WRITING CHAT THINGY O'CLOCK.
Hello, all. It is time for WRITING CHAT THINGY. As I have taken to calling it. For those who are new around these parts, it's a group chat where we share prompts to write fifteen minute ficlets. If you haven't come before but want to try it out, don't be afraid to stop by
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That's what Arthur keeps telling himself in the days after it happens, after he comes back feeling like Lazarus or Rip Van Winkle - he doesn't mention this to her, of course. She'd only laugh and tell him he looked pretty good for someone who'd come back from the dead or slept a hundred years, maybe ask to check him for gray hairs. He'd almost prefer that to her other checks, though. The way she keeps an eye on him to make sure he doesn't go for the knives, how his razor blades have been replaced with a disposable - he isn't sure if she hid them or just threw them out, but looking would only make her worry more. The way she doesn't leave him alone for more than an hour at a time. The way she skims her fingers up and down the insides of his forearms, touching the scabs and scars and pockmarks of his captivity. How he'll wake up at night and find her already awake and watching him.
It's wrong, he thinks. He's used to being the one looking out for everybody else. He'd maybe had a few thoughts about looking out for her specifically - but they weren't together, they'd barely spent more than a few weeks in each others' company all told. They've been on exactly one date. It was only moderately awkward and led to them talking about New Wave music for an hour and Ariadne throwing grapes at his head.
And then he had to go and get himself kidnapped and experimented on and held captive like some fucking newbie who didn't know the first thing about security or safety or elementary rules of shaking a tail. It's embarrassing, is what it is, and if it hadn't been his own ass on the line but a client or a team he'd never work again. Being found - being rescued - by Ariadne, who is only a few shades past green on the experience scale, is just extra humiliation. That grates far more than the way she stays and the way she makes sure he doesn't forget he's in reality and start trying to wake himself up. Not that she's incompetent. She's going to be amazing, if she gets back to work. And she can't do that while she's playing nursemaid.
He hates that he needs her to be there like this. He hates that she's only there out of some misplaced sense of obligation that makes her think she has to be there for him, that whatever hope they might have had for gradually forming some kind of relationship has been ruthlessly crushed by circumstance. He hates that he probably wants her more than she wants him, that they're sharing a bed but haven't so much as kissed since he woke up and pulled her close, that this is apparently what his life is now. And he hopes like hell that things change soon. He's just not sure how to make that happen.
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(Seriously -- I'm having difficulty *not* reading it, and I've not seen the movie!)
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