Title: While I'm Alone And Blue As Can Be
Author: Chaos
Beta: None, tragically.
Pairings: Mal/Cobb.
Warnings: angst, everywhere
Ratings: PG
Spoiler Warnings: Stuff about Mal, but if you haven't seen the movie why are you really here?
Disclaimer: Not mine at all. Lyrics for the title/cut (also what Dom hears in the story) are from 'Dream A Little Dream of Me' originally by Ozzie Nelson, who is, surprisingly, not me.
Summary: Dreaming alone doesn't work. It's like he told her, no matter how hard he tries he knows it's not her. The harder he tries the less her she becomes.
Author's Note: Written for two prompts over at the kink meme and to serve my own twisted desire to write a fic using this song.
I also can't believe the first piece I've written for this fandom is het. What is the world coming to?
The dance floor is the living room of their tiny flat and the only light comes from the stars and the constellations that Paris paints outside their windows. But it doesn't matter because they're together.
The ancient record player clicks, skipping a little before the next song picks up. He pulls her closer, whispering with breath that tickles hair away from her ear.
"It's our song." She smiles at him, everything softened by the moment.
"Isn't that a little banal?" She asks. He smiles in return.
"No." He tells her, pulling her back against his chest.
When he gets in the car to leave (run away, away from his children, from the past and the memories) the song on the radio seems like a twisted joke.
He flicks it off as they pull out of the driveway.
He spends the next few miles too busy glancing over his shoulder (hands clenched in his lap, palms sweaty) to notice, but once they're on the main roads (surrounded by other cars and safe) he realises that it's playing again.
He glances at the radio, but it's still off.
He considers saying something but holds his tongue. Grits his teeth and endures until the slam of the car door abruptly cuts the tune in half and he realises this is really happening. She's really dead. He's really running away and he might never get back.
It's a shock and he can't help but feel that he's betraying his kids a little. That he's doing exactly what Mal did. And it tears him up inside.
But there are sirens in the distance so he hurries into the terminal and boards the plane as quickly as he can, trying not to look like a man on the run and not exactly sure how one manages that. He's suddenly acutely aware of every move he makes.
He plays the song for Philipa, holding her hands as she stands on his feet and slowly waltzing her around the room. She giggles and laughs and her smile is sweet in the afternoon sunlight (tinting the room like an old photograph).
Mal smiles at him over her head, infinitely sweeter (seasoned with memories).
He doesn't sleep on the flight.
Stumbling off amongst a horde of other zombies he's relieved to find the hot, stagnant air completely free of ghostly music.
He takes a deep breath as he emerges from the terminal and it's like filling his lungs with soup.
He watches her dance with James. Baby balanced on her hip as she swings around the room, humming to herself and mumbling the lyrics.
Her face is happy.
He doesn't sleep.
He books himself into a hotel room and sits in the expensive leather chairs in the air-conditioning, rolling Mal's top around in his hand.
It's such a small thing (to inspire such a huge change in his life).
("What about you? You need something as well."
"Not while I've got you."
"Oh really? And what if someone can figure out a way to look like me? What then? Or what about your projection of me?"
"I'd know."
"Dom, you can't possibly-"
"I'll know.")
He sets it aside, scrubbing one hand across his face. Stubble rasps against his palm and tears prick his eyes.
(One hand slipping out as he passed the kitchen bench. He'd taken it with him when he fled the hotel room. Now it was in his palm, in his pocket.
Its weight was a constant punishment, a reminder. Of things he had lost that he could never get back.
Never again…)
His head jerks up, all thoughts of sleep vanishing as elegant notes drip into the air.
Fleeing it, he lets himself out into the heat of the balcony but still the melody haunts him, mixed up with the sounds of traffic and people down below.
Dreaming alone doesn't work.
It's like he told her, no matter how hard he tries he knows it's not her.
The harder he tries the less her she becomes.
He finally falls asleep on the couch, awkwardly curled up to fit. Because he doesn't want to retreat to the bedroom, doesn't want to admit that he can't fight exhaustion anymore (like a child that doesn't want to go to bed because the bogey-man's in the closet).
For the first time in ages he slips easily into his own subconscious.
It's a different kind of dreaming.
Here things can just flow over him, all fuzzy at the edges and soft in the middle.
The song is still there, clear as a bell over conversations that are simply, words he can't make out.
Mal looks like she did all those years ago as they spin on the polished dance floor in a slow (perfect) waltz, and for a moment he can forget where he is. Leaning his head down and inhaling the scents that amount to her, feeling the smoothness of her skin.
"Do you miss me?" Her voice is soft and he pulls back, watching her smile (ever so slightly seductive) in the soft light.
"I miss you so much." He tells her. "So much I can't even breathe." Her smile twists a little.
"Will you stay with me?" She asks plaintively (though there's a deeper note of of something else in there too) and he opens his mouth to reply as everything around him fades to white.
He tries harder anyway. Again and again.
(There's her waltzing James around the room and smiling at him. Their perfect house (their castle in the air) shifting ever so slightly around them, suiting her mood, her whim, her anything.)
He doesn't give in because he needs to get the memories just right.
(Humming cheerfully as she runs the cold metal of a gun barrel over Arthur's cheek.)
Because he wants so desperately to be able to let go of reality.
(Lying beside him in a sumptuous bed as that old record player from their first flat plays, skipping occasionally, and she sings along in a voice like a nightingale. A voice she never had.)
He comes back to himself slowly, groggy in the crisp, conditioned midnight air.
The knocking is so loud in the strange silence that he almost topples off the couch.
He finds his feet just in time and staggers towards the door.
Arthur's outside, looking impeccable even though it must be baking out.
He steps through and Dom can see the little tells. The tight pinches at the corners of his mouth, the way his eyes are drawn wider than usual, the way he keeps tugging at his cuffs.
They don't say anything for a moment.
Then a strange sense of vertigo hits him.
He just makes it back to the table, fumbles for the top, unaware of Arthur crouching at his side (suitcase abandoned), observing him with quick, dark eyes.
He spins it (fingers too large, grip too damp), watching intently until it slows and falls.
Then he swallows, gasping in air as he sinks down to sit, entirely uncomfortable with the way his reality has changed. Staring at the totem on the glass tabletop as he leans against Arthur's shoulder and lets the tears leak out.
Because it's not her anymore and everything's broken.