Chapter Text
01 // greed is the gift for the sons of the sons
Things go so quickly that Ariadne doesn't have time to wonder what she's gotten herself into until she's on a plane from Paris to Sydney.
Nobody tells her to dress up; she's not a child, and while there are moments when her youth and inexperience flare up brightly and pick her out, this job is so unprecedented that everyone is inexperienced in one way or another. Eames might know the human psyche inside and out, but he knows no more of compounds than that they come in a little glass vial. Yusuf may be formulating a special blend by hand in his makeshift lab, but he cheerfully admits that he would not have thought of the plane ride or been able to secure the entire first class cabin even without Saito's intervening hand. Their benefactor is as eager to learn as Ariadne is, she thinks, remembering him hovering on the periphery of their meetings, and while she hesitates to guess about his prior ventures in shared dreaming or criminality she knows that this is new for him too. Arthur plans everything but cannot draw a maze to save his life, as he memorably demonstrated on a training run when he deliberately provoked her projections. Cobb is holding everything so close to his chest that his skills are downplayed, but all of that is diminished by the shade of Mal that threatens all of them. And she's new to everything, she's smart enough to know her limits, but she knows she is really, really good at building these worlds from the inside out.
She also knows that showing up in thrift-store trousers and her favorite threadbare red blazer would make her instantly memorable in first class, and that's something none of them want. So she puts a bit more on her groaning credit card (if this works then she'll be able to pay it all off - and her student loans - and her parents' mortgage) and buys an outfit or two for the trip.
In the airport she sees the rest of the team; they're traveling separately so as not to appear conspicuous. But she can sense them as if invisible threads connect them all, her namesake's spool stretching out from her and twining around these criminals with whom she's somehow become entangled. On the long flight to Sydney she has a row to herself, chance or Saito or whatever, and she leans her head against the plastic of the cabin wall and sleeps. When she wakes up she can see their heads, Yusuf's curls catching shadows, Eames' long nose tilted up as he sleeps, Cobb bent over his secret thoughts and Arthur's hair gleaming dully like a crow's wing.
Her dreams are full of mazes, a palm's worth of coarse thread spilling over from the scarf around her neck, and men in the shadows. If she sees Mal she doesn't remember it. She wakes with a scowl on her face. Couldn't her subconscious be a little more creative with the symbolism? Did her parents doom her to a life of labyrinths and allusion? If she'd been named something like Emily or Catherine would she be on this plane, on her way to break into someone's mind and remake his world? Or would she be back home, married to a college boyfriend and working a nothing job and chafing at the boundaries of her life? Does a name hold that much power, or does it only count if you have a famous tragic heroine for a namesake?
At the airport in Australia she stumbles into the bathroom and looks at herself, eyes ringed by dark circles. She brushes her hair mechanically and is vaguely aware of the other women passing behind her with suitcases and children and their own heads full of dreams. Would any of them take this chance? Leave behind whatever ethics they might have had to help plant an idea in a man's mind? A seed that will grow and spread and flower like an invasive strain, vines working their way in till the structure falls along with his father's corporation?
What is she doing here?
And the answer turns out to be - saving Dominic Cobb's mind.
After that, everything else seems to fall away.
02 // we're just impostors in this country you know
The airport feels more dreamlike than the last two days have been, spent mostly in the air and mostly asleep, racing against time and projections and the slow collapse of all their plans. Now the ground is solid under her feet, the refrigerated air punctuated by blasts of warmth as the doors open. People are moving and she feels a headache crawling around the edges of her skull. International travel is hell, but is it still jet lag if she's hung over from being inside three layers of dreamspace and surviving falling over a bridge, an exploding elevator, falling thousands of feet? She wishes badly for a moment that she was being met by someone - anyone - but the only faces she recognizes are the men with whom she's just committed several crimes. And their victim. Arthur's eyes meet hers, then slide away. Eames walks past, but Yusuf gives her the ghost of a smile. He's off to a connecting flight, she knows. They all scatter. They can't know each other here. She wants to curl into a ball and - she isn't sure. Weep or laugh or simply huddle away from the world.
A few hours later, though, Ariadne is lying on the bed and trying to convince her head that it's not going to explode when her phone buzzes and falls off the nightstand. It's a text from Arthur's number, giving her an address and a time. The time is two hours from now; she isn't sure why he wants to meet her when he was so insistent that they leave and not have contact after the job. But then there's that kiss he gave her, and that sly smile, and the touch of his fingers on her wrist. There are questions she wants to ask him, but she isn't sure where to start.
A shower leaves her feeling slightly more human and she stares at herself in front of the mirror again, not sure what to do with her hair. She settles for drying it into its normal waves. But she leaves the scarf off and dabs a little perfume at her throat, the iris and clove scent grounding her. Things never smell right in dreams. Then she stares at her suitcase, willing it to produce something new and impeccably stylish before she scolds herself for being an idiot. Clearly she's overthinking this. But she still digs out the one dress she brought and slips it on, adding the white jacket over the top. At least nobody looking for her will expect her to be wearing a dress.
Arthur's mystery address turns out to be a bar, lights glowing through the windows and gleaming on his hair as he stands outside. It's too hot in Los Angeles for his customary layers. But he still seems to outclass her in a crisp shirt and those same light trousers. "You look like you should be in the Great Gatsby," she says, and he gives her that small courtly smile.
"Come on," he says, his hand heavy between her shoulder blades as he steers her through the door.
She sees the profile before anything else, tilted to look back at the bar and framed perfectly against the dance floor. The entire night seems to shift and rearrange around her; this isn't what she thought it was. If Eames is here, maybe Cobb is? Maybe Yusuf's catching a later flight? Then he turns and smiles at them both and things snap back into place. Whatever's going on, she won't be able to sort it out by acting like some simpering fool. Eames is somehow taking up the entire bench on his side of the booth; Arthur slides in beside her facing the other man and summons a waiter.
They don't talk about the job, of course. They don't talk about work at all, though clearly some of the more far-flung locales Eames describes would have been places he pulled jobs. But instead they talk about traveling, and their favorite cities, and she and Eames almost slip from a friendly debate to an actual argument about Montreal, and Arthur is the only one who sticks up for Chicago. Ariadne's never been and he smiles and tells her she should, she'd love it. Somewhere in there his arm has made its way over the back of the booth, close enough to drape over her shoulders but loose enough for plausible deniability. He only has one drink but seems to relax more as the evening goes on, his banter with Eames never turning unpleasant. Ariadne feels a warm glow spread through her, and she's pretty sure it's not from the drinks, because she's barely touched her second glass.
