A/N: This is a result of me watching one too many rom-coms. My most recent viewing was He's Just Not That Into You. I know. I should be ashamed at the amount of these movies I've seen, but I'm really on a roll. I can't stop. I can't!

So this idea popped in my head, which I call "the behind the scenes rom-com that happened during the psychological action movie that is Inception." Please bear with me if you choose to read it.

After Hours

Arthur paid attention to details. It was ingrained in him. It was part of his job.

So when their architect came into the warehouse the next day, looking slightly bedraggled with downcast eyes and a pucker between her eyebrows, he knew that her foul temper was due to some outlying circumstance that had nothing to do with Eames' teasing, though the Englishman deserved the withering glare Ariadne gave him.

Eames stalked off, sensing the cold temperature, muttering about coming by later, and Arthur made his way up to the small woman in her corner of the warehouse she made her own.

She was facing the wall of inspirational photographs she gathered from magazines, print outs, photos from Arthur or Eames' recon work. She had a few sketches tacked up too, and it was at a few of these, she pretended to be enthralled with as Arthur came to stand a few feet behind her.

"What's wrong with me?" she asked, exasperated, and before Arthur could come up with a reply, she turned to face him. Her fair face was red with repressed emotion, and her lips had an uncharacteristic downturn slope to it. He could see she was trying to make light of the situation, but she was clearly upset.

She gestured out with her arms, before bringing them in to cover her chest. "I mean," she went on, "I'm fairly intelligent. I know the signs. I'm not high maintenance or demanding. I'm not overtly opinionated. I don't have weird habits. I don't smoke. I don't have a chewing gum shrine in my bedroom. I'm not clingy, creepy, crazy, or cold."

Arthur had to bite back the smile that pulled at the corners of his lips as she went on this ridiculous rant. "No," he agreed.

This seemed to be the right thing to say. "So why," she said, coming up to her worktable to lean. "Do I just keep finding these people who treat me like crap?" she demanded.

And Arthur had to look down at his leather Oxfords in thought, unsure of what to do with a team member building with emotion. Despite his earlier amusement, he sensed Ariadne's fury and slight hurt feelings. He wasn't used to someone like her, unwittingly open about, well, anything. He was much used to people like Cobb. Cobb who falsely assured Arthur that he was fine following Mal's death. Or people like Eames, who chose to cope with a smile and a joke, than trying to work out any feelings. Or even Yusuf, who chose to remain silent on his personal life entirely.

But Ariadne? Ariadne was honest and blunt. When she felt things, her emotions were clear on her face. When she had a problem with you, she made it clear. It was simultaneously easy, refreshing but also frightening, especially for someone like Arthur, who favored keeping his emotions in proper check and out of the warehouse.

She started to shuffle papers to busy her hands.

Now wasn't the time to laugh at his team member. For one, Ariadne was a woman, so Arthur was extremely aware that she had different, um, needs than the others in the group. And secondly, she was very emotional right now and needed talking down, especially if they were going to get any work done today.

"So that guy—" he started, coming to stand in front of the table across from her, bringing the conversation to a point.

He knew the source of all of this already. He knew it because Ariadne was uncharacteristically happy for the past few days, and he knew it was because of the guy she met during happy hour a few nights back. They apparently hit it off and had seen each other outside of the bar. He was apparently really nice and charming and funny.

"He's an ass," she interrupted, shuffling more paper around.

"Well, I could've said that," Arthur muttered, which was clearly the wrong thing to say, because Ariadne's head shot up to shoot daggers at him. He felt stunned on the spot.

He sighed. "Look, Ariadne," he said, slouching his shoulders. "What happened?"

She stopped short, her head bent as her wavy brown hair came down to block her face. "He said that he'd call me later," she scoffed, mockingly, and then she frowned. "And we all know what that means."

Arthur was trying to be conciliatory. "Ariadne—"

"I know," she said quietly. "I know the drill, Arthur. It's not me, it's him. It's not that I'm not amazing, it's because he can't see it. It's not because of anything I've done, because—" She stopped to look at him, her hands spread out in front of her as she leaned forward. "What is it then, Arthur? Because I sound damn fantastic."

Arthur smiled. "You are fantastic," he agreed.

