Mess of Me | Inception | PG13 | Ariadne/Dom
Title: Mess of Me
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Ariadne/Dom
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: For the movie.
Summary: Written for a prompt from inception_kink: Ariadne has a stalker. Miles finds out and tells Cobb about it. For the sake of this fic, Miles's last name is Draumr.
A/N: Guysssss this is a problem, I cannot stop writing this fandom. laksjfksdfgnls.
It all begins out the first day of the semester, with a polite hello and nod of the head. She's finagled her way, as a junior, into Professor Draumr's Romanesque seminar reserved for seniors only. Draumr grants her permission with a certain amount of hesitation; he finally relents after relentless negotiation and finally, in an act of last resort and desperation, a call to the professor's son-in-law. Ariadne had harbored a lingering crush on her ex-boss for her short duration as Architect during the inception job, and it had been extraordinarily difficult to strike up the courage to call him just out of the blue. Still, she really wanted this class.
"Alright, alright, you're in," Professor Draumr tells her in passing a day before the semester begins. "Just call your watchdog off me. Dom's been harassing me around the clock to get you a spot." Ariadne nearly throws her arms around her mentor in joy but stops herself and merely squeals before running off to buy her books.
The boy she is paired with is broad and muscular, with a shaved head and a tattoo that Ariadne can only see the top of (the rest disappears below the collar of his shirt). He spends most of their first lesson shooting furtive glances at her. Ariadne thinks he might have a bit of a crush.
They spend the next few classes going over floor-plans in hushed voices. Ariadne finds that her partner, Barry, was not completely incompetent, but he could never come up with a plan more elegant than those drawn up by her own hand.
"You're too good to still be in school," he tells her fervently one day. "You should be running your own firm." She laughs, expecting him to smile at her, but all he does is look at her with a dark intensity that makes her own smile fade rapidly.
He offers to walk her home. She declines, telling him a lie about having to call her mom.
"It's okay, I'll walk ten feet behind you," is what he responds with.
"No, this is a private conversation," Ariadne says bluntly. "Sorry."
She walks away quickly, unnerved.
-
It's when she starts seeing him in her regular cafe that a dark cloud of worry settles down over her. She mentions in passing to Professor Draumr in office hours about how bizarrely Barry acted. "It's like, I'll be sitting there," she says darkly, "and then next thing I know, he's right over my left shoulder, just staring." Professor Draumr gives her a concerned look. "I'm probably just imagining things."
But when she goes to open the office door, it is Barry who is waiting outside it. She jumps, and she hears Professor Draumr clear his throat.
"Mr. Williams, come have a seat," Professor Draumr calls to Barry.
"I'm just here to walk Ariadne back to her dorm," Barry says, grinning at Professor Draumr. Ariadne looks over her shoulder at her teacher helplessly.
"Actually Barry, I was hoping that you'd drop by. I've got some questions about some of your dimensions from last week's homework assignment..."
And with that small diversion, Ariadne darts out, for the first time tasting real fear.
-
She lets it go until she sees him outside her window.
She drops the glass of water she had been drinking from and it shatters on the floor beside her bare feet. She's dressed in boxers and a white tank top. He's looking at her with those dark vacant eyes for a long moment, and then has swiftly vanished from the premises. Ariadne has never felt more naked in her life. She stumbles toward the phone in shock and steps on a piece of glass that cuts into her foot like a knife. Cursing, she grabs the cordless phone and hops to the window, pulling the curtains shut shakily.
She doesn't know who to call.
In the end, she ends up dialing Professor Draumr's home phone (he had given it to her after she had returned from the inception job; "in case you need to talk about it," was the reason he had given her).
A sleepy voice answers and Ariadne immediately feels awful about waking him up.
"Hello?"
"Uh, Professor Draumr?" Ariadne squeaks. She hears a rustling from his end.
"Ariadne? Is that you?"
"Y-yes, it's me. Professor--" she says, and suddenly her voice is constricted in fear. She feels the tears coming and begs them not to fall while she's on the phone with her professor, how embarrassing.
"Ariadne, are you all right?"
