Inception: Shift the World to Suit Us (031-040)
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,
(001 - 010)
(011 - 020)
(021 - 030)
031 - Heart Racing
It’s not as if he’s made any sort of effort at being covert. She’s just that oblivious.
(her iPod is blasting into her ears and he revises his earlier assessment from ‘oblivious’ to ‘it’s a wonder she’s aware of anything else at all,’ and she’s singing into a hairbrush in a pair of skinny jeans and a watermelon-print bra)
He laughs softly to himself and leans his arm up against the doorjamb, thinking a number of less-than-pure thoughts as he admires her shimmying around the room. He’d put money on her taking at least until the song is over to notice him leering with what he imagines must look like a slightly creepy grin curving up half his mouth, but she’ll forgive him for it.
(oh lord, the song’s even yelling something about skin-tight jeans and his patience is rapidly deteriorating in favor of anticipation)
“What in God’s name are you doing?” Ariadne jumps a good six inches and his smirk widens when she presses her hand to her heart, the wide-eyed prey look leaving her face as soon as it arrives.
(his eyes run her up and down again)
”Jesus, Arthur!” She releases breathy laughter and hugs her arms around herself. “Do that creepy-rapist sneak-up-on-me-in-my-undies thing again, why don’t you?”
(her face is flushed with life and probably embarrassment, and she’s absolutely gorgeous)
“Just admiring, don’t mind me,” he says. “Those new?”
(he follows her fingers tucking her hair behind her ear)
“You like?” she asks with a smirk of her own.
(her hands smooth down her thighs)
“Honestly?” She nods. “I hate them. They’re all wrong for you.” It’s a complete lie, of course, they look stellar on her. Her face falls but he moves to slide his palms down her arms and kisses the side of her face. “Let me take them off for you…”
032 - Don't Look Back
And then one day he disappears.
(she feels used and discarded and hateful and destructive and all manner of things that roil within her and make her want to retch)
Her entire world is thrown into sharp focus and every single line and curve and color is more vibrant than she’s ever seen before, though she doesn’t know if it’s because of him, or because of her own selfish refusal to believe he is worth waiting for if he won’t even ask if she’ll still be there. She will not let him steal her colors and so she forces them brighter than they’ve ever been.
(the contrast and saturation sting her eyes and make them water; she will call it nothing more than that and she shoves it down, boxes it away and goes on with her life)
It’s months before she can live and work and sleep in her own home and not feel like the tiny place is far too large to hold her, but she teaches her classes and grades her papers and draws to occupy the spare moments in her day. Sketches litter her table and desk and walls and couch and somehow no matter how many there are it’s never enough.
(they are the first thing he sees when she opens her door and blanches at the sight of him on the other side)
He looks like hell. He looks like he’s been through a shredder. And she wants nothing to do with him because she’s had enough and hurts enough and all the wounds she’d stitched and sewn and sutured shut he tears apart again. She says something she can’t remember and his face breaks and Ariadne shuts the door against him.
(and she slides down the inside of the door and draws her knees up to her chest, and the wetness in her eyes streaks down her face)
033 - Drawn to You
(she finds him; she always does, except this time finding and being found seem reversed when his eyes meet her wide, lost ones)
She calls out of work three days in a row and sends her students an email explaining illness and assignments. She doesn’t feel guilty, though she supposes she should; the end-of-term crunch had never been kind to her as a student, and her conscience does twinge a bit from reneging on the promise that she wouldn’t put her classes through the same. But she cannot face the lecture hall and falsify a sense of normalcy for them if she can’t even fool herself with it anymore.
(he speaks and she listens, and though he can’t tell if she hears he knows the ache she radiates too well, and he tells her, no holds barred, that he cannot live without her)
She spends those three days in his bed. And he is passionate and heady and gentle and rough and everything she remembers and too many things she doesn’t, and it breaks her heart and makes her whole again all in the same breath. Arthur loves her with the fervor of a man who knows there isn’t much time left, and she wants to tell him no, you’ll have forever, I want forever, but shards of fear pierce through the words and they die in her throat.