"But apparently not enough for a phone call? Or the time of day?" She shook her head, clearly fed up. "I'm so tired of this stupid game that people play. Why take my number, why actually play ball with me—"

Euphemisms aside, Arthur didn't want to hear this. "—Ariadne!"

But she was on a role. "—why say you're going to call, when really, you're just a lying jerk face who can't see a good thing when it's right before him?"

Arthur couldn't help but smile at that. "I suppose drinks after work won't be the best suggestion to get over this, will it?" he joked, lamely.

And she did something she tended to do, something that Arthur should have expected from her. She surprised him. She shrugged, her rant clearly over. She picked up her nearby pencil and went over to find her desk chair. "What do you mean?" she asked, walking away. "Of course, I'll need a drink later."

Three weeks. They've been working together on this job for three weeks, and Ariadne appeared to be comfortable enough to shoot back shots of tequila like it was water right in front of him. Granted, Eames and Yusuf sat nearby, egging her on, buying her drinks to cheers her new path towards—

"To Ariadne, who is better off without those bastards," Eames said, holding up his glass. Yusuf and Ariadne raised their glasses as well and started to chug.

Yusuf spread out a round to the table, before picking one up himself. "To Ariadne," he said, smiling, "for being too good for that dimwit in the first place!" They all laughed again, a little too loudly because of their consumption, and cheered again, before chugging. Empty glasses hit the wooden table one by one, and Eames began to start a conversation with Yusuf about car chases. Arthur noticed as Ariadne, flushed, smiling, made excuses to go to the restroom.

In the small wooden alcove to the back, he spotted her waiting in line for the women's. "So," Arthur started, taking up the spare space next to her along the wall. Even though it was happy hour, he kept his suit on and his tie proper under his collar. "Feeling better?" he asked.

Ariadne smiled nervously, leaning against the wooden wall too to face him. "Temporarily, yes. Temporarily, everyone loves me."

Arthur nodded. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked a little uncertainly.

She shrugged, shoving her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. Her posture became terrible and her chin rested into her floral patterned scarf. "I'd rather lubricate with booze and swim in the compliments Yusuf and Eames are basking me in," she replied.

Arthur nodded, chuckling. "There's that too."

They stood there for a few minutes, just standing. Arthur wasn't sure where this urge to check on her came from really. He hadn't been drinking as much as his team members, a part of him unused to it while on the job anyway, and he knew that Ariadne was a big girl. She wasn't young, and while inexperienced with dream sharing, she wasn't naïve. No, Ariadne was fully capable of handling herself, especially in this city, where all of them were noobs anyway.

And maybe a small part of him just felt bad for her. She didn't want it. He knew that if he said anything, she'd snarl at his sympathy or pity, but since she came into the warehouse—or rather, since Cobb brought her in—Arthur took a diplomatic interest in her, if only to guide her along in the proper direction. Though, that didn't explain her habit for joking with Eames. She was on the wrong path there.

"I called him," she said, suddenly, and Arthur's ears picked up at her change in tone. The him he spoke about wasn't the Englishman, clearly.

"You called him?" he asked, attempting to ease out what sort of reaction she needed.

"Yeah," she said with a forced shrug. "Why can't I call him?"

Arthur did his best to remain nonplussed. "There's no reason you can't," he said, attempting to be supportive. "What did he say?"

Ariadne visibly winced. "I left a voicemail."

Arthur looked ahead.

"It was a completely normal voicemail," she entreated, though he could see how she even felt that her argument was hollow.

Arthur carefully replied, delicately delivering his words in such a way to not alienate her. "I don't think you should've called him."

Ariadne sighed. The puff of air blew some of her hair out of her face. "I thought you'd say that." Beyond the bathroom door, they both turned at the sudden sound of the flush and the air dryer going off. Ariadne cleared her throat. "Well, this is me" she said as the wooden door creaked open, revealing a tall French woman with carefully constructed careless hair and barely-there make-up that enhanced her natural beauty. The woman spotted Arthur and smiled, which Arthur returned.

Ariadne laughed as the woman stalked away. "Of course," she said with a weary tone.

Arthur turned to her. "I was being polite," he insisted.

"Sure you were, Point Man," Ariadne agreed half-heartedly, her hand on the door. "Go have fun."