And then it all spills out and she tells him everything, including the latest peeping-Tom moment from minutes earlier. Professor Draumr says nothing until she's finished, a sob inflecting every syllable.
"Lock your doors and keep a phone by your bed," says Professor Draumr in a voice decidedly unlike his normal lecturing tone. "This will be sorted by the morning."
"Professor--"
"Get some sleep, Ariadne. There's nothing else you can do tonight. Goodnight, my dear." He hangs up abruptly, and Ariadne gazes down at the phone in shock.
It takes hours for Ariadne to fall asleep. Every time she glances at the window of her bedroom, she can feel herself imagining Barry's pale face peering at her through the window. It is an image she cannot get out of her head. Even after falling asleep, nightmares dance in her head.
Horrible images flash through her unconscious head: imprisoned in Barry's closet, gagged and bound; alone in their Romanesque classroom, he's got her by the wrists and has pulled her pants down around her ankles; the door of her apartment's been kicked down, and he strides across her threshold with a knife in his right hand and a smile on his face.
She doesn't sleep much that night.
-
She wakes up the next day at around noon to a knock on the door. She limps to the door and looks through the peephole.
"Dom?" she gasps, flinging the door open. And sure enough, standing on her doorstep is the man who had started (and ended) it all, looking slightly disheveled with mussed up hair from what must have been an overnight flight. His suit is wrinkled, and he carries a bag over his shoulder that, if packed correctly, could probably hold an extensive arsenal of weapons. It probably did, Ariadne guesses.
"I hear you need some protection," he says to her, a tremor of a strange emotion in his voice that Ariadne has only ever heard him use when talking about his kids. He walks inside and she closes the door behind him. She feels touched.
"You didn't need to fly here and everything--" she begins, but he puts a hand on her shoulder and looks deep into her eyes. This look gives Ariadne the exact opposite feeling that Barry's terrifying gazes had provoked in her: instead of horror and revulsion, simple relief and adoration blossom within her, warming her soul.
"Yes, I did," he says simply. She opens her mouth to say something in response, but all that comes out is a small whimper. Now her eyes are full of tears, and she finds herself wrapped in his embrace, sobbing out-right for the first time since the whole terrifying experience had begun. Dom merely strokes her hair and holds her tight, murmuring reassurances into her ear.
"No one's coming near you now," he tells her. "No one."
Dom stands watch that night, and Ariadne sleeps soundly.
-
When Ariadne awakens the next day, she finds Cobb making a pot of coffee in her small kitchenette.
"Any sign of him?" she asks. When Cobb doesn't answer her, her heart drops.
"You're safe," is all he tells her. "No one's getting in here."
"What do you mean, 'no one's getting in here,'" Ariadne gasps, horror-struck. Dom slams the coffee mug down.
"I mean," he growls, turning towards her, fury in his eyes, "that if he tries anything, he's going to regret it. I know a lot of ways to make people regret." He thrusts a cup of coffee at her, anger still clearly at the forefront of his mind. "Coffee?"
She takes the mug and sits down at the kitchen table with it, clearly shocked at his outburst.
"Are you going to kill him?" she whispers. When he doesn't respond, she balks. "You can't kill for me," she hisses in outrage. "How dare you even consider that, for even a second--"
"How can I not?!" Dom shouts at her, effectively silencing the both of them for a few minutes. "How can I not think about killing the guy who's trying to-- to you, Ariadne..." Dom doesn't need to say it to make the potential outcome clear.
"I'm calling the police," Ariadne decides, going to the phone. Dom cross the room and stands between her and the phone.
"The police can give you a restraining order, but I'm someone who can actually stop this motherfucker," Dom says in a threatening voice. "Let me do this."
She sits back down.
"You can't kill him, Dom," Ariadne repeats. Dom shrugs his shoulders and doesn't respond.
-
That night, Ariadne cannot sleep. Dom's sitting on her couch, a hand gun by his side and the New York Times in his lap, when she calls out a singular, "Dom?"
He's by her side in an instant.
"What, what, did you see him?" he says, a little breathlessly, glancing toward her window, gun raised.
"No!" she says, eyes wide. "No, no." Dom lowers his gun slowly, uncertainly, and finally slips it into the back of his pants.
