(no subject)
So, this morning on my way into class, I spent most of the drive behind a car with the vanity tag SPHNKTR. Yeah, I know.
Humming One of Your Songs, Part Five
With the money issue settled, Ariadne spends the next few weeks going under whenever she has time free from class, working out the kinks in one of her builds. She’s using the hotel from the Fischer job as her base, but she’s modifying it heavily in order to fit into the boundaries of actual physics and also to replace the warmly masculine design that had meant to appeal to Fischer in favor of her own more whimsical mentality. This isn’t something that she’d ever want built in the real world, she thinks- not a broad enough appeal- but it’ll look good in her portfolio, and it’ll make a bold statement about her vision. It’s quite a feat, Ariadne thinks to herself, because she doesn’t even know what her vision is, yet.
She laughs to herself in the middle of her kitchen, and then waits for a moment for someone to ask her what’s so funny before she feels faintly foolish, because of course there isn’t anyone there but her. It’s been well over a month, now, but for a while there was always someone lurking around while she worked, Yusuf in his makeshift lab or Cobb dreaming himself into tighter knots or the quiet click of Arthur’s laptop keyboard or Eames pacing around, trying to nail Browning’s stride exactly. She feels odd, being alone.
Maybe that’s why she answers when her cell beeps at her, even though the caller id is showing “Unknown Caller.” Maybe it’s because she has a feeling who it might be, though, and she’s decided that she always has time for Arthur; sure enough, her cautious “Hello?” is met with Arthur’s brisk, “So, I know you said that you want out for a while, but I’ve got a job.”
She thinks about it for a few moments, humming absently while Arthur waits patiently on the other end of the line. On one hand, she always intended to get back into the business; on the other hand, she also didn’t expect it to happen this soon. She’s not sure she’s ready; part of her wants to live in undiluted dreams for a little while.
“What kind of job?” she says finally, and Arthur gives a little sigh that sounds relieved and that she could swear he didn’t mean for her to hear.
“The easy kind. One level, and you don’t have to go under for the actual job; we’ve got that covered.”
She wonders who “we” is, in this scenario- is Cobb really coming back that quickly? On the other hand, she’s pretty sure Arthur isn’t monogamous in the business sense; for all his loyalty to Dom, some of his working stories were suspiciously absent his friend’s name. Either way, it’s not necessarily her business.
“If it’s that simple then why are you calling me? I know you’re not an architect, but I have seen you build, you know.”
Arthur huffs out a breath. “Easy for you, not easy for the rest of us. It’s a streamlined setup- no mazes, this isn’t an extraction and I don’t need a way out- but it needs the kind of detail that I just can’t supply.”
It takes her about three seconds to come up with her reply. She can’t even pretend to herself that she was ever going to say anything else. “Where do you need me to be?”
This time Arthur’s noise is amused. She can easily picture his expression, the little sideways kick at the corner of his mouth. “Exactly where you are. I’ll come to you with what we’ve got so far; you can work wherever you feel most comfortable. I can get the warehouse back, if you want.”
Arthur can, in his own sideways way, be almost ridiculously sweet at the oddest times. “I do not need an entire warehouse all to myself, god, Arthur, are you crazy?”
She can almost hear him rolling his eyes. “Just an offer.”
“And much appreciated, despite your weirdness.” She pauses, then asks, almost a little hesitantly, “Would you mind terribly if I just do the work in my place? It’s a little cramped, but it’s where I’m used to working, and if the build isn’t too huge then I should have plenty of space-“
Arthur cuts her off before her ramble can gain too much speed, which is a neat trick that she wishes she could make more of her friends learn. “Wherever you’re happiest is fine,” he says warmly, and she hears the tapping of his fingers on his laptop keyboard. “I’m booking a room at the hotel near you right now.”
She wants to laugh- Arthur has a way of cutting through the bullshit- but settles for smiling quietly down at her hands, secure in the knowledge that he can’t see her. “Guess I’d better stock up my coffee. When am I expecting you?”