And Arthur stalked off to the bar, thankful that French was one of his better languages.

"So you're telling me," Ariadne said, cutting out a long line in her foam board to create her model. "That it's really not that complicated?"

Arthur, sitting on a chair at the end of her workstation so as not to get in the way of her cutting frenzy, nodded. He had his laptop open in front of him as he went through to check some details. "Yeah. There aren't hard and fast rules or games. Hell, guys aren't that conniving. It's just simple."

It's odd how this became okay for both of them. Usually, Arthur favored working on his own, reading articles and researching at his space on the opposite end of the warehouse, but he found himself drawn up to Ariadne's work table, if only for convenience. He was the second level dreamer after all.

So it became habit, habit became accepted, and accepted became normal to the point that if someone did need him—Yusuf to test his serums, Eames to tease, and Cobb to talk—they headed to the back of the warehouse near the newspaper covered windows where Ariadne set up shop.

"So when he doesn't call me?" she parried. The sharp blade of her exacto knife slid across the foam board in one fatal swoop.

"He doesn't want to," Arthur replied. She ripped the piece off with a satisfying pluck.

And okay, Arthur decided to take it upon himself to help her with her love life, because, well, the girl needed it. She was too honest, which made her believe it of other people, and it was endearing a quality to be near, especially as they planned an illegal job to incept the mind of the heir of a multi-billion dollar corporation, but it wasn't necessarily good for the bar scene.

"And when we sleep together and he promises to call but doesn't?" she asked, studying the pieces she just cut.

"He doesn't want to, but he did want to have sex with you."

"But what if he's going to call later?" she asked, stopping in what she was doing to look at him. "Couldn't he just be waiting—"

"For what?" Arthur asked, looking at her. "The right time? That doesn't exist. No, Ariadne. If the guy's interested, then he's interested," Arthur insisted.

Ariadne's lips twisted slightly with doubt, before she went to cutting out more walls. "It can't be so cut and dry as all that," she said thoughtfully.

Arthur laughed. "It really is."

"If he refuses to spoon," Eames said with a delight in the last word, "you really shouldn't expect commitment." The table chuckled politely at this as Eames leaned back.

"I got one," Yusuf said with a laugh. He scooted forward, his hands up as he spoke. "If a guy leaves right after," he said with a knowing look around the table as he held his beer aloft, "he's not into you."

Eames laughed, nodding, and Arthur remained subdued as he took a drink of his own. "That's a dead giveaway," Ariadne interjected.

"Ah," Eames added. "But if he makes an excuse? Don't believe him."

"Like what?" she wondered.

Eames looked to the ceiling in thought. "Like work."

"Or a haircut," Yusuf cut in.

"Or a squash game," Eames continued.

"Basically, any reason to leave," Arthur said soberly, looking at her. "Don't believe it."

Ariadne's eyes were wide for a moment as she nodded along. "And you men wonder why we have trust issues," she said primly.

"Je voudrais…" Ariadne began, chewing on her choices as she stood in front of the sidewalk window, facing the sandwich man. She held her sunglasses over her eyes, still hooked behind her ears, as she considered the menu.

Arthur, his pâté sandwich in one hand and his coffee in another, took a seat on one of the green folding chairs against the wall. It overlooked the cobblestoned street and the crowds of people gathering around a low wall round a beautiful fountain. The water enticed children and cooled the air. Meanwhile, other people out of work and taking a lunch break sat in nearby groups, clumped in circles, talking animatedly, and enjoying the sun.

In a few seconds, Ariadne joined him, holding her own sandwich made with a quarter of a baguette and wrapped in wax paper. She took a hearty bite before she sat down.

Closing her eyes, she hummed with pleasure.

"If they served sandwiches in the bars, I'm sure we could find you a guy," Arthur joked, watching her.

"If they served sandwiches at the bar, I really wouldn't care about navigating the dating pool," Ariadne replied. She gestured for him to take a bite of hers, so Arthur handed over his in good will.

"Why do it then?" Ariadne wasn't listening; she was busy grabbing another bite of his sandwich. "That's still my lunch," he pointed out.

She blushed, then returned it, complimenting him on his choice. "My friend Sophie," she started, before needing to stop to finish chewing. "My friend Sophie told me that I needed to try dating again."

