Arziyan
Title : Arziyan
Summary : Arthur answers the door and before he can comment on her state, like he wants to, she cuts him off. “I’m running away. Would you like to come with me?"
Rating : R
Notes : Written for this inception_kink prompt, but it got ridiculously out of control.
Further Notes : Arziyan means yearning. Yeah, I know I decided to get fancy and put my title in a different language. I know, I'm shaking my head at myself. Honestly, I have no idea what this is. When the words come, I write. Apparently I'm a HUGE fan of stories where they don't see each other for long periods of time.
To put a beginning to them would be incredibly difficult. When they meet, it’s not a beginning. It’s not an aligning of stars, it’s not fate or kismet or anything of the sort. It just simply is. Cobb introduces them and she smiles at him briefly, unsurely, and then she disappears into the dream, and then out of the warehouse. It’s anything but a beginning.
The kiss they share in his dream is merely a prequel to what could be considered their beginning. It’s the dormant, yet unstable, snow that’s yet to start the avalanche. When they seek solace in his hotel room, after they touch down in LAX, they’re two bodies craving something. It’s the shifting of the snow, though neither knows it.
When they go their separate ways the following morning, there are no longing looks and no lingering kisses. There’s no promise to see each other in the future. Her job is done and Ariadne now knows where she belongs. She has seen what pure creation can do and limited creation is good enough for her. There’s a flat in Paris, a roommate who loves to nag, classes and a dissertation waiting for her. There’s a boy, she could possibly have something real with, and that’s more than enough for her.
She still gets the taste of him in her mouth from time to time.
She tries to wash it away with her roommate’s expensive coffee she’s not allowed to touch. Sometimes, with beer from the bar that’s just around the corner. Other times, it’s the cheap white wine that sits in her fridge, untouched save for such occasions when she wakes up in a cold sweat.
She does the exact same thing when she catches a glimpse of the tiny nick on her arm that’s now permanently a welt. It looks like a burn. Sometimes it feels like it’s on fire. She tells her roommate and her inquisitive friends she doesn’t remember where it’s from when they ask about it.
She lies to their faces. She realizes then, in the middle of her own lies, when someone says they don’t remember where they got a scar, they’re most likely lying. Like she is.
Her friends decide a trip to Marseille is the smartest and most ideal way to celebrate getting their degrees. There’s no more graduate school in their futures. They’re done and spending a weekend outside Paris is the only way to celebrate such an achievement.
She stumbles out of Le Trolleybus halfway through the first night they’re in Marseille. The music is giving her a headache and she’s not interested in playing boules. The welt on her right arm itches. She doesn’t move to soothe it. She prefers to ignore it. It reminds her of people - a person- she wants to forget.
Closing her eyes, letting her feet guide her, Ariadne turns the cover she just knows is there. She’s being daring, if she so happened to walk into something, or even fall, she would get right up like a big girl and start all over again. Instead, she bumps into him. Literally. Her front meets with a solid weight and her eyes fly open.
For a brief instant, he looks startled to see her.
“Arthur?”
“Do you make a habit out of walking with your eyes closed?” He questions easily. “It’s a dangerous recreational pastime.”
It’s like no time has passed at all. The year they haven’t seen each other seems like a distant memory. There he is before her, all sleek lines and propriety. His shoulders are squared and his hands sit in the pockets of his trousers.
“What are you doing here?” Her curiosity can’t be helped.
“Work. You?”
“I’m on a trip with my friends.” He nods, eyes peering just over her shoulder. “I’ll leave you to it then.”
Short and simple. That’s how she wants to keep it. “If I asked you to have a drink, would you say no?”
“Are you asking?” She arches a brow. He nods. “Then no, I’m not saying no.”
Ten minutes later, they’re sitting atop a rock that overlooks the Mediterranean Sea. Ariadne thinks about the year they haven’t seen each other. She thinks about the night they spent in his hotel room. They were just two slick bodies moving against each other. They were driven on pure adrenaline and they desperately craved a release. Calloused hands and soft skin clashing at feverish speeds. She absentmindedly reaches for the welt on her arm.
“It didn’t go away.” Arthur’s eyes are focused on the swollen skin.
“I kept forgetting to put the special cream on it.”
A broken wine glass and an accidental clashing in his room resulted in a slashing of her skin. It served as a reminder of him. No matter how hard she tried to bury the weeks they worked together, and salvage fragments of a normal life, it never let her forget him - them.
A gust of sea breeze washes over them and Ariadne closes her eyes. It reminds her of the beach she and Cobb were washed up on. It’s the exact opposite of the beach in limbo and it makes her ponder the older man for a moment. Her mind begins to wonder what happened with Cobb and his children and then she stops herself.
“I take it you’re not doing important work.”
“Why do you assume that?” He holds the beer bottle by the narrow neck and a furrow appears between his brows.
“You’re here with me right now, aren’t you?”
“I suppose you could look at it like that.” His words confuse her. It’s not like Arthur to speak in riddles, but she supposes she doesn’t really know him. Working with him for a handful of weeks doesn’t constitute as knowing a person. “Importance is subjective.”
