hear Eames roaring into his phone and he hopes to hell it’s emergency services on the other end)
“I really…liked this dress,” she croaks and there’s a weak, watery smile on her lips even as her teeth grit through the pain-blood seeps thick and red through the teal fabric and stains it dark like bruises and his hands are slippery where they press through his jacket.
(her face clenches and her eyes flutter shut and he can tell it’s hard for her to even open them again)
“Shhh, Ari, Ari, look at me,” he says, one hand on her cheek to guide her gaze and the other buried in fabric and blood, “I need you to stay awake, okay? Just for a little while.” There’s a tremor way down deep in his throat and even though there’s no way she’ll have heard it he knows it’s there and he refuses to let her see him scared.
(Eames’ great heavy hands hold the ruined coat to Ariadne’s side, and he’s saying something Arthur doesn’t hear and all he can do is clutch his lover’s hand against his chest and count the seconds til he hears the sirens howl)
“It’s going to be alright. You’re going to be alright.”
025 - Caught Up In You
She wakes to the sterile smell of sickness and harsh light filtering through thin curtains, and it stings her eyes but it’s a welcome kind of pain-even the dull ache throbbing through her side with every heartbeat feels like the pulsing of relief. At the back of her head a voice niggles and she shoves it back down; when she’d passed out in the ambulance…she’d fully expected not to wake up.
(I never knew there’d come a day when I’d be saying to you, don’t let this good love slip away)
She’s cold from the flimsy hospital gown and a radio plays low from somewhere in the room-no, there’s got to be a speaker, and it sounds like her iPod-classic rock blooming softly in the background, and relief turns to something that sends shivers like breaking waves surging down her back.
(don’t, don’t you know the kind of man I am? no, said I’d never fall in love again)
Arthur is here. Leaning over onto her bed, his head on his arms, asleep.
(but it’s real and the feeling comes shining through)
Mercifully, the IV is hooked up to the wrist on her opposite side, and she’s able to push her fingers gently through his hair. He’s disheveled, still in the ruined clothes he’d been wearing the night she was shot-she can see what must be her blood smeared like rust on his sleeves-but he’s never left her.
(I’m so caught up in you, little girl, and I never did suspect a thing)
She smooths her hand over his cheek; there’s a few days’ worth of stubble and it scratches and despite all the tactile evidence surrounding her, she still can’t believe he’s never left her side.
(so caught up in you, little girl, that I never want to get myself free)
Her eyes sting and she wants to laugh or cry but it makes everything hurt and comes out more like a snuffle, and Arthur lifts his head and holds her cold hand against his face and kisses her palm, and the mix of emotions she sees there is like nothing else on the face of the earth.
026 - Damages
“Eames?” she asks frantically-as soon as she’s lucid and dealing with the pain enough to fall back down into reality.
(she could honestly use the morphine but she needs to hear this as herself and she doesn’t trust the drugs to spare her memory)
“Off the grid, for now,” Arthur leans forward, elbows on his knees, and the line between his eyebrows deepens. “He took out the one who attacked you.”
Ariadne swallows. “Is he safe? Does he know-?” Arthur nods and she releases a breath she hadn’t known she was holding (she swallows again to choke back tears of relief that well up and clog her throat and make her face throb with heat). “Who was he? The gunman?”
“Russian. Some kind of bodyguard, we think. He had no ID other than a card with his photo and employer.”
“And the Mark?” Arthur hesitates for a second, and Ariadne picks at a loose thread on the hospital blanket. Dread settles in her gut.
(they can’t afford to botch another job and failure sits heavy on her shoulders)
“Saito is taking care of it.”
“Saito?” she hisses and instantly regrets it; her stitches protest and send flares of pain lancing through her at the pressure in her lungs.
A wry, mirthless smile angles across his lips. “He said he’s returning the favor.” He rubs her cold hand between both of his own. “Besides, you’re valuable. To far more than just me.”
(useful, she’ll give them, but not much farther than that-at least, not anymore, but she hates the obsidian-glass edges in his eyes and would rather have him smile than ponder all the ways she’s fallen short)
“Hey,” she says, and runs her fingers over the back of his right shoulder. They come to rest on the ridges of old scar tissue there. “We match now.”