"And why isn't she here to help you on this quest?" he asked, taking his food back, though he realized that asking her questions while eating wasn't going to get anything done. Ariadne held up a finger, the universal sign for a second, as she chewed.

"She's back in the States visiting, ahem, family," she explained.

Arthur started to ask a follow up, when Ariadne stopped him. "And as fun as it is to have this discussion with you, I'm eating my sandwich but not really tasting it," she said, shutting him down.

He had to laugh at that. "Fair enough."

"If a guy's interested, he'll make it happen," Arthur said matter-of-factly, sitting at their same round table at the bar. Ariadne had convinced him to go out again, pulling Eames along too. Yusuf and Cobb were back at the warehouse, staying for some sort of experimentation.

In an unspoken agreement, Arthur and Eames seemed to take it upon themselves to help Ariadne out. Arthur didn't formally approach the Forger for this purpose, but he knew that the Englishman was wise enough to see just how hapless Ariadne was in this area, especially considering their drinking binge weeks ago.

Since then, for happy hour, after Cobb or Saito called it a day—or even when Ariadne or Yusuf didn't do overtime at the warehouse—they spent it at the bar, attempting to coach their new architect. Granted, she hated it. She refused to try any tips out when they were there, telling them that it was already embarrassing that she was inept, she didn't need an audience of grown men watching her.

So they just talked. They gave advice when it would come up, and Ariadne would brave a question, every now and again or relate something that happened to her the other night, drinking until she felt candid.

Eames nodded, spreading his arm out over the cushioned booth, slightly behind Ariadne's shoulders. "I once shared a cab with this woman—gorgeous! Legs up to here and actually an interesting thing to say—so the next day, I made my way back to her street, when I realized that I had no idea where she lived."

Ariadne leaned forward, interested. "What did you do?"

"I went up to each house to find out if it was the one."

"And realized that she didn't live there?" Arthur added, eyebrows rose.

Eames didn't spare him a look. "No, I found her."

"Then what happened?" Ariadne asked, riveted.

"I realized that she was more interesting after I've had a few," Eames said with a shrug, laughing at the memory.

"That is a perfect waste on a charming story," Ariadne said, leaning back against the cushions, her drink in her hands, and Eames laughed, swigging the rest of his dark ale, before slapping it onto the table.

"That's your problem right there," Arthur pointed out, taking a sip of his beer and gesturing towards her. "You're a romantic."

Ariadne looked admitted to that and shrugged. "What's wrong with wanting a little romance?" she asked, a little demandingly, looking from Eames to Arthur.

"It doesn't exist," Arthur insisted calmly, rationally, sitting back.

Ariadne looked appalled, and she smiled as a resort. "You mean to tell me that you're in Paris, the city of love, the purveyor of romantic art, design, literature, and you don't believe in romance?"

"You do realize that you're speaking to Stick-in-the-Mud, right Ariadne, dear?" Eames asked from the sidelines, clearly enjoying himself. "He's practically a robot."

Ariadne spared him a glance. "I mean, I might be a little idealistic but—"

"Robot!" Eames said, though no one appeared to be listening.

"And that's the problem right there," Arthur interrupted. "You put these excuses or give things a storyline to make it all better, when it's really that cut and dry," he explained. "I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but it's not always like that."

"It could be," she insisted.

"Robot!"

"But it's not," he pointed out, ignoring Eames. Arthur realized that his drinks were making him a little looser, a little more vocal than usual, and he carefully considered his next words, looking at the sparkling Eames and the resigned Ariadne. "It's not a movie, or a book, or a painting, Ariadne. There's no design to make it all tidy."

She smiled this small, knowing smile, like she saw this secret that Arthur couldn't. Leaning forward, licking her lips slightly, her voice conveyed this all-seeing wisdom as she looked at him directly: "Arthur," she started, "one day a girl, a real special girl, who alphabetizes her shampoo bottles and keeps track of her expenses will unwittingly make you fall for her, and you will realize that romance is exactly just mooning and juning and not made up stories."

Arthur shrugged. "That's just a story people tell to pragmatists like me."

And Ariadne looked like the cat that swallowed the canary. "You're scared that I'm right."

