[fic]: little beast
Title: Little Beast
Author: knowmydark
Rating: M.
Word Count: 2,078.
Genre: Romance/Angst.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Us against the world. Eames/Arthur, slash, One-Shot.
A/N: More Siken-inspired fic, this is starting to border on ridiculous. Prior to about three days ago, I'd never read a word of Siken, and now I'm channeling him like a madwoman. Based on the poems Little Beast and Seaside Improvisation by Richard Siken. inception_kink fill for this prompt (Us against the world).
Please don't forget to comment!
--
Little Beast
--
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.
(Scheherazade - Richard Siken)
--
We start with fire, a match lit with a cigarette lighter and the eruption. We both know what kind of looks we mean, my long slanting ones that mean to get under your nails, your short ones, prickling up all the skin of my neck. You are the wrong sort of line for my sort of swerve; where we meet, all the teeth of our gears snag up. You have brown eyes. I want to sleep with you. I want to find all the places that tear you apart.
--
We start with fire, the smooth lick of it up the walls, you in this season’s Yves St Laurent with the glass like pieces of rain in your hair. You’ve your finger hooked into the trigger, eyes calm, the centre of chaos and untouched by it. There is blood and viscera on your pant legs; they’re not yours. You are losing the shine in your shoes. You’ve a single nick beneath your eyebrow and the red is drenching the side of your face, disappearing whenever you duck or you turn. You’re a god dragged beneath an inferno, and you love it. You don’t smile, but I know that your teeth are sharp.
--
Days you are a brilliant thing, an exercise in containment, police tape in a half-mile radius. I can’t get near you without your eyes flicking up, all your fight on show. It is on show. You don’t mean it. It’s just that we can’t help ourselves.
Nights you are a wild thing, all snarling mouth and teeth and nails, the way you love me like you hate me, and that for me is alright. We started with fire and we’ll carry it through, the orange glow in your pupils like it’s swallowing you up, like it’s burrowed into a hole in your chest and decided that it likes its environs. It’ll eat you, perhaps, on some day coming up. You’ll wake and find nothing behind your ribs. In the meantime, I’ll put my hand up by your back and shove down, and you’ll hiss things against the pillow.
--
Your hands are the hands of a pianist, a virtuoso, deadly against the blade of a knife. Inside dreams, I am deathly in love with you. Outside dreams, I am deathly in love.
Not with you.
--
Your hands fold so perfectly into a gun, hair slicked, slender like the most unbreakable things and beautiful, in a way that burns much too fast and will reach the fuse several years too soon.
I don’t mean to be attracted to splintering things, in the way people don’t mean to lie, to steal, to murder, and I don’t mean to fuck you, your thighs whipcord taut and your voice in your throat. I don’t mean it at all. We all love our faults and the things we don’t mean, so perhaps that’s a problem. Perhaps that’s the deal. I’d leave if I thought that would solve everything, but your spine truly makes the most elegant arch, the fight still in you, always in you, like a genie we both want to keep bottled up. You’ll ride me and I’ll fuck you into the floor, twice. You’ll have the worst carpet-burn. Your eyes will be the sound of a gun going off, and fuck, how I’ll want you. You won’t even know.
--
Latitude, longitude, timezones. The clatter of suitcase wheels on tile. You’ll follow me and I’ll be following you, a dog that just ends up chasing its tail. We’ll make a habit of fucking in different continents. Perhaps you could write a list. Go on.
--
In five years, if there will be five years, I can see you standing by a window, I can see the way your face is in profile and the way the light clogs up by your Adam’s apple. I can see you, and I can see the window behind you, and I can see through you to the window to the birds outside. You’ll be fading; you’ll slowly turn miserable. I can see this. This is going to occur. If I keep you, the fuse won’t go off but go out. You want happiness? I can’t really blame you for that, pet. I can see your lashes like an electric fence, like shutters, like closeting up your soul. Oh, darling. I won’t let the fire go out. If you want, I will feed it. I won’t fall in love.