027 - Repair
She sleeps fitfully, and Arthur hopes to God it’s just because of the oppressive lack of privacy that comes with a stay in the hospital. He can’t exactly say he’s enjoying it himself-he’s been wearing the same clothes for four days-but leaving Ariadne here, even for a few hours, is the last thing in the cosmos he’s willing to do. Irrational? Yes. But the shock of almost having her torn away from him is still too sharp and present in his mind; he is acutely aware that a life of crime requires very close acquaintance with disaster, but knowing and accepting it are two very different things and it doesn’t make the harsh reality any easier to face.
(she’d begged him, fear so tangible in her eyes that it rippled through the rest of her small body, to make sure no word of the firefight reaches her family)
He holds her hand whenever she closes her eyes, as much for his comfort as hers. It’s the only way her hands have warmed up since she’s been here, and he’s glad to be able to lend her that small comfort rather than nothing at all.
(she sleeps better with him touching her as well; he’d rather it anyway, and physical contact grounds him here as much as it does her)
He knows it’s not the pain that bothers her. She avoids the subject of her injury like the plague, and only allows it when the nurses check on her and she has no choice. If he knows her by now, she’s worrying herself into oblivion-and as much as he tells her it isn’t her fault she matches him with all the silent pleading ways it is.
(between the job and Eames, keeping her secrets and making amends, Ariadne is eating away at her insides and Arthur worries he won’t be able to fill in all the pieces she tears out of herself)
028 - Sweet Slow Burn
Ariadne dreams them dappled sunlight and a bedroom and a soft white dress he slides reverent hands over like a whisper through delicate silence. The fluid folds hug her small body and drape like falling water to her knees, and Arthur traces the fabric’s edges with fingertips that skim along the low dip at her back. His hair is loose and falls around his face, woven through by the slender fingers holding him still.
(her kiss is long and hot and languid on his lips)
And from there it’s all a tangle of hesitant hands and shed clothing and shifting gravity that pulls them close and sets the world on edge. Heat rises between them, licks at their skin and spreads its sweet torture beneath this slow-burning haze; he is impatient but she catches his wrists and forces his hands to her waist, and she slips her palms up his sides and down his chest and works his shirt out from beneath his belt. Her body pressed against his thrums with life and he aches to pin her up against the wall and take her there, right now-but this dream is not the place, and he will love her soft and slow and kiss her ‘til her breath comes short and ragged.
(her pulse beats rapid and staccato, begging ‘closer, closer…’)
He pushes the straps of the dress down over her shoulders and layers kisses on the skin he reveals, and her slender fingers clench at his shirt and tug until the buttons come undone. His totem lies forgotten in his jacket on the floor and she is the only real thing left, pressed up close as he leaves hot, open-mouthed kisses on her throat, and he eases her back into the mattress when she sighs into his hair.
(make love to me)
029 - Past is Present
“Where are we?” Ariadne asks, a wary look in her eyes as she pushes wind-whipped hair out of her face. It’s bright, but drizzling, which she’s close to assuming things about, until he shoves his hands in his pockets and explains.
(it’s not an easy thing to relive, but it isn’t something he’s able to put into words and the dream is the next best thing)
“I spent a lot of my childhood here. And yeah, it’s supposed to be raining, don’t even start with me. It should stop soon.” Arthur takes off his jacket and sets it around her shoulders, and she slips her arms into the too-long sleeves. “Don’t look at me like that, I’m not showing you some traumatizing memory or anything.” He smiles and guides her forward with a hand at the small of her back. “I wasn’t a tortured soul of a kid; just a solitary one.”
(she resists the gentle push he gives her and ducks beneath his arm, and she fastens her arms around his waist and burrows her face against his chest)
He tries to disengage her but she tightens her grip on his lean waist and rubs her face against his shirt. “Oh no,” she says, “this is your dream. You can lead the way.”
(she looks up again and all of a sudden there’s a loaf of day-old bread in his hand that isn’t securing her to his side)
”Ducks?” she laughs as the tall grass gives way to the glassy surface of a pond, her smile more amused than confused. The waterfowl in question are indeed honking softly and preening as they paddle obliviously around. “You spent much of your formative years feeding ducks?”
(the raindrops come few and far between now, and he bends to kiss the top of her head)
“In case you haven’t noticed, Ariadne, there isn’t much by way of human contact out here. And for your information I spent most of my time aiming to bean them with pieces of bread, not feed them.”