Ariadne sat back as Eames looked between the two of them, sizing them up before he let out a loud guffaw. "I'm not sure if you're right, Ariadne," he said, turning to her. "But I sure as hell want to be there if that happens."

And Arthur sat nearby. He kept tight lipped about it all.

Ariadne looked at her phone again.

Arthur looked at her. "Ariadne, what are you doing?"

"Just—"

"New rule," Arthur said, holding out his hand. "No phones."

"I just—"

"—you're not allowed to look at this until the end of the day. Focus on completing the changes to Yusuf's level."

She looked annoyed, but she placed her mobile into his awaiting palm. "Fine."

Arthur sat near his friend at one of the communal worktables, drinking coffee and pouring over a newspaper.

Dominic Cobb sat a few feet away, lost in his thoughts as he pieced apart a croque monsieur.

"After this, what are you hoping to do?" his friend suddenly asked, cutting into the article he was just reading. Arthur looked up and looked at Cobb, seeing the turmoil and calculation strongly ingrained in his features. Cobb called out his name, and Arthur folded up his paper, placing it onto the table.

"Go back Stateside. I have a few things to settle," he reeled off.

"Does that mean you're ready to settle down again?" Cobb asked, and Arthur felt slightly uncomfortable under his long-time friend's scrutiny.

Cobb and Mal used to be on him to find some place, to find someone to settle down, preferably near them. Granted, this was during their early years as a couple, when they didn't have kids and when Cobb would never have considered going illegal in dream sharing. It got a little worst when Pippa then Jamie came along: the couple insisting that they knew a girl that would be right for him.

Her name was Laura, and Arthur only agreed to a date because Mal insisted most fervently that they would be perfect together.

And they were, in their own way. Laura was just as busy as he was. She worked as a publicist in New York. She had goals. She even had a particular way to organize her DVDs, which Arthur admired. He told her he loved her after three months of dating. They moved in together, and Arthur was never happier than hanging out in their apartment together, exploring the city. He loved how she always slid her hair behind her ears as she thought or how she shrugged when she thought. He loved how she knew the best way to cheer him up and how to make him proper coffee.

She understood too. She understood that he worked often. She thought he dealt with international insurance claims, mainly because he led her to think so, though he started to consider staying Stateside longer, if only to be near her. Only to wake up every day in their bed.

One day, he came home early to surprise her to find a surprising tableau of a woman and man's clothing strewn in their apartment, leading to a more blatant tableau in their bedroom.

In talking to her later, this had been going on for a while. Arthur helped pay for the rent in Manhattan and wasn't there often. Arthur called at odd hours because of time zones, and Laura was busy with work. It was easy to hide an affair.

Arthur was angry. He was scorned, blatantly rejected, made a fool, but more importantly, Arthur was hurt. He truly didn't see this coming.

He read people.

He just read her wrong.

He stayed away since then, but this past job, he told Cobb that he was going to go back. Laura didn't own the country for God's sake. Laura wasn't at his apartment anymore. He had a right to go back, if only to settle the lease on his place to get rid of Laura's stigma for good. He'd go back to traveling.

Now, Cobb was a family man, so he had this whole notion about settling down, encouraging Arthur to do the same, but Arthur wasn't like that. Arthur didn't have a family to go to. Arthur didn't have someone he needed to be there for, except Cobb.

And that was fine by him.

Arthur sat next to Ariadne at a high top round table, poised on stools. He sipped a whiskey as she sucked through a straw of a gin and tonic, watching the bar around them. Nervously, she would scratch the back of her neck as she took in what Arthur said.

"He's interested," he said, pointing out the couple that they've been studying for the past ten minutes. Near the bar stood a blonde talking animatedly to a bored looking guy.

"That guy?" Ariadne asked, incredulous, sipping her drink.

"No, no," Arthur said, gesturing to the guy at the blonde's shoulder, eyeing her and trying to get a word in edgewise. "He is." He watched as Ariadne's face fell, watching the poor guy on the sidelines who didn't have any game, while the guy that had the blonde's attention was clearly not interested.

"She's going to spend the night talking to him about her diet, how she bought a sweater yesterday, and oh," Arthur stopped himself as a spill happened at the bar. "Now Mr. Bored has a chance to get away." The guy the blonde had her eyes on, stood up as the blonde attempted to wipe up the spilled drink, distracted.

