Satori [Arthur/Ariadne]
satori = a Buddhist concept of enlightenment, the first step to nirvana, that kick to the brain that puts the world in the right perspective
done for this prompt on inception_kink. Yes I have a problem.
It was Labor Day weekend, and I spent it in San Francisco and with the boyfriend respectively. I'm sure at some point during my days in debauchery, this all made sense.
.first kiss.
The first time they kiss is a made-up memory from a dream within a dream, which sounds too Disney to be a real statement, but there it is. For all that he told her to give him a kiss, he was the one leaning in to take it, and she tried not to be disappointed at how little he took.
She determines this was not a real kiss, and so she shouldn’t actually be pining for another. She gestures to the bartender. He replenishes her drink, and she stares into the amber liquid like it will tell her what the hell is wrong with her. She came here to work, to memorize this nightclub, its frenetic heart rate, the number of steps from one end of the floor to the other, the little alcoves for necking that can be turned into secret passages.
She had to buy a dress and jewelry and shoes and she’s kind of glad no one she knows will ever see her in them. She’s very glad no one she knows saw her dancing like a blind, drunk idiot just to get a better look at the overpopulated parts of the room. With her arms waving like a confused windmill and her hair whipping around, she easily convinced the people in her way to find somewhere else to clot. She counted the cigarette burns in the red leather couches, learned how the little tables tipped when weight was put on them, discovered the one plant that was actually real.
She finished her inspection in an hour, but no one stays at a club for just one hour so she hopped on a barstool and tried not to think about anything in particular.
It’s unfortunate she’s entirely too intelligent to not think, so she opted for the universal method of avoiding introspection. She ordered whiskey.
This is her fourth, and she’s been thinking about Arthur, even though there’s nothing here that should remind her in any way of him or his perfect lips. She gulps down her shot and waits for the next one. She’s sober enough to realize that when pinstripe materializes in her peripheral vision, it should not be there. She turns, and sure enough Arthur is looking down at her with a mixture of emotions she can not begin to fathom.
“What are you doing?” he asks, as if it isn’t immediately obvious.
“Getting plastered. Like drywall.”
“Why?”
“Well this is a nightclub, and I don’t dance,” she explains reasonably, listing a little to the right.
Arthur doesn’t ask if she got her notes first (which she will be grateful for tomorrow) because he trusts her.
“You could have left,” he reminds her.
“And waste this dress?” she demands, flipping her fingers at the glorified handkerchief. She contemplates her drink and reaches for it. Arthur is much faster and she is left staring stupidly at the empty glass in his hand. She notes a smear of Maybelline on his lip and she can’t stop herself from twining her arms around his neck and kissing him with teeth and tongue and a willful determination to coat his mouth in artificial red. She tastes whiskey and surprise and when she finally untangles herself, she says “Now that was worth the shot” and bursts into hysterical giggles.
The first time she kissed him she was in a nightclub that smelled of smoke and blasted that song by The Killers. Their first kiss was the next morning when he woke up on her couch to hot coffee and an apology, and his eggs and bacon had been arranged into a smiley face.
.first night together.
The first time they spend the night together, in the same building, Ariadne was sleeping off a full round of whiskey shots and Arthur was torn between wiping away the chalky lipstick all over his mouth and staring at it forever. She tells him in the morning I wasn’t as think as you drunk I was with a small smile and asks how he takes his coffee.
The first time they spend the night together, in the same room, Arthur was sleeping off a knife to the shoulder and Ariadne was determined to make sure nothing bothered him. He tells her in the morning that she shouldn’t sleep like that, slumped in a chair, head on her hands on the folders on his desk.
She was only supposed to let herself in to feed his fish, a housewarming gift from the landlord who apparently had nothing better to breed. The silvery betta is the only thing remotely resembling a personal item in the apartment.
He comments on her nerves when she changes the gauze packed on his wound.
“I know three guys who never learned how to handle their scalpels.” She shrugs, and doesn’t mention she was stabbed in the stomach once. “And woodshop, in high school? It’s not the blood that bothers me.”
She doesn’t need to be told this is why she wasn’t included in this job. Ariadne is not-so-secretly relieved she didn’t know anything until yesterday afternoon when she gasped Arthur, what happened? upon seeing him. He told her. He was blurry with drugs and pain and seeing him not poised and perfect made it so much worse because he probably never meant her to know.