“Am I talking to Eames right now?” He doesn’t make a show of hiding his amusement. He looks at her and smiles widely, eyes crinkling, face dimpling. She suddenly feels foolish. She doesn’t know why she readily agreed to have a drink with him. She’s supposed to be avoiding everything that connected her to that part of her life. And he’s the greatest connection she could have. “My friends are probably looking for me. I have to go.”
She walks off, not waiting to see if he will stop her.
It’s a cloudy night. Tell-tale signs of a summer shower are gathering and Ariadne makes a mental note to remember her umbrella the next morning. The plans for the wedding are consuming her, consuming her apartment and it’s more than likely she’ll forget the shock red umbrella that sits just by the door in case of emergencies.
“And then he has the audacity to storm off. Him!” This is the fifth, or maybe it’s the seventh, time Ariadne is hearing this story for the night.
“He’ll be back. He has nowhere else to sleep,” Ariadne assures Annie, her roommate, as they walk arm in arm on the deserted street. It’s nearing three in the morning and it feels like they’re the only living souls in Paris.
She tilts her head upwards and looks at the gray clouds that are now covering the stars. It’s the calm before a storm.
“There’s someone loitering outside the building,” Annie whispers to her. Before she allows the girl to start panicking, that’s her go-to reaction for most everything, Ariadne holds her closer and fishes in her jacket pocket. Her fingers tighten on the small can that’s always there. The pepper spray was a gag gift, but when out with Annie it never hurt to bring it along.
The figure is stoic and unmoving. Ariadne would think it a statue, rather than a nighttime caller, if they didn’t move closer.
The meeting in Marseille is a coincidence, she’s sure of that, but this is anything but.
“Go on, I’ll be right with you.” Ariadne presses her keys to Annie’s palm and sends her off with a nudge. The blonde eyes them unsurely before she unlocks the front door and disappears.
For a minute there is absolute silence between them. Arthur watches her with steady eyes, waiting, while she fights the shameful descent of her gaze. He’s wearing an outfit that reminds her of the one in Yusuf’s dream. Casual, but tailored to custom fit him, she’s sure.
“We never finished that drink.”
She wants to laugh. It’s quite possibly the funniest thing she’s heard all year. There he is, two months after Marseille, and he’s staring at her with unwavering eyes. The air around her feels crisper and the fine hairs on her arms stand on end.
“No, we didn’t,” She agrees, taking a tentative step forward. She’s testing the waters. He’s the shark waiting for her to misstep.
Arthur doesn’t do anything without reason. This much she does know about him.
“There’s a job. We need an architect.” Her eyes snap close. She knows he remembers the conversation they had when they lay boneless on his bed, thin pieces of fabric covering their slick bodies.
“Arthur-“
“I am asking you to reconsider your stance. You made your feelings quite clear, but think about it. It’s good money and you’ll put that degree to good use. Working in a bookstore, waiting for work, isn’t helping your creativity. You should put it to good, loosely speaking, use or it’ll disappear. You don’t want that to happen.”
He slips her a piece of paper into her hand and then he’s gone. The sheen of the drizzle comes down and she’s left staring in the direction he disappears into.
That night she dreams of taut stomach muscles and a familiar voice gasping her name. There are calloused finger tips that grip her hips tightly and whiskey laced breath that tickles her nose, intoxicatingly.
Annie doesn’t yell the next morning when she finds a fresh pot of her coffee has been brewed.
Summer escapes her.
She dutifully walks the distance between her apartment and the bookstore every day.
On evenings, when she feels daring, Ariadne walks the long way home. She walks past the Parisian warehouse, just to see if it’s still there. The number Arthur slipped into her hand a month and a half earlier sits in the front pocket of her satchel. She doesn’t know if he’s still waiting for her call and she’s not brave enough to find out. She wonders if it’s even real. She’s not brave enough to pick up the phone and find out.
Arthur is persuasive enough to get her to abandon the normalcy she desperately tries to hold on to even so long after Inception.
Cobb almost lost everything, including himself, because of his dreams and she doesn’t want to be like that.
A week after Annie marries, Ariadne sits in the darkness of her apartment. Her knees are drawn to her chest tightly and the glass of wine that sits on her coffee table teeters.
She’s alone. For the first time in her life she’s alone. Her parents are in Ohio and the only familiar face she can remember is now in London, starting a new life.
The number on the paper that sits next to her wine glass is faded, but not unrecognizable.
She has a real job now. An opening in an architecture firm opens up and she’s the first person they call to interview for the position, but she finds herself day dreaming of impossible staircases that are only possible in dreams.
When she was younger her aunt blamed her inability to decide what she wanted on being a Libra. Her mother called her difficult and her father smiled and said it took her a long time to figure out what was right for her and no one else.
Ariadne finds herself lingering on the last words Arthur speaks to her. Her mind picks it apart to impossible pieces.
She snatches the phone off the cushion next to her and before she can lose her nerve, she dials the number.
“Hi Arthur, it’s me, Ariadne…”
She wants her creativity back.
Every evening when she returns from work, she checks her answering machine and all her missed calls. None of them are from him. Annie invites her to London for the weekend, her mother wants to know if she’s coming home for Christmas, Michael - the man she went on a date with- calls to ask her on a follow up date.
That’s a call she knows she won’t be returning.
Still, Arthur doesn’t call.