Eames finishes his drink and tosses a few bills on the table, then stands. "Keep out of trouble, children," he says, leaning over. Ariadne thinks he's going to kiss her on the forehead and doesn't move, but she's a little startled when his full lips brush over her own mouth instead. She can feel Arthur's arm at her back shift slightly, like he's deciding whether or not he wants to jump up and defend her honor or something, but he sits calmly until Eames pulls away. Then he turns to her as Eames walks away. "I'll drive you home," he tells her.
"Do you have a car?" she asks, eyebrows going up. He smiles.
They drive with the windows down, the wind combing through her hair and sending it whipping through the car. At the hotel he gets out and gives the key to a valet, and she pauses on the sidewalk for a moment.
"What, are you staying here?"
He looks back at her, one eyebrow cocked - and she immediately kicks herself mentally for thinking that word. If this is a seduction, he's certainly leaving her most of the work. Ariadne rolls her eyes and heads inside. There's his hand on her back again as he follows her in. She's not sure why, or how it stays so perfectly between her shoulder blades. The gesture is protective - and perhaps a little possessive. In the elevator, though, his hand slides down below her waist. Just low enough to promise what she hopes they're heading towards.
At her door she pauses and looks back at him, and his hands are in his pockets. She sighs. "Don't just stand there, come on." So he makes his way in and sits down on the couch, tactfully ignoring her boots on the floor and her towel thrown over the back of the chair at the desk. Ariadne kicks her heels off, drops her jacket, and sits down on the coffee table in front of him, nudging her way past his knees.
"Why did you kiss me?" she asks. His eyes widen just a little, and she guesses he wasn't expecting to be called on it. "Because that's a pretty terrible distraction."
"It was --"
"Worth a shot, I know. So is it? Now that we're not about to get killed by projections?"
He raises his hand and combs his fingers through her hair, brushing her temple lightly and down the curve of her cheek. This time she's expecting it when his mouth meets hers. But the kiss quickly deepens, and when he pulls back it's just enough to catch his breath. And then he's grinning as she shifts off the table and onto his lap, straddling him. Her dress slides up her thighs and his hands spread warm and wide over her back and she's not sure whether this is a terrible mistake. They kiss for what feels like forever, until he mouths his way down her jaw and onto the line of her neck, burying her face in the curve of her shoulder. Her hair falls away from her face; she feels utterly wanton as his mouth works against her skin. She'll probably have a spectacular bruise tomorrow. Good thing she has her scarves. At that thought she giggles and he stops.
"I thought this was what you wanted," he says.
"It is," she answers, and sets her mouth over his again.
If there's one blessing she can take from this encounter, it's that she is entirely too exhausted to dream by the time he finally lets her fall asleep. In the end she comes three times, the first slow and deliberate, the second hurried as he works towards his own release, and the third achingly drawn out as he teases her oversensitive flesh with delicate movements, coaxing her to that peak one more time with filthy words that are almost more arousing than the flick of his tongue against her. He crawls up the bed as she lies there catching her breath, sprawls on his stomach and throws an arm over her waist and falls asleep almost instantly. The weight feels like a bulwark against anything bad that could possibly happen as she drifts off. And yet she still wakes up to that sickening sensation of falling, of eyes like a Fury's, of a lilting voice speaking half-truths.
Arthur is lounging on the sofa in one of the hotel bathrobes, looking more relaxed than she's ever seen him. He looks over as she struggles to sit upright, glancing away from the muted television and staring. At what, she's not sure. His hair is loose and curling slightly around his face, a shadow of stubble on his jaw, and though she feels grimy and exhausted she can feel that spark of desire again. She thinks firmly at her body to stop being ridiculous. A slow, lazy smile spreads across his face like honey. It's so self-satisfied that it needs to be kissed off his face immediately. But he's all the way across the room.
"I was wondering if you would ever get up."
"I'm not up," she says, falling backwards and letting the pillows block out the world. If she doesn't get up, this doesn't have to end. Not like a dream, she thinks firmly. Dreams end when you wake up. This newly improbable reality could be stretched out indefinitely. The springs of the sofa creak and the mattress dips and he's there leaning over her, those long fingers pushing her hair away from her face, framing the curve of her cheek.
"I ordered breakfast, but you don't have to get up," he says. She wraps a hand around a fluffy lapel and pulls him down, tasting the mint on his breath and realizing how badly she needs a shower.
Later they're perched on the bed, a tray between them with coffee tilting in the cups, his shirt from last night serving as her temporary robe. He's studiously buttering a muffin when she can't keep her mouth shut any longer.
"Let's go," she says.
"Where?" He looks less surprised than she thought he would. All that training, perhaps. Never give anything away.
"I don't know. San Francisco? I've always wanted to visit there."
He gives her a long, measuring look. Spontaneity does not seem to be an element of Arthur's life. Sure, sometimes plans go to hell, but Ariadne would bet that he not only has a plan B, he has a plan C through Z inclusive. He can improvise if all of that falls through, but he's essentially reactive, she's coming to realize. The point man needs someone else to take initiative. Then he smiles. "Okay. Why not?"
They take Arthur's rental car and drive up the coastline, the wind tangling her hair. Arthur is so quiet that she chatters to fill the space, and Ariadne finds herself telling him her life story. About growing up alone and different and never being particularly troubled by that. He seems to relax as they cross climates, says things at all the right points, but he doesn't always share things in return. When she gasps awake beside him in the anonymous darkness, he doesn't ask if she's had a nightmare, just turns and tucks an arm over her waist or rubs the space between her shoulder blades. It's hard to tell when he's sleeping or just lying there awake, breath deep and even until he suddenly speaks. A few things come out now and then, flashes of what's lying deep under the surface like glimmers in a stream. He parcels out truths with care, weighing them carefully before depositing them in her hands. Perhaps he's afraid of what she might do with them. It's not like he's cold; his smile is a miracle every time and she tells worse and worse jokes to get him to laugh, and he reaches for her hand or puts his arm around her when they're walking down the street of whatever town they've stopped in for the night. But there's a fundamental reserve, a locked door at the core of him that she's only started to glimpse. His smiles are glimpses at what might be underneath. So are his silences.
After San Francisco it's Portland, and jokes about hipsters and how Ariadne has found her people; after that it's Seattle, and kissing in the rain and tiny cups of gelato.Then Coeur D'Alene, hours of driving across the west and relearning the meaning of the sky. They check into motels under false names, making a game of it, taking turns giving names from old movies and paying in cash. She starts taking photographs and he teases her about her attempts at art, but stops when she buys a sketchpad and seems to actually impress him with her figures and quick portraits along with her architectural drawings. Days blur together into one long silver and blue stretch of radio static. The air through the window starts to taste like summer.
