all_inclusive | Entries tagged with zz: arthur

Any entries earlier than this were pre-reboot.

Throughout the day on the 14th, the Nexus staff deliver single roses and accompanying notes to designated hotel guests in celebration of the Valentine's Day holiday. For some, the gesture will be a foregone conclusion; for others, it will be a surprise. For some, they might only guess at who sent them the gift in the first place.

[Comments with deliveries ~~will follow~~ are done. You may reply to yours with a reaction if you like!]

weighted_reality

There's live music in the bar tonight, a torch singer of decent talent and no renown, accompanied by a baby grand. It draws Arthur there, one hand thumbing the totem in his pocket and the other wrapped around a glass of whiskey. There's a sketchpad on the table, mostly filled with drawings of buildings, none of them particularly imaginative, each tower restricted to a specific architectural movement. There's very little variation in the doodles of an educated and orderly hand, more meditative exercise than art piece.

Halfway through his whiskey, the girl at the piano encourages her small audience to take to the dance floor if they so choose, an invitation Arthur declines. He lacks motivation and a dance partner to boot and so sees little point. Instead he returns to his sketches, turning his attention to the corners of the bar and the brave few who've stood to dance. What grace he captures in still architecture he doesn't possess in the drawings of people and organic forms.

He's about to stand and order another drink when the piano plinks out a few hauntingly familiar notes and the woman at the microphone croons out words he knows well, "Des yeux qui font baisser les miens...un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche..."

Arthur can't help humming along. He's always loved Edith Piaf.

seeorseem

September | The Nexus

Eames is going to get a masters degree in forging at the rate the hotel is willing to help him along. This time, it's of a more canine persuasion. Luckily, Arthur helps him to switch back before other activities can be practiced.

ADULT CONTENT

concierge

Outside of the Nexus Hotel, waiters and hotel staff had begun to set up the umbrellas and the tables in the middle of the day. Soon, it became clear that something was happening in the shadow of the Nexus. White tablecloths were draped on the tables and drinks and food were brought out with the help of several waiters and servers, staffing tables with hot and cold foods beside bartending stations. Summery drinks in bright, neon colors are laid out one by one and soon, the afternoon light casts a radiant look on the scene.

Music plays faintly in the background and a note at the front desk invites all the Nexus guests to head outside and join in on the summer party, which promises to continue going as long as there are people to stay and continue keeping the warm atmosphere rolling.

On the lawn, social games had been set out -- lawn bowling, croquet, and tables were set up with chairs for anyone who didn't quite have the will or the spirit to get into such games. Soon, a small number of people had begun to mill around, but as with all parties, there's always room for more.

seeorseem

APRIL 11th | Chicago, IL, USA

"Are you really going to be so stubborn as to ignore me and not even give me the chance to apologize?" he has to wonder, because that's roughly what it feels like is happening.

Eames apologises for pushing too fast, too hard.

PG-13

seeorseem

The fact of the matter, thinks Eames, is that reality should not be this malleable.

If he were asleep and attached to his PASIV, waking up to find himself in this form would be normal -- expected, even, given his tendency to pick up jobs that challenge him and there's something perfect about making a beautiful woman and assigning her minor flaws in order to keep the dreamer from suspecting that something is amiss. The problem is that he's not in a dream. His totem tells him that this is reality, which is making his head hurt.

It's been two days and Eames still can't shake this forge. He's hesitant to even call it that, but for the sake of his sanity, he's needed to retain that distinction in his mind, lest he go absolutely around the bend. He can't be what he is, and yet, he is. It's not the sort of thing he's come to expect to understand and he can't even find Arthur to search for an explanation.

The good news is that Eames has always been rather fluid when it comes to living in another person's skin. He might be forging in reality, but he will do it perfectly. He knows how to walk as a woman, how to wear the clothes, how to sit, and how to speak. It's one comfort in all this madness because at least he feels at home in his own skin.

If he still is himself. Eames raises slim fingers to the bartender, signalling for another scotch on the rocks being that drinking does tend to numb the worrisome notion that he's slipped so far into a dream that he doesn't know what's real anymore.

"You know," he remarks off-handedly to the companion at his side, "I had thought that I wouldn't have to pay so often for my own drinks. My expectations must be re-evaluated."

seeorseem

There are small tricks to forgery that separate the good from the great. Eames has several friends who've forged with him over the years and they can be effusive and charming, they can be technically perfect, but the trouble with them is that it's the detail. Their paintings are noticed because their brushstrokes are hesitant -- every detail is observed, but without fluidity.