When Ariadne returns home after a particularly tiring day at the office, she unlocks her door and doesn’t even bother to turn on the lights. She knows the layout and a few drunken nights have taught her where everything is. Ariadne knows she won’t bump into a single thing. All she’s focused on is her bed.
“No lights? If things were this bad you should’ve given us a ring sooner.”
A strangled scream escapes her lips. She hears the faint clicking of her lamp and in the corner Eames is sitting with his legs crossed. He blends into the frenzied décor of her apartment nicely. His paisley shirt matches a rogue throw pillow she knows she has.
“Is breaking and entering how you get your thrills these days, Eames?” She tosses her bag onto her couch unceremoniously.
“You’ve got to enjoy the little things in life.” He throws a wink at her and Ariadne finds it impossible not to smile at him.
“What are you doing here?”
“Arthur sent me to collect you. Usually I don’t take kindly to him ordering me around like I’m some kind of lap dog, but this one I had to do. We’ve missed you girlie.”
Being tiny doesn’t guarantee her grace. She launches herself at Eames and he catches her with solid arms. His chuckles that rumble through her provide more comfort than she thought possible.
Eames helps her pack. He throws mismatched outfits into her suitcase haphazardly and she makes three phone calls.
She leaves a message for her mother; she won’t be making it home for Christmas. She tells Annie she can’t make the weekend trip she promised and she calls in sick. She and Eames are out the door before the clock chimes ten.
“So you and Arthur work exclusively together now?” Araidne questions Eames when they’re on the plane, heading to Shanghai.
“Going back to petty thievery after Inception didn’t seem appealing. And who better to team up with? Stuffy business men have no problem employing him, Arthur being the honest looking type after all, and I get to reap the benefits.
Eames is many things, but talking about people behind their backs isn’t something he does - even when he’s not fond of said person. Ariadne inquires about their current, or rather former, architect and the clenching of his jaw tells her all she needs to know.
She walks into his hotel room. Walk is the wrong term. Eames pushes her into the hotel room and closes the door before he escapes down to the bar.
Arthur looks up from his paper work and gazes at her. It’s her turn to be scrutinized. Her cheeks flush, but she follows his eyes.
“For a couple of months there, I didn’t think you would call.”
“For a couple of months there, I didn’t think I would call.” He smiles at her, not at all like the way he did in Marseille and Ariadne finds solace in this.
When she dreams, she’s almost always being pulled under by a current, she can fight back against. Her limbs are heavy and fighting against the water is like fighting an invisible intruder. Ariadne knows she’ll never win, so she gives in. And almost every time there are no strong hands to pull her from under the water.
Her first PASIV induced dream in nearly a year and a half follows the same pattern. She wakes up gasping and coughing and instantaneously Arthur is at her side. His long slender fingers press into her arm, soothing her skin with his cool touch. It’s reminiscent of the day she first meets him.
“What happened in there?” His voice is even and his fingers seek out her pulse point.
There's still three minutes left on the timer.
“N-nothing,” she gasps, clutching the arm of her chair tightly. If she holds onto it with just enough strength it’ll ground her. She knows that to be a fact. Arthur stares at her pointedly, unwaveringly, but he says not a word. His stoicism doesn’t seem as heavy handed as it was before. His eyes are softer. Eames’ easy nature must have rubbed off on him, she decides.
The job in Shanghai goes off without a hitch.
The mark likes muted colors, ceiling to floor glass walls and pragmatic shapes. Much like navigating her way through her darkened apartment, this is a familiar dance Ariadne has done several times before. Arthur doesn’t offer her the option to enter the dream and she doesn’t ask for it. When she sleeps in her hotel room that night, she dreams of warm calloused hands.
Arthur likes work and Eames likes money.
Ariadne understands the partnership much better when she’s a part of it. After Shanghai they travel to São Paulo. Eames boasts that the job is easier than the one in Shanghai. He isn’t wrong. She builds a museum that loops within itself and when Arthur tells her she’s outdone herself, she feels a swell of pride. When they’re sipping Mojitos, or rather Dirty Mojitos in Eames’ case, after the completion Ariadne sits between the two men, a feeling of contentment settling in the pit of her stomach.
It doesn’t occur to her until they’re in Berlin, via Delhi and Cape Town, that what she ran from is the thing that’s making her feel more alive than she has in a long time. Limited creation was enough, she could make it enough -her creativity would suffer but she would make it enough- , but their company was irreplaceable. Before they go out to celebrate their fifth consecutive victory, Ariadne calls and quits her job at the architecture firm.
The music in the club is loud, the smoke is unbearable and when Eames disappears with a tall blond fellow, Arthur places a hand on the small of her back and leads her out of the establishment.
They walk in silence.
“What were you doing in Marseille?”
“I was actually working, if that’s what you’re asking. I didn’t expect to run into you. I respect you enough to comply with your requests. You didn’t want anyone to come looking for you, so I made sure no one did.”
“Eames?” Arthur nods at her question and slides his hands into his pockets.
“When we started this partnership, he wanted you, but I made your feelings on the topic quite clear. I’m an acceptable extractor, but architecture isn’t my area of expertise. I’m sure Eames hated ninety percent of the architects I hired. I came only when I-we needed you."
“I needed time,” She whispers the words. “I needed time to figure out what I wanted.”
“I know that.” His words linger in the air. It’s not said smugly or self-righteously. He says it like a person who’s been in the same predicament. “Did you talk to anyone about it?”