03 // what is termed a landslide of principle
The trip stretches on through June, days becoming warmer and the sun bringing out threads of gold in her hair. She's afraid to name what's going on, risk blowing things up. Arthur gives his loyalty sparingly, she knows that. His true friends are named and numbered and laid out in orderly fashion like bullets in a magazine. Everybody else is an associate. Ariadne wonders if the sex makes her different or if she's just another contact he'll memorize before tearing up the business card. Someone to be called upon when she could be useful.
She's learned a lot of things about him along the way. His last name; he's half-Jewish; he always drinks his coffee black and his tea with milk; the scent of his skin under his cologne. She knows how his eyes flutter shut when he tastes something sublime and how they crinkle at the corners when he laughs. But that door inside him is still closed, even if she manages to peer through the keyhole now and then. Ariadne takes it as a reminder and a warning. It's not how she lives - he knows almost everything about her at this point - but it does mean that someday they're going to come to a definite difference of opinion.
They reach Chicago, and he takes her to a hotel in a brick building with crumbling mortar and heavy plaster mouldings. She can tell he thought she'd like it, and she does. But when they go up to the room and she drop-kicks her suitcase into the closet, he doesn't let go of his.
"I'll see you in a few hours, all right?" he says, hand in his pocket and the other one around the handle of his bag.
"Where are you going?" she asks. He starts to form an answer, then shrugs.
"I'll be back later."
Ariadne puzzles over this as she unpacks and brushes her hair and heads out to explore the area, quiet but bearing the signs of impending gentrification and giving her material enough to fill another few pages to her sketchbook. He texts her later, once again with an address and time. It's like the past weeks never happened. She feels more like a petulant child than ever, and she doesn't bother dressing up; wherever he takes her can cope with her jeans and comfortably worn-in boots. It turns out to be a quiet neighborhood sort of joint where steaming bowls of pho unbalance the rickety tables. Ariadne doesn't want to cause a scene but the questions she's been carrying in her chest demand answers.
The waitress is an older woman, almost grandmotherly, and she smiles at Arthur and starts to guess his order before he opens his mouth. "And your girlfriend, what does she want?" His jaw tightens as he nods at her and Ariadne hastily orders a bowl of pho tai. He glances at the waitress like she's just sold him out, a Judas in a flowery apron.
"You live here, don't you," she says after the waitress leaves, watching his face closely. The pause tells her everything she needs to know. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Everybody needs some things to stay private," he answers. He's not looking at her and Ariadne suddenly feels queasy. Is he breaking up with her? They hadn't even gotten so far as to name what they were - the waitress used the word girlfriend before either of them had - but hiding the fact that he even lived in the city was a little bigger than that. And he took her to a hotel instead of his apartment. Maybe Ariadne is a little more flexible about these things than he is, but crashing at his place wouldn't be the worst invasion of his privacy ever, would it?
"Things like the fact that you live in the greater metropolitan area?" she asks, trying to keep her voice light. A telltale wobble makes him look up sharply and she looks away just as quickly.
"I didn't think it was important." A lie. On top of lying by omission. The temptation to cause a scene is strong.
"That's bullshit," she says instead. She risks a glance at him and he's looking past her at the door. Usually she chalks this up to paranoia, but right now it feels like he's trying not to look her in the eye. She sits mute and miserable through the rest of the meal, telling herself that the prickling in her eyes is from the sriracha.
After their plates are cleared, she stands. For once in a long while it seems that she's surprised him.
"Let me walk you back," he says.
"I'll find my own way, thanks," she answers. Her mother's voice echoes in her head telling her to be nice, but there doesn't seem to be any point in that now.
The bed seems entirely too big and too cold. An illusion, she tells herself, and settles right in the middle. When she wakes up she's curled on the left side as if he's just gotten up a few moments before from being wrapped around her back. The water isn't running in the shower, though. Nothing betrays his presence and she knows he didn't come after her. Somewhere in the city he's waking up in his own bed, making his coffee, sitting in his own kitchen. A wave of homesickness hits her and washes past. This trip has taken enough time. Enough of her energy has been spent.
An hour later she's checking out of the hotel and catching a cab to the airport. The whole time she's making deals with herself, hedging her bets, telling herself she'll turn back if he calls - in the lobby, at the airport, in security, waiting at the gate. Her phone doesn't ring. When she turns it on again after they land there are no messages waiting. She tells herself it was sweet for a while, but clearly now it's time to move on. If she doesn't think about it too hard she can almost believe it.
04 // always did prefer the drizzle to the rain
She hopscotches across the country by herself this time: landing in Memphis and eating her weight in barbecue, a weekend in New Orleans where she takes two hundred pictures of buildings in various states of disrepair, stopping in New York and spending an entire day in Central Park drawing the passersby. The ache in her chest lessens. It's not as if they ever made any promises. Not as if he ever really opened up to her. Not as if it meant anything. Repeating it doesn't make her believe it, but it becomes familiar as a catechism: none of it meant anything. For a moment she considers telling herself it was just another dream, the haze before waking when lucidity intrudes and the awareness of the dream presses at the skin of unreality. But her heart rebels against that. She can't leave the world of dreaming behind, not now, and if she's going to pursue it she'll have to be ruthlessly clear about what is real and what is not. Even if what's real is painful and messy and hurts.
In London she digs into the bottom of her satchel and extracts a number scribbled on the back of a bar tab, dialing on her new phone as she hides from the lowering gray clouds outside. The plastic feels cheap and light in her hand as if it's going to break between her clutching fingers.
"Hello?" The voice sounds brusque, distracted.
"Eames? It's Ariadne."
"Ariadne, darling! What a delightful surprise." He flips from cold to warm as easily as the turn of his poker chip in his hand and tells her he'll be there to escort her from Heathrow or whatever tube station she might choose.
He sweeps her through the city, shouldering her bag easily and tucking her arm into his own and transforming from the well-mannered thug she remembers to a perfect gentleman. It looks like he's slimmed down since she saw him last, neck not quite as thick and shoulders a little less hulking, but she still feels like a bird fluttering around him while he stands steady as an oak.
Eames' apartment - flat, he says - is nicer than she would have guessed. There are bits and pieces that have his feel around them; what might be an antique hookah or an ornate set of bagpipes, a little statue of an elephant, some photographs and sketches tacked up. Still, there's an air of neglect around the place, even if it's not exactly coated in dust. It feels as though it's waiting for him.