(she gasps and writhes under his hands, and he hitches her leg up over his shoulder and feathers kisses up the inside of her thigh)
She memorizes the way his breath fractures when her hair ghosts over his chest, what makes him shiver and what makes him groan and how he whispers that he loves her in the stillness when they fight to catch their breath. Each kiss is a promise and laced with remorse she can feel with every beat of his heart, and no, she isn’t afraid he’ll disappear again, but still she checks her totem while he dozes in her arms.
(her body is molten and she collapses boneless against him, and she would seep beneath his skin and pulse within his blood if it could make him stay with her like this forever)
034 - What Little I Can Do
It is a rare day when Ariadne will wake him up by straddling his back, her deft hands working his muscles as if she was put on this earth for the specific purpose of giving him that very massage.
(lower, lower)
She doesn’t tell him why she does it, and Arthur doesn’t ask. She doesn’t know what she’d tell him if he did. How could she describe watching his entire body seize, the muscles in his neck standing out like cables, and not being able to do anything for him? She can’t imagine waking up with that sort of pain. She’ll lie beside him and force herself to wait until the episode passes, then smooth her hands over his face, his arms, his chest, every part of him she can reach, until she feels his heartbeat slow to normal.
(ahhhh yes, love, a little harder)
The worst is hearing him talk in his sleep. Nothing intelligible, but the soft noises caught at the back of his throat sound as if it takes him every ounce of willpower to keep from screaming. It tortures her to listen, to lay there in the dark and know there’s nothing she can do to take it away from him.
(there-just there-ohhh, god, Aria…)
But in truth she isn’t sure she wants to face his demons, and she’s certainly not about to force him to. What they have together now is easy, a rhythm they’ve both fallen into and are loath to interrupt. So for now, then, she’ll hold her tongue and rub him down and do everything she can to make sure nothing physically hurts in the morning.
(don’t stop, please don’t stop-)
035 - Notice
A coffee cup plunks down on the table in front of her, but she’s on a roll and if she doesn’t finish this sketch right now she’ll forget the image of the fortress in her mind and have to agonize tomorrow over those maddening elusive little details hovering just at the fringes of her consciousness.
(hey, he says, his half-smile softer than usual out of the corner of her eye; cream and a vanilla shot, right?)
Arthur pulls up a stool beside her and leans over the table, hands clasped in font of him, patient as he waits for her to reach a lull in her art. She smiles a little, still focused on the paper; she’s found it hard to meet his eyes after that last-well, she doesn’t really want to dwell on their last lesson’s visit to London.
(thanks; how’d you know? Oh-and could you grab that eraser for me?)
When he passes it to her his hand slides along her palm and it jars her, sends a shiver up her arm and as much as she’d like to contain it her attention is no longer on the drawing in her hands.
(I pay attention, he says, ‘s what I’m here for)
The eraser sits forgotten in her palm. She doesn’t realize she’s holding her breath when he brings his fingers up close to her face, brushes her cheek, the barest ghost of contact as he tucks a lock of hair behind her shoulder.
(my dreams aren’t so different from yours, he says, if you pay attention to the people in them)
He kisses gently, but it rocks her to her toes.
036 - Rescue Her
He isn’t the only one needing soothing from monsters that lurk in the night, and Arthur doesn’t hesitate to wake Ariadne when she’s caught inside her thoughts. Her dreams are quiet, restless, and the most sound she ever makes are fitful murmurs soft and keening in her throat.
(she sleeps on her stomach and what little noise she makes is muffled by the pillow, and he’ll stroke her hair and whisper her name until it grounds her back into reality)
Sometimes she’ll lean against the headboard and draw her knees up to her chest, and she’ll need to talk about it to clear her head. He’ll listen and weave his fingers with hers until she’s ready to ease back into bed, and he’ll spoon her against his chest and lie awake until she sinks down into sleep. He knows it makes her feel like a child, and he knows that on some level it embarrasses her even still, but in the morning she’ll kiss his cheek and whisper thanks regardless.
(the worst nights, he’ll caress her face and his fingers will come away wet, her shoulders will shake with silent sobs and then he’ll lean above her, press tender kisses to her back and hold her, the both of them lying awake until the windows glow)
And sometimes when he wakes her she’ll turn into him, wrap her arms around his neck and beg him with her body to make her forget. She’ll hook her legs around him and he’ll ease himself between her thighs, kiss her mouth and face and throat and melt with her until she gasps and turns to silk and lies there spent and boneless in his arms.
