A FEW PROMPT FILLS (AGAIN)
Prompt: Arthur chases someone using parkour. Eames is heart-eyed. About 1:20 into this clip of the Casino Royale opening is loaded with parkour/free-running, where D. Craig is pretty much Eames -- especially when he crashes through that dry wall lolol -- and Sebastien Foucan is Arthur.
They’re on the helipad of the Solaryne Biosystems building, obviously having mistimed something because Lee Aleman, the son of the CEO, isn’t scheduled to take off for another fifteen minutes. Yet he’s just appeared on the rooftop and is staring at them from about fifty yards away.
Arthur sighs. Eames calls, “Bit of an early bird, aren’t you?”
Then Aleman takes off, quite fast for a spoiled heir. Arthur shrugs off his suit jacket and hands it to Eames. “Hold this,” he orders.
“Did I happen to forge into a coat rack?” Eames begins, but Arthur is already jogging across the helipad. He has long strides and keeps a straight back even as he runs. His tie flaps over his shoulder like it’s waving goodbye.
Eames squints after him for a couple seconds before kicking into motion himself. He’s never been good at all out, running-for-his-life type situations in open areas, but he can do distance, and he can definitely evade. Even better if there are obstacles that he can instinctively use to his advantage.
This is why he thinks chasing after Arthur will be cake. Eames actually pulls ahead and is clambering down the spiral staircase that leads down to the main rooftop when he sees movement out of the corner of his eye.
When he looks up, he’s greeted with the sight of Arthur jumping cleanly over the wall, sailing through the air feet first before landing with a loud clack of his shoes and parlaying the momentum into a neat somersault. The whole thing could be chalked off to Eames hallucinating, except there’s a soft cloud of dust still dissipating around where Arthur had landed.
“What in the,” Eames mutters. He heaves himself over the banister to skip the last six or so steps in a poor, diluted imitation of what Arthur had just pulled off.
Both of them have already disappeared through the rooftop access door. Eames manages to get there before it shuts; he hears the furious pounding of footsteps echoing all along the stairwell, the sounds building up to something akin to that one time Eames had been chasing someone within a ringing bell tower.
“Arthur!” he yells into the noise.
Arthur’s head keeps bobbing along about two flights below him. Eames is about to call his name again when Arthur hoists himself onto the handrail and squats there for a moment, arms outstretched and elbows resting on his knees. He could be squatting in an alleyway, having a leisurely smoke for how relaxed he looks.
“Arthur!” Eames yells again, and this time Arthur looks up and meets his eyes. He doesn’t smile or respond -- he doesn’t do anything, in fact, except look back down.
Then he jumps.
It seems like he’s airborne for an impossible amount of time. Eames just watches as Arthur’s body clears a dozen, a dozen and a half steps, and then his hands are fitting neatly over the edge of the handrail three flights down, feet braced against the side of the concrete staircase. He flexes his arms and pushes off again, this time catching himself on the opposite side.
Eames tunes back in to his own body and is surprised to realize that he’s been running this entire time. He keeps up a steady stream of curses as all three of them burst out a side-door and onto the street. Even now, on the flat streets of LA, Arthur is somehow managing to cut down the distance between him and Aleman by clearing parking meters, shrubbery, and even a bike rack. Longitudinally.
A passing U-Haul truck intersects with Eames’s path and he hops on the back for a quick ride, jumping off at the next corner. At this point, Arthur is almost caught up to Aleman and Eames is only a few yards behind, but he’s guessing that Arthur isn’t half as tired as Eames is.
Suddenly, Arthur tacks on a burst of speed -- Aleman is making a beeline for an idling Town Car with its back license plate blacked out and by some miracle, he actually makes it. The door closes and the car screeches away a split second before Arthur can get a grip on the door handle. It’s almost anticlimactic.
Eames slows to a jog as he nears. “Spectacular chase,” he coughs out, “but I think it’s high time -- ”
And he stops speaking once more when Arthur makes a sharp change in direction, running up the sidewalk that leads to an overpass crossing above a four-lane expressway.
“Meet me at the warehouse,” he calls. He then proceeds to climb up the fencing in one neat hop, and is over on the other side in two.