“Tomorrow?” he asks hopefully, and this time she does laugh. At least she’s getting advance notice this time; if Arthur showed up on her doorstep at six am with no warning she might actually shoot first and ask questions later.
“I’ll be here,” she tells him, and Arthur ends the call with as little fanfare as he begins. She shoves her cell back into her hoodie pocket and prays that it doesn’t fall out, and when she turns to go back to work she just sits there for a moment, thinking about how very strange her life really is.
She’s also thinking about Arthur, and the fancy coffees that he prefers even though he pretends not to care, and wondering if the store down the street is even remotely likely to have what she wants or if she’ll have to venture further, and trying to decide if she should bother to stock up on proper food while she’s at it, just in case Arthur might decide to stick around long enough to share a meal. Also, she’s wondering which mug he’ll choose from the stack; she’s got a good idea, but she’s going to hide her candidate in the middle of the crowd, just to make sure she’s right.
~*~
She’s right: he goes straight for the plain black one that Eames rejected, even though she hid it behind a bright green one with WORLD’S BEST ARCHITECT written on it. It fits neatly in the dish drainer when he finishes and she expects him to leave, then, but instead he settles down on the other side of the table with his laptop, and when, hours later, she tentatively suggests staying in for lunch, he smiles at her and says yes to whatever.
~*~
It takes her three days to finish the build, a quiet cottage in the countryside, complete with several acres of actual countryside, which explains why Arthur needed to outsource to an architect. She’s actually pretty lucky that she’s been working on her Penrose Garden, because she’s never lived anywhere but the city and her knowledge of the English countryside is limited to movies. As it is, she gets the work done in record time, even though she has Arthur lurking around the entire time and distracting the hell out of her.
He doesn’t mean to, she can tell; he seems to be going out of his way to not distract her, but she doesn’t care how smoothly he inserts himself into her routine, Arthur is and always will be distracting. He’s too attractive not to be- or rather, attractive in the way a really nice piece of art is attractive, lovely to look at but not something she feels the need to put her hands on and mess it up. Compelling. Arthur is compelling to watch, and far too many times she looks up from her work and sees him on his laptop, or going over some surveillance photos or filling out some paperwork, and she just sort of zones out a little, watching him. There are definitely worse ways to pass the time.
And he has to know that she’s staring at him, is the thing, because Arthur is a point man and thus, generally speaking, pretty observant, but he never says anything. If it bothers him at all, she can’t tell.
He looks a little surprised when she hands him the finished blueprints, sometime late in the afternoon on the third day. “That was fast,” he says, a little cautiously, but she just crosses her arms over her chest and lets him go through the work. She knows it’s good. She doesn’t need to explain herself.
His eyebrow starts inching upwards as he pages through, and when he’s examined it to his satisfaction he bundles everything up and gives her a little smile, almost like a reward. “That’s amazing,” he says honestly, and she beams back at him. “I thought it would take you a week at least.”
She holds out her hand, palm-down, and rocks it side-to-side. “I recycled the grounds from a build I was doing in my spare time,” she admits. “And you had the basic structure of the cottage already. All the groundwork was already done.”
“Still.” Arthur looks impressed, and despite herself she sits up a little straighter. Arthur’s approval is a powerful thing. “You’re kind of a natural at this, you know that?”
If he keeps this up she’s going to start blushing and then she’ll have to go find a corner and hide in it. “Okay, seriously, enough with the admiration train,” she says, waving her hand. “Just tell me that you’ve got what you need to do the job.”
Arthur snaps back to business. “Yeah, I think it’ll be more than enough,” he says, rubbing his thumb over the edge of the rolled papers. “Thanks for doing this, I know you want to take some time to focus on school.”
She waves that away. “I’m not that busy. So I’ll use this to pad my portfolio, who’ll know besides Miles? And it’s not like he’s got a leg to stand on, seeing as he introduced me to Dom in the first place.”
“Well, so long as I’m not interrupting your real life. You should be able to hang onto that, if you want.”
Ariadne smiles at him, because she knows what he’s really saying is, The rest of us lost the chance a long time ago. “Not at all. I’m always happy to have you, you know that.”