"Do you live here?" she asks, running a finger over an ornately carved box made of dark wood.
"Occasionally. Stay as long as you like," he adds, producing a set of keys out of nowhere and tossing it to her. The ring holds a heavy lump of cloudy rose quartz that's been carved into a hexagonal prism. "But first, let me take you out for dinner and you can tell me everything you've been doing since Los Angeles." There's no stress on the double entendre but it's plain enough. Ariadne refuses to blush.
He takes her out for curry that sears her mouth and drinks and kisses her on the forehead when he steers her into the guest room. The sheets smell like lavender. But the soothing scent doesn't keep her dreams untroubled. Arms pull her down into waves that roll over her face, the cold scent of metal and gunpowder choking her through the pounding surf, and she fights and fights until she flounders into wakefulness and a bed of tangled sheets.
Ariadne pads into the kitchen to get a drink of water, and when she turns back to the living room Eames has appeared silently. To her credit she does not spill all over herself.
"Can't sleep?" he asks.
"Nightmares. Occupational hazard, I guess," she says, trying to make a joke out of it. But it's clear he sees it as nothing but, joining her on the sofa and sitting close enough that she can feel his warmth.
"They happen. But you went through more than most, and on your first job." He turns and moves a lock of hair from where it's still plastered, sweat-damp, to her neck. "He asked too much of you."
She never told Arthur about Limbo. But it seems right to tell Eames. He knows all the right words to say. And he's no defender of Cobb, he'll blame the extractor for putting the team in danger and going too far in pursuit of exorcising his grief - because of course it wasn't about his children. Arthur would disagree, would say he went to lengths that were necessary. Arthur defends Cobb too much, Ariadne thinks to herself.
But she tells Eames about plugging in and waking up, washing up, on the coastline of a crumbling city, a private paradise that was rotted and decayed from the core outwards. The canker at the center of it: the story Cobb never told, the reason he knew inception could work. The shade animating the place, the parasite of grief and guilt given shape in the beautiful dead face of Mal. Fischer cowering on the porch. Firing a gun for the first time, in dreams or reality. At some point in there Eames' hand goes from her arm to her shoulder and around her back, and she ends up half-speaking into his chest, words slurring as sleep overtakes her. The worst bedtime story ever, she thinks, and chuckles. He strokes her hair again and tells her to close her eyes.
And in some ways falling asleep in his arms and waking up there, on the old sagging sofa, is more intimate than what happens two days later when they're cooking dinner together. Ariadne asks to taste the sauce and Eames offers her a spoonful and watches her with intent eyes as she sucks on the spoon. The metal clinks against her teeth as she pulls it out, and she's not sure afterwards which one of them moves first. When she kisses him she can taste wine and tomatoes and garlic. She retains enough presence of mind to turn off the stove as he crowds her backwards against the counter and slides his hands under her shirt.
He's so much bigger than her that it could be awkward or unnerving how easily he lifts her up to sit on the counter. Instead it's just - well, it's hot, seeing those muscles working under stark lines of ink as he strips off his shirt and starts diligently applying himself to raising a spectacular series of marks on her neck. She wraps her legs around his hips and drags her fingers up and down the curving muscles on his back and the thick column of his waist as he mouths over her skin. One of his hands slides up and flicks open her bra, and she'd be amused if he wasn't scratching lightly down her back which feels better than she expects it to. Her head lolls back when he nips at her earlobe and her skull smacks right into the cabinet. It's more noise than actual damage, and she's starting to laugh it off when Eames picks her up and starts carrying her out of the kitchen, which just makes her laugh harder as she winds her legs more tightly around his hips and clings to those stupid over-muscled shoulders.
"Are you laughing at me, pet?" he asks, pausing halfway through the living room. "Because I can leave you here, if you like."
"No, no, I'm good," she says, and attempts to lever herself a little higher. Instead she mostly succeeds in grinding her pelvis against his stomach, which makes him groan.
"Right. Bedroom. Yours or mine?"
"Yours? Bigger bed." Which she's seen through the open door but hasn't tried out. The bed turns out to be luxuriously soft. When Eames sets her down she spends a moment sprawling into the duvet and humming happily. She opens her eyes to see Eames looking down at her with amusement, hands paused midway through unbuttoning his jeans.
"Shall I leave you two alone?"
"You can stay and watch," she offers. He takes a sharp breath and joins her on the bed.
"Maybe next time," he says, pushing her shirt up and smoothing his palms over her breasts. She pulls him down and doesn't talk much more after that, although she learns some new curse words from Eames. And just like that, they're having sex. Frequently. But nothing else really changes between them.
There's no agreement with him. There's even less tension. Just companionship and understanding and stealing pencils and jockeying for the best light. He takes her to museums and restaurants and shows off his city. Sometimes he'll tug her jeans down and lay her on the desk and lick into her, fingers spreading her wide and that clever tongue leaving her shivering and shaky, feeling detached from herself. Sometimes she slides into bed with him and guides him into her, rocking slowly in the cocoon of his sheets. And sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night and he soothes her back to sleep. That makes her feel closer to him, seeking solace, than simply enjoying each other and the impressive amounts of sex.
Even though she's staying in one city she feels like she's floating. There's even less direction to her life. The sun breaks through the clouds more often but London is still rainy on the best days as the summer comes to its full. Nothing's tying her here. But she feels less and less inclined to leave.
05 // she's gone to the other side giving us a yo heave ho
After so many weeks on the road it's nice to be in one place for a while. Of course, being settled means that the uncomfortable realities of the life she left in Paris have a chance to catch up to her. Ariadne's parents call and the conversation is elliptical, full of long silences and spaces where nobody knows what to say. She was supposed to come back to Maine at the end of the summer, la morte-saison, for the tail end of the season and a clambake and all that sort of thing. Her mother was disappointed, her father even more so, and they wanted to know what was so important that was keeping her away.
How was she supposed to explain this? That she's hanging out with a criminal? A man whose first name she doesn't even know? Is she a kept woman now? She traces these questions into the mazes she draws in the sketchbook Eames brought her.
The alchemy of dreaming is so different from anything they brought her up to expect. They're both hidebound academics of the worst sort. Lives based entirely on dead languages and artifacts from another time, things that nobody has touched in a thousand years. They have a hard time programming the DVR, for fuck's sake. How would she explain a piece of cutting-edge secret military technology that shouldn't even exist?
They interpret, dissect, analyze. She creates. Which is a simplistic reduction of the worst kind, she knows, and her father would look over his glasses and tell her to try again. But that's how it feels. When she dreams of libraries it's to create shelves that stagger into infinity, not to place her works beside the rest of the canon.