(she tries very hard not to but the laughter bubbles up from her throat anyway, and she swats at his chest in an attempt to contain herself)
“I feel like this should surprise me. Except it doesn’t at all,” she eventually manages through giggles, and takes the bread from him, grinning like a mad six year old. “Were you a good shot then, too?”
030 - Transient
He misses Paris.
(her beignets for breakfast and his pain au chocolat, and the powdered sugar she’d smear on his sleeve in the morning)
He has never in his life experienced anything as singularly draining as those months in France had been. The nature of the job had made him nervous. Ariadne had made him nervous. His own head had made him nervous. He thinks it’s impressive he made it through the whole ordeal without developing a rainbow of ulcers.
(his clothes in her washer and that singular morning of confusion when he’d learnt Ariadne fancied wearing brightly-colored men’s briefs instead of girly underthings)
He’s stayed stateside for awhile-a long while-after going his own way in Los Angeles; he’d caught a late flight out to Chicago O’Hare and a cab to his old apartment in Pilsen. Since then he’s remembered just how stale and sometimes opressive the air is here, and when he thinks about it he isn’t exactly sure why he’s even stayed. The two jobs he’d taken since landing at LAX had wrapped up quickly. There’s not much to hang around for, save a few no-longer-fresh graves and what’s left of a family with no interest in seeing his face anymore.
(her body pressed up flush against his back, skin-on-skin, and the gentle sighs and murmurs she would whisper in her sleep)
Her term is almost over. He can feasibly go back. And if it were so simple he’d have boarded that flight weeks ago; instead he turns his phone over in his hands, and his mind works again and again through the hundreds of ways she could have found to put him in her past.
~~*~~*~~
A/N: Past is Present was written as a gift to bird_incage to go with her beautiful graphics. She is a lovely individual, and also writes fantastic AxA fics. Pop over to her page, you will LOVE her. /shameless pimping. But anyway, I'd love to know what you think of these! Hope you liked :)
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. Ten more ficlets, this time with a few actually in chronological order. ~*le gasp!*~
(001 - 010)
(011 - 020)
021 - Protective
Tonight, it’s Eames rather than Arthur who’s the last to leave the warehouse before her. He lingers around the opposite side of her workbench, aimlessly paging through some dossier or other until by chance she glances up and locks her eyes with his.
(he holds himself loosely, relaxed and at home as a cat in the sun, but that face of his has whole worlds buried in his eyes and not all of them are ones she’s keen to visit)
“I’d be careful with Arthur, if I were you,” he says, and Ariadne feels her ears heat with the shame of a child caught with her finger in a tub of frosting. Eames spares her the indignity of staring at her, and for that she isn’t sure whether to feel slighted or thankful; he wanders off toward the door, all interest in her personal life seemingly lost, as languid and nonchalant as ever.
(it’s the same coiled, wild-cat elegance she imagines is what keeps Eames alive in the dreams, as it’s doubtful that that easy, devil-may-care attitude of his is useful while being assaulted by projections)
“There are skeletons in that man’s closet even he’s not prepared to face.” He grabs his jacket, slings it over his shoulder. “Watch yourself.”
(part of her is still shrinking from embarrassment, but another small and strong-willed little part flares in defiance at being treated like a child-when none of this team would be anywhere without her)
“I appreciate the concern, Eames,” her exacto knife cuts the model foam board a bit more violently than necessary, “but I’m a big girl.”
(he faces her and there’s a sudden hard-edge to his eyes, and a narrow smile Ariadne doesn’t quite understand)
“I didn’t say it for your benefit only, darling.” And with that puzzling smile, the Forger strides away.
022 - Trials & Condemnation
(her presence is as much a comfort to him as it is immense pressure weighing on his chest; she is his breath while he’s left gasping desperately, a Salem witch condemned and crushed beneath stones without any crimes to confess)
He’s up early-too early, but despite the dreamless night there’s a heavy rush of adrenaline singing in his veins like fears through a dying man’s head. His die rests on the side table and he casts it once, just to be sure; the brush of skin on skin sets his every nerve alight and he needs a double-take, again just to be sure. Ariadne’s cheek is pillowed on his shoulder, fast asleep, and her arm draped across his chest and his fingers tangled with hers seem far too delicate, too intimate a thing for a man like him to wake up to.
(you’ll break her; you’ll ruin her, take everything from her, and then what? apologize?)