“Not that I don’t enjoy constantly screaming your name, but I would’ve preferred it to be in a much different situation,” Eames yells back, and inhales quickly as Arthur disappears in a blink.
*
Eames arrives at the warehouse, sweating like a fucking cow. He’s exhausted, sore, and more than a little turned on; in fact, he has half a mind to duck into the bathroom and have a wank right there and then, but he doesn’t want to miss Arthur’s arrival. In the end, he just guzzles all the water they have and stands around, trying to ignore the feeling that all his muscles are dying.
He’d tossed Arthur’s suit jacket onto a chair and now eyes it warily, as if it too holds secrets about Arthur.
About ten minutes later, Arthur finally walks in, cheeks red from the exertion, looking generally crazed and unkempt. Eames guesses that jumping down stairwells and doing superhero stunts will do that to someone.
“I followed them to the safehouse. At least we know where to find him now,” Arthur announces.
He stops in the middle of the warehouse space when Eames walks over and silently hands him a water bottle. Arthur nods before proceeding to drink the entire thing, his throat working in a slow rhythm.
“Explain,” is all Eames says.
“There’s not much to explain,” Arthur replies breathlessly. “I spent my formative years in Paris. Free-running seemed like a good use of my time.”
“I definitely should have worn different shoes for this,” he adds with disdain.
Eames just takes it all in: Arthur standing there, arms akimbo, breathing heavily through his nose. The white button-down, which started the day as pristine and crisp as could be, is now covered with dust and sticking to his upper back, curving along the dip between his shoulder-blades. There are beads of sweat along his hairline, on his nose, gathering on the curve under his lower lip. He sniffs and runs the heel of his wrist over his mouth. He’s still panting.
“What?” Arthur finally asks.
Eames shakes his head. He bites at his thumbnail and says, “You know what.”
And surprisingly, Arthur smiles. The chase has made his eyes bright, and he looks piqued, playful, even. If only Eames could replay this through dreams -- he hopes he’ll remember all the nuances of this moment later on.
“Yes, I do know what,” Arthur finally says, still with that faint smile.
And then they bone.
Prompt: Their class gets picked for Battle Royale.
Eames
The first two minutes are the worst.
They’re all strapped with a small shoulder bag before getting pushed out of the helicopters and into a clearing surrounded by tall trees. As promised, a pile of weapons is sitting right at the center of it all.
For some odd reason, nobody moves until the helicopters are just specks in the sky. A random snap of a twig is what finally causes the scramble. Some of them haven’t even stood up yet when half the class is immediately blown up by some lucky bastard who grabbed a backpack full of grenades, or dynamite, or whatever it is that has a effective radius of at least twenty yards. Another quarter gets peppered with machine gun rounds as the screams finally start.
People begin running in every direction, Eames included.
He steers clear of any groups larger than two and sprints towards the woods until his legs burn and his vision gets speckled. Still, he runs. Some base part of his mind recognizes the white-blonde hair in his periphery as Mary Unger -- the track star, the all-around athlete, the one with fantastic mile-long legs underneath her uniform skirt.
Just as they reach the edge of the woods, she falls away as suddenly as if she’s been jerked back by some invisible force. When he spares a glance over his shoulder, she’s lying facedown with a spear sticking out of her back.
Eames keeps running.
*
Eventually his body betrays him by refusing to go any further. He falls to his knees by a thin stream and it’s only after he’s drank three handfuls that he thinks about what it could possibly be tainted with.
“Fuck it,” he says out loud. He sticks his face into it and drinks until it feels like his lungs are no longer sticking together.
His location looks no different from the entrance to the woods. Trees, trees, and more trees, too close together to provide an adequate view but too far apart to provide an adequate cover. He decides to climb one anyway, grunting as he makes his way up the trunk and onto some leafy branches about fifteen feet up.
The field of view is marginally better from that height. Eames pulls his shoulder bag to his front and rifles through it: compass, flashlight, two bags of dried food. His only provisions. And, of course, the collar around his neck. It’s situated just underneath his Adam’s apple, stronger than plastic but lighter than steel. He pops his thumb into the small gap and tugs experimentally. Nothing.