Arthur’s face closes down instantly, and she can’t understand why until she realizes, extremely belatedly, that Arthur isn’t here entirely for a job. He can’t be. He must know at least a half-dozen architects, any number of which are probably willing to shoulder a much bigger share of the work than her, but he flew out here anyway and was here mostly-constantly for the better part of three days because he likes her company.
It’s a little staggering. It’s not like she thought he hated her, or anything; he came to her before and was willing to spend time with her outside of their business transaction, but Arthur doesn’t seek people out. She doesn’t need to be a genius at reading people in order to know that much. Arthur has business acquaintances and he has Dominic Cobb and he has whatever the fuck Eames is, but he likes his space and he likes his privacy and she never wanted to intrude on that.
But Dom’s out of the business, for now at least, and Arthur very clearly isn’t, and it’s not like she thinks that she’s any kind of replacement for his best friend but it’s clear that he’s looking for something, and it seems that for whatever reason he thinks she might be it. And the honest truth is, she’d be willing to give whatever Arthur wanted to take from her. He’s too unbearably fascinating to do anything that might drive him away.
“And you don’t have to bring a job when you show up,” she adds, because this is a point that needs to be made clear. Even if she’s totally wrong and reading him all backwards and he doesn’t want more than business from her after all, she needs to say it anyway, because he’s the kind of person that likes to know everything and this is something he should be told. “You know that, right?”
He twitches all over, the strongest reaction she’s gotten out of him yet, and then he gives her a rueful look. Busted. “I do now,” he admits, and she just grins at him in unadulterated relief, because yes, she didn’t read him wrong after all; there is something besides the angles and architecture of her mind that he needs from her, something that she can give.
“In fact, you can come even if it’s just because you want to,” she continues. “As long as you buy me dinner or something, I’m never going to mind.
“In fact,” she repeats, because he’s smiling now, just a little bit but enough for her to see it, and she can’t help mugging for his attention even though she should have gotten over that by now. “Even if you don’t buy me dinner, I’m still not going to mind. That’s just how awesome I am.”
“I would be happy to buy you dinner,” he says solemnly, but his eyes are dancing a little. She loves that he can be teased. “Wherever you want to go. Your choice.”
She narrows her eyes a little. “Even if it’s that really terrible Chinese place around the corner?” she asks, testing. He raises his eyebrows.
“For you, I will risk botulism,” he says dryly.
“That’s a generous offer. I’m pretty impressed with the depth of your sacrifice.”
“Well, I do have a local doctor on speed-dial,” he admits. “Sorry if that detracts from the mystique a little.”
“Oh, Arthur. As if anything could ever detract from your mystique.”
He looks a little perturbed at this, from which she concludes (not for the first time) that he’s not really familiar with friendly flirtation. Eames is about as subtle as a brick to the head, after all, and there’s about six billion layers of complications underneath that; as for everyone else, well, Arthur doesn’t really present himself as someone who can be good-naturedly teased. That’s why she enjoys doing it so much.
He turns away and grabs one of the paper tubes out of the haphazard stack on her desk and deposits the blueprints safely inside. “If you don’t mind, could you give me a walkthrough later, just to make sure I’ve got it down? I’m the dreamer on this run, and I’d hate to fuck up something because I didn’t get the details right.”
She doubts Arthur has ever gotten the details wrong in his life, the Fischer incident aside, but she lets it stand because professional obsession is probably how he got where he is in life. “I don’t mind at all. Actually, if you’ve got the time I can take you under later and give you a proper walk-around. If you’re that worried about it.”
“I’d appreciate that.” He sets down the blueprint container and then, incongruously, holds out one hand like he’s asking her to dance. “But first, I’m pretty sure I owe you dinner. Feel like collecting?”
Oh, Arthur. “I’d love to,” she says, grinningly maniacally, and grabs onto his hand. “You pick the place, this time.”
He nods and dips into his pocket, coming back out with his cell phone in hand. He flips it open and dials something from memory, and when the call connects, Arthur says briskly, “Reservation for two, please,” and gives her hand a squeeze before letting her go.