If she wanted, she could build them a temple, a reconstruction of the Parthenon, the caves of the Eleusinian Mysteries with the scent of drugged wine and psychogenic mushrooms. She could build them her own labyrinth and let them fill it with Theseus, with Athenian youths, with a minotaur and the hot rank stink of its breath. But they want something they can touch, something that will last for centuries. One of her models sits on a side table in the living room of their house. It's so old and so awful it's embarrassing, but her parents are still proud.
And it's not that she's ashamed of them, exactly. If she graduates - if she goes back to school and finishes her degree - she's sure they will fly to Paris and take her out for dinner and chat animatedly with Professor Miles and meet her school friends and coo over her tiny garret and order dinner in badly accented but grammatically flawless French. She knows that they taught her to love puzzles and solving them, whether that meant finding the end of a maze or the motivations behind an action. She's just old enough to be tired of their influence in her life and not quite old enough to love them as equals.
It's a bit strange that this year of all years they should suddenly want to see her. As soon as she went to college she was gone for good, even if she was still coming home for holidays and telephoning regularly like a dutiful daughter. Not another summer in the lobster shack, that was for damn sure. But there's an undercurrent of worry now, Dad assuring her that she can come home whenever she needs to, her mother wondering if everything's all right. The noise that catches in her throat isn't a laugh or a sob, just a wordless cry that no, everything is not all right. She's trying to gather the fragments of her life together again.
Eames doesn't quite understand this push and pull. She's not sure what they are exactly but it doesn't gnaw at her the way it did with Arthur. But they talk a great deal more, and she occasionally reminds him not to lie to her. He says he finds her honesty refreshing. Of course he never expected her to tell him anything but the truth. But Ariadne is a terrible liar. And in return it seems he's trusted her with facts - and that says more than any complete history Arthur could have given her. When he says he never felt close to his parents, there's a ring of truth to it. Not that that makes him unique.
One afternoon he takes a call and leans against the window, the pearly light of sun through clouds catching on the shiny fabric of his shirt, and takes notes on the back of a takeaway menu. He always looks fantastically louche, as if he's just waiting for the call to star in the next Bond movie.
"A job?" she asks later.
"Possibly," he answers. Her legs are draped over his lap and he runs his hand up and down her shin, riffling the hairs there.
"Do they need an architect?" It feels like there should be more emphasis, a moment when she's crossed to the other side, but there's no tolling bell or any sign that she's choosing a new life for herself. But instead he tilts his head and considers her, the three-quarter view of his face obscuring whatever emotion might lie behind the careful examination of her features. She feels young and small and childish and defiant. Finally he shrugs.
"I'll ask when they call next," he says, cupping her heel. And there it is, it's done.
06 // she never finds no trouble, she tries too hard she's oblivious despite herself
They fly into Lisbon. The heat is staggering, and the hat Eames buys for her does very little to shield her face from the sun. Scarves are tucked back into the suitcase she brought and ignored. When they're alone Eames twists tendrils of hair away from her sweaty neck and kisses away the salt. She's so hot that it's annoying rather than arousing.
"If you keep that up I'm going to shoot you," she says, shrugging irritably.
"I should never have bought you a gun," he answers. Not that either of them expect her to use it, but it appears to come with the job along with learning how to insert IVs and calculate dosages based on weight. Which will be particularly handy when she goes back to class in the fall. University seems a world away right now. Still, enough of her training sticks around to make her grind her teeth at the Post-Modernist buildings. Ariadne has never thought of herself as being overly sentimental about the past, and her designs for the dreams were crisp and angular, but these squared-off shapes are blocky and ugly and brutish.
The job is an easy one, they tell her, and there's no need for her to go under. Lewis, the extractor, bats away her requests for more information. She's an architect, not a therapist, and background isn't important. Ariadne bites her tongue to hide the protests; this is her first real job and she wants to do it right. Blair is the chemist and hides in the walk-in closet with her vials and bottles. There's something she's not telling them.
It's too easy to simply accept their explanations and move along. The job only needs two levels, a park and an apartment, and Lewis and Eames supply her with references. Building a park is more fun than Ariadne had expected it to be; she spends a lot of time in the Praça do Império but adds in details from the Public Gardens, Central Park, the Jardin des Tuileries. Hedgerows would be the easy way out; instead she sticks to gravel paths that intersect with open areas and get blocked off by fountains and shrubberies and intricate sprays of flowers. She starts experimenting with sounds and birdsong, and wonders whether she could fill the dream with her own projections. They're supplied by the subject, she knows, but what if she could make people or animals that were scenery as much as the topiaries or the playground?
Lewis chides her for spending too much time on fripperies; nobody will notice, he says. Ariadne doesn't believe this, but she doesn't look to Eames for confirmation of the wrongness of this criticism. He's remaining distant while they're on the job. It's something she appreciates. Instead of feeling like the girl he brought along, she's just another member of the team. A junior member, perhaps, and she gets the impression that many extractors don't understand the importance of good architecture. But she moves along, teaching him and Eames the level and going to work on the apartment. It's meant to be light and airy, more like an actual place than a half-familiar amalgamation. While they say they can't bring her there in person, they give her plenty of photographs and Eames gives her notes, and they go under and he edits the dream slightly and offers suggestions right down to the child's drawings stuck on the fridge.
That's mildly disquieting, the thought that they are messing with someone with a real life and family. Nobody tells her much about the mark but playing on anyone's sympathies is a good way to gain trust and information. What better way than to make them feel comfortably at home? After all, not every mark can be a lonely fatherless multibillionaire with a yearning for reconciliation with his father. Some of them must be much more routine. People who have access to information - secretaries, personal assistants, underlings with an axe to grind. The curtains in the apartment are a sunny yellow and the drawings show a mommy and a daddy and a little dog and a child and a house. The dog and the house appear to be equally aspirational.
Three days later the job is finally going off. Ariadne isn't going under, she isn't even going to be in the same room; it's a two-man job with Lewis on the first level and Eames on the second and Forging someone. She hasn't paid much attention to his end of the job, though she's noted some mannerisms creeping in that are definitely borrowed. A particular flick of the wrist when pouring wine, a way of throwing his head back and laughing, a slight lean in with eyes intent on hers that reminds her oddly of Arthur in its focus. Nominally Ariadne is the lookout, though Blair is watching over the men and the mark and monitoring the Somnacin dosage. Ariadne brings her gun and a book and keeps an eye on the time. And she would never have known that anything was wrong if they hadn't been late. A few minutes pass, then another few, and it's a full quarter of an hour after they were all supposed to be out of the building and Ariadne can't wait any longer. She heads into the room down the hall and stops, feeling a wave of sickness rising in her throat.