(he doesn’t tell her how sometimes he’ll wish she’d lose organic dreams, if only so he’ll never see the tears they steal from her again)
037 - Breaking Point
(Without words he knows, has known for a long time, that Ariadne will shoulder his burdens beside him, and he doesn’t know how or why but something in him shifts; she is as much a part of him as everything he’s fought so hard to spare her from, and he doesn’t have the energy to hide it anymore)
“I was an army sniper, once. Did two tours in Afghanistan. And there was this kid in my batallion, Private Nolan Hesh. I knew him when we were kids. Went to the same middle school and everything. Our parents were friends.”
(he’s lying on his back and she’s curled up against his side, silent; his arm around her, and his other hand strokes her arm absently as if sunk into a trance-she doesn’t press, and her eyes never leave his face)
“My second tour, his first, a convoy we were in… Roadside bombs. Two trucks were blown apart before we even knew what hit us. What was left of us took fire from Al Quaeda militia and did the best we could until help arrived. Fuckers put the bullet in my shoulder. Nolan was in the truck before mine. Both his legs got blown off. Somehow, the handful of us well enough carry our guns held the insurgents back until reinforcements arrived. Then the bastards scattered. The lot of us managed to get Nolan back to base alive, but once we got there…”
(he swallows and stares, unfocused, at the ceiling, and Ariadne wraps herself closer around him)
“They had to induce a coma to treat him, but when the medics took Nolan off the drugs…he wouldn’t wake up on his own. So the military decided to use him as a guinea pig. To test ‘dream therapy’ and see if they could use it get inside his head to pull him out of it.”
(his grip on her tightens, and Ariadne presses her lips to the side of his face; he can’t let her all the way in at once, and it’s okay, she will not push him farther)
038 - Hot Water
It’s a sad day indeed when he finds himself bizarrely enjoying the little-girl music she blasts from the shower. She sings along-surprisingly well for someone who constantly asserts being musically-challenged-to a playlist that’s churned out songs about love and knights in shining armor and storybook happily-ever-afters for the duration the water’s been running. He wasn’t even aware that so many of those songs existed.
(he’s going to run out of hot water soon, and he is fully prepared for the punch in the arm he’ll earn from laughing at her squeals when the cold spray hits her full-force)
It’s funny enough that she’s insisted on bringing her own pillow with her when she spends the night at his flat-but shower speakers? The pillow thing he almost understands-she complained the first night that she almost smothered herself to death in his too-fluffy ones. But the more of her life that gets strewn across his place, and the more of his in hers, for that matter, the less he can remember what it felt like to protect himself.
(she shrieks from the bathroom-right on schedule)
”Jesus Christ, Arthur, I swear to God, if you turned the water off on me…”
(the door opens and steam pours into his room and she pokes her head out, dripping hair sticking to her face, wrapped in a towel that’s far too big for her)
“I thought you used the music to time your showers, Ari, not as an excuse to drain my tank.”
(that punch in the arm-also right on schedule)
He takes the towel from around her and starts rubbing her dry, and she purrs under his hands. “And for the record,” he says, moving from her body to her hair, “you used up my hot water all by your lonesome, Ariadne, that was not me.”
(another punch in the arm-not entirely deserved this time, might he add)
“You just wait,” she says, “til you have to shower at my place. I’ll be waiting.” He smiles back at her with a challenge in his eyes, and protection from this doesn’t seem to be something he should covet so desperately.
039 - Dinner Guest
“Good God, control yourselves or get a room, will you? You’re both bloody unbearable.”
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Ariadne laughs, disengaging her lips from Arthur’s, “this is my room. And you’re early.”
(Arthur looks like he’d rather be twenty thousand leagues under the sea than in the presence of Julian Eames at this moment in time, and Eames, of course, is more than amused by this)
“Excuse me, then for trying to be a punctual dinner guest. Lock your front door, or next time I’m bringing a camera.”
“Why, Mr. Eames, do I detect a threat?” Ariadne swings her legs off of Arthur’s lap and trots to the tiny kitchen. She grins at the collective inhale when she opens the oven.
