FEST FIC. FEAST THINE EYES.
Art Prompt Title: Each of them lost in their own worlds, in the cities that were supposed to be their homes.
Art link: Art Master Post
Artist: fae_boleyn
Fic Title: The Someone Effect
Author: accio0greatness
Pairing(s): Established Arthur/Eames, Arthur/Ariadne, Arthur/Eames/Fischer, PREDOMINATELY ARIADNE/SAITO/ROBERT
Rating: R
Word Count: ~2,000
Warnings: A bit feverish.
Summary: And this lusting, this yearning, this incompleteness that haunts them? Classic Someone Effect. Arthur and Eames leave their impression everywhere.
They meet in Iowa City, a few months after The Job is finished.
Ariadne’s hair is longer, reaching the bottoms of her shoulder blades-she still dresses like an adolescent boy: varsity jacket, baggy jeans, scuffed sneakers.
Saito is frazzled, and not showing it-the Midwest is strange and alien and far too welcoming to be a real place.
Robert has just awoken from a nap-jet lag is a bitch, his lips are sleep-swollen and heavy, casting a shadow on his chin.
Another patron enters the bookshop, the bell on the door ringing-bringing them all back to themselves. With a tilt of his head, Saito leads them out of the door.
Ariadne is not lonely.
And that worries her.
Shouldn’t she feel abandoned in the City of Lights with no one to hold hands with at her favourite cafe? It’s a bit eerie how content she is with her architectural sketches, not even a cat to keep her company.
On occasion, she thinks of ringing Arthur-his dry wit is often missed, as she replays conversations they had as she brushes her teeth. Makes yet another batch of crepes. Presses her index finger to the swell of her bottom lip.
She stifles the urges quickly; remembering the possessive way Eames would bite at that neck, as she returned just a tad too early from a coffee run. Arthur’s cheeks would be flushed, eyes dazed as he snapped his hips, forcing Eames’ golden thighs apart even more, whimpering and jerking as if each kiss Eames pressed to his pale skin was the prick of a needle. And Arthur really couldn’t say he minded the twinges of pain.
Ariadne is not lonely.
She makes sure to tell herself that each morning.
Her dreams are still flat, still unable to satisfy her, and as she looks at herself in the mirror, noting the bags that are growing beneath her eyes, she knows that there is no going back. She reminds herself to order more of that Columbian blend. She didn’t order it because it tastes like Arthur’s lips did, she found that out on accident. It is the same colour as his eyes. His hair.
She throws some clothes on and makes it to the cafe where she intends to sketch more buildings. More people walking past-tourists with their strangely endearing faux-French slogan shirts, adolescents travelling in groups. It’s pointless. Whenever she presses lead to paper on a day like today-the night before bringing her a poor imitation of him, his long-fingered hands, the scent of his aftershave-she can only manage to draw his lips. His eyes. The back of his head.
If she draws him in his completeness, his besuited glory, or (God Forbid) those spectacles she caught him wearing one very late night... she will break.
She knows her name is the same of that princess, that maze-navigator, but now that Dom is gone, now that her quest is over, she cannot make her way through the turns and corners and hidden doors all of this has left her with.
She wakes with tears in her eyes and a need to be held.
Ariadne is not lonely.
They reach the hotel with minor difficulties, jogging across crosswalks with the hordes of college-aged kids. They eye Ariadne, she blushes and clutches Robert’s forearm. He doesn’t know how to feel about that.
Saito smirks at the sight of them, leaning into each other for warmth-March in the Heartland is brisk and relentless. He cups Ariadne’s elbow with the palm of his hand and whispers in her ear, relishing the way she shudders, cheeks flooding with crimson.
“We are all missing them, Princess.”
He nearly misses a glimpse of skin as Ariadne presses her small hand beneath Fischer’s jacket. Her knuckles are ice upon the man’s skin. Saito presses a kiss to Ariadne’s jaw in the lobby after they are given the room key.
She tastes of adrenaline.
Saito is still off-kilter.
Living a lifetime and waking up in your own body, being able to breathe without wheezing-it’s a terrible, wonderful thing.
Tokyo is busy, and welcomes him with open arms-he visits former colleagues, wines and dines his mistresses, promises each of them he’ll return.
He will.
But now? When he’s alone in his parlour, half-asleep and philosophical? He presses his hands to his smooth cheeks and shudders.
He was not scared in Limbo. He was a bit restless, maybe, a tad disappointed in how empty his life had become-but he wasn’t frightened.
He still doesn’t have a totem.
From time to time, he thinks he should invest in one, but he gets a strange kick out of now knowing what reality and dream is. It unlocks some facet of himself-in his dreams he is less cautious, he is wild and unrestrained and his projections aren’t sure what to do-who is this slightly foul-mouthed ruffian, this outspoken man? And his acquaintances that exist outside his subconscious mind find him changed also, his laughter more genuine.
Days stretch before him like a buffet, a final chance to do what he should have done, to do what he couldn’t as he aged on the coast, in that beautiful, and dreadful house. He gets a puppy, a mutt-names her Diana after the only woman he has ever heard Eames speak of without degrading.
Saito promises himself he’ll find something like Eames has found. Some spirited companion to keep him from drinking too much, from buying furniture from catalogues because he’s horrible at judging the length of the walls in his penthouse’s sitting room.