~*~
Arthur’s reservations are for somewhere ridiculously fancy, and so he heads back to his hotel room to change into “something a little more formal” (her mind boggles) and gives her a chance to take a long, luxurious bath with lots of sweet-scented bubbles and then hunt through her closet for something that could approximate the kind of money she actually has, now. She finds a suit, appropriately enough, from the time Angela dragged her to a photo shoot of a designer friend and then played fairy godmother in the dressing room after. It’s got a long black jacket and dove-gray waistcoat with about a thousand tiny pearl buttons, and when she examines herself in the mirror she realizes that it fits even better than it did two years ago. (Her new habit of eating better has its benefits, instead of her old preference for skimming by on coffee and power naps.)
Arthur loves it, she can tell from the way his eyes go a little wide, when she opens the door at his knock. It’s kind of adorable how much he loves high fashion. “You clean up well.”
“Not as well as you,” she says, looking him over. If Arthur in a working suit is a picture that she likes to hold onto for bad days, Arthur in his idea of full formalwear is sort of mind-blowing. She doesn’t even have the vocabulary to describe most of what he’s got on his body right now.
He clears his throat. “Shall we?”
He takes them there in his rental, something sporty and expensive and midlife crisis-ish, and they spend the trip mostly in silence. Arthur seems to be mostly focused on the road, and Ariadne just enjoys the passing scenery, Paris at night, the same blaze of color and life that drew her here in the first place. The silence is comfortable, though, and Arthur smiles at her when he hands off the keys to the valet and holds the door for her when they go inside. If she didn’t know better, she’d think this was a date.
Dinner itself is a blast. She lets Arthur order for them both, since this is his show and anyway she’s pretty sure he’s got her grocery lists on file somewhere, and they spend the evening working their way through six tiny and amazing courses and sipping red wine and talking. Admittedly she holds up far more than her fair share of conversation, but it’s not like she doesn’t like to talk, and Arthur makes for an appreciative audience. He turns out to be almost disturbingly well-read, and he keeps up with her eclectic collection of literary tastes with ease. They spend almost half an hour discussing Camus’ The Stranger and then spend another forty minutes or so arguing about the Twilight books. (She thinks that they’re incredibly silly but basically harmless; he thinks they are an abomination and a scourge upon mankind.) Then she finds out that he’s kind of a movie buff and it’s on.
They don’t stop till dessert and only then because she keeps trying to steal some of his cheesecake and he gets so involved in fending her off that they end up in an impromptu fencing match with their forks and that’s the point at which their server shows up with a very strained smile and the check. Arthur pays with a black card and not even a hint of an apology, and she manages to hold in her amusement by some superhuman feat of will until they’ve collected their coats and left the restaurant, at which point she explodes in giggles and even Arthur is smiling kind of wryly.
She takes a deep breath of the night air while the valet goes to retrieve their car. “This was a pretty amazing dinner,” she tells him. “I feel way overpaid for a build I’m going to use in my portfolio anyway.”
“No, overpaid is what I deposited in your bank account four hours ago,” he corrects. “This is just a thank-you for taking the time.”
“Bank account?” She gives him a Look. “Did you get the info from Eames?”
He looks almost offended. “Like I needed to. I’m a point-man, remember? Kind of what I do.”
“Sorry, did I hurt your feelings? Poor baby.”
“You are a cold, cruel woman,” he tells her, but the corner of his mouth is twitching. He thinks she’s hilarious; she can tell these things. “I had a good time.”
“Me, too. We should do this again sometime.” She gives him a pointed look. “And, not that I mind the work, but maybe next time we can do it without the pretense, huh?”
“It’s hardly pretense if I actually needed your help,” he argues, but it’s for form’s sake and they both know it.
“And if you need it again I will obviously be here, but I’d like to spend a little time with you just as friends. If you want to.”
His face stills and he looks at her in measuring silence for a long moment, and then he huffs out a sigh and rubs the back of his neck. “I’ll give you a call when I’m clear for a week or two.”