"I, well," Ariadne begins. "Can you stay with me?" she finally asks, looking anywhere but at Dom Cobb.
"That's what I've been doing," Dom says, a little perplexedly.
"I mean, in here."
Dom says nothing, just goes and retrieves his Times from the living room and re-enters, pulling a chair behind him. He settles by the head of her bed and unfurls the newspaper once more.
-
Dom decides to attend to Ariadne during the week, following her to her classes and sitting behind her or next to her, a looming shadow behind the petite brunette everywhere she went. Having Dom with Ariadne made her feel safe, clearly, but she also got a lot of looks from fellow classmates-especially her fellow female classmates-, who all wondered exactly who this ridiculously handsome stranger was and why the hell was he following around that mousy Ariadne for?
"You're not exactly subtle, you know," she tells him one day, while they're eating at her second favorite cafe. He chuckles, staring at his phone in awe.
"Why would I want to be subtle?" he asks her. "I want that bastard to know that you've been marked with a 'no stalking, staring, or touching' label, courtesy of Dom Cobb." Cobb proceeds to crumble the remnants of his croissant. "Anyway, he needs to know that you've been claimed by someone much more powerful than his pathetic little self could ever dream of being."
"A little full of yourself, there?" Ariadne laughs, feeling both amused and reassured. Dom shakes his head, also grinning.
"Nah, Saito's just texted me saying that if this idiot bothers you any more that he's sending in the equivalent of the Japanese Navy Seals to take him out," Dom replies, and Ariadne barks out a laugh that echoes throughout the cafe.
"Don't think he won't do it," Dom tells her as she wipes a tear of mirth from her eye. "I don't think they'll be necessary, however. I've definitely got the situation under control."
"Have you, now? Arthur tells me you say that to him quite a lot, and you're rarely accurate," Ariadne quips, but her hand clutching her coffee cup a little too tightly betrays her fear. Dom teases her hand away from the mug and takes her hand with his own. It seems a little comical, with her hand so small and his so large.
"I'm going to kill Arthur," he says calmly. "But yes, I've assessed the situation and I assure you that I can handle it." He gives her hand a squeeze, asking for her trust. She gives his hand a squeeze back, her faith in him unwavering.
-
It's when they get separated that she realizes that something has gone horribly wrong.
She doesn't know exactly how it happens: one minute, they're both on the metro, the next, someone's pulled her out of the bus and Dom is standing there behind closed doors, staring at her, transfixed, gaping in horror at the figure who's got his hands wrapped in the back of her coat.
"You haven't been avoiding me, have you?" asks a horribly familiar voice in her ear. She shakes her head emphatically. Before she can say another word, a cloth doused in what she assumes in chloroform is pressed over her mouth and nose and all goes black.
-
When she wakes up, she gags on a piece of cloth that had been unceremoniously shoved into the cavity of her mouth. She cannot see anything, as she's been blindfolded, but God, she can hear... she can hear the sound of his loud breathing behind her.
"Wakey, wakey," Barry whispers to her. She shudders. He kisses the back of her neck in what he must have considered a loving manner; it leaves his saliva on her skin, dripping down her back. "I've missed you."
He makes slow work of undressing her, and Ariadne every so often attempts a kick or roll off what was so clearly, so appallingly a bed. First her skinny jeans come off, peeling away from her skin. She keeps her thighs tightly pressed together, desperately attempting to stay clothed. He solves this problem quick enough, pressing a sharp, thin object against her pale stomach, under her shirt.
"Relax," he commands. She whimpers and lets him pull off her jeans. He does the rest of her undressing with the knife lying on top of her belly.
"You are so beautiful," he coos, tracing a line up her side with a finger. Ariadne wants to vomit.
He's unclasped her bra when Ariadne hears the unmistakable sound of a door being kicked in.
"Police!" shouts a voice that she knows all too well. "Hands up!"
She can feel Barry struggling to his feet, hears the sound of him re-zipping his zipper and rummaging through a drawer for something-
"Hands on your head!" calls a voice that Ariadne knows to be Arthur's. "HANDS ON YOUR HEAD."
"Ariadne," Dom calls. He sounds both furious and petrified. "Ariadne."