There on the floor between Lewis and Eames is a child. She looks to be about six or seven, a yellow ruffled sundress spilling over the carpet and shiny black hair strewn over a pillow that's far too large for her. Her eyelashes flutter against the blue circles under her eyes. A plastic tube snakes from her wrist to the PASIV, the wristband looped far too loosely around the pudgy joint. As Ariadne stumbles backwards she sees Lewis shake himself slightly and Eames blink awake, but she doesn't wait for them to sit up and see her. She's out the door, walking the streets of Lisbon and hoping the heat will bake the sour taste out of her mouth.
When she gets back to the hotel Eames is waiting for her. She drops her purse so she won't be tempted to throw it at him. The expression of naked regret on his face is new and cannot be trusted.
"I didn't realise," he says, and there's a crack in his voice as he says it. That would be hard to fake, she supposes. "Lewis has some vendetta against Felipe and I thought I was forging his wife for him. Not for their daughter." His face twists and he looks for a moment as if he's going to be sick.
"But you didn't back out when you saw who it was." Her voice sounds so cold and even that Ariadne is mildly surprised at herself. She's never been angry, truly angry, like this before.
"I couldn't, love." He sees her bristling at that and winces. "Blair would've slit my throat just for thinking it, and gutted you as well just for fun. Nasty piece of work, and that's not even considering Lewis and his penchant for sociopathic revenge quests."
Ariadne crosses to the kitchenette and pulls out the bottle of vodka they've been keeping in the freezer. "You're a thief and a liar, Eames. You could've gotten out of it. And you could be lying to me right now."
"That's true," he agrees. The bedsprings creak but the carpet makes no noise as he crosses the room, and suddenly he's leaning against the counter next to her. "But I'd hoped you'd thought well enough of me to know I'd never choose this sort of job. And that I'm not working with Lewis again. Neither will anyone else."
"Good." Ariadne downs a shot of vodka, hissing slightly at the burn, then looks at him as a new thought occurs to her. "You didn't kill him, did you?"
"Of course not. Too messy. But he's going to find that all of his assets have been suddenly donated to children's charities. And word gets around remarkably quickly." He takes the bottle out of her hand and pours himself a rather large measure in one of the water glasses. "We're a gossipy and unscrupulous bunch, but we do generally have our limits."
Generally. Slippery slope arguments are the worst sort of logic and would give her philosophy-teaching father fits, but Ariadne knows that the longer she stays here the more she will begin to apply terms like generally and mostly to the things she considers unacceptable. And that's not what she wants. She doesn't want to be the girl from a film noir with a gun in her purse. She doesn't want to feel that insidious slide towards moral relativism and a situation where she shrugs and grits her teeth and invades the mind of an innocent child.
"I can't do this anymore."
"We'll leave Lisbon tomorrow," he says, laying a hand over hers on the counter. She pulls it away, slow and deliberate.
"That's not what I meant."
When she goes, she leaves the gun in his suitcase.
07 // always find my faults faster than you find your own
It seems unbelievable that she could make it back to Paris in time for the fall semester to begin. But there she is, falling into the steps of her old routine. Up in the morning, shower with the pipes knocking about in the walls, grabbing a scarf and thundering down the stairs and apologizing to her downstairs neighbor, swinging around the corner and over the bridge, grabbing a pain au chocolat and a coffee and pouring through the gates of the university with hundreds of other students and finally sliding into her seat like one of a row of flowers waiting for the gardener to come with his watering can. Visiting the market and buying yoghurt and carrots and cheese and bread and occasionally splurging on some really good sausage, drinking cheap wine and doing her laundry in the world's tiniest washing machine. It's like the past few months never happened. Not like they were a dream. Too cliched to even think about putting it that way.
Two weeks ago she was in Lisbon. Before that she was in London, and then before that she was zigzagging across the United States. This spring she was working with criminals to break the mind of an orphaned billlionaire. Nobody would believe her if she told them her work placement was more of a corporate-monopoly-breaking, international-law-flouting enterprise. Slowly she realizes how comfortable she's become with lying, with saying that nothing much happened over her summer, that she did some traveling and saw some old friends. And that's without even thinking about the dreams themselves. Of course going from building and remaking worlds to wrestling with AutoCAD and writing papers was going to be hard. That much was expected. But she hadn't realized just how frustrating it would be. Like trying to draw with her hands in potholders and a blindfold over her eyes, or the first time she'd come to France and could understand much more than she could speak and always worried that everyone was laughing at her.
And the part that had surprised her the most is being a student again. Not the work, but being a pupil, an empty vessel waiting to be filled with knowledge, the chatter of her classmates and professors sounding exactly alike. Professor Miles is the best of the lot, coming around to sit in front of his desk and leading his classes more like a shared discussion and discovery of knowledge. But when she's been challenging men old enough to be her father, coming up with contingency plans on the turn of a dime, teaching layouts to experts who look at her with admiration for her skill and intelligence - how could she ever have thought to go back to school?
There's nothing quite like it, Arthur had said. Now she's starting to think he didn't just mean the dreaming.
Miles looks less surprised than she feels when she finds herself standing in front of his desk, the late afternoon sunlight slanting through and making his desk glow richly under its coating of chalk dust. "So, you're leaving us," he says. It isn't a question.
"Leave of absence," she answers. Not permanently, she hopes. Someday her degree might come in handy.
"Of course, my dear. If you come back I'll buy you a drink and you can tell me all about it." He sees right through her, of course. For a moment she wants to ask him questions one after another - how many students has he lost to the dreaming? Why did he pick her and send her with Cobb? How selfish was he being? Does he know Cobb was seeing Mal in his dreams? What was Mal like, before she died? Does he think that all dreamers are fated to lose themselves in the dream, or just the women, or just the ones with dark curls, or does he think she'll escape that fate?
But she doesn't ask anything. She just nods and turns to go.
"Keep in touch, Ariadne," he says as she leaves.
Two weeks later she sends him a postcard from Prague with an upside-down cathedral inked on the back. She hopes he's proud.
08 // til her voices are remembered and his secrets can be told
Prague is like walking into someone else's dream, a city where the past and present collide like nowhere else she knows. London was stately, incorporating its improvements and billboards like a snowball becoming an avalanche. Los Angeles was painfully young. Paris chose to tuck its modernizations discreetly away and maintain the illusion of its former grace wherever possible, shunting the new and undesirable to the outer rim of the city. But Prague is like a child's recounting of a fairy tale, with their favorite cartoon superheroes appearing to escort Cinderella to the ball.