She gives him a grin full of triumph for getting her way. “You do that.”
tbc.
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Humming One of Your Songs, Part Five
With the money issue settled, Ariadne spends the next few weeks going under whenever she has time free from class, working out the kinks in one of her builds. She’s using the hotel from the Fischer job as her base, but she’s modifying it heavily in order to fit into the boundaries of actual physics and also to replace the warmly masculine design that had meant to appeal to Fischer in favor of her own more whimsical mentality. This isn’t something that she’d ever want built in the real world, she thinks- not a broad enough appeal- but it’ll look good in her portfolio, and it’ll make a bold statement about her vision. It’s quite a feat, Ariadne thinks to herself, because she doesn’t even know what her vision is, yet.
She laughs to herself in the middle of her kitchen, and then waits for a moment for someone to ask her what’s so funny before she feels faintly foolish, because of course there isn’t anyone there but her. It’s been well over a month, now, but for a while there was always someone lurking around while she worked, Yusuf in his makeshift lab or Cobb dreaming himself into tighter knots or the quiet click of Arthur’s laptop keyboard or Eames pacing around, trying to nail Browning’s stride exactly. She feels odd, being alone.
Maybe that’s why she answers when her cell beeps at her, even though the caller id is showing “Unknown Caller.” Maybe it’s because she has a feeling who it might be, though, and she’s decided that she always has time for Arthur; sure enough, her cautious “Hello?” is met with Arthur’s brisk, “So, I know you said that you want out for a while, but I’ve got a job.”
She thinks about it for a few moments, humming absently while Arthur waits patiently on the other end of the line. On one hand, she always intended to get back into the business; on the other hand, she also didn’t expect it to happen this soon. She’s not sure she’s ready; part of her wants to live in undiluted dreams for a little while.
“What kind of job?” she says finally, and Arthur gives a little sigh that sounds relieved and that she could swear he didn’t mean for her to hear.
“The easy kind. One level, and you don’t have to go under for the actual job; we’ve got that covered.”
She wonders who “we” is, in this scenario- is Cobb really coming back that quickly? On the other hand, she’s pretty sure Arthur isn’t monogamous in the business sense; for all his loyalty to Dom, some of his working stories were suspiciously absent his friend’s name. Either way, it’s not necessarily her business.
“If it’s that simple then why are you calling me? I know you’re not an architect, but I have seen you build, you know.”
Arthur huffs out a breath. “Easy for you, not easy for the rest of us. It’s a streamlined setup- no mazes, this isn’t an extraction and I don’t need a way out- but it needs the kind of detail that I just can’t supply.”
It takes her about three seconds to come up with her reply. She can’t even pretend to herself that she was ever going to say anything else. “Where do you need me to be?”
This time Arthur’s noise is amused. She can easily picture his expression, the little sideways kick at the corner of his mouth. “Exactly where you are. I’ll come to you with what we’ve got so far; you can work wherever you feel most comfortable. I can get the warehouse back, if you want.”
Arthur can, in his own sideways way, be almost ridiculously sweet at the oddest times. “I do not need an entire warehouse all to myself, god, Arthur, are you crazy?”
She can almost hear him rolling his eyes. “Just an offer.”
“And much appreciated, despite your weirdness.” She pauses, then asks, almost a little hesitantly, “Would you mind terribly if I just do the work in my place? It’s a little cramped, but it’s where I’m used to working, and if the build isn’t too huge then I should have plenty of space-“
Arthur cuts her off before her ramble can gain too much speed, which is a neat trick that she wishes she could make more of her friends learn. “Wherever you’re happiest is fine,” he says warmly, and she hears the tapping of his fingers on his laptop keyboard. “I’m booking a room at the hotel near you right now.”
She wants to laugh- Arthur has a way of cutting through the bullshit- but settles for smiling quietly down at her hands, secure in the knowledge that he can’t see her. “Guess I’d better stock up my coffee. When am I expecting you?”
“Tomorrow?” he asks hopefully, and this time she does laugh. At least she’s getting advance notice this time; if Arthur showed up on her doorstep at six am with no warning she might actually shoot first and ask questions later.