Ariadne stares at him incredulously. “Of course, I went right up to my roommate and told her, and her fiancé, all about unexplored dream space.”
His lips quirk amusedly. “Would you like to talk about it?”
“Are you offering?” He nods slowly. “Yes.”
She sits in his hotel room and talks. Ariadne never liked sharing about herself. Her aunt called her anti-social. Her mother called her shy. Her father patted her on the head and said she would talk about herself when she felt the time was appropriate.
She tells him about the nightmares that frequented her dreams for a year after Inception, her dreams about Cobb and Mal that haunted her long after she stopped dreaming about them. She tells him about no longer walking the bridge to get to the University. Vivid visions of Mal stabbing her refused to go away. She tells him she hasn’t seen her totem, much less touched it, in eight months. She tells him about her new fear of drowning. And Arthur listens. He doesn’t say word and it’s exactly what she needs.
She can’t say anymore so Arthur speaks. His voice, that sounds like its taken far too many shots of whiskey, breaks the silence of the hotel room. He tells her about the night Mal jumps, the night that changed everything.
“It’s a fair trade.” He shrugs easily when she tells him he doesn’t need to talk about it. “I went right back to work. I wanted to understand all the aspects of the dream world. We all deal with it in different ways.”
It’s the most personal thing he has divulged to her. It’s really the only thing he’s told her.
When she’s too exhausted to go on, he lifts her easily and carries her to his bed. She feels warm lips on her forehead, but Ariadne is sure she’s merely remembering events from a night that never left her mind.
To put a beginning to them would be incredibly difficult, but that night is the closest thing they have to one. It’s the shift that sets off the avalanche that’s them.
Two weeks later they’re in London. Eames’ nephew is celebrating his fifth birthday and he declares he, they, can’t miss it for the world. Arthur leans down and whispers this is the third birthday Eames’ nephew has had in the span of fourteen months. His breath tickles her face and she revels in the feeling. She shifts on her feet uncomfortably and smiles thinly at him.
It takes Eames to point out the obvious to her.
He’s holding a slice of birthday cake in his hands and his face is painted when he approaches her. She tears her eyes away from the overcast sky and grins, wiping at the paint that has begun to cake on his face.
“Ariadne, why are you still loitering?”
“Are you kicking me out of your nephew’s birthday party, Eames?”
“You are arse over elbow for Arthur.”
“I’m what?” Ariadne frowns heavily.
“You are head over heels for the bloke. Why are you still loitering? I’m not his biggest fan, by any means, but if you keep him waiting any longer I may have to put a bullet to his head to take him out of his misery.”
When it rains it pours.
Ariadne walks most of the way back to the hotel, wishing the entire time for her red umbrella that’s most likely still sitting next to the front door in her Parisian apartment. Her feet lead her back to The Dorchester. She’s soaking. Her t-shirt sticks to her body indecently and she’s dripping water on the pristine floor. The staff eyes her dirtily, but she pays them no mind. She knows her destination and she’s impatient to get to it.
Three solid knocks. She waits for a response, before she knocks again.
Arthur answers the door and before he can comment on her state, like he wants to, she cuts him off. “I’m running away. Would you like to come with me?”
Her resolve is broken. Ariadne can no longer pretend that she doesn’t dream about him, about the one night neither one of them speaks of- even when they’re alone. She steps right up to him and kisses him squarely on the lips without a single word of warning. There’s a crescendo that’s building, that has been building quietly.
Arthur holds her close. His lips slow her desperate kiss. His movements are meticulous, careful, deliberate as he explores the every rise and fall of her lips. She expects it to be like the night in L.A, but it’s inherently different. Inevitably different. He closes the door behind her quietly, never parting their mouths.
He peels her wet clothing from her body. His hands leave no patch of newly exposed skin untouched and his lips, his tongue, follow. She shivers and it’s not because of her damp hair that sticks to her back. His fingers don’t bite at her skin this time. He traces the droplets of water that cling to her stomach softly and he presses a faint kiss to the welt on her arm.
Arthur carries her to his bed. Ariadne smiles up at him and her breath catches at the sight of him. He’s still the same. Calloused hands and taut stomach muscles, but this time when he kisses her it’s not desperate. When he slips into her his hands don’t grab, they caress her skin. Arthur’s fingers find the scar on her arm and he brushes his thumb over it. The reminder of their last time. He thrusts gently, lovingly, and her head lolls to the side. His teeth scrape the sensitive skin of her neck and she arches into him. Shadows of the rainfall dance across his skin in the darkness.
He moves against her slowly and whispers things in the crook of her neck that sound like; so long.
He takes her for all she’s worth. His hands burn like molten metal and he loses control, spilling himself into her- crying her name into her skin.
There’s a clap of thunder outside and the rain falls onto the cold hard ground with renewed fervor. His phone rings and then hers, but they can’t hear it over the sounds of their own heavy breathing. Ariadne, at her least eloquent, can’t string two words together in her blissful euphoria. Arthur kisses her and they're, she's, lost again. He makes love to her more than once that night, with the rain beating against the window of his hotel room. It's just him, her and the rain.
When she runs away this time, back to that Parisian apartment with the red umbrella sitting just by the door, Ariadne takes Arthur with her.