(he and Eames are close enough friends for Arthur to know that the threat is only slightly less than empty, and good friend or no, the thought repulses him and Arthur does not share well with others)
“That depends,” he says, easing his wide frame into the chair like he owns the place. “Open door, open invitation. Unless, of course, you’d rather just invite me to whatever debauchery you’re hosting now and save yourselves a right little shock later.”
(she assesses the status of their meal and must decide the baking pasta needs more time, because she closes the oven and pads bare-footed back to settle into Arthur’s lap again)
“The only debauchery you’re invited to is whatever porn you’ve bought on pay-per-view, Mr. Eames.” Arthur winds possessive hands back around Ariadne’s waist, and the look Eames shoots him is…interesting. It’s not quite jealous, but not quite easily accepting, either, and the smile that splits Eames’ face reminds Arthur none too pleasantly of a shark that’s just smelt blood in the water.
040 - Suited for Each Other
(The dream is different and bizarre, and at once as and warped and elegant as he’s come to expect from Ariadne’s mind)
Arthur may be the dreamer, but she’s built and re-built everything to suit her and he’s too busy admiring the things she crafts to chide her for the extravagance.
(she’s taken his city of steel and light and glass and shrunk it down until she can climb the shorter buildings and use them to haul herself up on top of the skyscrapers, and she stands up on the rooftops and smiles down at him standing in the streets)
“Care to join me?” she asks with an eyebrows-raised smile, and settles onto her stomach atop her personal skyscraper, knees bent and chin resting in her hands.
(his projections, tiny though they are now thanks to her, are few and far between and pay them both no mind)
His long body doesn’t fit quite as well as she does, and he lays on his back close beside her and lets his feet dangle over the side of the building. She shifts to prop herself up on one elbow, her fingers stroke and card through his hair until it’s loose and falls around his face. The feeling is hypnotic, and he lets his eyes drift shut as hers sweep over the wide expanse of their small city, stretching into the recesses of his mind.
(later she’ll hop back to the ground and he’ll lead her through the streets of the city in his head, and once he realizes she means him to fill her deliberate lack of detail he pulls out all the stops; Arthur is no architect, but it’s worth it when her eyes light up with each little piece of him she sees in infused in his designs)
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,
(001 - 010)
(011 - 020)
(021 - 030)
031 - Heart Racing
It’s not as if he’s made any sort of effort at being covert. She’s just that oblivious.
(her iPod is blasting into her ears and he revises his earlier assessment from ‘oblivious’ to ‘it’s a wonder she’s aware of anything else at all,’ and she’s singing into a hairbrush in a pair of skinny jeans and a watermelon-print bra)
He laughs softly to himself and leans his arm up against the doorjamb, thinking a number of less-than-pure thoughts as he admires her shimmying around the room. He’d put money on her taking at least until the song is over to notice him leering with what he imagines must look like a slightly creepy grin curving up half his mouth, but she’ll forgive him for it.
(oh lord, the song’s even yelling something about skin-tight jeans and his patience is rapidly deteriorating in favor of anticipation)
“What in God’s name are you doing?” Ariadne jumps a good six inches and his smirk widens when she presses her hand to her heart, the wide-eyed prey look leaving her face as soon as it arrives.
(his eyes run her up and down again)
”Jesus, Arthur!” She releases breathy laughter and hugs her arms around herself. “Do that creepy-rapist sneak-up-on-me-in-my-undies thing again, why don’t you?”
(her face is flushed with life and probably embarrassment, and she’s absolutely gorgeous)
“Just admiring, don’t mind me,” he says. “Those new?”
(he follows her fingers tucking her hair behind her ear)
“You like?” she asks with a smirk of her own.
(her hands smooth down her thighs)
“Honestly?” She nods. “I hate them. They’re all wrong for you.” It’s a complete lie, of course, they look stellar on her. Her face falls but he moves to slide his palms down her arms and kisses the side of her face. “Let me take them off for you…”
032 - Don't Look Back
And then one day he disappears.
(she feels used and discarded and hateful and destructive and all manner of things that roil within her and make her want to retch)
Her entire world is thrown into sharp focus and every single line and curve and color is more vibrant than she’s ever seen before, though she doesn’t know if it’s because of him, or because of her own selfish refusal to believe he is worth waiting for if he won’t even ask if she’ll still be there. She will not let him steal her colors and so she forces them brighter than they’ve ever been.