She's outside the Dancing House, standing on the sidewalk across the street and wondering whether it would be the most ridiculously touristy idea to sit down on the grass behind her and sketch it, when she sees a figure coming down the street like the world's tallest crow. Her first instinct is to run. But that would be foolish. Instead she stays put and digs in her bag - for pencils, her camera, anything - so she doesn't have to watch him approaching.
"Ariadne?" His voice is warmer and more familiar than it has any right to be. Especially considering that the last time he saw her she was walking away from him.
"What are you doing here?" she asks, squinting to see his face. His expression is as blank as a portrait, like maintaining a smile for hours would expend more effort than he cares to give.
"What else?" He's not holding a silver briefcase, but her heart leaps anyway. It's been weeks since she's been inside a dream with another person. Maybe she can convince him - but then he's speaking again. "I'd ask you the same thing, but it looks like you're playing tourist. School project?" There's a single drop of condescension in those two words that sets her teeth to grinding.
"Just traveling." Ariadne rocks back on her heels. "So. Are we going to stand around being awkward or are we going to go our separate ways?"
Arthur flashes an unexpected smile. "What about a third option?"
"You're always prepared for contingencies," she says, studying the pattern of his tie. It's a fine basket-weave of gold over a dark, dark red.
"How about we get coffee?"
"And act like we're pleased to see each other?" That one strikes home, and for a moment she thinks he's taken a step back. But no, he's as close as he was before, the swaying clearly her imagination mapping him onto the building behind him.
"Don't presume to know what I'm thinking, Ariadne," he says, voice even. They could be discussing the importance of wheat crops in relation to the design of citadels in pre-Renaissance Italy. And the use of that much control must mean she's really getting to him. And suddenly it seems so incredibly petty, flinging these words at him when it's been months and they're in a strange city and he's trying so hard to be nice. A damning word, nice, but Arthur doesn't waste effort. She exhales, corners of her mouth turning up into a small and sheepish smile.
"Coffee would be great. My treat." An espresso isn't an apology, but it's a start. They walk to a café she'd seen earlier and liked. Arthur heads to a table in the back where he can see the exits, a touch of paranoia she's come to expect. He would call it preparedness. After a brief deliberation, she orders a palačinky to go along with her coffee, and he shakes his head slightly.
"Whatever, they're delicious. You should try some."
"There's a crepes place in my neighborhood," he says, placing each word like a land mine. "I was planning to take you there."
She doesn't know what to say to that. Is there anything? They sit in silence until the waiter comes back with their drinks and her dessert, which she really doesn't want to eat now. "Do you want me to apologize?" she asks finally, looking at the powdered sugar slowly dissolving into the surface of the thin pancake.
"You left," he says, and the thread of hurt in his words is as shocking as if he'd suddenly coughed up some blood into a handkerchief.
"I didn't - you didn't want me there." Fuck, she's not going to cry. She's over this, over the whole debacle that was Chicago.
"I spent years with nothing to call my own, Ariadne. And chasing after Cobb, and helping him with - after Mal, and then dropping everything to go when he needed me." She realizes how tired he is under his diligently maintained exterior, the dark green of his shirt making him look sallow and drained by contrast. "I had a life I wanted to get back to. And an apartment I hadn't been in for five months. I didn't want you to see that just yet."
"Like I care about a little dust --"
"I have a hard time getting close to people, all right?" He winces. Just admitting this is costing him something, almost causing him physical pain, and part of her just wants to crawl over the table and into his lap and pull his head onto her shoulder. But she's not that girl anymore.
"You're ridiculous. You know that, right?" Because deflecting is going to make the whole situation better, and insults will definitely help. It's true, though.
He grimaces, and then smiles ruefully. "I'm starting to realize this, yes."
"You could have told me all of that. Even just that you lived in the city." She takes a breath and lets it out slowly, picking up her coffee and putting it down without drinking it. "I don't expect you to tell me everything, but don't pull that shit again. And I won't run off without telling you. Deal?"
The moment of consideration stretches out longer than she'd like. This is possibly the weirdest relationship status talk she's ever had. If what they're doing can be called a relationship. Then he nods and gives her another one of those disarming smiles. "I think I can agree to those terms."
"So now what?"
He reaches across the table and puts his hand over hers, fingers closing around her wrist. She pulls her hand out and turns it so she's holding his hand, weaving her fingers between his till he's well and truly caught. "So now I'd like to buy you dinner. If you'll let me."
She lets him. And there's a bottle of wine, and she invites him up to her hotel room, laughing when he toes off his shoes just inside the door to match her pulling off her boots. They talk and she tells him about the Lisbon job - he nods and says he's heard about that one, that she was right to walk away. They carefully don't mention Eames. But Arthur tells her about his favorite parts of London, about going to the British Museum and being so awestruck by the Parthenon marbles that he had to sit down, and she tells him stories about being the only kid who dressed up as Artemis or Athena for Halloween with cardboard helmets and spears made of tree branches. It's possibly the most open she's ever seen him. Like seeing her anger made him want to expose himself. This doesn't get less confusing as she sobers up. It doesn't help her latent desire to familiarize herself again with what's under that crisp shirt. Neither does the hint of cologne she can still smell, curled up beside him on the tiny loveseat. An unfortunate word choice, she thinks, as his story slows and he realizes she's not really paying attention anymore. His mouth is slightly open. Leaning over to kiss him seems like the most obvious thing to do, really.
After a few glorious moments he pulls back, just enough to see her without his eyes crossing. "Are you -"
"Arthur, shut up," she says, settling her hand at the back of his neck. He's gone too long between haircuts, the ends of the strands brushing her knuckles. This doesn't have to mean anything.
Maybe he decides he's had enough of baring his soul and expressing his feelings for one night. He tilts his head back and lets her loosen his tie and pop the buttons of his shirt, tensing slightly when she scrapes her thumbnail down the center of his chest. He lets out a little breath when she kisses the spot right behind the sharp angle of his jaw before working her way down his neck. One of his hands tangles in her hair, the coils of her curls rolling between his fingers as she bites gently at his shoulder.
Time seems to move slowly as he helps pull her shirt over her head and then draws her back down for more kisses. Usually she wasn't very good at taking her time with him, but she slides into his lap and just lets herself remember how this goes with Arthur, the little things she does that he likes. The way she can roll her hips gently and his breath will catch in his throat, the feel of the hair that trails from his navel downwards and brushes against her knuckles when she undoes his belt buckle. How she can do all this without ever letting her mouth leave his for more than the space of a few breaths. Tonight he seems content to let her take the lead, though one of his hands slides up to cup her breast and roll the nipple between two fingers.