Summary : Arthur answers the door and before he can comment on her state, like he wants to, she cuts him off. “I’m running away. Would you like to come with me?"
Rating : R
Notes : Written for this inception_kink prompt, but it got ridiculously out of control.
Further Notes : Arziyan means yearning. Yeah, I know I decided to get fancy and put my title in a different language. I know, I'm shaking my head at myself. Honestly, I have no idea what this is. When the words come, I write. Apparently I'm a HUGE fan of stories where they don't see each other for long periods of time.
To put a beginning to them would be incredibly difficult. When they meet, it’s not a beginning. It’s not an aligning of stars, it’s not fate or kismet or anything of the sort. It just simply is. Cobb introduces them and she smiles at him briefly, unsurely, and then she disappears into the dream, and then out of the warehouse. It’s anything but a beginning.
The kiss they share in his dream is merely a prequel to what could be considered their beginning. It’s the dormant, yet unstable, snow that’s yet to start the avalanche. When they seek solace in his hotel room, after they touch down in LAX, they’re two bodies craving something. It’s the shifting of the snow, though neither knows it.
When they go their separate ways the following morning, there are no longing looks and no lingering kisses. There’s no promise to see each other in the future. Her job is done and Ariadne now knows where she belongs. She has seen what pure creation can do and limited creation is good enough for her. There’s a flat in Paris, a roommate who loves to nag, classes and a dissertation waiting for her. There’s a boy, she could possibly have something real with, and that’s more than enough for her.
She still gets the taste of him in her mouth from time to time.
She tries to wash it away with her roommate’s expensive coffee she’s not allowed to touch. Sometimes, with beer from the bar that’s just around the corner. Other times, it’s the cheap white wine that sits in her fridge, untouched save for such occasions when she wakes up in a cold sweat.
She does the exact same thing when she catches a glimpse of the tiny nick on her arm that’s now permanently a welt. It looks like a burn. Sometimes it feels like it’s on fire. She tells her roommate and her inquisitive friends she doesn’t remember where it’s from when they ask about it.
She lies to their faces. She realizes then, in the middle of her own lies, when someone says they don’t remember where they got a scar, they’re most likely lying. Like she is.
Her friends decide a trip to Marseille is the smartest and most ideal way to celebrate getting their degrees. There’s no more graduate school in their futures. They’re done and spending a weekend outside Paris is the only way to celebrate such an achievement.
She stumbles out of Le Trolleybus halfway through the first night they’re in Marseille. The music is giving her a headache and she’s not interested in playing boules. The welt on her right arm itches. She doesn’t move to soothe it. She prefers to ignore it. It reminds her of people - a person- she wants to forget.
Closing her eyes, letting her feet guide her, Ariadne turns the cover she just knows is there. She’s being daring, if she so happened to walk into something, or even fall, she would get right up like a big girl and start all over again. Instead, she bumps into him. Literally. Her front meets with a solid weight and her eyes fly open.
For a brief instant, he looks startled to see her.
“Arthur?”
“Do you make a habit out of walking with your eyes closed?” He questions easily. “It’s a dangerous recreational pastime.”
It’s like no time has passed at all. The year they haven’t seen each other seems like a distant memory. There he is before her, all sleek lines and propriety. His shoulders are squared and his hands sit in the pockets of his trousers.
“What are you doing here?” Her curiosity can’t be helped.
“Work. You?”
“I’m on a trip with my friends.” He nods, eyes peering just over her shoulder. “I’ll leave you to it then.”
Short and simple. That’s how she wants to keep it. “If I asked you to have a drink, would you say no?”
“Are you asking?” She arches a brow. He nods. “Then no, I’m not saying no.”
Ten minutes later, they’re sitting atop a rock that overlooks the Mediterranean Sea. Ariadne thinks about the year they haven’t seen each other. She thinks about the night they spent in his hotel room. They were just two slick bodies moving against each other. They were driven on pure adrenaline and they desperately craved a release. Calloused hands and soft skin clashing at feverish speeds. She absentmindedly reaches for the welt on her arm.
“It didn’t go away.” Arthur’s eyes are focused on the swollen skin.
“I kept forgetting to put the special cream on it.”
A broken wine glass and an accidental clashing in his room resulted in a slashing of her skin. It served as a reminder of him. No matter how hard she tried to bury the weeks they worked together, and salvage fragments of a normal life, it never let her forget him - them.
A gust of sea breeze washes over them and Ariadne closes her eyes. It reminds her of the beach she and Cobb were washed up on. It’s the exact opposite of the beach in limbo and it makes her ponder the older man for a moment. Her mind begins to wonder what happened with Cobb and his children and then she stops herself.
“I take it you’re not doing important work.”
“Why do you assume that?” He holds the beer bottle by the narrow neck and a furrow appears between his brows.
“You’re here with me right now, aren’t you?”
“I suppose you could look at it like that.” His words confuse her. It’s not like Arthur to speak in riddles, but she supposes she doesn’t really know him. Working with him for a handful of weeks doesn’t constitute as knowing a person. “Importance is subjective.”
“Am I talking to Eames right now?” He doesn’t make a show of hiding his amusement. He looks at her and smiles widely, eyes crinkling, face dimpling. She suddenly feels foolish. She doesn’t know why she readily agreed to have a drink with him. She’s supposed to be avoiding everything that connected her to that part of her life. And he’s the greatest connection she could have. “My friends are probably looking for me. I have to go.”