Eames almost falls out of the tree when he hears the voice.
“Get out of the tree.” There’s a sound of a gun cocking. “Now.”
Eames’s knuckles are white from holding on to a branch too tightly. He stares at the small lumps of bone. “Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with? No need for me to come out of my hideyhole, eh?”
He actually feels the whiz of the bullet, even though it buries itself into the tree about a meter below his foot. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, alright. Jesus Christ.”
It takes him far less time to climb down the tree. His feet hit the dirt within seconds and he turns to face whoever it is that’ll probably put a bullet in his head if he’s lucky and a few to the gut if he’s not. The guy is tall and skinny, familiar in a way that Eames can’t place.
“Hello.”
“Greetings to you too,” Eames says. “Are you going to let me keep my foot?”
The guy straightens his head, no longer looking at Eames through the gun sight. “Good to know you’ve got your priorities straight,” he says. Unbelievably enough, he smiles, complete with dimples.
It’s that exact expression that finally lets Eames recognize him. Arthur, last year’s winner of the Battle. His pretty, smiling face had been plastered everywhere, from buses to billboards to juice cartons. They’d used the same picture in the informational video that had been shown before being dropped onto this godforsaken island.
Arthur, a fucking volunteer for this year’s round.
“I’m guessing that silence means you recognize me,” Arthur finally says. The smile has slipped clean off, leaving a blank mask behind. He tilts his head again and points the gun at Eames. “I never wanted to be popular, but I suppose the situation can’t be helped. You should move now.”
Eames’s feet are rooted to the ground like century-old trees. He manages to take a step to the left.
“More.”
He takes another step. Then another. After stringing together a few more jerky movements, muscle memory for walking kicks in. Arthur turns in a slow circle the entire time, following Eames’s path with his gun.
“Very good,” Arthur commends, and then the tree blows up.
Eames yells and dives to the ground, covering his head from the splinters and bigger chunks of wood. The initial explosion shudders the very ground he’s lying on, but the sound dissipates fairly quick, spreading outward in fading echoes. Everything rattles and shakes as the woods readjusts itself with a long sigh.
He hears himself breathing, harsh and fast in the cavern created between his arms and the dirt. His eyes are still open, blinking at sprigs of grass. They somehow seem overly green.
“Hey.”
Eames obediently turns over when he feels Arthur’s foot nudging at his hip. The world rolls into view once more; Arthur is holding the gun at his side now.
“Watch out for those rigged trees.”
“Rigged,” Eames repeats.
“They blend in pretty well, but you can tell if you knock on the trunk. Sounds like cheap plastic, not like wood. I’d stay out of them altogether if I were you.”
Eames stares up at him. Arthur looks placid. His collar is a bit looser than Eames’s, but it’s still nowhere near big enough to pull over his chin. “If I were you, I’d have a gun and I wouldn’t have to be climbing trees,” Eames says.
Arthur smiles at him again. This one crinkles his eyes as well. He turns and lopes away through the trees without saying anything else. Eames watches him go, unsure if he’s relieved or terrified once more.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe that first half, the ones who disappeared in the explosion as easily as they could take a single breath -- they were the lucky ones.
*
Cobb
When the bell had sounded, the first thing Cobb had grabbed was Mal’s hand. The second thing he’d grabbed was the black duffel bag that he’d crash-landed by.
“Lie down,” he’d hissed, tugging at Mal’s hand.
He had shoved the bag underneath her body and then lied on top of her, trying to protect as much as he could. In the ensuing melee, someone had stepped on his ankle just enough to push something out of place, but everyone else was too frantic to escape the area to do any more harm. The chaos had ebbed even sooner than he’d been anticipating, like a parade turning around a corner, or an airplane disappearing into the clouds. Before long, it was quiet, the only noises coming from the trees and the occasional bird.
They’ve been on the move ever since, heading in a different direction than most. Mal had spied a small path that started at the clearing and led straight through into the woods. Cobb’s compass tells him that it’s south. He keeps checking it every now and then as he limps along; walking is possible, but not particularly enjoyable.