(the contrast and saturation sting her eyes and make them water; she will call it nothing more than that and she shoves it down, boxes it away and goes on with her life)
It’s months before she can live and work and sleep in her own home and not feel like the tiny place is far too large to hold her, but she teaches her classes and grades her papers and draws to occupy the spare moments in her day. Sketches litter her table and desk and walls and couch and somehow no matter how many there are it’s never enough.
(they are the first thing he sees when she opens her door and blanches at the sight of him on the other side)
He looks like hell. He looks like he’s been through a shredder. And she wants nothing to do with him because she’s had enough and hurts enough and all the wounds she’d stitched and sewn and sutured shut he tears apart again. She says something she can’t remember and his face breaks and Ariadne shuts the door against him.
(and she slides down the inside of the door and draws her knees up to her chest, and the wetness in her eyes streaks down her face)
033 - Drawn to You
(she finds him; she always does, except this time finding and being found seem reversed when his eyes meet her wide, lost ones)
She calls out of work three days in a row and sends her students an email explaining illness and assignments. She doesn’t feel guilty, though she supposes she should; the end-of-term crunch had never been kind to her as a student, and her conscience does twinge a bit from reneging on the promise that she wouldn’t put her classes through the same. But she cannot face the lecture hall and falsify a sense of normalcy for them if she can’t even fool herself with it anymore.
(he speaks and she listens, and though he can’t tell if she hears he knows the ache she radiates too well, and he tells her, no holds barred, that he cannot live without her)
She spends those three days in his bed. And he is passionate and heady and gentle and rough and everything she remembers and too many things she doesn’t, and it breaks her heart and makes her whole again all in the same breath. Arthur loves her with the fervor of a man who knows there isn’t much time left, and she wants to tell him no, you’ll have forever, I want forever, but shards of fear pierce through the words and they die in her throat.
(she gasps and writhes under his hands, and he hitches her leg up over his shoulder and feathers kisses up the inside of her thigh)
She memorizes the way his breath fractures when her hair ghosts over his chest, what makes him shiver and what makes him groan and how he whispers that he loves her in the stillness when they fight to catch their breath. Each kiss is a promise and laced with remorse she can feel with every beat of his heart, and no, she isn’t afraid he’ll disappear again, but still she checks her totem while he dozes in her arms.
(her body is molten and she collapses boneless against him, and she would seep beneath his skin and pulse within his blood if it could make him stay with her like this forever)
034 - What Little I Can Do
It is a rare day when Ariadne will wake him up by straddling his back, her deft hands working his muscles as if she was put on this earth for the specific purpose of giving him that very massage.
(lower, lower)
She doesn’t tell him why she does it, and Arthur doesn’t ask. She doesn’t know what she’d tell him if he did. How could she describe watching his entire body seize, the muscles in his neck standing out like cables, and not being able to do anything for him? She can’t imagine waking up with that sort of pain. She’ll lie beside him and force herself to wait until the episode passes, then smooth her hands over his face, his arms, his chest, every part of him she can reach, until she feels his heartbeat slow to normal.
(ahhhh yes, love, a little harder)
The worst is hearing him talk in his sleep. Nothing intelligible, but the soft noises caught at the back of his throat sound as if it takes him every ounce of willpower to keep from screaming. It tortures her to listen, to lay there in the dark and know there’s nothing she can do to take it away from him.
(there-just there-ohhh, god, Aria…)
But in truth she isn’t sure she wants to face his demons, and she’s certainly not about to force him to. What they have together now is easy, a rhythm they’ve both fallen into and are loath to interrupt. So for now, then, she’ll hold her tongue and rub him down and do everything she can to make sure nothing physically hurts in the morning.
(don’t stop, please don’t stop-)
035 - Notice
A coffee cup plunks down on the table in front of her, but she’s on a roll and if she doesn’t finish this sketch right now she’ll forget the image of the fortress in her mind and have to agonize tomorrow over those maddening elusive little details hovering just at the fringes of her consciousness.
(hey, he says, his half-smile softer than usual out of the corner of her eye; cream and a vanilla shot, right?)
