Title: Grad School Blues
Fandom: Inception
Rating: PG
Warnings: General situational spoilers for the film.
Pairing: Ariadne/Cobb. Fluff, but can be read as friendship if you'd like.
Summary: Ariadne is pulling her hair out over her masters thesis. Dom comes over to lend emotional support. Written for the following prompt on the LJ community inception_kink: Ariadne/Cobb - One of them gives the other a back massage.
Disclaimer: Inception and its characters are the property of the incomparable Christopher Nolan. I'm just borrowing them, and promise to give them back when I'm done.
Author's Note: This is my first ever published fanfic! Special thanks to StrangeLittleSwirl for the prompt, and to coldthermistor on LJ for betaing this for me!
Dom sat on a worn sofa in the main room of Ariadne's apartment, flipping channels on the television. It was early evening, and Ariadne would be home from the university at any moment. The sky outside was darker than it should have been for late spring in Paris, but a glance outside would reveal the reason – ominous clouds were gathering. Dom could already hear distant rumbles of thunder over the voice of the newscaster on France24. It would begin raining at any moment.
Ariadne was in the final months of her masters program, and would be defending her thesis soon. Dom had thought it an opportune time to pay a visit to his in-laws in Paris. He recalled, more vividly than he liked, the amount of stress he'd been under while completing his own degree, and thought that Ariadne could likely use the moral support. Phillipa and James were overdue for a visit with their grandparents, anyway. So he and the children had flown in, and were staying with Stephen and Marie Miles at their home in the 20th arrondisement, near the university. He hadn't exactly planned on going straight to Ariadne's place once they were settled in, but Miles had obliquely hinted that the state of Ariadne's nerves was such that sooner would be better than later, and that he'd already told her to expect a visit from Dom.
That was how Dom found himself lounging on Ariadne's couch in a grey long-sleeved T-shirts and jeans, his normally slicked-back sandy blond hair falling into his face after a hasty shower at the Miles residence. He had left James and Phillipa there to sleep off some of their jetlag, and promised to be back in time for a late supper, and to tuck the children in properly. He'd also sent Ariadne a text, to the effect that he'd taken the liberty of letting himself in. He hadn't received a reply.
Thunder boomed even closer and rain began to fall, just as Dom heard footsteps outside the door and a key turn in the lock. Ariadne opened the door and stepped into the living room of the apartment. Her face registered acknowledgement, but not surprise. She'd gotten his text, then. He smiled at her, muted the TV, and made to rise from the couch, but then paused as he got a better look at her. Her long brown hair was tangled and frazzled, and not just from the humidity outside. Her face was pale and drawn, and her eyes were red and puffy, as if she had been crying or was about to start. Living in France for years had made her almost as fastidious a dresser as Arthur, but her jacket was rumpled, her blouse was wrinkled and almost looked slept-in, and her signature scarf was askew. Her breathing was shallow, and Dom suspected she had not eaten a proper meal in days.
In short, she looked like a wreck. Or maybe just a typical graduate student.
Dom sat back on the couch and opened his arms. "Come here." Ariadne hesitated for maybe a split-second, then wordlessly dropped her keys and messenger bag by the door before quickly crossing the room and collapsing onto the sofa. She wrapped her arms around Dom's midsection and buried her face in his shoulder, while he put his arms around her shoulders and held her to him, lightly running a hand up and down her back. She let out a breath that was half shudder, half sigh, and nuzzled her head further into his shirt. Dom made a soothing noise and continued trailing a hand up and down her back for another minute, before a better idea came to him.
"Here, sit up for a second." Ariadne sat back from him, averting her brown gaze slightly from his light blue one. Dom suspected it was taking everything in her to keep from bursting into tears. He moved his hands to her shoulders and eased her red jacket off of them and down her arms, letting it drop to the floor. Then he deftly undid her scarf, loosely folded it, and placed it on the coffee table next to the sofa. Satisfied that her neck, shoulders, and back were now mostly unobstructed, he brought his hands back to her shoulders and coaxed her to turn around and lay face-down on the sofa. Ariadne dimly wondered what he was getting at, but was too utterly drained from the events of the day to ask questions, so she merely pillowed her head on her folded arms and let out another unsteady sigh.
The sofa was wide enough and Ariadne was petite enough that there was room for Dom to sit on the edge if he angled his body a bit. He situated himself next to her, his waist even with her hips, and gently brushed her hair away from the back of her neck. Then he gently but firmly began kneading the back of her neck with his thumbs. Ariadne tensed slightly and turned her head so that her forehead rested on her folded hands, her face hidden behind her fall of brown hair. Dom felt her relax as his hands continued to rub her neck, and then gradually worked their way across her shoulders and down her shoulder blades and spine, rubbing out knotted muscles and bringing relief to weeks of built-up stiffness.