The yellow light from the lamp makes him look even more sallow once she gets his shirt off, so she stretches up and flicks the switch. His hands span her back as if she needs the help to keep her balance. Or maybe to keep her from pressing down too much on him. She brushes her thumb down the side of his face, tracing one of his dimples. "Come on."
"Don't say that," he manages, and she can see the gleam of his smile in the light through the curtains.
"We're not having sex on the couch," she says, and his hips jerk and she can't keep down a laugh. Kissing him again seems to placate him, though, and he lets her stand up and cross to the bed, shedding the rest of her clothes on the way. He joins her while she's rummaging in her backpack for the condoms she bought the other day, because she was feeling reckless and hopeful and testing her Czech. "Did you know that the Czech for condom is 'kondom'?" she asks. His hand is a warm pressure against her back, like he can't bear to not be touching her.
"Actually, no." She turns and nearly hits him in the face with the foil strip, and he laughs. It's a sound she never heard enough of, will never hear enough of, and in pursuit of more she lunges and tackles him down to the mattress. The laughter dies down to a chuckle as she pins him, hips over his and hands pressing his arms into the duvet - and he's lost the rest of his clothes too, how convenient. Of course he could flip her easily, show her who's stronger. But he doesn't. His eyes are unfathomably dark in the half-light, further curtained as her hair falls down around his face. The sound of his breathing suddenly seems very loud. She drops the foil strip on the bed and shifts off him, lying next to him and stroking a hand down his side.
"Hey," he says, and she can tell he's about to gently reassure her that they don't have to do this, but that's not it at all, so she leans over and kisses him again. She wants to. She really wants to, and that's part of the problem. It shouldn't be this easy. So she lets him kiss away her worries, lets the simple thrill of skin against skin stoke that slow fire inside, gradually works her fingers through his hair and musses it thoroughly. For his part, Arthur seems perfectly fine to make out with her like they're teenagers, or like they're exploring each other for the first time. His free hand sweeps up and down her side, slowly mapping the territory from breast to waist to hip and back, and eventually it migrates forward as she starts minutely rocking her hips towards his, until she's rocking into his hand and those deft fingers of his are working their way between her folds.
Ariadne hisses his name as he strokes her, one finger dipping inside and then spreading her open little by little, coming up to circle her clit every so often. This slow, methodical exploration is just short of torturous, gentle and insistent. When he presses two fingers inside she shudders hard, not quite a climax but close, and she gropes around in the sheets for the condom. Arthur pauses in his ministrations and mutters something she can't quite hear, though given the tone it sounds something like "thank God." Getting the packet open and the condom onto him is a joint effort, but her hand moves up and down his length quite without his help until he groans and grabs her wrist. She rolls onto her back and holds her breath as he pushes into her, familiar and new and she keeps her eyes open to watch his face, lips parted and wet like he can't quite believe this is happening again. Maybe that's why he rocks into her so slowly, trying to stretch it out as long as possible, and at one point he drops his head to her shoulder and she turns and kisses his cheek, his ear, making him huff out a laugh. When she takes his earlobe between her teeth he thrusts hard, twice, then again before he catches himself.
"Yes," she finds herself saying, and works her hand between them. A few swirls over her clit bring her closer; then he's speeding up, having reached the limit of his control, and the change in speed and the angle set her off, clenching around him and digging her fingers into his shoulders. The last thrust sends her sliding backwards a little before he collapses half on top of her. It's only as they lie there, both catching their breath, that she realizes they've ended up sideways on the bed. This seems incredibly funny to her and she lets out a noise that's as close to a laugh as she can manage right now.
"What," Arthur asks. Or she thinks he does.
"Move," she manages, pushing at his shoulder. When he pulls out she doesn't dwell on how cold she feels when he goes to dispose of the condom, just slowly slides over the duvet till she can worm her way under it and curl up on her side of the bed. She half expects Arthur to get up and start dressing. Instead he slides in behind her, pulling the covers up over their shoulders and wrapping his arm around her waist. Spooning is probably several degrees too tender for whatever the hell is going on between them, but right now Ariadne is too tired and comfortable to care. That must be why she laces her fingers with his as they rest over her stomach.
After that they must fall asleep pretty quickly, because the next thing she knows it's morning and Arthur is, astonishingly, still passed out. He's rolled over at some point during the night so she's able to get up without worming her way out of his grasp. After she pees and brushes her teeth she comes out of the bathroom and has to stop and look at him for a moment. Then she has to get her sketchbook, because even if watching him sleep is a little creepy she can't resist putting that image down on paper. His hair is stark against the pillows and his chest and shoulders look like something out of an anatomy textbook. She's so absorbed in drawing that her pencil skitters across the page when he pushes himself up suddenly.
"What?" he asks, peering at her as if surprised to see her awake before him.
"Nothing. I was drawing." She hastily erases the mark she made when she jumped.
"Drawing me?" The smile he gives her is positively goofy, and she's unaccountably pleased when he leans over to kiss her. "I'm flattered. What time is it?"
"A little past six. Don't get all egotistical, mister." Just for that, she smudges graphite on his cheek.
"I should get going," he says, turning away so he can get out of the bed.
"No mixing business with pleasure?" she asks, and he shakes his head.
"No, I'm supposed to meet the client for breakfast. And I need fresh clothes." He doesn't seem to mind picking up his clothes from the night before and getting dressed in front of her, though. "How long are you staying in Prague?"
"Only a few more days, probably," she says, leaning back.
"Any thoughts about what you'd like to do next?"
"Nope. Well, lots, but I don't even know if some of them exist." Which is true. Prague's just a waystation. Eventually she'll have to figure out what to do with her life. The money from the Fischer job won't last forever.
He nods. And doesn't offer advice, which she appreciates more than anything he could possibly tell her. "If you ever need a hand - a word in the right ear -" He takes a small case out of his jacket pocket and extracts a card, then fishes out a pen and scribbles on the back of it. "That number always works. I might take a while to answer, especially if I'm not in the States, but..." The shrug doesn't say as much as the slightly embarrassed expression he's wearing. "Don't give that out."
She resists the urge to roll her eyes. "I'm going to put it on the wall of every bathroom from here to Vancouver."
"For a boring time, call Arthur?"
"You were never boring," she says with a heat that surprises even herself. This is as good as a promise, better than jewelry or flowers: it's trust. She doesn't want to need him, but he cares if she does. That's something.