She walks off, not waiting to see if he will stop her.
It’s a cloudy night. Tell-tale signs of a summer shower are gathering and Ariadne makes a mental note to remember her umbrella the next morning. The plans for the wedding are consuming her, consuming her apartment and it’s more than likely she’ll forget the shock red umbrella that sits just by the door in case of emergencies.
“And then he has the audacity to storm off. Him!” This is the fifth, or maybe it’s the seventh, time Ariadne is hearing this story for the night.
“He’ll be back. He has nowhere else to sleep,” Ariadne assures Annie, her roommate, as they walk arm in arm on the deserted street. It’s nearing three in the morning and it feels like they’re the only living souls in Paris.
She tilts her head upwards and looks at the gray clouds that are now covering the stars. It’s the calm before a storm.
“There’s someone loitering outside the building,” Annie whispers to her. Before she allows the girl to start panicking, that’s her go-to reaction for most everything, Ariadne holds her closer and fishes in her jacket pocket. Her fingers tighten on the small can that’s always there. The pepper spray was a gag gift, but when out with Annie it never hurt to bring it along.
The figure is stoic and unmoving. Ariadne would think it a statue, rather than a nighttime caller, if they didn’t move closer.
The meeting in Marseille is a coincidence, she’s sure of that, but this is anything but.
“Go on, I’ll be right with you.” Ariadne presses her keys to Annie’s palm and sends her off with a nudge. The blonde eyes them unsurely before she unlocks the front door and disappears.
For a minute there is absolute silence between them. Arthur watches her with steady eyes, waiting, while she fights the shameful descent of her gaze. He’s wearing an outfit that reminds her of the one in Yusuf’s dream. Casual, but tailored to custom fit him, she’s sure.
“We never finished that drink.”
She wants to laugh. It’s quite possibly the funniest thing she’s heard all year. There he is, two months after Marseille, and he’s staring at her with unwavering eyes. The air around her feels crisper and the fine hairs on her arms stand on end.
“No, we didn’t,” She agrees, taking a tentative step forward. She’s testing the waters. He’s the shark waiting for her to misstep.
Arthur doesn’t do anything without reason. This much she does know about him.
“There’s a job. We need an architect.” Her eyes snap close. She knows he remembers the conversation they had when they lay boneless on his bed, thin pieces of fabric covering their slick bodies.
“Arthur-“
“I am asking you to reconsider your stance. You made your feelings quite clear, but think about it. It’s good money and you’ll put that degree to good use. Working in a bookstore, waiting for work, isn’t helping your creativity. You should put it to good, loosely speaking, use or it’ll disappear. You don’t want that to happen.”
He slips her a piece of paper into her hand and then he’s gone. The sheen of the drizzle comes down and she’s left staring in the direction he disappears into.
That night she dreams of taut stomach muscles and a familiar voice gasping her name. There are calloused finger tips that grip her hips tightly and whiskey laced breath that tickles her nose, intoxicatingly.
Annie doesn’t yell the next morning when she finds a fresh pot of her coffee has been brewed.
Summer escapes her.
She dutifully walks the distance between her apartment and the bookstore every day.
On evenings, when she feels daring, Ariadne walks the long way home. She walks past the Parisian warehouse, just to see if it’s still there. The number Arthur slipped into her hand a month and a half earlier sits in the front pocket of her satchel. She doesn’t know if he’s still waiting for her call and she’s not brave enough to find out. She wonders if it’s even real. She’s not brave enough to pick up the phone and find out.
Arthur is persuasive enough to get her to abandon the normalcy she desperately tries to hold on to even so long after Inception.
Cobb almost lost everything, including himself, because of his dreams and she doesn’t want to be like that.
A week after Annie marries, Ariadne sits in the darkness of her apartment. Her knees are drawn to her chest tightly and the glass of wine that sits on her coffee table teeters.
She’s alone. For the first time in her life she’s alone. Her parents are in Ohio and the only familiar face she can remember is now in London, starting a new life.
The number on the paper that sits next to her wine glass is faded, but not unrecognizable.
She has a real job now. An opening in an architecture firm opens up and she’s the first person they call to interview for the position, but she finds herself day dreaming of impossible staircases that are only possible in dreams.
When she was younger her aunt blamed her inability to decide what she wanted on being a Libra. Her mother called her difficult and her father smiled and said it took her a long time to figure out what was right for her and no one else.
Ariadne finds herself lingering on the last words Arthur speaks to her. Her mind picks it apart to impossible pieces.
She snatches the phone off the cushion next to her and before she can lose her nerve, she dials the number.
“Hi Arthur, it’s me, Ariadne…”
She wants her creativity back.
Every evening when she returns from work, she checks her answering machine and all her missed calls. None of them are from him. Annie invites her to London for the weekend, her mother wants to know if she’s coming home for Christmas, Michael - the man she went on a date with- calls to ask her on a follow up date.
That’s a call she knows she won’t be returning.
Still, Arthur doesn’t call.
When Ariadne returns home after a particularly tiring day at the office, she unlocks her door and doesn’t even bother to turn on the lights. She knows the layout and a few drunken nights have taught her where everything is. Ariadne knows she won’t bump into a single thing. All she’s focused on is her bed.