“The ocean,” Mal says suddenly.
Cobb hears it too, the repetitive inhale and crash of waves. Then the air begins to smell like salt water and the trees finally let them out on the other side. There are sheets of flat, charcoal-colored rocks laid out before them, all leading up to a sharp cliff.
Mal curses in French. Cobb drops the bag, then squats down and puts his head in his hands. He doesn’t want to think about just how far the fall is.
When he looks back up, Mal is standing at the edge of the cliff, perilously close. Cobb stands immediately and just watches. She doesn’t move.
“Mal,” Cobb says in a soft voice, because what if he calls her name too loudly and she startles and --
“Mal,” he says again, walking toward her now. “Mal. Hey.”
She turns her head only. “Dom, come here.”
“Mal. You know I would follow you anywhere, okay? Okay? Just -- don’t move, please. Don’t do anything, alright?”
“I’m not going to jump,” she says scornfully. “Just come here.”
He approaches her slowly, taking her hand when she offers it and finally coming to a stop right behind her. “Look,” she says, pointing down to where the water is crashing between piles of rocks. The height is dizzying.
“There’s a cave,” she points out.
Cobb can see it, but barely. A small mouth on the side of the cliff wall, more than halfway down. “We can’t get there.”
“We’ll find a way.” Mal turns to him. She hasn’t cried. She hasn’t acknowledged anything at all. “I promise.”
Prompt: "I don't think you're an idiot at all. I mean, there are elements of the ridiculous about you. Your mother's pretty interesting. And you really are an appallingly bad public speaker. And, um, you tend to let whatever's in your head come out of your mouth without much consideration of the consequences... But the thing is, um, what I'm trying to say, very inarticulately, is that, um, in fact, perhaps despite appearances, I like you, very much. Just as you are." BRIDGET JONES.
This one is more of a mini-fill because I can't remember what happens in the movie :(
“I like you, very much. Just as you are.”
Arthur clears his throat. He flicks his gaze to the carpet, then looks back up to Eames. The corner of his mouth pulls up when he sees that Eames is still staring.
“Good night,” Arthur says, lifting his trench from the coatrack and shrugging it on as he steps out. He doesn’t look back.
*
“Just as you are?” Yusuf frowns. “Not...quieter, or with less facial hair, or half the drinking and minus the horrid tattoos -- ”
“Just as I am,” Eames cuts in with a shout. “Yes. That is what he said, yes.”
He takes two tequila shots and rubs his beard-covered throat as they go down. A look at the mirror lining the back wall of the bar highlights the fact that one of his eyes is currently bigger than the other. Probably a trick of lighting. He also notices that the leprechaun tattoo on his arm looks like it’s laughing at him. Probably another trick of lighting.
Yusuf shakes his head and gulps down a shot as well. “Jesus.”
“Based on your reactions, it’s like he told you he’d rather go home and fuck his couch cushions,” Ariadne says. “I’m failing to see the problem here.”
“You’re an intern,” Yusuf tells her. “You’re supposed to be following our lead, you’re not supposed to be rational or whatever it is that you’re doing right now.”
“It’s just terrifying either way,” Eames mumbles, head in his hands. “Arthur is very boring and predictable. I’ve come to depend on his boring-ness and predictability, in fact. We had an established rapport wherein I bothered the shit out of him and he was an Ice Queen. Now he goes and does something unpredictable and it is bloody terrifying.”
Yusuf has been holding his empty glass to his eye, squinting through it like it’s a mini-kaledioscope. “Maybe he was possessed,” he suggests brightly.
“You know, that would actually make me feel better. I’m not joking,” Eames says as Ariadne snorts.
Yusuf heaves out a sigh, then slams the glass facedown onto the bar and slides off his stool. “Alright, I’m calling it.”
Eames raises his head and looks blearily at him. “What? Why? You’re just going to go home and cuddle your cat to sleep anyway.”
“Yes, that will happen. What of it?”
“You -- ” Eames doesn’t even have enough energy for this. Instead, he slumps uselessly in the booth and gives Yusuf a plaintive look. “Can I borrow it tomorrow night?”