"You live in a cold, cold world, Arthur," Ariadne said, placing her drink down.

"It's my job to pay attention to details, Joanna," Arthur replied, leveling a look at her.

Ariadne bit back a smirk, shaking her head fondly as she set her drink down. "I figured you'd know about that."

"It's my job to know people," he affixed.

She snorted. "So I've realized."

"So why Ariadne? Why not your first name?"

"Only my family calls me Joanna. Some people, Jojo. But when I started school, there was another Joanna," she explained. "And my six-year-old self hated the idea that I wasn't special."

"So you went with your middle name," Arthur finished up for her.

She fidgeted with the straw in her drink. "Yeah. I went home, marched up to my mother, and told her that I had to change my name." She peered at him, her chin pointed down. "I was named after her, actually."

"I'm sure she loved to hear that then."

"My dad supported it entirely," she added. "He's the one who chose my middle name. Myths." She cleared her throat, and almost like it was forced conversation, she asked, "Is Arthur your real name?"

He nodded, completely at ease. "Yes. There's really no point to change it, I think."

"Sort of like Superman is really Superman and pretends to be Clark Kent among us mere mortals?" she questioned.

"That's a bit extreme, but sort of," he said. "It all depends on which one you consider to be your real life and which one you consider to be the pretend life. My work is what I'm around most so I give my real name out, but in a bar? I doubt it even matters."

Ariadne looked amused.

"What?"

"It's funny that you see your real life being the one that's not even in reality."

Arthur chuckled, downing the rest of his whiskey and placing the glass down. "Okay," he announced. "If we're going to dig this deep, why the obsession with finding someone?"

Ariadne didn't meet his eyes, forcing a shrug as she attempted a careless tone. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Nice try."

And she pursed her lips, looking at him, studying him in that way he often caught her studying Cobb. He wondered at how blatant she could be, her lack of grace or pretense, which he found intriguing and amazing. In the business of thieves, and hell, in just watching people, he could see someone play it. Eames was a player. Cobb, Yusuf, and Saito were players. But Ariadne was simply along for the ride.

When she said something or asked something, she wanted that said or she wanted that answer. There was no subtext to what she said or how she acted, which explained her lack of finesse when it came to dealing with flirtation or bar etiquette.

There had to be a reason why she was doing this. He assumed most of the story when she leaned forward, her fingers dancing lightly across her sweating glass, her concentration purely on the condensation, as she told him about this guy. This amazing guy she dated. He graduated last year and moved back to the States for a job, promising to attempt a long term thing, but inevitably giving in to the wiles of a waitress.

"They're still together, and apparently madly in love," she said in that way that was meant to sound like pure fact but was harbored with more emotion than she intended. She swallowed before continuing. "I heard about it from a few friends," she explained. "We were together for three years, and I never heard of Nathan and I described like that."

Arthur just sat there, his hands dangling past his lap. "Did you think you were that way?"

She had this wan look about her as she paused before answering. "No. I didn't, but knowing that he has it now, makes me feel the rejection harder, you know?"

"He's not doing it to hurt you."

"No, but when he cheated on me with her, when was he the bad guy?" she asked, not necessarily needing an answer. "That felt good. Everyone telling me that they're happy together seems to fix it." She started to stab her ice cubes shifting at the bottom of her glass. "Nathan's Sophie's brother," she added. "So I can't necessarily not hear about him."

"I'm sorry," Arthur said, mainly because he wasn't sure what he should be saying at this.

"It's fine," she said, pushing away her glass. "It really is, because I'm doing my best to finally move on." She laughed, taking a step off her stool to head to the bar. "I'm just really, really bad at it."

Arthur woke in his lawn chair and his eyes flicked to the side where Ariadne sat. She didn't go under this time around. But she sat in one of the nearby lawn chairs, curled Indian-style, pouring over a large textbook on green architecture in her lap. Feeling his stare, she looked up and smiled. She dug behind her, producing his mobile, she tossed it at him.

"Gabrielle called," she said with a knowing smile and an elongated trill of her words.

Arthur looked at the phone in his lap and hoped the heat he felt in his face wasn't visible. "Oh?" he asked, attempting to be nonchalant. "Did you answer?"