"Don't move," Barry says in a loud voice. Ariadne hears a click and she hopes to God that Arthur's the one holding the loaded gun.
"Put that down," Arthur calls out to Barry, her worst fears confirmed.
"Hmm, how about no?" Barry sneers. "Who the fuck are you people? I've seen you around, following her. Don't you idiots get it? She's mine."
"Not consensually," Arthur barks back heatedly. "It doesn't look very much like she's enjoying any of what you've been putting her through."
"She just doesn't know it yet!" Barry shouts back, voice shaking.
"You're wrong, Barry. She's mine," says Dom in a low voice. "She's been mine since the day I met her."
Ariadne tries to remember how to breath.
Before Barry can reply, a shot rings out. She hears a body fall to the floor, and she is terrified: terrified that the dead body is that of one person she cares most about, the person who has claimed her and protected her for so long... And suddenly there's a huge amount of movement in the room: someone is untying her with deft hands, and a large, callused hand pulls out her gag and removes her blindfold. Dom is sitting above her, shrugging off his jacket and handing it to her wordlessly. She re-hooks her bra, slips on the jacket, and falls into Dom's lap, a pants-less mess, silent tears falling down her cheeks like fucking Niagra Falls. Dom cradles her in his arms effortlessly.
"We need to clean this up," Arthur is saying to a group of what looks like Saito's Japanese Navy Seals. It appears that they had been the one to do the actual shooting. They nod and get to work, but Ariadne doesn't see what exactly goes on in the room because Cobb is carrying her far, far away... she says nothing to him, he says nothing to her, but they both understand. She is his, and has been for enough time to be able to admit it.
"Thank you," she whispers to him at last, once they're in the car. He is still holding her. She doesn't think she ever wants to let him go.
"You should be thanking Saito," Dom says quietly. "His men saved you. I only managed to get you kidnapped, brutally bound and gagged, and nearly raped to death. God, I'm such a fucking fantastic protector." She shudders when he says the words out loud and clutches at him, saying nothing.
The driver (one of Saito's men) has been at the wheel for a while before Ariadne asks where they're going.
"Airport," says Dom shortly. Ariadne stares at him, confused.
"What?" she says, flummoxed.
"I can't stay in Paris indefinitely, and God knows how I could sleep at all if I left you here by yourself," Dom says, the words falling out in a rush. "So, you're coming home with me. To L.A. They've got a pretty good architecture program at UCLA. And you'll be able to take jobs with the team again."
A dumbfounded silence unfolds between them.
"Paris is my home," she says blankly, not knowing what else to say. He presses a soft kiss on her forehead.
"Make a new home," he begs her. With me are the words he need not add.
She is quiet for a long time.
"We need to stop at my apartment for my things," she finally consents. "Plus, I'm half naked. Probably couldn't get through airport security and immigration with no pants on." Dom smiles broadly.
"You'd be surprised," is all he says, but the smile in his voice is unmistakably an Eames story waiting to be told.
"I'll have to have Eames tell you about his job in Johannesburg when we get home," Dom says with a grin, and Ariadne huddles closer to him, trying to burn away the previous few hours in her recent memory with Dom's smell, masculine and warm. She sits up on his lap and looks him in the eye. She tugs at the sides of Dom's jacket (far too large, but nicely textured and comfortable) and, only glancing away once, asks, "Did you mean it?"
"Mean what?" asks Dom, leaning forward and taking her arms in his hands.
"That I-" Ariadne begins, but she feels her voice get cut off by fear. Dom continues her sentence, not missing a beat:
"That you're mine?" he finishes softly. He sighs, eyes closed. "Only if you want to be."
She kisses him softly, slowly, and it is agonizingly gentle. His eyes open in surprise at the touch of her lips, then close in sweet surrender.
"I'll take that as a yes?" he asks her, when they both come up for air.
"That would be a little presumptuous," Ariadne teases, but she smiles wide and nods. "Of course it means yes, you big idiot!" She kisses him again, reaffirming her decision. "Yes, yes, yes."
"Good," Dom laughs into her ear, kissing the skin just below it. "You know, I sort of like you half naked. Maybe we shouldn't go back to your apartment."