“Her. Can you borrow her tomorrow night. And no, you may not.” Yusuf grabs his jacket and toddles out the door.
“Cats are people too, Eames,” Ariadne says solemnly.
They’re on the helipad of the Solaryne Biosystems building, obviously having mistimed something because Lee Aleman, the son of the CEO, isn’t scheduled to take off for another fifteen minutes. Yet he’s just appeared on the rooftop and is staring at them from about fifty yards away.
Arthur sighs. Eames calls, “Bit of an early bird, aren’t you?”
Then Aleman takes off, quite fast for a spoiled heir. Arthur shrugs off his suit jacket and hands it to Eames. “Hold this,” he orders.
“Did I happen to forge into a coat rack?” Eames begins, but Arthur is already jogging across the helipad. He has long strides and keeps a straight back even as he runs. His tie flaps over his shoulder like it’s waving goodbye.
Eames squints after him for a couple seconds before kicking into motion himself. He’s never been good at all out, running-for-his-life type situations in open areas, but he can do distance, and he can definitely evade. Even better if there are obstacles that he can instinctively use to his advantage.
This is why he thinks chasing after Arthur will be cake. Eames actually pulls ahead and is clambering down the spiral staircase that leads down to the main rooftop when he sees movement out of the corner of his eye.
When he looks up, he’s greeted with the sight of Arthur jumping cleanly over the wall, sailing through the air feet first before landing with a loud clack of his shoes and parlaying the momentum into a neat somersault. The whole thing could be chalked off to Eames hallucinating, except there’s a soft cloud of dust still dissipating around where Arthur had landed.
“What in the,” Eames mutters. He heaves himself over the banister to skip the last six or so steps in a poor, diluted imitation of what Arthur had just pulled off.
Both of them have already disappeared through the rooftop access door. Eames manages to get there before it shuts; he hears the furious pounding of footsteps echoing all along the stairwell, the sounds building up to something akin to that one time Eames had been chasing someone within a ringing bell tower.
“Arthur!” he yells into the noise.
Arthur’s head keeps bobbing along about two flights below him. Eames is about to call his name again when Arthur hoists himself onto the handrail and squats there for a moment, arms outstretched and elbows resting on his knees. He could be squatting in an alleyway, having a leisurely smoke for how relaxed he looks.
“Arthur!” Eames yells again, and this time Arthur looks up and meets his eyes. He doesn’t smile or respond -- he doesn’t do anything, in fact, except look back down.
Then he jumps.
It seems like he’s airborne for an impossible amount of time. Eames just watches as Arthur’s body clears a dozen, a dozen and a half steps, and then his hands are fitting neatly over the edge of the handrail three flights down, feet braced against the side of the concrete staircase. He flexes his arms and pushes off again, this time catching himself on the opposite side.
Eames tunes back in to his own body and is surprised to realize that he’s been running this entire time. He keeps up a steady stream of curses as all three of them burst out a side-door and onto the street. Even now, on the flat streets of LA, Arthur is somehow managing to cut down the distance between him and Aleman by clearing parking meters, shrubbery, and even a bike rack. Longitudinally.
A passing U-Haul truck intersects with Eames’s path and he hops on the back for a quick ride, jumping off at the next corner. At this point, Arthur is almost caught up to Aleman and Eames is only a few yards behind, but he’s guessing that Arthur isn’t half as tired as Eames is.
Suddenly, Arthur tacks on a burst of speed -- Aleman is making a beeline for an idling Town Car with its back license plate blacked out and by some miracle, he actually makes it. The door closes and the car screeches away a split second before Arthur can get a grip on the door handle. It’s almost anticlimactic.
Eames slows to a jog as he nears. “Spectacular chase,” he coughs out, “but I think it’s high time -- ”
And he stops speaking once more when Arthur makes a sharp change in direction, running up the sidewalk that leads to an overpass crossing above a four-lane expressway.
“Meet me at the warehouse,” he calls. He then proceeds to climb up the fencing in one neat hop, and is over on the other side in two.
“Not that I don’t enjoy constantly screaming your name, but I would’ve preferred it to be in a much different situation,” Eames yells back, and inhales quickly as Arthur disappears in a blink.