--
We start with fire. I’ll find you in your hotel room. I’ll throw you a punch; I might throw you two. I’ll throw you my heart like a basketball or a grenade that I’ve pulled the pin off of, and you’ll stare at it like you don’t know what it’s there for, like you’re asking for an instruction manual. Close the blinds. We don’t want the neighbours to see. I’ll kiss you like I’m biting into you, like you’re an apple that I’m trying to carve into thirds. Don’t you want this? Isn’t this what you’re looking for? You do the math, you count all the weeks, all the months. Nine months since Mal died, nine months you’ve been gone like an empty coat-hanger left in my closet, and I’d fall here onto my knees for you, you brilliant thing that I can’t keep hold of, like my fingers have all been coated with butter and you’ve lost all your limbs and turned into a snake.
--
When did I stop wanting to rip up your seams? How did this happen? Quick. Reach for the oil.
--
I don’t mean to get tired, I could keep this up for years, for decades, for millennia. This is a tango that we’ve already choreographed, you step here, I’ll go there, we’ll meet in the middle and the thorns from my rose-stem will tear at your throat.
I don’t mean to get tired, but people get old, I’m getting old. I’m nearly thirty-five. When, too, did this happen as well? It seems like the snow is layering up. I could take you home, I could rough you up, in the car seat where the seatbelt cuts into your shoulder and we could do all the things that we used to do, matches, lighters, petrol, the lot, set this whole street alight if you asked me to just to see that same orange in your pupils again, yawning. Oh, darling, you’ve worn me out. I don’t mean it, but we never get what we mean, and I’m wanting a different part of you, the part that’s been eaten up by now. Don’t check within your ribcage - it’s gone. Oh, darling. Alright. Alright. I’ll go.
--
Draw a circle with a piece of chalk. Imagine standing in a constant cone of light. Imagine surrender. Imagine being useless. Imagine being in love. It doesn’t sound right, does it?
--
I don’t mean to see you in the parking lots, in the shop windows, in the motel rooms. I don’t mean to see ghosted versions of you, like the fog your breath makes when you breathe on a mirror. It’s so easy to fall in love with your faults and you were always, always, my greatest fault, fire with the smoke leaking up to the sky like a laugh, like the taste of your collarbone. This is Kenya; this is the chasm I’ve dropped into. You won’t find me here, you won’t think to look. You wouldn’t look. This is the wrong sort of place, all show. The heat isn’t strong enough for you.
--
Cobb.
--
We start -
Did we ever even start at all? Or did we just end up in the middle of it, fighting and fucking with our fangs on show, like a dream? I’ve been in this business for years, and I still can’t tell where the boundaries blur.
--
Your hands fold so perfectly into a gun, hair slicked, slender like the most breakable things and it’s two years since the last time I saw you, but it hits me like a mortar shell every time. You’re tucked closer now, less furious, like you’ve streamlined yourself against the air to prevent it from holding you back, your hands like they’re meant for a knife or a keybed, or both. Your hips are still so extremely sharp-boned. I could cut myself open if I’m not careful.
On a hotel floor when we’re into the job you’ll slip your hands up underneath my shirtsleeve, brush your fingertips quietly over my wrist. I’ll be stunned like a flare through night-vision goggles. We’ll go on, and we’ll both say it never quite happened, but it did, and I saw it. I felt it. I know.
--
When did you stop wanting to rip up my seams? How did this happen? Do you even know?
--
We start with fire.
You’ll tail me to the taxi rank, bristling in that flaring way that you have. Beneath those suits that I’ve peeled off you is a raw thing, raw like a newborn child or the skid of a naked body on gravel, opened up to the very highest degree. Perhaps I will stop you at the cab door - perhaps I won’t. Perhaps it won’t matter. We’ll sit with our bodies canted apart, watch the birds outside the moving windows, and I won’t observe the line of your thigh, the way your jacket almost falls open. We’ll let the hum of the engine latch onto our spines, unify us and crinkle the air in between, turn it charged, something ready to hone to a solid and snap at the slightest mislaid breath. We’ll start with fire dimmed down to coals, waiting. We’ll reach my hotel, or yours.