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Ariadne/Dom
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: For the movie.
Summary: Written for a prompt from inception_kink: Ariadne has a stalker. Miles finds out and tells Cobb about it. For the sake of this fic, Miles's last name is Draumr.
A/N: Guysssss this is a problem, I cannot stop writing this fandom. laksjfksdfgnls.
It all begins out the first day of the semester, with a polite hello and nod of the head. She's finagled her way, as a junior, into Professor Draumr's Romanesque seminar reserved for seniors only. Draumr grants her permission with a certain amount of hesitation; he finally relents after relentless negotiation and finally, in an act of last resort and desperation, a call to the professor's son-in-law. Ariadne had harbored a lingering crush on her ex-boss for her short duration as Architect during the inception job, and it had been extraordinarily difficult to strike up the courage to call him just out of the blue. Still, she really wanted this class.
"Alright, alright, you're in," Professor Draumr tells her in passing a day before the semester begins. "Just call your watchdog off me. Dom's been harassing me around the clock to get you a spot." Ariadne nearly throws her arms around her mentor in joy but stops herself and merely squeals before running off to buy her books.
The boy she is paired with is broad and muscular, with a shaved head and a tattoo that Ariadne can only see the top of (the rest disappears below the collar of his shirt). He spends most of their first lesson shooting furtive glances at her. Ariadne thinks he might have a bit of a crush.
They spend the next few classes going over floor-plans in hushed voices. Ariadne finds that her partner, Barry, was not completely incompetent, but he could never come up with a plan more elegant than those drawn up by her own hand.
"You're too good to still be in school," he tells her fervently one day. "You should be running your own firm." She laughs, expecting him to smile at her, but all he does is look at her with a dark intensity that makes her own smile fade rapidly.
He offers to walk her home. She declines, telling him a lie about having to call her mom.
"It's okay, I'll walk ten feet behind you," is what he responds with.
"No, this is a private conversation," Ariadne says bluntly. "Sorry."
She walks away quickly, unnerved.
-
It's when she starts seeing him in her regular cafe that a dark cloud of worry settles down over her. She mentions in passing to Professor Draumr in office hours about how bizarrely Barry acted. "It's like, I'll be sitting there," she says darkly, "and then next thing I know, he's right over my left shoulder, just staring." Professor Draumr gives her a concerned look. "I'm probably just imagining things."
But when she goes to open the office door, it is Barry who is waiting outside it. She jumps, and she hears Professor Draumr clear his throat.
"Mr. Williams, come have a seat," Professor Draumr calls to Barry.
"I'm just here to walk Ariadne back to her dorm," Barry says, grinning at Professor Draumr. Ariadne looks over her shoulder at her teacher helplessly.
"Actually Barry, I was hoping that you'd drop by. I've got some questions about some of your dimensions from last week's homework assignment..."
And with that small diversion, Ariadne darts out, for the first time tasting real fear.
-
She lets it go until she sees him outside her window.
She drops the glass of water she had been drinking from and it shatters on the floor beside her bare feet. She's dressed in boxers and a white tank top. He's looking at her with those dark vacant eyes for a long moment, and then has swiftly vanished from the premises. Ariadne has never felt more naked in her life. She stumbles toward the phone in shock and steps on a piece of glass that cuts into her foot like a knife. Cursing, she grabs the cordless phone and hops to the window, pulling the curtains shut shakily.
She doesn't know who to call.
In the end, she ends up dialing Professor Draumr's home phone (he had given it to her after she had returned from the inception job; "in case you need to talk about it," was the reason he had given her).
A sleepy voice answers and Ariadne immediately feels awful about waking him up.
"Hello?"
"Uh, Professor Draumr?" Ariadne squeaks. She hears a rustling from his end.
"Ariadne? Is that you?"
"Y-yes, it's me. Professor--" she says, and suddenly her voice is constricted in fear. She feels the tears coming and begs them not to fall while she's on the phone with her professor, how embarrassing.
"Ariadne, are you all right?"
And then it all spills out and she tells him everything, including the latest peeping-Tom moment from minutes earlier. Professor Draumr says nothing until she's finished, a sob inflecting every syllable.