“No lights? If things were this bad you should’ve given us a ring sooner.”
A strangled scream escapes her lips. She hears the faint clicking of her lamp and in the corner Eames is sitting with his legs crossed. He blends into the frenzied décor of her apartment nicely. His paisley shirt matches a rogue throw pillow she knows she has.
“Is breaking and entering how you get your thrills these days, Eames?” She tosses her bag onto her couch unceremoniously.
“You’ve got to enjoy the little things in life.” He throws a wink at her and Ariadne finds it impossible not to smile at him.
“What are you doing here?”
“Arthur sent me to collect you. Usually I don’t take kindly to him ordering me around like I’m some kind of lap dog, but this one I had to do. We’ve missed you girlie.”
Being tiny doesn’t guarantee her grace. She launches herself at Eames and he catches her with solid arms. His chuckles that rumble through her provide more comfort than she thought possible.
Eames helps her pack. He throws mismatched outfits into her suitcase haphazardly and she makes three phone calls.
She leaves a message for her mother; she won’t be making it home for Christmas. She tells Annie she can’t make the weekend trip she promised and she calls in sick. She and Eames are out the door before the clock chimes ten.
“So you and Arthur work exclusively together now?” Araidne questions Eames when they’re on the plane, heading to Shanghai.
“Going back to petty thievery after Inception didn’t seem appealing. And who better to team up with? Stuffy business men have no problem employing him, Arthur being the honest looking type after all, and I get to reap the benefits.
Eames is many things, but talking about people behind their backs isn’t something he does - even when he’s not fond of said person. Ariadne inquires about their current, or rather former, architect and the clenching of his jaw tells her all she needs to know.
She walks into his hotel room. Walk is the wrong term. Eames pushes her into the hotel room and closes the door before he escapes down to the bar.
Arthur looks up from his paper work and gazes at her. It’s her turn to be scrutinized. Her cheeks flush, but she follows his eyes.
“For a couple of months there, I didn’t think you would call.”
“For a couple of months there, I didn’t think I would call.” He smiles at her, not at all like the way he did in Marseille and Ariadne finds solace in this.
When she dreams, she’s almost always being pulled under by a current, she can fight back against. Her limbs are heavy and fighting against the water is like fighting an invisible intruder. Ariadne knows she’ll never win, so she gives in. And almost every time there are no strong hands to pull her from under the water.
Her first PASIV induced dream in nearly a year and a half follows the same pattern. She wakes up gasping and coughing and instantaneously Arthur is at her side. His long slender fingers press into her arm, soothing her skin with his cool touch. It’s reminiscent of the day she first meets him.
“What happened in there?” His voice is even and his fingers seek out her pulse point.
There's still three minutes left on the timer.
“N-nothing,” she gasps, clutching the arm of her chair tightly. If she holds onto it with just enough strength it’ll ground her. She knows that to be a fact. Arthur stares at her pointedly, unwaveringly, but he says not a word. His stoicism doesn’t seem as heavy handed as it was before. His eyes are softer. Eames’ easy nature must have rubbed off on him, she decides.
The job in Shanghai goes off without a hitch.
The mark likes muted colors, ceiling to floor glass walls and pragmatic shapes. Much like navigating her way through her darkened apartment, this is a familiar dance Ariadne has done several times before. Arthur doesn’t offer her the option to enter the dream and she doesn’t ask for it. When she sleeps in her hotel room that night, she dreams of warm calloused hands.
Arthur likes work and Eames likes money.
Ariadne understands the partnership much better when she’s a part of it. After Shanghai they travel to São Paulo. Eames boasts that the job is easier than the one in Shanghai. He isn’t wrong. She builds a museum that loops within itself and when Arthur tells her she’s outdone herself, she feels a swell of pride. When they’re sipping Mojitos, or rather Dirty Mojitos in Eames’ case, after the completion Ariadne sits between the two men, a feeling of contentment settling in the pit of her stomach.
It doesn’t occur to her until they’re in Berlin, via Delhi and Cape Town, that what she ran from is the thing that’s making her feel more alive than she has in a long time. Limited creation was enough, she could make it enough -her creativity would suffer but she would make it enough- , but their company was irreplaceable. Before they go out to celebrate their fifth consecutive victory, Ariadne calls and quits her job at the architecture firm.
The music in the club is loud, the smoke is unbearable and when Eames disappears with a tall blond fellow, Arthur places a hand on the small of her back and leads her out of the establishment.
They walk in silence.
“What were you doing in Marseille?”
“I was actually working, if that’s what you’re asking. I didn’t expect to run into you. I respect you enough to comply with your requests. You didn’t want anyone to come looking for you, so I made sure no one did.”
“Eames?” Arthur nods at her question and slides his hands into his pockets.
“When we started this partnership, he wanted you, but I made your feelings on the topic quite clear. I’m an acceptable extractor, but architecture isn’t my area of expertise. I’m sure Eames hated ninety percent of the architects I hired. I came only when I-we needed you."
“I needed time,” She whispers the words. “I needed time to figure out what I wanted.”
“I know that.” His words linger in the air. It’s not said smugly or self-righteously. He says it like a person who’s been in the same predicament. “Did you talk to anyone about it?”