Arthur pulls up a stool beside her and leans over the table, hands clasped in font of him, patient as he waits for her to reach a lull in her art. She smiles a little, still focused on the paper; she’s found it hard to meet his eyes after that last-well, she doesn’t really want to dwell on their last lesson’s visit to London.
(thanks; how’d you know? Oh-and could you grab that eraser for me?)
When he passes it to her his hand slides along her palm and it jars her, sends a shiver up her arm and as much as she’d like to contain it her attention is no longer on the drawing in her hands.
(I pay attention, he says, ‘s what I’m here for)
The eraser sits forgotten in her palm. She doesn’t realize she’s holding her breath when he brings his fingers up close to her face, brushes her cheek, the barest ghost of contact as he tucks a lock of hair behind her shoulder.
(my dreams aren’t so different from yours, he says, if you pay attention to the people in them)
He kisses gently, but it rocks her to her toes.
036 - Rescue Her
He isn’t the only one needing soothing from monsters that lurk in the night, and Arthur doesn’t hesitate to wake Ariadne when she’s caught inside her thoughts. Her dreams are quiet, restless, and the most sound she ever makes are fitful murmurs soft and keening in her throat.
(she sleeps on her stomach and what little noise she makes is muffled by the pillow, and he’ll stroke her hair and whisper her name until it grounds her back into reality)
Sometimes she’ll lean against the headboard and draw her knees up to her chest, and she’ll need to talk about it to clear her head. He’ll listen and weave his fingers with hers until she’s ready to ease back into bed, and he’ll spoon her against his chest and lie awake until she sinks down into sleep. He knows it makes her feel like a child, and he knows that on some level it embarrasses her even still, but in the morning she’ll kiss his cheek and whisper thanks regardless.
(the worst nights, he’ll caress her face and his fingers will come away wet, her shoulders will shake with silent sobs and then he’ll lean above her, press tender kisses to her back and hold her, the both of them lying awake until the windows glow)
And sometimes when he wakes her she’ll turn into him, wrap her arms around his neck and beg him with her body to make her forget. She’ll hook her legs around him and he’ll ease himself between her thighs, kiss her mouth and face and throat and melt with her until she gasps and turns to silk and lies there spent and boneless in his arms.
(he doesn’t tell her how sometimes he’ll wish she’d lose organic dreams, if only so he’ll never see the tears they steal from her again)
037 - Breaking Point
(Without words he knows, has known for a long time, that Ariadne will shoulder his burdens beside him, and he doesn’t know how or why but something in him shifts; she is as much a part of him as everything he’s fought so hard to spare her from, and he doesn’t have the energy to hide it anymore)
“I was an army sniper, once. Did two tours in Afghanistan. And there was this kid in my batallion, Private Nolan Hesh. I knew him when we were kids. Went to the same middle school and everything. Our parents were friends.”
(he’s lying on his back and she’s curled up against his side, silent; his arm around her, and his other hand strokes her arm absently as if sunk into a trance-she doesn’t press, and her eyes never leave his face)
“My second tour, his first, a convoy we were in… Roadside bombs. Two trucks were blown apart before we even knew what hit us. What was left of us took fire from Al Quaeda militia and did the best we could until help arrived. Fuckers put the bullet in my shoulder. Nolan was in the truck before mine. Both his legs got blown off. Somehow, the handful of us well enough carry our guns held the insurgents back until reinforcements arrived. Then the bastards scattered. The lot of us managed to get Nolan back to base alive, but once we got there…”
(he swallows and stares, unfocused, at the ceiling, and Ariadne wraps herself closer around him)
“They had to induce a coma to treat him, but when the medics took Nolan off the drugs…he wouldn’t wake up on his own. So the military decided to use him as a guinea pig. To test ‘dream therapy’ and see if they could use it get inside his head to pull him out of it.”
(his grip on her tightens, and Ariadne presses her lips to the side of his face; he can’t let her all the way in at once, and it’s okay, she will not push him farther)
038 - Hot Water
It’s a sad day indeed when he finds himself bizarrely enjoying the little-girl music she blasts from the shower. She sings along-surprisingly well for someone who constantly asserts being musically-challenged-to a playlist that’s churned out songs about love and knights in shining armor and storybook happily-ever-afters for the duration the water’s been running. He wasn’t even aware that so many of those songs existed.