Ariadne shrugged, looking back at her textbook. "Moi? Non! Je n'aurais jamais!" she exclaimed with a dramatic hand to her heart, to push the point home that she would never. "How did you have time to pick up a woman last night anyway?"

After a couple of drink, Ariadne called it a night, shrugging off Arthur's offers to walk her home but agreed to a cab. He stayed the rest of the night by himself at the bar, lazily nursing a Jameson and unwinding from work. Gabrielle approached him then.

Sitting in the lawn chair, Arthur shrugged, looking at his phone in his lap.

"Goodness," Ariadne said with a sigh. She snapped her book shut and stood. "Well, at least I have a master helping me."

They were testing out Yusuf's serums, seeing if the inner ear function modification was working. So far—and Arthur had the bruises to show for it—it was.

"You've been spending a lot of time with the architect," Eames said, leaning on the table behind Arthur while Yusuf got the PASIV case set-up.

"I've been trying to help her out," Arthur said, itching the side of his nose with his thumb.

"Cobb's noticed," Yusuf added, taking the Point Man's arm and strapping on the bracelet and needle. Attached, Arthur took it and started to roll up his sleeve.

"Yeah? I'm surprised he's had time to notice anything," Arthur muttered, though no one seemed to acknowledge it. They all knew Cobb had his own issues he was working with at the moment.

"Should we be concerned that you have a small tendre for our maze maker?" Eames quizzed, folding his arms in front of his chest.

"What is this?" Arthur asked. "We're teammates. I'm trying to help her out. You two have been with us when we've gone out. It's not a big deal."

"Sure, but we're not always with her," Yusuf pointed out. "You two have been more," he seemed to consider his words carefully, especially as Arthur felt his face darken. "Together," Yusuf settled.

"We're working together," Arthur insisted. "Of course, we're together." His words sounded thin and too much, in the same vein as Hamlet's mother, and he saw that Eames and Yusuf thought so too. Backtracking wasn't going to do anything, neither was adding more doth-protests, so Arthur resigned himself to sitting back against the back of the chair, glowering.

Yusuf laughed as he pushed the plunger to give Arthur a dose of the sedative. "Sweet dreams," he called out, and Arthur immediately started to feel the effects.

"Of course he will," he vaguely heard Eames say. "He'll dream about our lovely architect."

He was going to punch Eames when he woke up.

Arthur sat with Ariadne at the bar. She was telling him a story about her first night in Paris, when she had a cold and was in desperate need of cold medication but forgot the French word for sick or cough drops or tissues. And she mimed her actions as she did on that fateful night, making Arthur laugh more, genuinely laugh, as she contorted her face and spoke in a high-pitched voice for the pharmacist.

So Eames and Yusuf had a point. He knew they were spending more time with one another than normal teammates would, but he genuinely liked Ariadne. He enjoyed her company, and with Cobb's internal battle, Saito's pressure, and the drug testing he's gone through, Arthur figured he was allowed some sort of break, and that was thanks to the small architect, who was always willing to talk out an issue with him or to even ask for his advice.

She asked the questions Eames and Yusuf hedged around, about Cobb, expressing her concerns and asking what he knew. Arthur had to admit that he didn't know a lot, but that he knew Mal was a problem, that she was why Cobb couldn't build anymore. He worried for him. He could see it eat at the Extractor, but Cobb didn't want any of Arthur's concern or comfort. He didn't want to talk it through with the Point Man at all. He'd rather pretend it wasn't there, really.

But not Ariadne.

It was nice having someone to talk about it with. It was nice to have someone around whom he could have a straight conversation with. It was nice to have someone who knew these things about him, about his world, and just accept it.

Arthur made his way back from the restrooms to see someone sitting in his previously vacated seat, chatting to Ariadne. He was handsome. He had short-cropped hair and wore a pressed shirt, though his sleeves were rolled up.

He wasn't French. Arthur could make that Ariadne spoke English to him. They seemed to be hitting it off actually, and Arthur couldn't account for that slight feeling of territorial concern as he watched them, waiting for this new guy to screw it all up.

A/N: Two more chapters left, and I'm completely done writing so the wait won't be long.

As always, thanks for reading!