We’ll fight. Two years and we’ll fight our way past it, not something we mean, but something we are. I’m tired, but you are tired as well, thirty-two and I’ve somehow forgotten that. We are both tired, of ourselves and of each other, but like the point when you realise that you have to get along with yourself we’ll both realise that this is all crucial, somehow, like brushing your teeth or making a meal or waking up. You’ll end up being the one to sink to your knees, a god brought down to a mortal again, bruised cheekbone, my teeth leaving semicircles, and you’ll reach for me like you never used to reach for me, wavering, the way you hate me like you love me, until the way that you hate and the way that you love is one thing and cannot be separated out.
--
Waking up first is the final mistake, last nail in a coffin I never want to get out of.
Oh, darling, if you could see yourself now you would shoot me, and I would still love you for it.
--
In five years, if there will be five years, I can see you standing by a window, I can see how the light breaks over your shoulder like cracking an egg in a frying pan.
In five years, and there will be five years, we know this, now, I can see you, your lines still slender and long, and if I could shout it I’m sure it would carry to the sea and then keep on going like an albatross. You’ll be steady, and beautiful like the sun is beautiful, so that if I look too directly at you I’ll go blind and yet I’ll still want to look, in the end. How did this happen? And when? And why? We won’t dampen the fuse, we’ll put our hands on it and light it together when the time finally comes. We started with fire and we’ll carry it through, the orange glow in your pupils like something soft, like it would melt if I put my fingertips to the shallow dip by the side of your throat. Oh, darling. You’re a thing that I can’t keep hold of, but perhaps I don’t need to. You’ll be here, all the same. We’ll be fucking and fighting but we won’t fight each other, we’ll stand with my back against your back and we’ll go down with bullets, with mortar shells, still together, just us against the world.
--
The End.
--
A/N: Wow. I never thought I'd write two Siken-inspired fics in two days. What is this, muse? I don't even know.
Please don't forget to comment! And feel free to friend me for future Arthur/Eames, or check out my other Inception fics, or my other kinkmeme fills!
♥
Author: knowmydark
Rating: M.
Word Count: 2,078.
Genre: Romance/Angst.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Us against the world. Eames/Arthur, slash, One-Shot.
A/N: More Siken-inspired fic, this is starting to border on ridiculous. Prior to about three days ago, I'd never read a word of Siken, and now I'm channeling him like a madwoman. Based on the poems Little Beast and Seaside Improvisation by Richard Siken. inception_kink fill for this prompt (Us against the world).
Please don't forget to comment!
--
Little Beast
--
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.
(Scheherazade - Richard Siken)
--
We start with fire, a match lit with a cigarette lighter and the eruption. We both know what kind of looks we mean, my long slanting ones that mean to get under your nails, your short ones, prickling up all the skin of my neck. You are the wrong sort of line for my sort of swerve; where we meet, all the teeth of our gears snag up. You have brown eyes. I want to sleep with you. I want to find all the places that tear you apart.
--
We start with fire, the smooth lick of it up the walls, you in this season’s Yves St Laurent with the glass like pieces of rain in your hair. You’ve your finger hooked into the trigger, eyes calm, the centre of chaos and untouched by it. There is blood and viscera on your pant legs; they’re not yours. You are losing the shine in your shoes. You’ve a single nick beneath your eyebrow and the red is drenching the side of your face, disappearing whenever you duck or you turn. You’re a god dragged beneath an inferno, and you love it. You don’t smile, but I know that your teeth are sharp.
--
Days you are a brilliant thing, an exercise in containment, police tape in a half-mile radius. I can’t get near you without your eyes flicking up, all your fight on show. It is on show. You don’t mean it. It’s just that we can’t help ourselves.
Nights you are a wild thing, all snarling mouth and teeth and nails, the way you love me like you hate me, and that for me is alright. We started with fire and we’ll carry it through, the orange glow in your pupils like it’s swallowing you up, like it’s burrowed into a hole in your chest and decided that it likes its environs. It’ll eat you, perhaps, on some day coming up. You’ll wake and find nothing behind your ribs. In the meantime, I’ll put my hand up by your back and shove down, and you’ll hiss things against the pillow.
