The Pearl Fishers - Yusuf/Ariadne
cathybites wanted Yusuf/Ariadne. IDEK you guys. I think it's kind of adorable.
Title: The Pearl Fishers
Author: yakbites
Rating: Very light R
Word Count: 707
Pairing: Yusuf/Ariadne
He smiled at her.
Ariadne thinks perhaps that was where it had all really started. She’d been exploring her first effort at a maze, a small village that felt almost like some of her best memories of vacations to Agen, her father with his guitar and plaid shirt and beard, the odd way the streets seemed to blur into each other,
She woke up calm, cued by the music, not by untimely death, and a stocky South Asian guy in a sweater vest was pulling glass bottles out of a trunk in front of her.
“Hello,” she said, and he smiled. It was a world apart from Cobb’s intent frown, Arthur’s polite bartender smile, always slightly removed, or what she would later learn was Eames’ mocking grin. He smiled like a real person, some guy who didn’t make his living raping minds, always having to worry about the boundaries of reality, clinging to the remnants of his own ordered self. He just looked open and friendly. She couldn’t help but grin back.
In the frantic weeks before the Fischer job, he was just a presence, easily filed away as some guy in deep blues and brown corduroy, listening politely as she taught him the routes through her city, her very first city. He would slip on reading glasses and hunch over her models.
“And streetlights, here and here?” he would ask, pointing, “and the median here?”
Many times she woke up to his fingers on her wrist, feeling for a pulse, testing the dosage of some new mix of sedative.
“We will have to reduce your ratio of paralytic more than I suspected,” he would say, “You are very small.” Not accusing and not teasing, just stating one more detail to be handled before they could succeed.
Everything went to shit.
They all made it out okay.
Now it is two weeks since they landed in LAX, and she still hasn’t even looked into booking a flight back home. She spends a lot of time in Saito’s back garden, watching the jacaranda trees move in the wind, or driving the small boxy Volkswagon that was her first post-job purchase through the hills. She is in possession of a truly ridiculous amount of money; she could do anything, but the airy white emptiness of Saito’s L.A. house is comforting, restful. It’s easy for her to slip into a haze, senses dulled, running her fingers lazily over the manicured lawn.
Saito had invited them to stay as long as they like, to use his house to recover, plan whatever they might do next. Dom, of course, was off north to see his children the instant they arrived in the States, and Arthur caught a connecting to Chicago, citing “some loose ends”, promising to return. Eames comes in and out at all hours, more often drunk than not, and when Ariadne makes quiet concerned noises, he laughs, mumbles about withdrawal, hair of the dog.
She understands completely, and keeps her hand wrapped around her totem.
So it is Yusuf, then, who makes omelets of the eggs she buys, and salad of the mangos and avocados she chops. He doesn’t seem to want to go anywhere either. He comandeers Saito’s computer and keeps up a steady stream of downloaded sound, Qawwali devotional music, cock rock, Bizet.
“I used to think I hated going under,” he says, collapsing onto the couch next to her, “Thought I wasn’t cut out for it. But now,”
Ariadne feels warmth radiating from him.
“You took care of us,” she says, “You did well.”
So maybe it is just proximity, maybe it is just a desperate effort to ease the malaise following the ultimate rush, but as his hands slide up her thighs that night, all she can think of is waking up to his smile.
She curls up against his substantial back and presses her face against the warm fabric of the t-shirt he pulled on immediately after, groaning about moobs.
“We have to do another job,” she says, “All of us. We just have to.”
He hums, and she breathes in sweat and deodorant and the tiniest hint of bleachy come.
“We will,” he says, and May wind buzzes faintly through the window screen.
Title: The Pearl Fishers
Author: yakbites
Rating: Very light R
Word Count: 707
Pairing: Yusuf/Ariadne
He smiled at her.
Ariadne thinks perhaps that was where it had all really started. She’d been exploring her first effort at a maze, a small village that felt almost like some of her best memories of vacations to Agen, her father with his guitar and plaid shirt and beard, the odd way the streets seemed to blur into each other,
She woke up calm, cued by the music, not by untimely death, and a stocky South Asian guy in a sweater vest was pulling glass bottles out of a trunk in front of her.
“Hello,” she said, and he smiled. It was a world apart from Cobb’s intent frown, Arthur’s polite bartender smile, always slightly removed, or what she would later learn was Eames’ mocking grin. He smiled like a real person, some guy who didn’t make his living raping minds, always having to worry about the boundaries of reality, clinging to the remnants of his own ordered self. He just looked open and friendly. She couldn’t help but grin back.
In the frantic weeks before the Fischer job, he was just a presence, easily filed away as some guy in deep blues and brown corduroy, listening politely as she taught him the routes through her city, her very first city. He would slip on reading glasses and hunch over her models.
“And streetlights, here and here?” he would ask, pointing, “and the median here?”
Many times she woke up to his fingers on her wrist, feeling for a pulse, testing the dosage of some new mix of sedative.
“We will have to reduce your ratio of paralytic more than I suspected,” he would say, “You are very small.” Not accusing and not teasing, just stating one more detail to be handled before they could succeed.
Everything went to shit.
They all made it out okay.
Now it is two weeks since they landed in LAX, and she still hasn’t even looked into booking a flight back home. She spends a lot of time in Saito’s back garden, watching the jacaranda trees move in the wind, or driving the small boxy Volkswagon that was her first post-job purchase through the hills. She is in possession of a truly ridiculous amount of money; she could do anything, but the airy white emptiness of Saito’s L.A. house is comforting, restful. It’s easy for her to slip into a haze, senses dulled, running her fingers lazily over the manicured lawn.
Saito had invited them to stay as long as they like, to use his house to recover, plan whatever they might do next. Dom, of course, was off north to see his children the instant they arrived in the States, and Arthur caught a connecting to Chicago, citing “some loose ends”, promising to return. Eames comes in and out at all hours, more often drunk than not, and when Ariadne makes quiet concerned noises, he laughs, mumbles about withdrawal, hair of the dog.
She understands completely, and keeps her hand wrapped around her totem.
So it is Yusuf, then, who makes omelets of the eggs she buys, and salad of the mangos and avocados she chops. He doesn’t seem to want to go anywhere either. He comandeers Saito’s computer and keeps up a steady stream of downloaded sound, Qawwali devotional music, cock rock, Bizet.
“I used to think I hated going under,” he says, collapsing onto the couch next to her, “Thought I wasn’t cut out for it. But now,”
Ariadne feels warmth radiating from him.
“You took care of us,” she says, “You did well.”
So maybe it is just proximity, maybe it is just a desperate effort to ease the malaise following the ultimate rush, but as his hands slide up her thighs that night, all she can think of is waking up to his smile.
She curls up against his substantial back and presses her face against the warm fabric of the t-shirt he pulled on immediately after, groaning about moobs.
“We have to do another job,” she says, “All of us. We just have to.”
He hums, and she breathes in sweat and deodorant and the tiniest hint of bleachy come.
“We will,” he says, and May wind buzzes faintly through the window screen.