Arthur offers no argument when she informs him she’s going to stay here until he’s better. She figures out it’s not just acceptance of her natural stubbornness when he flatly tells her he’s not taking the painkillers.
“But you’re hurt,” she protests.
“Pain is in the mind,” he counters with a tight smile. “And I can’t afford to have any more opiates in my system. You understand.”
She does. So she distracts him with conversation and kisses and her best attempts at gourmet cooking and eventually he can move his right arm without the whole of his body tensing like a tripwire.
The first time they spend the night together, in the same bed, neither of them is sleeping. The awful air mattress ensures she doesn’t sleep deep enough to miss Arthur moving in the middle of the night. She whispers a question and he says he’s just going to get a glass of water. She insists on getting it for him and when he finishes, she leans over to take it. The glass falls on to the comforter and rolls away, crashing to the floor. Neither of them notices, Arthur’s left hand is curled in her tangles and hers is clutched around his right and the cool taste of calcium and copper and water drowns the rest of her senses.
She doesn’t want to go further because she doesn’t want to hurt him, and it strikes her that this is not how the scenario is supposed to go.
The first time they sleep together, she is nestled in the bend of his good arm; her Tweety nightgown and his dried blood are the only things separating them.
The first time they make love, her hand doesn’t leave the healed skin on his shoulder and his mouth doesn’t leave her. She memorizes the rasp of his hair against her legs, the hard planes of his back, the hot wet touch of his tongue inside her, the storm of his breath and the thunder of throaty grunts in her ear. The first time they lay naked and sticky on his Egyptian cotton sheets, she wonders if it will be the last.
“Where should I leave this?” She holds up the key to his apartment by the simple leather fob.
“Why don’t you hang on to it?”
They both know this place will be empty in two weeks.
.first gift.
The first thing he ever gave her was a lesson. The first thing she gave him in return was a nasty glare and a hasty exit.
Arthur never bothered to name the fish. Ariadne is sure this says something about him, but she’s not exactly sure what. Especially not when the fish tank is sitting on the window next to her desk because he gave it to her before his next disappearing act. She named it Lancelot, because he had shining armor and well, calling him Arthur could lead to confusion and embarrassment.
The first time he comes back to her, he has a box of truffles from Switzerland, and they spend the night licking chocolate off each other. At around four in the morning they end up in her bathroom, and in the ten minutes it takes for the hot water to reach the shower, she’s pressed against the counter with Arthur thrusting into her, easily holding her up with his right arm. She scrapes her teeth against the curve of his ear, touches her tongue to the jut of his jaw, moans when his fingers trace the round of her breast, mewls when he plucks the pert pink tips and her name on his lips unravels her like a ball of string.
They finally manage to get clean, and they stumble into her tiny bed smelling of faraway gardens. When she wakes she’s alone, and any hint of Armani or aftershave has been chased away by jasmine.
She thinks of him as she savors her sweets, but resolutely shoves the empty box in the bin, because she doesn’t need such a simple structure to remind her.
She looks at ties, and cologne, and cufflinks, and Swiss watches, and moleskin notebooks, and while she could easily buy all of them in excess, she never once walks away with something she might give him.
She comes home to a package with no return address on her doorstep. Inside is an ornate jade sphere and she turns it in her hands to admire the swooping phoenix. She nearly drops it when she realizes there are five more just as intricately carved balls rolling freely inside, layered one within the others like a dream. She sets it carefully on its stand and searches the box, but there is no note, no explanation, no tenuous reference to her or him or even the fish. She wonders if he saw it and decided then and there, if he came up with some allegorical reason why it was the perfect gift for an architect, if he thought she would like it.
“Things like that don’t come with gift receipts.”
She turns toward her bedroom, and of course Arthur is leaning on the doorjamb looking for all the world like he belongs in her organized chaos.
“I love it,” she disclaims quickly. “I was just wondering if there was a… if you were going to tell me when you were coming back.”
There’s a glimmer of surprise in his eyes, like he never thought she’d care more about his return than a new toy.
It’s gone quickly, and he is breathing the citrus in her hair, she can feel hair gel on her ear and the faint prick of stubble on her neck. It makes her so irrationally pleased that he came here without taking the time to attend his immaculateness she doesn’t care if immaculateness is an actual word.