--
Your hands are the hands of a pianist, a virtuoso, deadly against the blade of a knife. Inside dreams, I am deathly in love with you. Outside dreams, I am deathly in love.
Not with you.
--
Your hands fold so perfectly into a gun, hair slicked, slender like the most unbreakable things and beautiful, in a way that burns much too fast and will reach the fuse several years too soon.
I don’t mean to be attracted to splintering things, in the way people don’t mean to lie, to steal, to murder, and I don’t mean to fuck you, your thighs whipcord taut and your voice in your throat. I don’t mean it at all. We all love our faults and the things we don’t mean, so perhaps that’s a problem. Perhaps that’s the deal. I’d leave if I thought that would solve everything, but your spine truly makes the most elegant arch, the fight still in you, always in you, like a genie we both want to keep bottled up. You’ll ride me and I’ll fuck you into the floor, twice. You’ll have the worst carpet-burn. Your eyes will be the sound of a gun going off, and fuck, how I’ll want you. You won’t even know.
--
Latitude, longitude, timezones. The clatter of suitcase wheels on tile. You’ll follow me and I’ll be following you, a dog that just ends up chasing its tail. We’ll make a habit of fucking in different continents. Perhaps you could write a list. Go on.
--
In five years, if there will be five years, I can see you standing by a window, I can see the way your face is in profile and the way the light clogs up by your Adam’s apple. I can see you, and I can see the window behind you, and I can see through you to the window to the birds outside. You’ll be fading; you’ll slowly turn miserable. I can see this. This is going to occur. If I keep you, the fuse won’t go off but go out. You want happiness? I can’t really blame you for that, pet. I can see your lashes like an electric fence, like shutters, like closeting up your soul. Oh, darling. I won’t let the fire go out. If you want, I will feed it. I won’t fall in love.
--
We start with fire. I’ll find you in your hotel room. I’ll throw you a punch; I might throw you two. I’ll throw you my heart like a basketball or a grenade that I’ve pulled the pin off of, and you’ll stare at it like you don’t know what it’s there for, like you’re asking for an instruction manual. Close the blinds. We don’t want the neighbours to see. I’ll kiss you like I’m biting into you, like you’re an apple that I’m trying to carve into thirds. Don’t you want this? Isn’t this what you’re looking for? You do the math, you count all the weeks, all the months. Nine months since Mal died, nine months you’ve been gone like an empty coat-hanger left in my closet, and I’d fall here onto my knees for you, you brilliant thing that I can’t keep hold of, like my fingers have all been coated with butter and you’ve lost all your limbs and turned into a snake.
--
When did I stop wanting to rip up your seams? How did this happen? Quick. Reach for the oil.
--
I don’t mean to get tired, I could keep this up for years, for decades, for millennia. This is a tango that we’ve already choreographed, you step here, I’ll go there, we’ll meet in the middle and the thorns from my rose-stem will tear at your throat.
I don’t mean to get tired, but people get old, I’m getting old. I’m nearly thirty-five. When, too, did this happen as well? It seems like the snow is layering up. I could take you home, I could rough you up, in the car seat where the seatbelt cuts into your shoulder and we could do all the things that we used to do, matches, lighters, petrol, the lot, set this whole street alight if you asked me to just to see that same orange in your pupils again, yawning. Oh, darling, you’ve worn me out. I don’t mean it, but we never get what we mean, and I’m wanting a different part of you, the part that’s been eaten up by now. Don’t check within your ribcage - it’s gone. Oh, darling. Alright. Alright. I’ll go.
--
Draw a circle with a piece of chalk. Imagine standing in a constant cone of light. Imagine surrender. Imagine being useless. Imagine being in love. It doesn’t sound right, does it?