Ariadne stares at him incredulously. “Of course, I went right up to my roommate and told her, and her fiancé, all about unexplored dream space.”
His lips quirk amusedly. “Would you like to talk about it?”
“Are you offering?” He nods slowly. “Yes.”
She sits in his hotel room and talks. Ariadne never liked sharing about herself. Her aunt called her anti-social. Her mother called her shy. Her father patted her on the head and said she would talk about herself when she felt the time was appropriate.
She tells him about the nightmares that frequented her dreams for a year after Inception, her dreams about Cobb and Mal that haunted her long after she stopped dreaming about them. She tells him about no longer walking the bridge to get to the University. Vivid visions of Mal stabbing her refused to go away. She tells him she hasn’t seen her totem, much less touched it, in eight months. She tells him about her new fear of drowning. And Arthur listens. He doesn’t say word and it’s exactly what she needs.
She can’t say anymore so Arthur speaks. His voice, that sounds like its taken far too many shots of whiskey, breaks the silence of the hotel room. He tells her about the night Mal jumps, the night that changed everything.
“It’s a fair trade.” He shrugs easily when she tells him he doesn’t need to talk about it. “I went right back to work. I wanted to understand all the aspects of the dream world. We all deal with it in different ways.”
It’s the most personal thing he has divulged to her. It’s really the only thing he’s told her.
When she’s too exhausted to go on, he lifts her easily and carries her to his bed. She feels warm lips on her forehead, but Ariadne is sure she’s merely remembering events from a night that never left her mind.
To put a beginning to them would be incredibly difficult, but that night is the closest thing they have to one. It’s the shift that sets off the avalanche that’s them.
Two weeks later they’re in London. Eames’ nephew is celebrating his fifth birthday and he declares he, they, can’t miss it for the world. Arthur leans down and whispers this is the third birthday Eames’ nephew has had in the span of fourteen months. His breath tickles her face and she revels in the feeling. She shifts on her feet uncomfortably and smiles thinly at him.
It takes Eames to point out the obvious to her.
He’s holding a slice of birthday cake in his hands and his face is painted when he approaches her. She tears her eyes away from the overcast sky and grins, wiping at the paint that has begun to cake on his face.
“Ariadne, why are you still loitering?”
“Are you kicking me out of your nephew’s birthday party, Eames?”
“You are arse over elbow for Arthur.”
“I’m what?” Ariadne frowns heavily.
“You are head over heels for the bloke. Why are you still loitering? I’m not his biggest fan, by any means, but if you keep him waiting any longer I may have to put a bullet to his head to take him out of his misery.”
When it rains it pours.
Ariadne walks most of the way back to the hotel, wishing the entire time for her red umbrella that’s most likely still sitting next to the front door in her Parisian apartment. Her feet lead her back to The Dorchester. She’s soaking. Her t-shirt sticks to her body indecently and she’s dripping water on the pristine floor. The staff eyes her dirtily, but she pays them no mind. She knows her destination and she’s impatient to get to it.
Three solid knocks. She waits for a response, before she knocks again.
Arthur answers the door and before he can comment on her state, like he wants to, she cuts him off. “I’m running away. Would you like to come with me?”
Her resolve is broken. Ariadne can no longer pretend that she doesn’t dream about him, about the one night neither one of them speaks of- even when they’re alone. She steps right up to him and kisses him squarely on the lips without a single word of warning. There’s a crescendo that’s building, that has been building quietly.
Arthur holds her close. His lips slow her desperate kiss. His movements are meticulous, careful, deliberate as he explores the every rise and fall of her lips. She expects it to be like the night in L.A, but it’s inherently different. Inevitably different. He closes the door behind her quietly, never parting their mouths.
He peels her wet clothing from her body. His hands leave no patch of newly exposed skin untouched and his lips, his tongue, follow. She shivers and it’s not because of her damp hair that sticks to her back. His fingers don’t bite at her skin this time. He traces the droplets of water that cling to her stomach softly and he presses a faint kiss to the welt on her arm.
Arthur carries her to his bed. Ariadne smiles up at him and her breath catches at the sight of him. He’s still the same. Calloused hands and taut stomach muscles, but this time when he kisses her it’s not desperate. When he slips into her his hands don’t grab, they caress her skin. Arthur’s fingers find the scar on her arm and he brushes his thumb over it. The reminder of their last time. He thrusts gently, lovingly, and her head lolls to the side. His teeth scrape the sensitive skin of her neck and she arches into him. Shadows of the rainfall dance across his skin in the darkness.
He moves against her slowly and whispers things in the crook of her neck that sound like; so long.
He takes her for all she’s worth. His hands burn like molten metal and he loses control, spilling himself into her- crying her name into her skin.
There’s a clap of thunder outside and the rain falls onto the cold hard ground with renewed fervor. His phone rings and then hers, but they can’t hear it over the sounds of their own heavy breathing. Ariadne, at her least eloquent, can’t string two words together in her blissful euphoria. Arthur kisses her and they're, she's, lost again. He makes love to her more than once that night, with the rain beating against the window of his hotel room. It's just him, her and the rain.
When she runs away this time, back to that Parisian apartment with the red umbrella sitting just by the door, Ariadne takes Arthur with her.