(he’s going to run out of hot water soon, and he is fully prepared for the punch in the arm he’ll earn from laughing at her squeals when the cold spray hits her full-force)
It’s funny enough that she’s insisted on bringing her own pillow with her when she spends the night at his flat-but shower speakers? The pillow thing he almost understands-she complained the first night that she almost smothered herself to death in his too-fluffy ones. But the more of her life that gets strewn across his place, and the more of his in hers, for that matter, the less he can remember what it felt like to protect himself.
(she shrieks from the bathroom-right on schedule)
”Jesus Christ, Arthur, I swear to God, if you turned the water off on me…”
(the door opens and steam pours into his room and she pokes her head out, dripping hair sticking to her face, wrapped in a towel that’s far too big for her)
“I thought you used the music to time your showers, Ari, not as an excuse to drain my tank.”
(that punch in the arm-also right on schedule)
He takes the towel from around her and starts rubbing her dry, and she purrs under his hands. “And for the record,” he says, moving from her body to her hair, “you used up my hot water all by your lonesome, Ariadne, that was not me.”
(another punch in the arm-not entirely deserved this time, might he add)
“You just wait,” she says, “til you have to shower at my place. I’ll be waiting.” He smiles back at her with a challenge in his eyes, and protection from this doesn’t seem to be something he should covet so desperately.
039 - Dinner Guest
“Good God, control yourselves or get a room, will you? You’re both bloody unbearable.”
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Ariadne laughs, disengaging her lips from Arthur’s, “this is my room. And you’re early.”
(Arthur looks like he’d rather be twenty thousand leagues under the sea than in the presence of Julian Eames at this moment in time, and Eames, of course, is more than amused by this)
“Excuse me, then for trying to be a punctual dinner guest. Lock your front door, or next time I’m bringing a camera.”
“Why, Mr. Eames, do I detect a threat?” Ariadne swings her legs off of Arthur’s lap and trots to the tiny kitchen. She grins at the collective inhale when she opens the oven.
(he and Eames are close enough friends for Arthur to know that the threat is only slightly less than empty, and good friend or no, the thought repulses him and Arthur does not share well with others)
“That depends,” he says, easing his wide frame into the chair like he owns the place. “Open door, open invitation. Unless, of course, you’d rather just invite me to whatever debauchery you’re hosting now and save yourselves a right little shock later.”
(she assesses the status of their meal and must decide the baking pasta needs more time, because she closes the oven and pads bare-footed back to settle into Arthur’s lap again)
“The only debauchery you’re invited to is whatever porn you’ve bought on pay-per-view, Mr. Eames.” Arthur winds possessive hands back around Ariadne’s waist, and the look Eames shoots him is…interesting. It’s not quite jealous, but not quite easily accepting, either, and the smile that splits Eames’ face reminds Arthur none too pleasantly of a shark that’s just smelt blood in the water.
040 - Suited for Each Other
(The dream is different and bizarre, and at once as and warped and elegant as he’s come to expect from Ariadne’s mind)
Arthur may be the dreamer, but she’s built and re-built everything to suit her and he’s too busy admiring the things she crafts to chide her for the extravagance.
(she’s taken his city of steel and light and glass and shrunk it down until she can climb the shorter buildings and use them to haul herself up on top of the skyscrapers, and she stands up on the rooftops and smiles down at him standing in the streets)
“Care to join me?” she asks with an eyebrows-raised smile, and settles onto her stomach atop her personal skyscraper, knees bent and chin resting in her hands.
(his projections, tiny though they are now thanks to her, are few and far between and pay them both no mind)
His long body doesn’t fit quite as well as she does, and he lays on his back close beside her and lets his feet dangle over the side of the building. She shifts to prop herself up on one elbow, her fingers stroke and card through his hair until it’s loose and falls around his face. The feeling is hypnotic, and he lets his eyes drift shut as hers sweep over the wide expanse of their small city, stretching into the recesses of his mind.
(later she’ll hop back to the ground and he’ll lead her through the streets of the city in his head, and once he realizes she means him to fill her deliberate lack of detail he pulls out all the stops; Arthur is no architect, but it’s worth it when her eyes light up with each little piece of him she sees in infused in his designs)