bennet_7 | Fic: Lights out

Some days I just don't know what to do with myself.

This is a very random and insubstantial fill for a prompt over at

inception_kink. The prompter wanted Ariadne and Arthur during a blackout in New York City. The Ghostbusters references are all me, though.

Title: Lights out
Fandom: Inception
Characters: Arthur, Ariadne
Rating: PG (if that)
Word count: 1,185

They’re on the balcony, watching the sun slowly set, when all over New York the lights wink out. They turn to see that Arthur’s apartment is no exception.

“Oh, excellent,” he says.

***
The kitchen is set back from the windows and receives no natural light so they use Ariadne’s iPhone as a torch. They find two proper flashlights and plenty of batteries but only three small tealight candles that Arthur admits were left behind by the previous inhabitants.

Off Ariadne’s mock disappointment, he shrugs his shoulders. “Guys owning candles isn’t a thing. We only buy them if we’re trying to impress women, whether they’re gifts for our mothers or romantic fire hazards for our girlfriends.”

Ariadne uses the surprising number of small mirrors she finds to build a reflective half-shell for the candle to sit in.

“Well those I happen to own because of the many shaving kits I’ve bought over the years.”

***
No power means no light but it also means no air-conditioning and it’s a warm day becoming a warm night. They open the French doors wide and push the couch onto the balcony and, with the coffee table to rest their feet on, their future doesn’t look so uncomfortable.

Ariadne declares that they need to eat all the perishables in the refrigerator, so naturally she pulls out the two cartons of ice-cream first.

“Chocolate and pistachio? My oh my, it’s a life of excess you lead, Arthur.”

She hands him a spoon and they settle down to watch the balcony and roof parties forming throughout the city.

***
“I’ve been saving this for a special occasion,” Arthur says, pulling out a French Burgundy from the back of the cupboard. Ariadne smiles wide until he continues, “Blackouts count in my book.”

She’s glad that the flashlight shines on him and not her.

The funny thing is that Arthur’s mood had improved once the power had gone out. Instead of complaining about their ruined plans (which were going to include dinner downtown and a late night showing of Ghostbusters) he’d been remarkably chipper about eating salsa and corn chips while debating which of the apartments across the road had the most entertaining occupants through night-vision binoculars (she liked the punk band grilling on the roof; he voted for the Wall Street-types, still in their suits, playing Twister on the fifth floor).

“You are actually enjoying this, aren’t you?” she says, directing the light at him while he grabs wine glasses from the shelf.

He turns and grins. “Uh, yeah. I like it when things go wrong. I mean, not tragically wrong, but dealing with the unexpected – that’s fun.”

“I guess that explains why you do what you do.”

“Partly, yeah.” He moves over to a set of drawers with, “Shine it over here, please?”

Arthur rifles amongst ladles, vegetable peelers, spatulas, and whisks, but: “Fucking corkscrew.”

He checks again and then the other drawers, to no avail.

“It’s ok, my Swiss Army Knife has an attachment…” He heads down the hall towards the bedroom but stops short so quickly that they bump into each other.

“Fucking Eames! I loaned it to him this morning and he didn’t give it back.”

“You don’t have a spare?” she asks, teasingly.

He says, very serious and a little sad, “That was my spare.”

“Ah. No wine for us then.”

“Please,” he says with a smile she thinks should be in a dictionary next to the word ‘rakish’. “I told you: I love solving problems.”

They go back to the balcony where Arthur sits down and takes off his shoe.

“Uh, Arthur, you’re not going to try and smash the neck, right?”

After removing the wax from over the mouth of the bottle with a kitchen knife, Arthur places it standing up in his shoe and knocks both against the wall, the heel hitting the brick and cushioning the base of the bottle. Ariadne watches, amazed, as the vibrations force the cork out a quarter of an inch at a time. When Arthur can finally get a hold of it, the cork pulls out cleanly.

“We should probably let it breathe for a bit after that.”

***
The breeze has picked up and Arthur brings out a blanket, necessitating that they sit hip against hip in order to share. For the sake of comfort, Arthur stretches his arm along the back of the couch and if it rests against Ariadne’s shoulders, she does not complain.

The lack of electricity has forced the punks to go acoustic and after wailing away at some original material, they’ve been playing unlikely covers for the past hour.

“ – pulsing through my veins, and I just can't contain, this feeling that remains.”

“Talented bunch,” Arthur comments. “I see a bright future playing weddings.”

Ariadne snorts, elbows him lightly in the ribs, and takes another sip from her glass (the wine had been worth the effort).

“I quite liked their interpretation of ‘Always look on the bright side of life’,” she tells him loftily.

“Yes, but you have to agree that their performance of ‘Ventura Highway’ was off-key.”

He looks down at her with a smile that crinkles the corner of his eyes.

“Well,” she says, feeling the heat rising in her cheeks, “it wasn’t boring. None of this has been.”

“Yeah,” says Arthur, looking out over a city cast in darkness. He keeps his tone light but can’t help a sidewards glance. “Not bad for a first date.”

Ariadne nearly chokes on nothing at all. “Date?” she says squeakily. “This was a date?”

“Um, yes?” says Arthur, pulling away to face her nervously. “I thought dinner – ”

“Arthur, we eat together all the time,” she says exasperatedly. “How was I supposed to know this was any different?”

“But the movie,” Arthur persisted.

“Ghostbusters is not a movie that screams ‘date’, Arthur.”

“You said two days ago you’d rather shove pencils in your eyes than sit through a movie based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, and,” he says with a pointed finger, “not an hour later you asked Yusuf if he was the Keymaster!”

“Sooo?” Ariadne says, feeling embarrassed and defensive, her mind screaming ‘We are on a date and I didn’t even know!’ “I like Ghostbusters, hooray for you being freakishly observant! But you never mentioned the word ‘date’.” She crosses her arms in a stunning act of maturity.

“I...I didn’t?” Arthur asks, uncertain.

“No.”

“I’m sure I planned it…I remember writing it down,” he says, more to himself than her, as if scrolling through a mental rolodex.

Seeing him hunched over, his chin resting on a propped hand, gazing into middle distance, Ariadne can’t help but think: My god, he’s gorgeous. And smart. And recognises random Ghostbusters references.

Really, the only thing to do is get up, climb into his lap, and kiss him senseless.

When she finally pulls away, he looks up at her in amazement.

“So…?”

“Yeah.”

And he pulls her to him again.

They quickly go inside, though, when beams of light fall upon them and they hear the wolf whistles and suggestions of the neighbors.

***

Author's note: Arthur's more generally characterised as pretty stiff and aloof in the fandom but I wanted to see him a little looser, not quite so suave. Opening up a bottle of wine with a shoe is kind of adorkably badass and something you can totally do.

Current Mood: weird
Current Music: 'Sticks n Stones' - Jamie T