"Lock your doors and keep a phone by your bed," says Professor Draumr in a voice decidedly unlike his normal lecturing tone. "This will be sorted by the morning."
"Professor--"
"Get some sleep, Ariadne. There's nothing else you can do tonight. Goodnight, my dear." He hangs up abruptly, and Ariadne gazes down at the phone in shock.
It takes hours for Ariadne to fall asleep. Every time she glances at the window of her bedroom, she can feel herself imagining Barry's pale face peering at her through the window. It is an image she cannot get out of her head. Even after falling asleep, nightmares dance in her head.
Horrible images flash through her unconscious head: imprisoned in Barry's closet, gagged and bound; alone in their Romanesque classroom, he's got her by the wrists and has pulled her pants down around her ankles; the door of her apartment's been kicked down, and he strides across her threshold with a knife in his right hand and a smile on his face.
She doesn't sleep much that night.
-
She wakes up the next day at around noon to a knock on the door. She limps to the door and looks through the peephole.
"Dom?" she gasps, flinging the door open. And sure enough, standing on her doorstep is the man who had started (and ended) it all, looking slightly disheveled with mussed up hair from what must have been an overnight flight. His suit is wrinkled, and he carries a bag over his shoulder that, if packed correctly, could probably hold an extensive arsenal of weapons. It probably did, Ariadne guesses.
"I hear you need some protection," he says to her, a tremor of a strange emotion in his voice that Ariadne has only ever heard him use when talking about his kids. He walks inside and she closes the door behind him. She feels touched.
"You didn't need to fly here and everything--" she begins, but he puts a hand on her shoulder and looks deep into her eyes. This look gives Ariadne the exact opposite feeling that Barry's terrifying gazes had provoked in her: instead of horror and revulsion, simple relief and adoration blossom within her, warming her soul.
"Yes, I did," he says simply. She opens her mouth to say something in response, but all that comes out is a small whimper. Now her eyes are full of tears, and she finds herself wrapped in his embrace, sobbing out-right for the first time since the whole terrifying experience had begun. Dom merely strokes her hair and holds her tight, murmuring reassurances into her ear.
"No one's coming near you now," he tells her. "No one."
Dom stands watch that night, and Ariadne sleeps soundly.
-
When Ariadne awakens the next day, she finds Cobb making a pot of coffee in her small kitchenette.
"Any sign of him?" she asks. When Cobb doesn't answer her, her heart drops.
"You're safe," is all he tells her. "No one's getting in here."
"What do you mean, 'no one's getting in here,'" Ariadne gasps, horror-struck. Dom slams the coffee mug down.
"I mean," he growls, turning towards her, fury in his eyes, "that if he tries anything, he's going to regret it. I know a lot of ways to make people regret." He thrusts a cup of coffee at her, anger still clearly at the forefront of his mind. "Coffee?"
She takes the mug and sits down at the kitchen table with it, clearly shocked at his outburst.
"Are you going to kill him?" she whispers. When he doesn't respond, she balks. "You can't kill for me," she hisses in outrage. "How dare you even consider that, for even a second--"
"How can I not?!" Dom shouts at her, effectively silencing the both of them for a few minutes. "How can I not think about killing the guy who's trying to-- to you, Ariadne..." Dom doesn't need to say it to make the potential outcome clear.
"I'm calling the police," Ariadne decides, going to the phone. Dom cross the room and stands between her and the phone.
"The police can give you a restraining order, but I'm someone who can actually stop this motherfucker," Dom says in a threatening voice. "Let me do this."
She sits back down.
"You can't kill him, Dom," Ariadne repeats. Dom shrugs his shoulders and doesn't respond.
-
That night, Ariadne cannot sleep. Dom's sitting on her couch, a hand gun by his side and the New York Times in his lap, when she calls out a singular, "Dom?"
He's by her side in an instant.
"What, what, did you see him?" he says, a little breathlessly, glancing toward her window, gun raised.
"No!" she says, eyes wide. "No, no." Dom lowers his gun slowly, uncertainly, and finally slips it into the back of his pants.