Mostly he wants to run. But it’s his bed and his flat and his arms he can’t seem to unfasten from her body, and the black monster growling in his stomach says to hell with it, she’s chosen you this way and if you fall, she’s falling too, she’s made her choice, so be it.
(how long are you intending to pretend this can go on?)
But when he thinks of pushing her away he can’t, it aches, and it may just condemn him all the same. There is no answer that will not end in wreckage for them both. He’s been jealous all his life of people blessed with her kind of devotion, and now that he’s found his own wretched self blessed he doesn’t know how to accept it.
(she murmurs in her sleep, soft sounds against his skin that make him pull her close as if it could protect her from himself)
023 - Taken Care Of
She must be dreaming. This is just far too bizarre to be reality.
(she would even laugh but she’s pretty sure it’ll make her cough up her insides, so she holds it in and ends up coughing anyway from the strain)
“Stop dying over there,” he calls from her tiny kitchen, “I’m doing this for your health, not mine.”
(he sounds so disgruntled and looks so out of place that this time Ariadne has to laugh, she simply can’t help herself, sick or not)
“I never pegged you for the domestic type, Arthur, this is new and exciting information to me,” she croaks past a weak smile. He doesn’t even need to turn around for her to know he’s rolling his eyes.
(there’s clanging and a crash and she thinks he may have broken something from the swearing under his breath, but waking up to extra blankets and him cooking in her kitchen is more than worth the eventual clean-up)
“You act like it’s a wonder I know how to use a stove,” he puts the steaming soup down on the side table and sits beside her badger den of blankets on the couch. It smells fantastic, but the thought of food right now just makes her want to retch. “I’ve lived alone for years, Ari, how else do you think I’ve survived this long?”
(it’s a side of him she’s never seen before and it makes her swell inside that he’s allowed her in as far as he has, if only inch by inch)
“I don’t know,” she coughs again, and forces a spoonful of soup down into her protesting stomach. “I figured you for a typical bachelor living out of his microwave.”
(he leans over and kisses her forehead, and it seems far more intimate than a kiss on the forehead should be)
“Oh ye of little faith,” he says, and smiles into her hair, an arm around her shoulders as she burrows against his side.
024 - Crossfire
(he is totally, unflinchingly, and desperately in love with her and god, oh god, oh god, anything but this to make him realize-)
There’s a lot of blood. She’s coughing and trying so hard not to cry and he wants this to be a dream so badly he would tear out his own heart to make it so, but he forces down the bile in his throat and puts pressure on the wound.
(vaguely he can hear Eames roaring into his phone and he hopes to hell it’s emergency services on the other end)
“I really…liked this dress,” she croaks and there’s a weak, watery smile on her lips even as her teeth grit through the pain-blood seeps thick and red through the teal fabric and stains it dark like bruises and his hands are slippery where they press through his jacket.
(her face clenches and her eyes flutter shut and he can tell it’s hard for her to even open them again)
“Shhh, Ari, Ari, look at me,” he says, one hand on her cheek to guide her gaze and the other buried in fabric and blood, “I need you to stay awake, okay? Just for a little while.” There’s a tremor way down deep in his throat and even though there’s no way she’ll have heard it he knows it’s there and he refuses to let her see him scared.
(Eames’ great heavy hands hold the ruined coat to Ariadne’s side, and he’s saying something Arthur doesn’t hear and all he can do is clutch his lover’s hand against his chest and count the seconds til he hears the sirens howl)
“It’s going to be alright. You’re going to be alright.”
025 - Caught Up In You
She wakes to the sterile smell of sickness and harsh light filtering through thin curtains, and it stings her eyes but it’s a welcome kind of pain-even the dull ache throbbing through her side with every heartbeat feels like the pulsing of relief. At the back of her head a voice niggles and she shoves it back down; when she’d passed out in the ambulance…she’d fully expected not to wake up.
(I never knew there’d come a day when I’d be saying to you, don’t let this good love slip away)
She’s cold from the flimsy hospital gown and a radio plays low from somewhere in the room-no, there’s got to be a speaker, and it sounds like her iPod-classic rock blooming softly in the background, and relief turns to something that sends shivers like breaking waves surging down her back.
(don’t, don’t you know the kind of man I am? no, said I’d never fall in love again)
Arthur is here. Leaning over onto her bed, his head on his arms, asleep.