He finds her first gift to him is a sleek grey toothbrush in her cat cup, a bar of unscented soap and male-appropriate shampoo in her shower, and a navy blue towel next to her red one.
Her first gift to him is a place he will always be welcome.
.first I love you.
The first time she says she loves Arthur, it is to the fish. Lancelot doesn’t seem to care one way or the other.
The first time she says I love you, she doesn’t actually. Arthur tells her to make a few changes to the level she’s working on. She says as you wish and wonders if he’s ever seen The Princess Bride.
She starts sleeping on the left side of her bed, even when she’s alone. She buys a stupid Swiffer thing so she can dust her apartment once a week. She invests in a filing cabinet for the folders full of sketches. It’s her apartment and she wants him to like it here. She needs so desperately for him to keep coming back.
Arthur doesn’t say I love you, even when it’s a lie. Even when no one else will hear.
He finds himself in shops significantly more bohemian than Coach and Donna Karan, looking at bright twists of color, running his hands over loose silks and soft cotton and open weave and thinking how they would look under the chocolate spill of her hair. Chanel No. 5 gives him a headache, Dior is overpowering, and he doesn’t know when Bath & Body Works ruined him for women’s fragrance. He is the point man, and it is driving him to distraction that he has to tell himself to finish work before going to see her.
The first time she tells him to his face that she loves him, Arthur is asleep, Ella Fitzgerald in his ears and a lead in his arm. Her finger is on a detonator and this is not real; even so, she won’t unsay it.
The first time he tells her he loves her, the world is shattering around them, and he presses his lips to her temple instead of the cold muzzle of the Glock. She stares at him in utter disbelief and then collapses as the bullet finds her heart.
She watches him pack up the PASIV, conferring with their extractor in fluent Japanese. She nods, rubbing the spots of blood on her wrist and disappears into the corridor with the briefcase. The mark is still unconscious on the recliner.
“Sumire is taking the information to Ohtori. You and I are leaving Kyoto now.” He ushers her down the staircase and into the street.
“Together?” she can’t help asking. “I mean… you just said… Unless that was, you know…”
“Come on, let’s go home.”
The first time she tells him she loves him when he can hear her, they are somewhere in Ukyo-ku and he just called her apartment home. He was in the middle of booking their tickets to Paris(two seats, no bags, first class, next to each other), and the woman on the other end of the phone has to prompt him several times before he tells her which airport he wants to go to.
When he hangs up, he pulls her into an alleyway and carefully kisses her temple, her forehead, her eyelids. He rolls her shirt up above her breasts and spends a full minute just looking. She shifts uncomfortably and tells him she never felt the bullet and she meant what she said. She didn’t(she’s pretty sure) and she does(with every bit of her she has). She’s pretty sure that instant when it felt like her heart was exploding was because he said I love you, Ariadne. She’d forgotten that it wasn’t real, that he had a semi-automatic pistol in his hand, that they needed to wake up.
He fixes her clothes and they rush to catch the train to Tokyo for their flight. She doesn’t mind because he holds her hand all the way to the door of her apartment.
.first gesture of commitment.
Ariadne gives Lancelot to her ex-roommate’s ten year old cousin. She dumps everything in her fridge and freezer, unplugs the thing, and buys a cubic ton of mildly scented mothballs. They go in her closet, her drawers, the linen cupboard and she thinks she is ready. She sets her bishop on the newly cleaned kitchen counter and nudges it. The bronze head makes a loud thunk when it hits the wood and now she is ready. She locks the door behind, content that leaving this place doesn’t mean she has to lose it.
Arthur is waiting for her outside beside a car she suspects is a Ferrari. He hands her in and they ride off into the evening.
When they stop, he gives her a brass key on a silver fish, and she unlocks their first apartment with rapturous trepidation. It’s tastefully decorated, and of course there are no personal touches. The hardwood floor doesn’t have a single mark on it, the view of the Seine belongs on a postcard, it kind of smells like incense with an undercurrent of furniture polish. It’s as perfect as Arthur can make it, and she couldn’t have dreamt any better.
It doesn’t matter that they will spend 90 per cent of their time in hotels, warehouses, airports, dreams. The most important thing of all is that now Arthur buys tickets for two, that her scarves are folded carefully with his ties, that Ariadne’s dreams always have a knight in fine Armani, that Arthur can kiss her whenever she wants, that they will love as Cobb and Mal did and they will not live the same way. The second most important is that they will have this home in real life, where they won’t need to dream to discover the amazing.
done for this prompt on inception_kink. Yes I have a problem.