“I’ll be here,” she tells him, and Arthur ends the call with as little fanfare as he begins. She shoves her cell back into her hoodie pocket and prays that it doesn’t fall out, and when she turns to go back to work she just sits there for a moment, thinking about how very strange her life really is.
She’s also thinking about Arthur, and the fancy coffees that he prefers even though he pretends not to care, and wondering if the store down the street is even remotely likely to have what she wants or if she’ll have to venture further, and trying to decide if she should bother to stock up on proper food while she’s at it, just in case Arthur might decide to stick around long enough to share a meal. Also, she’s wondering which mug he’ll choose from the stack; she’s got a good idea, but she’s going to hide her candidate in the middle of the crowd, just to make sure she’s right.
~*~
She’s right: he goes straight for the plain black one that Eames rejected, even though she hid it behind a bright green one with WORLD’S BEST ARCHITECT written on it. It fits neatly in the dish drainer when he finishes and she expects him to leave, then, but instead he settles down on the other side of the table with his laptop, and when, hours later, she tentatively suggests staying in for lunch, he smiles at her and says yes to whatever.
~*~
It takes her three days to finish the build, a quiet cottage in the countryside, complete with several acres of actual countryside, which explains why Arthur needed to outsource to an architect. She’s actually pretty lucky that she’s been working on her Penrose Garden, because she’s never lived anywhere but the city and her knowledge of the English countryside is limited to movies. As it is, she gets the work done in record time, even though she has Arthur lurking around the entire time and distracting the hell out of her.
He doesn’t mean to, she can tell; he seems to be going out of his way to not distract her, but she doesn’t care how smoothly he inserts himself into her routine, Arthur is and always will be distracting. He’s too attractive not to be- or rather, attractive in the way a really nice piece of art is attractive, lovely to look at but not something she feels the need to put her hands on and mess it up. Compelling. Arthur is compelling to watch, and far too many times she looks up from her work and sees him on his laptop, or going over some surveillance photos or filling out some paperwork, and she just sort of zones out a little, watching him. There are definitely worse ways to pass the time.
And he has to know that she’s staring at him, is the thing, because Arthur is a point man and thus, generally speaking, pretty observant, but he never says anything. If it bothers him at all, she can’t tell.
He looks a little surprised when she hands him the finished blueprints, sometime late in the afternoon on the third day. “That was fast,” he says, a little cautiously, but she just crosses her arms over her chest and lets him go through the work. She knows it’s good. She doesn’t need to explain herself.
His eyebrow starts inching upwards as he pages through, and when he’s examined it to his satisfaction he bundles everything up and gives her a little smile, almost like a reward. “That’s amazing,” he says honestly, and she beams back at him. “I thought it would take you a week at least.”
She holds out her hand, palm-down, and rocks it side-to-side. “I recycled the grounds from a build I was doing in my spare time,” she admits. “And you had the basic structure of the cottage already. All the groundwork was already done.”
“Still.” Arthur looks impressed, and despite herself she sits up a little straighter. Arthur’s approval is a powerful thing. “You’re kind of a natural at this, you know that?”
If he keeps this up she’s going to start blushing and then she’ll have to go find a corner and hide in it. “Okay, seriously, enough with the admiration train,” she says, waving her hand. “Just tell me that you’ve got what you need to do the job.”
Arthur snaps back to business. “Yeah, I think it’ll be more than enough,” he says, rubbing his thumb over the edge of the rolled papers. “Thanks for doing this, I know you want to take some time to focus on school.”
She waves that away. “I’m not that busy. So I’ll use this to pad my portfolio, who’ll know besides Miles? And it’s not like he’s got a leg to stand on, seeing as he introduced me to Dom in the first place.”
“Well, so long as I’m not interrupting your real life. You should be able to hang onto that, if you want.”
Ariadne smiles at him, because she knows what he’s really saying is, The rest of us lost the chance a long time ago. “Not at all. I’m always happy to have you, you know that.”