"I, well," Ariadne begins. "Can you stay with me?" she finally asks, looking anywhere but at Dom Cobb.
"That's what I've been doing," Dom says, a little perplexedly.
"I mean, in here."
Dom says nothing, just goes and retrieves his Times from the living room and re-enters, pulling a chair behind him. He settles by the head of her bed and unfurls the newspaper once more.
-
Dom decides to attend to Ariadne during the week, following her to her classes and sitting behind her or next to her, a looming shadow behind the petite brunette everywhere she went. Having Dom with Ariadne made her feel safe, clearly, but she also got a lot of looks from fellow classmates-especially her fellow female classmates-, who all wondered exactly who this ridiculously handsome stranger was and why the hell was he following around that mousy Ariadne for?
"You're not exactly subtle, you know," she tells him one day, while they're eating at her second favorite cafe. He chuckles, staring at his phone in awe.
"Why would I want to be subtle?" he asks her. "I want that bastard to know that you've been marked with a 'no stalking, staring, or touching' label, courtesy of Dom Cobb." Cobb proceeds to crumble the remnants of his croissant. "Anyway, he needs to know that you've been claimed by someone much more powerful than his pathetic little self could ever dream of being."
"A little full of yourself, there?" Ariadne laughs, feeling both amused and reassured. Dom shakes his head, also grinning.
"Nah, Saito's just texted me saying that if this idiot bothers you any more that he's sending in the equivalent of the Japanese Navy Seals to take him out," Dom replies, and Ariadne barks out a laugh that echoes throughout the cafe.
"Don't think he won't do it," Dom tells her as she wipes a tear of mirth from her eye. "I don't think they'll be necessary, however. I've definitely got the situation under control."
"Have you, now? Arthur tells me you say that to him quite a lot, and you're rarely accurate," Ariadne quips, but her hand clutching her coffee cup a little too tightly betrays her fear. Dom teases her hand away from the mug and takes her hand with his own. It seems a little comical, with her hand so small and his so large.
"I'm going to kill Arthur," he says calmly. "But yes, I've assessed the situation and I assure you that I can handle it." He gives her hand a squeeze, asking for her trust. She gives his hand a squeeze back, her faith in him unwavering.
-
It's when they get separated that she realizes that something has gone horribly wrong.
She doesn't know exactly how it happens: one minute, they're both on the metro, the next, someone's pulled her out of the bus and Dom is standing there behind closed doors, staring at her, transfixed, gaping in horror at the figure who's got his hands wrapped in the back of her coat.
"You haven't been avoiding me, have you?" asks a horribly familiar voice in her ear. She shakes her head emphatically. Before she can say another word, a cloth doused in what she assumes in chloroform is pressed over her mouth and nose and all goes black.
-
When she wakes up, she gags on a piece of cloth that had been unceremoniously shoved into the cavity of her mouth. She cannot see anything, as she's been blindfolded, but God, she can hear... she can hear the sound of his loud breathing behind her.
"Wakey, wakey," Barry whispers to her. She shudders. He kisses the back of her neck in what he must have considered a loving manner; it leaves his saliva on her skin, dripping down her back. "I've missed you."
He makes slow work of undressing her, and Ariadne every so often attempts a kick or roll off what was so clearly, so appallingly a bed. First her skinny jeans come off, peeling away from her skin. She keeps her thighs tightly pressed together, desperately attempting to stay clothed. He solves this problem quick enough, pressing a sharp, thin object against her pale stomach, under her shirt.
"Relax," he commands. She whimpers and lets him pull off her jeans. He does the rest of her undressing with the knife lying on top of her belly.
"You are so beautiful," he coos, tracing a line up her side with a finger. Ariadne wants to vomit.
He's unclasped her bra when Ariadne hears the unmistakable sound of a door being kicked in.
"Police!" shouts a voice that she knows all too well. "Hands up!"
She can feel Barry struggling to his feet, hears the sound of him re-zipping his zipper and rummaging through a drawer for something-
"Hands on your head!" calls a voice that Ariadne knows to be Arthur's. "HANDS ON YOUR HEAD."
"Ariadne," Dom calls. He sounds both furious and petrified. "Ariadne."