It was Labor Day weekend, and I spent it in San Francisco and with the boyfriend respectively. I'm sure at some point during my days in debauchery, this all made sense.
.first kiss.
The first time they kiss is a made-up memory from a dream within a dream, which sounds too Disney to be a real statement, but there it is. For all that he told her to give him a kiss, he was the one leaning in to take it, and she tried not to be disappointed at how little he took.
She determines this was not a real kiss, and so she shouldn’t actually be pining for another. She gestures to the bartender. He replenishes her drink, and she stares into the amber liquid like it will tell her what the hell is wrong with her. She came here to work, to memorize this nightclub, its frenetic heart rate, the number of steps from one end of the floor to the other, the little alcoves for necking that can be turned into secret passages.
She had to buy a dress and jewelry and shoes and she’s kind of glad no one she knows will ever see her in them. She’s very glad no one she knows saw her dancing like a blind, drunk idiot just to get a better look at the overpopulated parts of the room. With her arms waving like a confused windmill and her hair whipping around, she easily convinced the people in her way to find somewhere else to clot. She counted the cigarette burns in the red leather couches, learned how the little tables tipped when weight was put on them, discovered the one plant that was actually real.
She finished her inspection in an hour, but no one stays at a club for just one hour so she hopped on a barstool and tried not to think about anything in particular.
It’s unfortunate she’s entirely too intelligent to not think, so she opted for the universal method of avoiding introspection. She ordered whiskey.
This is her fourth, and she’s been thinking about Arthur, even though there’s nothing here that should remind her in any way of him or his perfect lips. She gulps down her shot and waits for the next one. She’s sober enough to realize that when pinstripe materializes in her peripheral vision, it should not be there. She turns, and sure enough Arthur is looking down at her with a mixture of emotions she can not begin to fathom.
“What are you doing?” he asks, as if it isn’t immediately obvious.
“Getting plastered. Like drywall.”
“Why?”
“Well this is a nightclub, and I don’t dance,” she explains reasonably, listing a little to the right.
Arthur doesn’t ask if she got her notes first (which she will be grateful for tomorrow) because he trusts her.
“You could have left,” he reminds her.
“And waste this dress?” she demands, flipping her fingers at the glorified handkerchief. She contemplates her drink and reaches for it. Arthur is much faster and she is left staring stupidly at the empty glass in his hand. She notes a smear of Maybelline on his lip and she can’t stop herself from twining her arms around his neck and kissing him with teeth and tongue and a willful determination to coat his mouth in artificial red. She tastes whiskey and surprise and when she finally untangles herself, she says “Now that was worth the shot” and bursts into hysterical giggles.
The first time she kissed him she was in a nightclub that smelled of smoke and blasted that song by The Killers. Their first kiss was the next morning when he woke up on her couch to hot coffee and an apology, and his eggs and bacon had been arranged into a smiley face.
.first night together.
The first time they spend the night together, in the same building, Ariadne was sleeping off a full round of whiskey shots and Arthur was torn between wiping away the chalky lipstick all over his mouth and staring at it forever. She tells him in the morning I wasn’t as think as you drunk I was with a small smile and asks how he takes his coffee.
The first time they spend the night together, in the same room, Arthur was sleeping off a knife to the shoulder and Ariadne was determined to make sure nothing bothered him. He tells her in the morning that she shouldn’t sleep like that, slumped in a chair, head on her hands on the folders on his desk.
She was only supposed to let herself in to feed his fish, a housewarming gift from the landlord who apparently had nothing better to breed. The silvery betta is the only thing remotely resembling a personal item in the apartment.
He comments on her nerves when she changes the gauze packed on his wound.
“I know three guys who never learned how to handle their scalpels.” She shrugs, and doesn’t mention she was stabbed in the stomach once. “And woodshop, in high school? It’s not the blood that bothers me.”
She doesn’t need to be told this is why she wasn’t included in this job. Ariadne is not-so-secretly relieved she didn’t know anything until yesterday afternoon when she gasped Arthur, what happened? upon seeing him. He told her. He was blurry with drugs and pain and seeing him not poised and perfect made it so much worse because he probably never meant her to know.