--
I don’t mean to see you in the parking lots, in the shop windows, in the motel rooms. I don’t mean to see ghosted versions of you, like the fog your breath makes when you breathe on a mirror. It’s so easy to fall in love with your faults and you were always, always, my greatest fault, fire with the smoke leaking up to the sky like a laugh, like the taste of your collarbone. This is Kenya; this is the chasm I’ve dropped into. You won’t find me here, you won’t think to look. You wouldn’t look. This is the wrong sort of place, all show. The heat isn’t strong enough for you.
--
Cobb.
--
We start -
Did we ever even start at all? Or did we just end up in the middle of it, fighting and fucking with our fangs on show, like a dream? I’ve been in this business for years, and I still can’t tell where the boundaries blur.
--
Your hands fold so perfectly into a gun, hair slicked, slender like the most breakable things and it’s two years since the last time I saw you, but it hits me like a mortar shell every time. You’re tucked closer now, less furious, like you’ve streamlined yourself against the air to prevent it from holding you back, your hands like they’re meant for a knife or a keybed, or both. Your hips are still so extremely sharp-boned. I could cut myself open if I’m not careful.
On a hotel floor when we’re into the job you’ll slip your hands up underneath my shirtsleeve, brush your fingertips quietly over my wrist. I’ll be stunned like a flare through night-vision goggles. We’ll go on, and we’ll both say it never quite happened, but it did, and I saw it. I felt it. I know.
--
When did you stop wanting to rip up my seams? How did this happen? Do you even know?
--
We start with fire.
You’ll tail me to the taxi rank, bristling in that flaring way that you have. Beneath those suits that I’ve peeled off you is a raw thing, raw like a newborn child or the skid of a naked body on gravel, opened up to the very highest degree. Perhaps I will stop you at the cab door - perhaps I won’t. Perhaps it won’t matter. We’ll sit with our bodies canted apart, watch the birds outside the moving windows, and I won’t observe the line of your thigh, the way your jacket almost falls open. We’ll let the hum of the engine latch onto our spines, unify us and crinkle the air in between, turn it charged, something ready to hone to a solid and snap at the slightest mislaid breath. We’ll start with fire dimmed down to coals, waiting. We’ll reach my hotel, or yours.
We’ll fight. Two years and we’ll fight our way past it, not something we mean, but something we are. I’m tired, but you are tired as well, thirty-two and I’ve somehow forgotten that. We are both tired, of ourselves and of each other, but like the point when you realise that you have to get along with yourself we’ll both realise that this is all crucial, somehow, like brushing your teeth or making a meal or waking up. You’ll end up being the one to sink to your knees, a god brought down to a mortal again, bruised cheekbone, my teeth leaving semicircles, and you’ll reach for me like you never used to reach for me, wavering, the way you hate me like you love me, until the way that you hate and the way that you love is one thing and cannot be separated out.
--
Waking up first is the final mistake, last nail in a coffin I never want to get out of.
Oh, darling, if you could see yourself now you would shoot me, and I would still love you for it.
--
In five years, if there will be five years, I can see you standing by a window, I can see how the light breaks over your shoulder like cracking an egg in a frying pan.
In five years, and there will be five years, we know this, now, I can see you, your lines still slender and long, and if I could shout it I’m sure it would carry to the sea and then keep on going like an albatross. You’ll be steady, and beautiful like the sun is beautiful, so that if I look too directly at you I’ll go blind and yet I’ll still want to look, in the end. How did this happen? And when? And why? We won’t dampen the fuse, we’ll put our hands on it and light it together when the time finally comes. We started with fire and we’ll carry it through, the orange glow in your pupils like something soft, like it would melt if I put my fingertips to the shallow dip by the side of your throat. Oh, darling. You’re a thing that I can’t keep hold of, but perhaps I don’t need to. You’ll be here, all the same. We’ll be fucking and fighting but we won’t fight each other, we’ll stand with my back against your back and we’ll go down with bullets, with mortar shells, still together, just us against the world.
--
The End.
--
A/N: Wow. I never thought I'd write two Siken-inspired fics in two days. What is this, muse? I don't even know.
Please don't forget to comment! And feel free to friend me for future Arthur/Eames, or check out my other Inception fics, or my other kinkmeme fills!
♥