(but it’s real and the feeling comes shining through)
Mercifully, the IV is hooked up to the wrist on her opposite side, and she’s able to push her fingers gently through his hair. He’s disheveled, still in the ruined clothes he’d been wearing the night she was shot-she can see what must be her blood smeared like rust on his sleeves-but he’s never left her.
(I’m so caught up in you, little girl, and I never did suspect a thing)
She smooths her hand over his cheek; there’s a few days’ worth of stubble and it scratches and despite all the tactile evidence surrounding her, she still can’t believe he’s never left her side.
(so caught up in you, little girl, that I never want to get myself free)
Her eyes sting and she wants to laugh or cry but it makes everything hurt and comes out more like a snuffle, and Arthur lifts his head and holds her cold hand against his face and kisses her palm, and the mix of emotions she sees there is like nothing else on the face of the earth.
026 - Damages
“Eames?” she asks frantically-as soon as she’s lucid and dealing with the pain enough to fall back down into reality.
(she could honestly use the morphine but she needs to hear this as herself and she doesn’t trust the drugs to spare her memory)
“Off the grid, for now,” Arthur leans forward, elbows on his knees, and the line between his eyebrows deepens. “He took out the one who attacked you.”
Ariadne swallows. “Is he safe? Does he know-?” Arthur nods and she releases a breath she hadn’t known she was holding (she swallows again to choke back tears of relief that well up and clog her throat and make her face throb with heat). “Who was he? The gunman?”
“Russian. Some kind of bodyguard, we think. He had no ID other than a card with his photo and employer.”
“And the Mark?” Arthur hesitates for a second, and Ariadne picks at a loose thread on the hospital blanket. Dread settles in her gut.
(they can’t afford to botch another job and failure sits heavy on her shoulders)
“Saito is taking care of it.”
“Saito?” she hisses and instantly regrets it; her stitches protest and send flares of pain lancing through her at the pressure in her lungs.
A wry, mirthless smile angles across his lips. “He said he’s returning the favor.” He rubs her cold hand between both of his own. “Besides, you’re valuable. To far more than just me.”
(useful, she’ll give them, but not much farther than that-at least, not anymore, but she hates the obsidian-glass edges in his eyes and would rather have him smile than ponder all the ways she’s fallen short)
“Hey,” she says, and runs her fingers over the back of his right shoulder. They come to rest on the ridges of old scar tissue there. “We match now.”
027 - Repair
She sleeps fitfully, and Arthur hopes to God it’s just because of the oppressive lack of privacy that comes with a stay in the hospital. He can’t exactly say he’s enjoying it himself-he’s been wearing the same clothes for four days-but leaving Ariadne here, even for a few hours, is the last thing in the cosmos he’s willing to do. Irrational? Yes. But the shock of almost having her torn away from him is still too sharp and present in his mind; he is acutely aware that a life of crime requires very close acquaintance with disaster, but knowing and accepting it are two very different things and it doesn’t make the harsh reality any easier to face.
(she’d begged him, fear so tangible in her eyes that it rippled through the rest of her small body, to make sure no word of the firefight reaches her family)
He holds her hand whenever she closes her eyes, as much for his comfort as hers. It’s the only way her hands have warmed up since she’s been here, and he’s glad to be able to lend her that small comfort rather than nothing at all.
(she sleeps better with him touching her as well; he’d rather it anyway, and physical contact grounds him here as much as it does her)
He knows it’s not the pain that bothers her. She avoids the subject of her injury like the plague, and only allows it when the nurses check on her and she has no choice. If he knows her by now, she’s worrying herself into oblivion-and as much as he tells her it isn’t her fault she matches him with all the silent pleading ways it is.
(between the job and Eames, keeping her secrets and making amends, Ariadne is eating away at her insides and Arthur worries he won’t be able to fill in all the pieces she tears out of herself)
028 - Sweet Slow Burn
Ariadne dreams them dappled sunlight and a bedroom and a soft white dress he slides reverent hands over like a whisper through delicate silence. The fluid folds hug her small body and drape like falling water to her knees, and Arthur traces the fabric’s edges with fingertips that skim along the low dip at her back. His hair is loose and falls around his face, woven through by the slender fingers holding him still.