Arthur’s face closes down instantly, and she can’t understand why until she realizes, extremely belatedly, that Arthur isn’t here entirely for a job. He can’t be. He must know at least a half-dozen architects, any number of which are probably willing to shoulder a much bigger share of the work than her, but he flew out here anyway and was here mostly-constantly for the better part of three days because he likes her company.
It’s a little staggering. It’s not like she thought he hated her, or anything; he came to her before and was willing to spend time with her outside of their business transaction, but Arthur doesn’t seek people out. She doesn’t need to be a genius at reading people in order to know that much. Arthur has business acquaintances and he has Dominic Cobb and he has whatever the fuck Eames is, but he likes his space and he likes his privacy and she never wanted to intrude on that.
But Dom’s out of the business, for now at least, and Arthur very clearly isn’t, and it’s not like she thinks that she’s any kind of replacement for his best friend but it’s clear that he’s looking for something, and it seems that for whatever reason he thinks she might be it. And the honest truth is, she’d be willing to give whatever Arthur wanted to take from her. He’s too unbearably fascinating to do anything that might drive him away.
“And you don’t have to bring a job when you show up,” she adds, because this is a point that needs to be made clear. Even if she’s totally wrong and reading him all backwards and he doesn’t want more than business from her after all, she needs to say it anyway, because he’s the kind of person that likes to know everything and this is something he should be told. “You know that, right?”
He twitches all over, the strongest reaction she’s gotten out of him yet, and then he gives her a rueful look. Busted. “I do now,” he admits, and she just grins at him in unadulterated relief, because yes, she didn’t read him wrong after all; there is something besides the angles and architecture of her mind that he needs from her, something that she can give.
“In fact, you can come even if it’s just because you want to,” she continues. “As long as you buy me dinner or something, I’m never going to mind.
“In fact,” she repeats, because he’s smiling now, just a little bit but enough for her to see it, and she can’t help mugging for his attention even though she should have gotten over that by now. “Even if you don’t buy me dinner, I’m still not going to mind. That’s just how awesome I am.”
“I would be happy to buy you dinner,” he says solemnly, but his eyes are dancing a little. She loves that he can be teased. “Wherever you want to go. Your choice.”
She narrows her eyes a little. “Even if it’s that really terrible Chinese place around the corner?” she asks, testing. He raises his eyebrows.
“For you, I will risk botulism,” he says dryly.
“That’s a generous offer. I’m pretty impressed with the depth of your sacrifice.”
“Well, I do have a local doctor on speed-dial,” he admits. “Sorry if that detracts from the mystique a little.”
“Oh, Arthur. As if anything could ever detract from your mystique.”
He looks a little perturbed at this, from which she concludes (not for the first time) that he’s not really familiar with friendly flirtation. Eames is about as subtle as a brick to the head, after all, and there’s about six billion layers of complications underneath that; as for everyone else, well, Arthur doesn’t really present himself as someone who can be good-naturedly teased. That’s why she enjoys doing it so much.
He turns away and grabs one of the paper tubes out of the haphazard stack on her desk and deposits the blueprints safely inside. “If you don’t mind, could you give me a walkthrough later, just to make sure I’ve got it down? I’m the dreamer on this run, and I’d hate to fuck up something because I didn’t get the details right.”
She doubts Arthur has ever gotten the details wrong in his life, the Fischer incident aside, but she lets it stand because professional obsession is probably how he got where he is in life. “I don’t mind at all. Actually, if you’ve got the time I can take you under later and give you a proper walk-around. If you’re that worried about it.”
“I’d appreciate that.” He sets down the blueprint container and then, incongruously, holds out one hand like he’s asking her to dance. “But first, I’m pretty sure I owe you dinner. Feel like collecting?”
Oh, Arthur. “I’d love to,” she says, grinningly maniacally, and grabs onto his hand. “You pick the place, this time.”
He nods and dips into his pocket, coming back out with his cell phone in hand. He flips it open and dials something from memory, and when the call connects, Arthur says briskly, “Reservation for two, please,” and gives her hand a squeeze before letting her go.