*
Eames arrives at the warehouse, sweating like a fucking cow. He’s exhausted, sore, and more than a little turned on; in fact, he has half a mind to duck into the bathroom and have a wank right there and then, but he doesn’t want to miss Arthur’s arrival. In the end, he just guzzles all the water they have and stands around, trying to ignore the feeling that all his muscles are dying.
He’d tossed Arthur’s suit jacket onto a chair and now eyes it warily, as if it too holds secrets about Arthur.
About ten minutes later, Arthur finally walks in, cheeks red from the exertion, looking generally crazed and unkempt. Eames guesses that jumping down stairwells and doing superhero stunts will do that to someone.
“I followed them to the safehouse. At least we know where to find him now,” Arthur announces.
He stops in the middle of the warehouse space when Eames walks over and silently hands him a water bottle. Arthur nods before proceeding to drink the entire thing, his throat working in a slow rhythm.
“Explain,” is all Eames says.
“There’s not much to explain,” Arthur replies breathlessly. “I spent my formative years in Paris. Free-running seemed like a good use of my time.”
“I definitely should have worn different shoes for this,” he adds with disdain.
Eames just takes it all in: Arthur standing there, arms akimbo, breathing heavily through his nose. The white button-down, which started the day as pristine and crisp as could be, is now covered with dust and sticking to his upper back, curving along the dip between his shoulder-blades. There are beads of sweat along his hairline, on his nose, gathering on the curve under his lower lip. He sniffs and runs the heel of his wrist over his mouth. He’s still panting.
“What?” Arthur finally asks.
Eames shakes his head. He bites at his thumbnail and says, “You know what.”
And surprisingly, Arthur smiles. The chase has made his eyes bright, and he looks piqued, playful, even. If only Eames could replay this through dreams -- he hopes he’ll remember all the nuances of this moment later on.
“Yes, I do know what,” Arthur finally says, still with that faint smile.
And then they bone.
Prompt: Their class gets picked for Battle Royale.
Eames
The first two minutes are the worst.
They’re all strapped with a small shoulder bag before getting pushed out of the helicopters and into a clearing surrounded by tall trees. As promised, a pile of weapons is sitting right at the center of it all.
For some odd reason, nobody moves until the helicopters are just specks in the sky. A random snap of a twig is what finally causes the scramble. Some of them haven’t even stood up yet when half the class is immediately blown up by some lucky bastard who grabbed a backpack full of grenades, or dynamite, or whatever it is that has a effective radius of at least twenty yards. Another quarter gets peppered with machine gun rounds as the screams finally start.
People begin running in every direction, Eames included.
He steers clear of any groups larger than two and sprints towards the woods until his legs burn and his vision gets speckled. Still, he runs. Some base part of his mind recognizes the white-blonde hair in his periphery as Mary Unger -- the track star, the all-around athlete, the one with fantastic mile-long legs underneath her uniform skirt.
Just as they reach the edge of the woods, she falls away as suddenly as if she’s been jerked back by some invisible force. When he spares a glance over his shoulder, she’s lying facedown with a spear sticking out of her back.
Eames keeps running.
*
Eventually his body betrays him by refusing to go any further. He falls to his knees by a thin stream and it’s only after he’s drank three handfuls that he thinks about what it could possibly be tainted with.
“Fuck it,” he says out loud. He sticks his face into it and drinks until it feels like his lungs are no longer sticking together.
His location looks no different from the entrance to the woods. Trees, trees, and more trees, too close together to provide an adequate view but too far apart to provide an adequate cover. He decides to climb one anyway, grunting as he makes his way up the trunk and onto some leafy branches about fifteen feet up.
The field of view is marginally better from that height. Eames pulls his shoulder bag to his front and rifles through it: compass, flashlight, two bags of dried food. His only provisions. And, of course, the collar around his neck. It’s situated just underneath his Adam’s apple, stronger than plastic but lighter than steel. He pops his thumb into the small gap and tugs experimentally. Nothing.
Eames almost falls out of the tree when he hears the voice.
“Get out of the tree.” There’s a sound of a gun cocking. “Now.”