Arthur offers no argument when she informs him she’s going to stay here until he’s better. She figures out it’s not just acceptance of her natural stubbornness when he flatly tells her he’s not taking the painkillers.
“But you’re hurt,” she protests.
“Pain is in the mind,” he counters with a tight smile. “And I can’t afford to have any more opiates in my system. You understand.”
She does. So she distracts him with conversation and kisses and her best attempts at gourmet cooking and eventually he can move his right arm without the whole of his body tensing like a tripwire.
The first time they spend the night together, in the same bed, neither of them is sleeping. The awful air mattress ensures she doesn’t sleep deep enough to miss Arthur moving in the middle of the night. She whispers a question and he says he’s just going to get a glass of water. She insists on getting it for him and when he finishes, she leans over to take it. The glass falls on to the comforter and rolls away, crashing to the floor. Neither of them notices, Arthur’s left hand is curled in her tangles and hers is clutched around his right and the cool taste of calcium and copper and water drowns the rest of her senses.
She doesn’t want to go further because she doesn’t want to hurt him, and it strikes her that this is not how the scenario is supposed to go.
The first time they sleep together, she is nestled in the bend of his good arm; her Tweety nightgown and his dried blood are the only things separating them.
The first time they make love, her hand doesn’t leave the healed skin on his shoulder and his mouth doesn’t leave her. She memorizes the rasp of his hair against her legs, the hard planes of his back, the hot wet touch of his tongue inside her, the storm of his breath and the thunder of throaty grunts in her ear. The first time they lay naked and sticky on his Egyptian cotton sheets, she wonders if it will be the last.
“Where should I leave this?” She holds up the key to his apartment by the simple leather fob.
“Why don’t you hang on to it?”
They both know this place will be empty in two weeks.
.first gift.
The first thing he ever gave her was a lesson. The first thing she gave him in return was a nasty glare and a hasty exit.
Arthur never bothered to name the fish. Ariadne is sure this says something about him, but she’s not exactly sure what. Especially not when the fish tank is sitting on the window next to her desk because he gave it to her before his next disappearing act. She named it Lancelot, because he had shining armor and well, calling him Arthur could lead to confusion and embarrassment.
The first time he comes back to her, he has a box of truffles from Switzerland, and they spend the night licking chocolate off each other. At around four in the morning they end up in her bathroom, and in the ten minutes it takes for the hot water to reach the shower, she’s pressed against the counter with Arthur thrusting into her, easily holding her up with his right arm. She scrapes her teeth against the curve of his ear, touches her tongue to the jut of his jaw, moans when his fingers trace the round of her breast, mewls when he plucks the pert pink tips and her name on his lips unravels her like a ball of string.
They finally manage to get clean, and they stumble into her tiny bed smelling of faraway gardens. When she wakes she’s alone, and any hint of Armani or aftershave has been chased away by jasmine.
She thinks of him as she savors her sweets, but resolutely shoves the empty box in the bin, because she doesn’t need such a simple structure to remind her.
She looks at ties, and cologne, and cufflinks, and Swiss watches, and moleskin notebooks, and while she could easily buy all of them in excess, she never once walks away with something she might give him.
She comes home to a package with no return address on her doorstep. Inside is an ornate jade sphere and she turns it in her hands to admire the swooping phoenix. She nearly drops it when she realizes there are five more just as intricately carved balls rolling freely inside, layered one within the others like a dream. She sets it carefully on its stand and searches the box, but there is no note, no explanation, no tenuous reference to her or him or even the fish. She wonders if he saw it and decided then and there, if he came up with some allegorical reason why it was the perfect gift for an architect, if he thought she would like it.
“Things like that don’t come with gift receipts.”
She turns toward her bedroom, and of course Arthur is leaning on the doorjamb looking for all the world like he belongs in her organized chaos.
“I love it,” she disclaims quickly. “I was just wondering if there was a… if you were going to tell me when you were coming back.”
There’s a glimmer of surprise in his eyes, like he never thought she’d care more about his return than a new toy.
It’s gone quickly, and he is breathing the citrus in her hair, she can feel hair gel on her ear and the faint prick of stubble on her neck. It makes her so irrationally pleased that he came here without taking the time to attend his immaculateness she doesn’t care if immaculateness is an actual word.
He finds her first gift to him is a sleek grey toothbrush in her cat cup, a bar of unscented soap and male-appropriate shampoo in her shower, and a navy blue towel next to her red one.
