Disclaimer: I do not own Brick or Inception.
a/n: Yes, that disclaimer means that this is kind of a crossover. Kind of. FF doesn't have a category for Brick, though, so... woot!
I just watched this movie (Brick) for the first time. Oh my God, it is Arthur as a teenager. Also-obviously, the past she's mostly referring to is...pretty much Brendan Frye's life, but there's some headcanon from my friend Kuroi thrown in here-thank you for your awesome, dearling! If you haven't seen Brick, you definitely need to do so as quickly as possible. It's on the Internet! Unfortunately, Megavideo is the source, but the shit that is Megavideo is worth enduring for this movie. Seriously.
When Ariadne was in high school, she smoked. It was her way of getting away from things, an excuse to go outside and be alone. If the conversation got tough or rowdy, or people started being dumber than usual, she would mutter "Goin' out for a smoke, be back", and she would leave and sit on the back step, or the hood of Tracy's car, and she would smoke, and wonder how it was that she never noticed the sirens until an ambulance sped by.
When Arthur finally told her what had happened—six months after they had started dating, the whole duration preceding filled with lack of sleep and questions and one-sided fights, because he had such issues, and he wouldn't tell her… When he did—when he told her, she knew why he hadn't wanted to, and when she climbed onto the loveseat beside him and put her head on his shoulder, her arms wrapped around his chest, she felt like she was lying in the grass behind Drew Furtzel's house again, alone, staring at the August sky so stained with humidity and pitiful, streaky clouds, smoke swirling up and away, her hair tumbling out of the fedora that had rolled off her head, just listening to the sirens.
By that point in time—the point in time that involved laying around, smoking cigarettes in friends of friends' yards, stuffing her hair into hats because she wanted to look like a boy sometimes, doing her homework like the kid she thought she wasn't—he had already dropped out of college and become a mercenary, was already making it big by offing people, and there she lay, thinking about sirens. She was sixteen, and he was already the age that she was right then, with her head on his shoulder, with him not-crying over wounds that had scarred over years ago, but that still ached when it rained.
As she assumed he had expected, she didn't know what to say to any of it, didn't know what to do or think, because she was sure that he didn't want pity or apologies or love in exchange for that, for all that she had buckets of love to give (not so much pity or apologies). But still—she knew him. She knew him through and through, much as he liked to pretend she didn't. In her opinion, his past didn't change who he was now, so she was still fairly certain that the best response for him right now was silence, because it was so frequently the response he gave.
So she gave him silence, and she didn't move away from him, and she didn't apologize or tell him that it was terrible, that he had suffered so much, because he already knew that, and they both knew that it was his fault from the get-go for getting into that kind of shit.
Eventually, he slid deeper into the couch, head falling onto the top of the cushions, eyes on the ceiling. She sat up and watched him, her hair falling over her shoulder, hands to herself. She said:
"When I was in high school, I smoked. It was cool, but I didn't do it because it was cool—I did it to get away from people, because people respect your silence when you're smoking, and I hadn't figured out that I only like people in concept yet, so I still hung out with this group of…teenagers, hooligans, idiots—what's the difference? They did shit, and they got drunk and had sex, and a couple of them got shot or pregnant or addicted, and I never really noticed, because I was always out back smoking."
She looked like she wanted a toke right then, and she twisted her hair between her hands, making a thick rope of it, shining in the dim light of her living room. His eyes had slid to her now, and she knew that what she was saying wasn't so much meaningful as analogical.
"Two weeks before I graduated, I slept over at my friend Tracy's house, and she was sobbing and hysterical because her boyfriend had just broken up with her, and I didn't know what to do—I didn't care, and Austin had always been a jerk, so I couldn't believe that she hadn't seen it coming—and she blew up at me when I got up and said I was going to go smoke, that I would be back, and for the first time, I saw that she actually had a brain, because she hit my problems dead on the head, right smack dab in the middle of everything. She told me that I was aloof and distant, that I put up this façade of not caring because I really and truly did not care, that I was terrible at parties and horrible with friendship things, and that I was the reason that none of the guys in our circle would ask anyone out, because they were all secretly hoping that I would come back in from smoking and tell them what I thought about all the time, and talk to them, and maybe let them pull the hat off my head and run their sweaty hands through my unbrushed hair in some unfathomable imitation of intimacy. They all hoped—every single one of our guy friends—that I would let them in, that I would stop being some intimidating, cool chick with a straight face, and all of the girls hoped, too, because they wanted to learn from me how to be so fucking awesome all the time."
She laughed.
"And then Tracy asked me, as she sat on her bed and stared across her bedroom at me, and I stared back, with my hat and my men's suit vest and my pack of cigarettes, "What do you think about all the time?", and I said "Sirens. Like on ambulances." And she stared at me like I was the hugest fraud in existence, and I waved my cigarette box at her, and picked up my backpack, and I left, and as I walked home, I lit a cigarette, and I blew the entire conversation out in a puff of smoke, and two weeks later, after I graduated, I went cold turkey, and then I went to college, and I fucked a girl, and I fucked myself up, and I never tired to make friends again."
She laughed again, this time with some humor behind it, twisting the rope of hair that she had persisted in playing with into a knot at the back of her head, holding it there, staring at him.
"But I didn't have to try for you, and you shouldn't have to try for me either. I don't expect anything from you—I understand why you're scared, but just so we're on the same page, you could hurt me really, really badly if you wanted to, and I would probably still come back."
She let go of her hair, and it untwisted and fell down her back, and he tugged her closer, eyes shifting back to the ceiling, one arm around her waist, her arms around his chest again, and he didn't say anything, because it was the least he could do, because both of them liked their silence.