(her kiss is long and hot and languid on his lips)
And from there it’s all a tangle of hesitant hands and shed clothing and shifting gravity that pulls them close and sets the world on edge. Heat rises between them, licks at their skin and spreads its sweet torture beneath this slow-burning haze; he is impatient but she catches his wrists and forces his hands to her waist, and she slips her palms up his sides and down his chest and works his shirt out from beneath his belt. Her body pressed against his thrums with life and he aches to pin her up against the wall and take her there, right now-but this dream is not the place, and he will love her soft and slow and kiss her ‘til her breath comes short and ragged.
(her pulse beats rapid and staccato, begging ‘closer, closer…’)
He pushes the straps of the dress down over her shoulders and layers kisses on the skin he reveals, and her slender fingers clench at his shirt and tug until the buttons come undone. His totem lies forgotten in his jacket on the floor and she is the only real thing left, pressed up close as he leaves hot, open-mouthed kisses on her throat, and he eases her back into the mattress when she sighs into his hair.
(make love to me)
029 - Past is Present
“Where are we?” Ariadne asks, a wary look in her eyes as she pushes wind-whipped hair out of her face. It’s bright, but drizzling, which she’s close to assuming things about, until he shoves his hands in his pockets and explains.
(it’s not an easy thing to relive, but it isn’t something he’s able to put into words and the dream is the next best thing)
“I spent a lot of my childhood here. And yeah, it’s supposed to be raining, don’t even start with me. It should stop soon.” Arthur takes off his jacket and sets it around her shoulders, and she slips her arms into the too-long sleeves. “Don’t look at me like that, I’m not showing you some traumatizing memory or anything.” He smiles and guides her forward with a hand at the small of her back. “I wasn’t a tortured soul of a kid; just a solitary one.”
(she resists the gentle push he gives her and ducks beneath his arm, and she fastens her arms around his waist and burrows her face against his chest)
He tries to disengage her but she tightens her grip on his lean waist and rubs her face against his shirt. “Oh no,” she says, “this is your dream. You can lead the way.”
(she looks up again and all of a sudden there’s a loaf of day-old bread in his hand that isn’t securing her to his side)
”Ducks?” she laughs as the tall grass gives way to the glassy surface of a pond, her smile more amused than confused. The waterfowl in question are indeed honking softly and preening as they paddle obliviously around. “You spent much of your formative years feeding ducks?”
(the raindrops come few and far between now, and he bends to kiss the top of her head)
“In case you haven’t noticed, Ariadne, there isn’t much by way of human contact out here. And for your information I spent most of my time aiming to bean them with pieces of bread, not feed them.”
(she tries very hard not to but the laughter bubbles up from her throat anyway, and she swats at his chest in an attempt to contain herself)
“I feel like this should surprise me. Except it doesn’t at all,” she eventually manages through giggles, and takes the bread from him, grinning like a mad six year old. “Were you a good shot then, too?”
030 - Transient
He misses Paris.
(her beignets for breakfast and his pain au chocolat, and the powdered sugar she’d smear on his sleeve in the morning)
He has never in his life experienced anything as singularly draining as those months in France had been. The nature of the job had made him nervous. Ariadne had made him nervous. His own head had made him nervous. He thinks it’s impressive he made it through the whole ordeal without developing a rainbow of ulcers.
(his clothes in her washer and that singular morning of confusion when he’d learnt Ariadne fancied wearing brightly-colored men’s briefs instead of girly underthings)
He’s stayed stateside for awhile-a long while-after going his own way in Los Angeles; he’d caught a late flight out to Chicago O’Hare and a cab to his old apartment in Pilsen. Since then he’s remembered just how stale and sometimes opressive the air is here, and when he thinks about it he isn’t exactly sure why he’s even stayed. The two jobs he’d taken since landing at LAX had wrapped up quickly. There’s not much to hang around for, save a few no-longer-fresh graves and what’s left of a family with no interest in seeing his face anymore.
(her body pressed up flush against his back, skin-on-skin, and the gentle sighs and murmurs she would whisper in her sleep)
Her term is almost over. He can feasibly go back. And if it were so simple he’d have boarded that flight weeks ago; instead he turns his phone over in his hands, and his mind works again and again through the hundreds of ways she could have found to put him in her past.
~~*~~*~~
A/N: Past is Present was written as a gift to bird_incage to go with her beautiful graphics. She is a lovely individual, and also writes fantastic AxA fics. Pop over to her page, you will LOVE her. /shameless pimping. But anyway, I'd love to know what you think of these! Hope you liked :)