It was storming in earnest now, the wind whipping through the trees on the avenue outside, the rain lashing the windows and cascading down the eaves of the apartment building, accompanied by flashes of lightning and loud crashes of thunder. Every few seconds Ariadne's breath would hitch, and her upper body would shake slightly. Dom knew she was crying, but didn't comment, or even shush her. He knew that this was what she needed now – to have a good cry and listen to the rain. All that was required of him was to simply be there, a quiet, anchoring presence, urging the stiffness out of her back and shoulders with his hands, offering comfort without judgment.
Ariadne's breathing became gradually more even as Dom's hands reached her lower back. She was even able to make an appreciative noise as he worked out a particularly tight knot at the base of her spine. In time his hands stopped altogether, and they both simply remained where they were on the sofa, each existing in the moment and in the other's presence, listening to the torrential downpour and occasional thunderclaps outside.
After several minutes, Ariadne slowly sat up and faced Dom, trying to discreetly wipe the remaining tears away as she did. Her face was wet, but it looked a little less drawn than it had and her breathing was steady. Dom gently traced his thumbs under her eyes, and smiled at her.
"Better?"
"Much, thank you."
Dom smiled wider, then leaned in and swiftly planted a kiss on her temple before softly asking, "Wanna talk about it?"
"Later. I just want to not think about…" Ariadne made an expressive gesture with her hands, "for a little while. I do feel much better now, though. Where on earth did you learn how to do that, by the way?"
Dom absently smoothed his hair out of his eyes. "From Eames, actually. And he learned from Yusuf, as I understand it. One of Yusuf's aunts is a professional masseuse."
Ariadne quirked an eyebrow eloquently, wondering what circumstances had prompted Eames to teach Dom how to give back massages. "Hey, don't give me that look! You asked!" he said playfully. She cracked a smile, the first Dom had seen since she had gotten home. Dom smiled back and leaned in to kiss her again, this time on the cheek.
"I did ask," Ariadne relented, grinning in spite of herself. "It's good to see you, Dom, and I'm sorry I couldn't give you a better welcome than that." Dom mutely waved away her apology, and she continued speaking. "How long are you in town for?"
"A week, maybe a bit more. Stephen and Marie haven't seen the kids in several months, and Phillipa just got out of school for the summer, so there's no reason for us to hurry back. And I'm sorry for dropping in on you on such short notice, but Stephen thought you could use a shoulder to cry on, as it were, in very short order."
Ariadne started, abashed. "How did you…"
"I was a grad student myself once." Dom widened his eyes at her meaningfully.
Ariadne exhaled sharply and wrung her hands in her lap. "How long do you have?"
"Until the rain stops, at least. I walked here and I didn't bring an umbrella."
"Not long enough."
Dom guffawed. "That bad, huh?"
"You have no idea." But Ariadne's tone was wry, rather than hopelessly stressed.
"Well, you may as well start from the beginning and see how far we get. Better out than in." As Dom spoke, he swung his legs up onto the sofa and reclined against the armrest, putting an arm around Ariadne's shoulders and pulling her with him so she was draped over him. He picked up the remote and un-muted the TV, but kept the volume low. The trials and tribulations of the last few weeks, and how things kept going wrong with her thesis project, and how her interns were idiots, and how she was pulling her hair out, and why had she ever thought doing a project with this style of architecture would be a good idea, came out in bits and pieces as they watched the evening news and listened to the thunderstorm outside slowly die down. Dom duly commiserated with her and shared a story or two from his own post-grad days, and in time they lapsed into a comfortable silence as Dom resumed flipping channels through the TV.
In time the sun came back out, and Dom left to return to the Miles residence, but not before setting a dinner date with Ariadne for the following evening and extracting a promise from her to shower and get some sleep in the meantime. "You can do this, sweetheart," he said into her hair as he hugged her goodbye.
Ariadne gave him an extra-tight squeeze before releasing him and seeing him out the door. "Thanks, Dom." Dom nodded at her once, and then left to start the short journey back to the Miles residence. She hadn't said what specifically she was thanking him for – for the backrub, for listening to her kvetch, for the encouragement, or for simply being there. Somehow, Dom knew she'd meant all of those things, but particularly the last. And as surely as he knew that, he knew he always would be.