Her first gift to him is a place he will always be welcome.
.first I love you.
The first time she says she loves Arthur, it is to the fish. Lancelot doesn’t seem to care one way or the other.
The first time she says I love you, she doesn’t actually. Arthur tells her to make a few changes to the level she’s working on. She says as you wish and wonders if he’s ever seen The Princess Bride.
She starts sleeping on the left side of her bed, even when she’s alone. She buys a stupid Swiffer thing so she can dust her apartment once a week. She invests in a filing cabinet for the folders full of sketches. It’s her apartment and she wants him to like it here. She needs so desperately for him to keep coming back.
Arthur doesn’t say I love you, even when it’s a lie. Even when no one else will hear.
He finds himself in shops significantly more bohemian than Coach and Donna Karan, looking at bright twists of color, running his hands over loose silks and soft cotton and open weave and thinking how they would look under the chocolate spill of her hair. Chanel No. 5 gives him a headache, Dior is overpowering, and he doesn’t know when Bath & Body Works ruined him for women’s fragrance. He is the point man, and it is driving him to distraction that he has to tell himself to finish work before going to see her.
The first time she tells him to his face that she loves him, Arthur is asleep, Ella Fitzgerald in his ears and a lead in his arm. Her finger is on a detonator and this is not real; even so, she won’t unsay it.
The first time he tells her he loves her, the world is shattering around them, and he presses his lips to her temple instead of the cold muzzle of the Glock. She stares at him in utter disbelief and then collapses as the bullet finds her heart.
She watches him pack up the PASIV, conferring with their extractor in fluent Japanese. She nods, rubbing the spots of blood on her wrist and disappears into the corridor with the briefcase. The mark is still unconscious on the recliner.
“Sumire is taking the information to Ohtori. You and I are leaving Kyoto now.” He ushers her down the staircase and into the street.
“Together?” she can’t help asking. “I mean… you just said… Unless that was, you know…”
“Come on, let’s go home.”
The first time she tells him she loves him when he can hear her, they are somewhere in Ukyo-ku and he just called her apartment home. He was in the middle of booking their tickets to Paris(two seats, no bags, first class, next to each other), and the woman on the other end of the phone has to prompt him several times before he tells her which airport he wants to go to.
When he hangs up, he pulls her into an alleyway and carefully kisses her temple, her forehead, her eyelids. He rolls her shirt up above her breasts and spends a full minute just looking. She shifts uncomfortably and tells him she never felt the bullet and she meant what she said. She didn’t(she’s pretty sure) and she does(with every bit of her she has). She’s pretty sure that instant when it felt like her heart was exploding was because he said I love you, Ariadne. She’d forgotten that it wasn’t real, that he had a semi-automatic pistol in his hand, that they needed to wake up.
He fixes her clothes and they rush to catch the train to Tokyo for their flight. She doesn’t mind because he holds her hand all the way to the door of her apartment.
.first gesture of commitment.
Ariadne gives Lancelot to her ex-roommate’s ten year old cousin. She dumps everything in her fridge and freezer, unplugs the thing, and buys a cubic ton of mildly scented mothballs. They go in her closet, her drawers, the linen cupboard and she thinks she is ready. She sets her bishop on the newly cleaned kitchen counter and nudges it. The bronze head makes a loud thunk when it hits the wood and now she is ready. She locks the door behind, content that leaving this place doesn’t mean she has to lose it.
Arthur is waiting for her outside beside a car she suspects is a Ferrari. He hands her in and they ride off into the evening.
When they stop, he gives her a brass key on a silver fish, and she unlocks their first apartment with rapturous trepidation. It’s tastefully decorated, and of course there are no personal touches. The hardwood floor doesn’t have a single mark on it, the view of the Seine belongs on a postcard, it kind of smells like incense with an undercurrent of furniture polish. It’s as perfect as Arthur can make it, and she couldn’t have dreamt any better.
It doesn’t matter that they will spend 90 per cent of their time in hotels, warehouses, airports, dreams. The most important thing of all is that now Arthur buys tickets for two, that her scarves are folded carefully with his ties, that Ariadne’s dreams always have a knight in fine Armani, that Arthur can kiss her whenever she wants, that they will love as Cobb and Mal did and they will not live the same way. The second most important is that they will have this home in real life, where they won’t need to dream to discover the amazing.