"Don't move," Barry says in a loud voice. Ariadne hears a click and she hopes to God that Arthur's the one holding the loaded gun.
"Put that down," Arthur calls out to Barry, her worst fears confirmed.
"Hmm, how about no?" Barry sneers. "Who the fuck are you people? I've seen you around, following her. Don't you idiots get it? She's mine."
"Not consensually," Arthur barks back heatedly. "It doesn't look very much like she's enjoying any of what you've been putting her through."
"She just doesn't know it yet!" Barry shouts back, voice shaking.
"You're wrong, Barry. She's mine," says Dom in a low voice. "She's been mine since the day I met her."
Ariadne tries to remember how to breath.
Before Barry can reply, a shot rings out. She hears a body fall to the floor, and she is terrified: terrified that the dead body is that of one person she cares most about, the person who has claimed her and protected her for so long... And suddenly there's a huge amount of movement in the room: someone is untying her with deft hands, and a large, callused hand pulls out her gag and removes her blindfold. Dom is sitting above her, shrugging off his jacket and handing it to her wordlessly. She re-hooks her bra, slips on the jacket, and falls into Dom's lap, a pants-less mess, silent tears falling down her cheeks like fucking Niagra Falls. Dom cradles her in his arms effortlessly.
"We need to clean this up," Arthur is saying to a group of what looks like Saito's Japanese Navy Seals. It appears that they had been the one to do the actual shooting. They nod and get to work, but Ariadne doesn't see what exactly goes on in the room because Cobb is carrying her far, far away... she says nothing to him, he says nothing to her, but they both understand. She is his, and has been for enough time to be able to admit it.
"Thank you," she whispers to him at last, once they're in the car. He is still holding her. She doesn't think she ever wants to let him go.
"You should be thanking Saito," Dom says quietly. "His men saved you. I only managed to get you kidnapped, brutally bound and gagged, and nearly raped to death. God, I'm such a fucking fantastic protector." She shudders when he says the words out loud and clutches at him, saying nothing.
The driver (one of Saito's men) has been at the wheel for a while before Ariadne asks where they're going.
"Airport," says Dom shortly. Ariadne stares at him, confused.
"What?" she says, flummoxed.
"I can't stay in Paris indefinitely, and God knows how I could sleep at all if I left you here by yourself," Dom says, the words falling out in a rush. "So, you're coming home with me. To L.A. They've got a pretty good architecture program at UCLA. And you'll be able to take jobs with the team again."
A dumbfounded silence unfolds between them.
"Paris is my home," she says blankly, not knowing what else to say. He presses a soft kiss on her forehead.
"Make a new home," he begs her. With me are the words he need not add.
She is quiet for a long time.
"We need to stop at my apartment for my things," she finally consents. "Plus, I'm half naked. Probably couldn't get through airport security and immigration with no pants on." Dom smiles broadly.
"You'd be surprised," is all he says, but the smile in his voice is unmistakably an Eames story waiting to be told.
"I'll have to have Eames tell you about his job in Johannesburg when we get home," Dom says with a grin, and Ariadne huddles closer to him, trying to burn away the previous few hours in her recent memory with Dom's smell, masculine and warm. She sits up on his lap and looks him in the eye. She tugs at the sides of Dom's jacket (far too large, but nicely textured and comfortable) and, only glancing away once, asks, "Did you mean it?"
"Mean what?" asks Dom, leaning forward and taking her arms in his hands.
"That I-" Ariadne begins, but she feels her voice get cut off by fear. Dom continues her sentence, not missing a beat:
"That you're mine?" he finishes softly. He sighs, eyes closed. "Only if you want to be."
She kisses him softly, slowly, and it is agonizingly gentle. His eyes open in surprise at the touch of her lips, then close in sweet surrender.
"I'll take that as a yes?" he asks her, when they both come up for air.
"That would be a little presumptuous," Ariadne teases, but she smiles wide and nods. "Of course it means yes, you big idiot!" She kisses him again, reaffirming her decision. "Yes, yes, yes."
"Good," Dom laughs into her ear, kissing the skin just below it. "You know, I sort of like you half naked. Maybe we shouldn't go back to your apartment."