Eames’s knuckles are white from holding on to a branch too tightly. He stares at the small lumps of bone. “Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with? No need for me to come out of my hideyhole, eh?”
He actually feels the whiz of the bullet, even though it buries itself into the tree about a meter below his foot. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, alright. Jesus Christ.”
It takes him far less time to climb down the tree. His feet hit the dirt within seconds and he turns to face whoever it is that’ll probably put a bullet in his head if he’s lucky and a few to the gut if he’s not. The guy is tall and skinny, familiar in a way that Eames can’t place.
“Hello.”
“Greetings to you too,” Eames says. “Are you going to let me keep my foot?”
The guy straightens his head, no longer looking at Eames through the gun sight. “Good to know you’ve got your priorities straight,” he says. Unbelievably enough, he smiles, complete with dimples.
It’s that exact expression that finally lets Eames recognize him. Arthur, last year’s winner of the Battle. His pretty, smiling face had been plastered everywhere, from buses to billboards to juice cartons. They’d used the same picture in the informational video that had been shown before being dropped onto this godforsaken island.
Arthur, a fucking volunteer for this year’s round.
“I’m guessing that silence means you recognize me,” Arthur finally says. The smile has slipped clean off, leaving a blank mask behind. He tilts his head again and points the gun at Eames. “I never wanted to be popular, but I suppose the situation can’t be helped. You should move now.”
Eames’s feet are rooted to the ground like century-old trees. He manages to take a step to the left.
“More.”
He takes another step. Then another. After stringing together a few more jerky movements, muscle memory for walking kicks in. Arthur turns in a slow circle the entire time, following Eames’s path with his gun.
“Very good,” Arthur commends, and then the tree blows up.
Eames yells and dives to the ground, covering his head from the splinters and bigger chunks of wood. The initial explosion shudders the very ground he’s lying on, but the sound dissipates fairly quick, spreading outward in fading echoes. Everything rattles and shakes as the woods readjusts itself with a long sigh.
He hears himself breathing, harsh and fast in the cavern created between his arms and the dirt. His eyes are still open, blinking at sprigs of grass. They somehow seem overly green.
“Hey.”
Eames obediently turns over when he feels Arthur’s foot nudging at his hip. The world rolls into view once more; Arthur is holding the gun at his side now.
“Watch out for those rigged trees.”
“Rigged,” Eames repeats.
“They blend in pretty well, but you can tell if you knock on the trunk. Sounds like cheap plastic, not like wood. I’d stay out of them altogether if I were you.”
Eames stares up at him. Arthur looks placid. His collar is a bit looser than Eames’s, but it’s still nowhere near big enough to pull over his chin. “If I were you, I’d have a gun and I wouldn’t have to be climbing trees,” Eames says.
Arthur smiles at him again. This one crinkles his eyes as well. He turns and lopes away through the trees without saying anything else. Eames watches him go, unsure if he’s relieved or terrified once more.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe that first half, the ones who disappeared in the explosion as easily as they could take a single breath -- they were the lucky ones.
*
Cobb
When the bell had sounded, the first thing Cobb had grabbed was Mal’s hand. The second thing he’d grabbed was the black duffel bag that he’d crash-landed by.
“Lie down,” he’d hissed, tugging at Mal’s hand.
He had shoved the bag underneath her body and then lied on top of her, trying to protect as much as he could. In the ensuing melee, someone had stepped on his ankle just enough to push something out of place, but everyone else was too frantic to escape the area to do any more harm. The chaos had ebbed even sooner than he’d been anticipating, like a parade turning around a corner, or an airplane disappearing into the clouds. Before long, it was quiet, the only noises coming from the trees and the occasional bird.
They’ve been on the move ever since, heading in a different direction than most. Mal had spied a small path that started at the clearing and led straight through into the woods. Cobb’s compass tells him that it’s south. He keeps checking it every now and then as he limps along; walking is possible, but not particularly enjoyable.
“The ocean,” Mal says suddenly.
Cobb hears it too, the repetitive inhale and crash of waves. Then the air begins to smell like salt water and the trees finally let them out on the other side. There are sheets of flat, charcoal-colored rocks laid out before them, all leading up to a sharp cliff.