~*~
Arthur’s reservations are for somewhere ridiculously fancy, and so he heads back to his hotel room to change into “something a little more formal” (her mind boggles) and gives her a chance to take a long, luxurious bath with lots of sweet-scented bubbles and then hunt through her closet for something that could approximate the kind of money she actually has, now. She finds a suit, appropriately enough, from the time Angela dragged her to a photo shoot of a designer friend and then played fairy godmother in the dressing room after. It’s got a long black jacket and dove-gray waistcoat with about a thousand tiny pearl buttons, and when she examines herself in the mirror she realizes that it fits even better than it did two years ago. (Her new habit of eating better has its benefits, instead of her old preference for skimming by on coffee and power naps.)
Arthur loves it, she can tell from the way his eyes go a little wide, when she opens the door at his knock. It’s kind of adorable how much he loves high fashion. “You clean up well.”
“Not as well as you,” she says, looking him over. If Arthur in a working suit is a picture that she likes to hold onto for bad days, Arthur in his idea of full formalwear is sort of mind-blowing. She doesn’t even have the vocabulary to describe most of what he’s got on his body right now.
He clears his throat. “Shall we?”
He takes them there in his rental, something sporty and expensive and midlife crisis-ish, and they spend the trip mostly in silence. Arthur seems to be mostly focused on the road, and Ariadne just enjoys the passing scenery, Paris at night, the same blaze of color and life that drew her here in the first place. The silence is comfortable, though, and Arthur smiles at her when he hands off the keys to the valet and holds the door for her when they go inside. If she didn’t know better, she’d think this was a date.
Dinner itself is a blast. She lets Arthur order for them both, since this is his show and anyway she’s pretty sure he’s got her grocery lists on file somewhere, and they spend the evening working their way through six tiny and amazing courses and sipping red wine and talking. Admittedly she holds up far more than her fair share of conversation, but it’s not like she doesn’t like to talk, and Arthur makes for an appreciative audience. He turns out to be almost disturbingly well-read, and he keeps up with her eclectic collection of literary tastes with ease. They spend almost half an hour discussing Camus’ The Stranger and then spend another forty minutes or so arguing about the Twilight books. (She thinks that they’re incredibly silly but basically harmless; he thinks they are an abomination and a scourge upon mankind.) Then she finds out that he’s kind of a movie buff and it’s on.
They don’t stop till dessert and only then because she keeps trying to steal some of his cheesecake and he gets so involved in fending her off that they end up in an impromptu fencing match with their forks and that’s the point at which their server shows up with a very strained smile and the check. Arthur pays with a black card and not even a hint of an apology, and she manages to hold in her amusement by some superhuman feat of will until they’ve collected their coats and left the restaurant, at which point she explodes in giggles and even Arthur is smiling kind of wryly.
She takes a deep breath of the night air while the valet goes to retrieve their car. “This was a pretty amazing dinner,” she tells him. “I feel way overpaid for a build I’m going to use in my portfolio anyway.”
“No, overpaid is what I deposited in your bank account four hours ago,” he corrects. “This is just a thank-you for taking the time.”
“Bank account?” She gives him a Look. “Did you get the info from Eames?”
He looks almost offended. “Like I needed to. I’m a point-man, remember? Kind of what I do.”
“Sorry, did I hurt your feelings? Poor baby.”
“You are a cold, cruel woman,” he tells her, but the corner of his mouth is twitching. He thinks she’s hilarious; she can tell these things. “I had a good time.”
“Me, too. We should do this again sometime.” She gives him a pointed look. “And, not that I mind the work, but maybe next time we can do it without the pretense, huh?”
“It’s hardly pretense if I actually needed your help,” he argues, but it’s for form’s sake and they both know it.
“And if you need it again I will obviously be here, but I’d like to spend a little time with you just as friends. If you want to.”
His face stills and he looks at her in measuring silence for a long moment, and then he huffs out a sigh and rubs the back of his neck. “I’ll give you a call when I’m clear for a week or two.”
She gives him a grin full of triumph for getting her way. “You do that.”
tbc.
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