He buys a ring. It’s neither feminine nor masculine, because Saito indulges in those he finds beautiful, with sharp minds, no more and no less-a band of silver, similar to the one he saw Arthur fiddling with in front of the ice machine at the hotel they spent the night in when they landed in Sydney. Arthur was gorgeous, hair slightly curling from a shower, nibbling at his lower lip, thumb spinning the circle of precious metal around his ring finger.
Saito promises himself he will find someone he can make glow like that.
He knows that when he does, this sense of imbalance will fade, and Diana will stop looking at him in her condescending way. Perhaps she’ll stop pissing in his shoes, too.
Neither of them expected Robert to be like this-he is loud and wanton as his shirt cuffs tangle round his wrists. He moans into Ariadne’s mouth as she straddles his hips, baring his long throat for Saito’s teeth. He feels feverish, hair no longer slicked back, falling over his brilliant blue eyes. When Saito’s hands undo his belt and trousers, pushing them past those creamy hips, he rests thick and pale in the distinguished man’s hand.
Saito would rather leave him there, wobbling on the bed, rubbing his delectable arse against his prick like that, but Ariadne will have none of it. She bites at Robert’s lower lip again and pulls her shirt over her head. Her breasts are perfect.
And the sight of both of them licking at him through the silk of his undergarments-wet breath and tongues wrenching moans from his throat...
When they kiss around the head, Robert’s lips slippery and smooth, Ariadne’s tongue a parcel from the netherworld, he nearly loses himself.
Robert takes him to the root, swallows and then moans as Ariadne tweaks a nipple. Saito’s vision flashes black/golden/magenta and he awakens to Ariadne half lying on his chest, her hair smelling of jasmine.
It isn’t normal, how much he can’t get them out of his head.
Robert even thought of them at the funeral-his father’s sunken face brought tears to spill onto his cheeks, but so did the realisation that the absolute completion he saw in the faces of those two in baggage claim-a golden hand pressed in the small of the more serious looking man’s back-would never be his.
It’s not cynicism. It’s just the truth. His father had known of his preference for men, and while he’d never directly condemned it, his godfather had never been rebuked for his snarky comments.
Though he may not be able to shake the sense of resentment and suspicion that roils his guts each time he sees the man, Robert knows he will never move past the phase of quick fucks without his father’s absolute approval. And the man is dead. Buried.
So instead, Robert wonders what it would be like, to be in a three-he couldn’t pick which of the men he desired more, so he passes the time wondering what it would be like to slide into tight heat and be plunged into at the same time.
He would be the buffer of their fuck, the interpreter, passing the thrust from the broad-shouldered smirker to that delicate looking slighter man, his hair dark and curling with sweat. Kisses would be peppered across his shoulder blades, and he would moan and shudder and they would all be gaspingthrustingburning...
Robert wants that. He wants it with every fibre of his being, but he forces himself to wake, to shower and not to think of either pair of those lips wrapped around his cock at a board meeting again.
Ariadne feels strange-how can she be enjoying this? Robert neither smells nor tastes like Arthur; his kisses are too desperate, his teeth on her neck less precise than they ought to be.
And Saito... for all his charm and Old World grace, he looks like he belongs there, the cream-coloured sheets of the bed wrapped around his legs as he traces the head of his prick around her open mouth.
But she can’t deny she feels cherished, in this bed-Robert’s whispered confession against the back of her neck makes her knees nearly give out. He lines himself up against her slickness, and feels a woman’s flesh give around him for the first time.
They both whimper, and Saito wants to keep them in this room until they have fucked it all away, all the disappointments, all the not-quite-good-enough fantasies, all the ghosts of Arthur and his Eames that linger in the shadows of Ariadne’s eyelashes., the hollows of Robert’s hips.
Ariadne rasps guidance to Robert and his slender fingers learn quickly; though he finishes far too quickly to feel like a worthy bedmate, the way she shudders into the mattress, fists clenched, throat rippling round Saito like a devilish thing-it is worth it.
They catch their breath, and Robert is stretched by callused hands-Ariadne is fascinated by his writhing each time she grazes the nodule inside the grasping heat. As he lowers himself onto Saito, he can’t help but wonder how the man knew that he liked his hips grabbed roughly, the cheeks of his arse spread as he swivels his hips and rides like a champion. Then suddenly, that girl, that temptress with her big doe eyes and freckled back is lowering herself onto him also, the dampness of her sliding down to rest int he dark curls below his navel.
She is slippery and hot and not as tight as he knows Saito would be, but she is a whirlwind of sensation, his head pounds as Saito bucks beneath him, Ariadne driving back against his body. He sinks his teeth into her shoulder and feels himself twitch inside her as her breath hitches.
Saito still has control of his voice, and says now-quietly, forcefully: “Come for me.”
And he feels himself gush into her mere nanoseconds after she shrieks and collapses on Saito’s chest.
Sex is a messy past-time, but now, with three dark-haired figures huddled on the bed, the head cranked and room service bearing French toast tout de suit, it is the only cure for the Someone Effect.
For the first time in ages, Ariadne dreams of her old elementary school, not pale ears and a slender waist.
Saito mentally tallies the cost of another ring, and plans how to get this to Tokyo.
Robert feels whole inside. He doesn’t dream, but he never did much anyway.
Except for on planes.