Mal curses in French. Cobb drops the bag, then squats down and puts his head in his hands. He doesn’t want to think about just how far the fall is.
When he looks back up, Mal is standing at the edge of the cliff, perilously close. Cobb stands immediately and just watches. She doesn’t move.
“Mal,” Cobb says in a soft voice, because what if he calls her name too loudly and she startles and --
“Mal,” he says again, walking toward her now. “Mal. Hey.”
She turns her head only. “Dom, come here.”
“Mal. You know I would follow you anywhere, okay? Okay? Just -- don’t move, please. Don’t do anything, alright?”
“I’m not going to jump,” she says scornfully. “Just come here.”
He approaches her slowly, taking her hand when she offers it and finally coming to a stop right behind her. “Look,” she says, pointing down to where the water is crashing between piles of rocks. The height is dizzying.
“There’s a cave,” she points out.
Cobb can see it, but barely. A small mouth on the side of the cliff wall, more than halfway down. “We can’t get there.”
“We’ll find a way.” Mal turns to him. She hasn’t cried. She hasn’t acknowledged anything at all. “I promise.”
Prompt: "I don't think you're an idiot at all. I mean, there are elements of the ridiculous about you. Your mother's pretty interesting. And you really are an appallingly bad public speaker. And, um, you tend to let whatever's in your head come out of your mouth without much consideration of the consequences... But the thing is, um, what I'm trying to say, very inarticulately, is that, um, in fact, perhaps despite appearances, I like you, very much. Just as you are." BRIDGET JONES.
This one is more of a mini-fill because I can't remember what happens in the movie :(
“I like you, very much. Just as you are.”
Arthur clears his throat. He flicks his gaze to the carpet, then looks back up to Eames. The corner of his mouth pulls up when he sees that Eames is still staring.
“Good night,” Arthur says, lifting his trench from the coatrack and shrugging it on as he steps out. He doesn’t look back.
*
“Just as you are?” Yusuf frowns. “Not...quieter, or with less facial hair, or half the drinking and minus the horrid tattoos -- ”
“Just as I am,” Eames cuts in with a shout. “Yes. That is what he said, yes.”
He takes two tequila shots and rubs his beard-covered throat as they go down. A look at the mirror lining the back wall of the bar highlights the fact that one of his eyes is currently bigger than the other. Probably a trick of lighting. He also notices that the leprechaun tattoo on his arm looks like it’s laughing at him. Probably another trick of lighting.
Yusuf shakes his head and gulps down a shot as well. “Jesus.”
“Based on your reactions, it’s like he told you he’d rather go home and fuck his couch cushions,” Ariadne says. “I’m failing to see the problem here.”
“You’re an intern,” Yusuf tells her. “You’re supposed to be following our lead, you’re not supposed to be rational or whatever it is that you’re doing right now.”
“It’s just terrifying either way,” Eames mumbles, head in his hands. “Arthur is very boring and predictable. I’ve come to depend on his boring-ness and predictability, in fact. We had an established rapport wherein I bothered the shit out of him and he was an Ice Queen. Now he goes and does something unpredictable and it is bloody terrifying.”
Yusuf has been holding his empty glass to his eye, squinting through it like it’s a mini-kaledioscope. “Maybe he was possessed,” he suggests brightly.
“You know, that would actually make me feel better. I’m not joking,” Eames says as Ariadne snorts.
Yusuf heaves out a sigh, then slams the glass facedown onto the bar and slides off his stool. “Alright, I’m calling it.”
Eames raises his head and looks blearily at him. “What? Why? You’re just going to go home and cuddle your cat to sleep anyway.”
“Yes, that will happen. What of it?”
“You -- ” Eames doesn’t even have enough energy for this. Instead, he slumps uselessly in the booth and gives Yusuf a plaintive look. “Can I borrow it tomorrow night?”
“Her. Can you borrow her tomorrow night. And no, you may not.” Yusuf grabs his jacket and toddles out the door.
“Cats are people too, Eames,” Ariadne says solemnly.