I went home for Christmas and made the mistake of setting my laptop down in one of the main rooms of my parents' house. I left the room to grab something, and came back to find that my grandfather had opened my computer and was reading through the rough draft of this chapter. Prior to that moment, I had absolutely no idea how impossible it is to explain to a grandparent how "smut" ended up in a word document on my hard drive, especially when he knows that I do quite a bit of writing. All that to say, happy Christmas to those who celebrate it, hope yours was a bit less awkward than mine. ;)
A huge amount of thanks to those of you who reviewed the last chapter, both for your compliments and for your critiques; I love getting mixed feedback because it gives me insight into how you guys view the plot, the characters, and the progression of the story. Thanks also to those who have been going through and leaving reviews of earlier chapters; I'm so glad you've found my story and that you're enjoying it so far.
~M.
He whispers her name like a prayer in the dark, and her breath is a sea of mangled words and shallow gasps. They move together like heartbeats and ocean waves, and when she whispers 'I love you' into the curve of his collarbone, she's not thinking about implications or ramifications or aftermath, only that the words have been clawing at her throat since his kiss that afternoon, and the ache of not saying them has become unbearable.
He reaches a hand up to cup her face and waits until her eyes are focused on his before he says, "I've loved you since the first time I dreamed with you."
Ariadne can't sleep after. It's not that it wasn't good—'good,' she thinks, would be the understatement of the century, even with Arthur's cracked ribs—and it's not that she isn't tired, because she's still planning on sleeping for a week straight when this is all over. She just can't stop her mind from replaying Arthur's story over and over and over again, analyzing every sentence and gesture and intonation until she feels like she's dissecting him. The thought makes her sick.
She waits until his breathing settles into the slow rhythm of sleep before gathering her shed clothing and slipping from the room.
She's to the part in the grilled cheese making process where she plates the sandwich and peels it open to add apple slices the way that her mom did when she was small, when the door of her bedroom squeaks open and Arthur joins her in the kitchen.
"Sorry if I woke you up; I was trying to be quiet, but you know how—" Ariadne looks up from her work and catches his expression. "What's wrong?"
He plasters a tight-lipped smile over bloodshot eyes and clenched teeth. "You know Dom can't dream on his own anymore?" he asks, scrubbing his finger over an invisible imperfection on island of counter space between them. "He's lucky."
She puts down her apple slices and steps around the island. Her arms circle his waist and she rests her head on his chest and listens to the way his heart beats a hummingbird wing rhythm from beneath his rib case.
He wraps his arms around her and doesn't speak.
She doesn't remember transitioning from the kitchen to the couch, and when a knock at the door startles her awake she nearly falls off the narrow cushions. It's Arthur's arms, still tight around her, that keep her from hitting the floor.
"It's Dom," he says, detangling himself from her and the blanket covering them.
"How can you tell?"
"That's his knock."
"Like a secret code or something?"
"No, just one of those habits people get into." Arthur's lips twist into a smirk as he reaches for the doorknob. "He doesn't know he does it."
He pulls the door open, and even from her seat on the couch, Ariadne can read tension in the lines of Cobb's body.
"Whelan got an early discharge," he says. "We're meeting him downstairs in fifteen minutes to go over his vision for the job."
Arthur inclines his head, and Cobb's glances around the room, stopping to nod at Ariadne before his eyes snap back to Arthur.
"Listen," he begins slowly.
"I know." Arthur cuts him off, voice flat.
Cobb nods and his focus slides back to Ariadne. "See you in fifteen."
"See you then," she returns, just before Arthur shuts the door.
"What was Cobb trying to tell you?"
"Nothing."
"Don't try to shut me out again." She warns, pulling herself up to her full height.
"He's just concerned about things. I'll talk to him later."
She raises an eyebrow.
He steps back to the couch.
"You need to be able to trust me if we're going to make this work," he says, planting a kiss in her hair.
"I do trust you, I just know better than to believe everything you say."
"Fair enough."
His smile is so wide that she can see the dimples in his cheeks, but the amusement doesn't quite spread to his eyes.
"It's so nice to see you all in the flesh; I trust your stay has been pleasant so far." Whelan's grin is all teeth as he glances around the table at each team member. Even bound to a wheelchair, pale and depleted in comparison to the man he had been in the dream world, he's still managed to retain his aura of menace. Ariadne picks at the needle marks in her arms rather than look at him.
"The job should be fairly simple," he continues, passing out a stack of manila file folders. "After all, you already know the mark."
Cobb's the first one to open his file, and the first one to shove it away. "No," he says. "There's no possible way."
Ariadne reaches for her own folder, flipping it open. Saito's face stares up at her from the first page.
Whelan clicks his tongue. "You never did get me the information on Proclus Global's expansion program, so I will do for myself what you've failed to do for me. Clearly Saito plans to fill the vacuum left by Fischer Morrow, a not altogether unwise move, except that my company had contracts with Fischer Morrow, contracts that I doubt Mr. Saito would be willing to renew, given his past experience with Cobol Engineering.
"Your job, then, Arthur," he says, turning to the point man. "Is simply this: you will plant in Saito's mind the desire to play nicely with my company, and in return, provided you've sufficiently taught me how a successful inception is preformed, I will allow your dear companions to live their lives in peace."
Arthur leans forward in his chair. "You're infringing on the terms of our agreement. You told me that you would release the rest of the team into Saito's protection. If something were to go wrong—which, given that Saito is both familiar with our team and with the process of inception itself, is nearly guaranteed—their protection would be forfeit."
"The simple solution to that, of course, would be to perform the job correctly. Consider it an added incentive."
"I told you I would teach you to do an inception, and I will, but the risk of this job is too great. You are setting us up for nearly certain failure, and I can't agree to that."
"You see," Whelan smirks. "That's one of the wonderful things about being in my position; I don't have to ask you to agree to anything, I just tell you to do it.
"Of course there's always the alternative." He nods, and one of his men steps forward, gun sliding from his holster. "You keep telling me what you can't do, and I'll start offing your friends until your can'ts become cans."
"It doesn't have to go that far." Arthur's voice is steady and as unfaltering as his expression, and Ariadne wishes she knew how he does it. "Given the size of Cobol, I have no doubt that there is some other enemy or affiliate who we could incept for the benefit of the company."
"Of course there are others, but this is the one that requires an experienced team, and better still, this is the one that I've already assigned to you. Now, unless any of you have any questions pertaining to the actual job, I'm going to head home and let you do some brainstorming."
His assistant—a woman in her late twenties with a business suit and enough professionalism that Ariadne wonders just how often she watches her boss threaten people with murder—glides forward from her place beside Whelan's cronies and wheels him away from the table.
"Yeah, actually, I have a question," Eames says, causing the woman to pause and Whelan to twist around in his seat. "How long do we have?"
"I'm a reasonable man," Whelan says. "So I will give you a reasonable amount of time to complete this job. Just don't mistake my charity for naivety; if I find any of you working slowly I will have reason to begin lowering the headcount. Anything else?"
He pauses for a few beats before saying, "Then I will see you later, best of luck."
The door barely has time to close behind him before Cobb jerks to his feet, chair crashing backward against the floor, and storms from the room.
Ariadne crosses her arms on the table top and rests her forehead in the nest that they create so that the others won't see the tears in her eyes. She bites her cheek until she can taste blood to keep from screaming.