(no subject)
Title: -none-
Rating: PG-13 for for language
Pairing: Ariadne/Arthur
Word Count: 838
Summary: She won't be getting back to sleep.
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"I can't stop thinking about you."
Her eyes snap open, and she answers articulately. "What?"
"You heard me."
She recognizes the voice but the words are so foreign that she has to check her caller ID just to make sure before responding. "Arthur, this is Ariadne. Not the piece you picked up the night before."
She can hear the amusement in his voice. "I know."
She turns her head so she can see her alarm clock. It glows red, a beacon in her bedroom. "Arthur, it's 3 in the morning. What are you doing up?"
"In our line of work, very few of us keep up with normal circadian rhythms. You're an anomaly."
She can tell he's drunk. Maybe he trained himself that way, but it's nearly imperceptible. There's just a slight softening at the end of his sentences, instead of the normally crisp way he bites off his words.
Also, he's lying. As far as she knows, everyone still sleeps at normal times. "Where are you?"
"At a club." he drawls lazily.
"On a Tuesday night?"
"Technically it's Wednesday morning now." He pauses, as if to wait for a witty response from her, and upon hearing only silence, he admits "Ok, one of the stripping variety."
She blearly tries to focus on the music in the background and it does seem to corroborate his story. Standard stripper fare. "So why'd you call me?"
"I told you. I can't stop thinking about you."
"Is the show not entertaining enough?" she mumbles.
"Not nearly."
She buries her face in the pillow. "Arthur, it's late. I want to go back to sleep."
He doesn't answer, distracted, and she hears a female voice in the background. "Honey, why are you on the phone? Trying to make your girlfriend jealous?"
"Yeah, but it's not working." he tells whoever he's talking to. Probably some gorgeous waitress he's been hitting on all night until he decided to drunk dial her
"That's cause you don't have a girlfriend." she reminds him once she has his attention again.
"And not for lack of trying."
If her sleep addled brain would only string together her thoughts into a coherent sentence, she'd want to ask him what he was talking about. He had demonstrated about as much interest in being in a committed relationship as a crackhead would at a sandwich...when he wasn't hungry. She had never seen physical evidence of its existence but she had heard rumours of a running contest between Arthur and Eames involving women...something, slept with, conquered, who knows.
She settles for this: "When have you ever tried to get a girlfriend?"
He ignores her. "There's a girl dancing right now. She's got hair like yours. When she's not facing me...I pretend it's you."
Her stomach drops. This is getting more and more surreal. "I bet that's quite a stretch." she manages.
"Is it so crazy?"
"Well knowing you, you're probably someplace really nice. Which means the girls are correspondingly high end."
"You don't think you're a high end girl?" he asks, amused.
"Not of the escort variety."
He laughs softly. "I've always been into tall girls. Something about their legs, when they're wearing heels, or in skirts. I like it when they're wearing thigh high stockings, and the way it feels when they wrap their legs around me."
"You called me at 3 in the morning so you could recite a soliloquy on why you love tall girls."
"No, I called you because I wanted to tell you how more and more lately I've been wondering how you'd feel in thigh highs, with your legs around me."
She begins to feel a bit tingly. Arthur had proven in the past to have a terrible memory after bouts of alcohol overconsumption. In this case, she considers this fact almost regretfully. He had never flirted with her quite so blatantly before and she's not used to him like this. She's not even sure she's should be taking him as seriously as she is. "What am I supposed to say to that?"
"Promise me I'll find out one day." he says, voice low.
The tingling feeling in the pit of her stomach grows.
"Ariadne?"
"I'm still here."
"Promise me." he repeats.
She hesitates. "Will you go home if I do?"
"I'll do anything you want."
She's never getting back to bed now. "I promise."
"You promise what?" he goads.
She sighs. "I promise you'll find out what it's like to fuck me one day."
His breath hitches. "Even better."
"Arthur?"
She can still hear him breathing? "Yeah?"
"Go home. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Good night, Ariadne."
"And Arthur? If you drove tonight, take a cab home."
"Ok." he agrees, and she stays on the phone until she hears the soft click and the dial tone. She stares at her phone for a minute before flinging it into her pile of clothes, out of reach so she won't call him back.