Eames has found a great deal of success in focusing on the bigger picture. He creates his architecture in his forgeries and builds on them, uses mannerisms and research until he creates the exact replica. It works in life as much as it does in dreams, though in life it's usually more along the lines of money, paperwork, and art.

There's one other key aspect -- practice, practice, practice.

He's hauled a canvas from home into the Nexus for the privacy of it, taking the easel outside to paint in the daylight. With the sun beaming down on him, he decides that it's feeling a bit like a Monet kind of day, waterlilies at that. It's a famous painting and he hasn't half the canvas he needs to replicate it, but he works on a section from memory, thinking back to early mornings in the Orangerie with his headphones in, tracing the edges of petals that from far away make utter sense, but up close blur into the water.

This is how he stays sharp.

This is how he's going to keep earning money. The trouble is that he keeps pausing, hand hovering in the air. His thoughts keep straying because all this practice and there's no performance. He needs a job and he needs it soon, before he goes out of his mind and does something insane like take on a sleep and run job with some of the high paying politicians who like to request a specific type.

They might pay well, but he does have some dignity left. Not much, maybe, but some.

weighted_reality

By now, Arthur thinks he should know not to trust the doors. If one pulls at him behind the heart, it should be a signal to walk in the opposite direction and not return. It's a shame he was never good at resisting a locked door; maybe if he'd been better at it, he wouldn't be a dream criminal. He also wouldn't be richer than someone of his origins deserves to be.

But this particular door puts a bad feeling in his gut when he pushes down on the handle. The cold, fetid air that blows through is painfully familiar and soon Arthur is standing ankle deep in rapidly-graying Chicago snow, staring at boarded-up businesses that were his hometown mainstays when he was a kid. The people who walk by are almost as gray as the snow, looking a little more downtrodden than he remembers.

He knows if he turns left, he'll walk down to a small house that was his. He'll go back to parents who would hardly recognize him in his Armani suit and slicked back hair. He's not the Arthur they'd know.

If he goes right, he can take the L and go to his barely-used penthouse, to the place where he can be the Arthur he's become, but now it's all so uncertain.

So he stands just beyond the doorway, snow collecting on his hair and jacket.

seeorseem

Once, for a job, Eames had procured training as a registered masseuse in order to get close to an array of wealthy corporate clients who enjoyed the privileges of the rich and famous twice a week with accompanying lotions, oils, and rubs. He'd used the information to forge his way into their dreams and drain their bank accounts dry while siccing the treasury on them to cover his tracks and managed to pocket a sizable sum for the honest work.

Since then, he hasn't put those skills to much use, but he does think about keeping himself occupied if he is to stay here at the hotel (and he doesn't have to, but Arthur seems to be stuck and Eames is keen to find out if there's a reason behind that). So he's taken a job. The money is blatantly unnecessary, but nice enough.

After all, he can honestly pay the waitresses now instead of using a little charm and a promise of a payment tomorrow. His hands are a bit slick yet today seeing as he's given a lovely lady named Mrs. B a massage focusing on her tense arms due to her rich husband's neglect. Or something else vapid and boring.

When he isn't researching someone for a case, people can be eclectic and delightful and wonderful, but so very boring and similar and Eames is beginning to itch for a challenge.

"Rye, please," he orders at the bar. "With a touch of ginger."

He searches the room, looking for something. Perhaps a mark, perhaps someone to keep him occupied through the evening, or maybe he's simply keeping an eye out to protect his own hide. Whatever he discovers, though, will have to be better than coasting along waiting for something to happen to him.

seeorseem

OCTOBER 2ND, 2013 | THE NEXUS HOTEL

With no solid lead on a way out, Eames turns to his own subconscious to find clues of escape. Instead, he's followed by Arthur.

PG-13

weighted_reality

Arthur's long stopped hoping for anything to make sense. He hasn't quite accepted his own descent into insanity (which is, perhaps, an indication of the fact that he's gone insane) but he's abandoned any thought of the rules of the dreamspace.

He sleeps. He wakes. He walks through doors to a "real world" that he no longer perceives as real and then walks through another back to the labyrinth. Arthur wonders if he's accepting this all too calmly. Maybe there is such a thing as a tranquil fall into madness. At the end of the day, it seems like a modicum of grace in the situation is the most that he can hope for.

There's a new door across the hallway from his, which makes him wary. Usually it's a wall, a space between two doors. Arthur runs a hand over the loaded die in his pocket, but doesn't bother to check it anymore. Its confirmation of reality has long stopped being believable to him. He can only assess what he sees and try and slot it into an arbitrary "real" or "not real" category for himself.

Something about this new door draws him and Arthur finds his keycard in his hand without thinking about. It's not a surprise when the little light blinks green and the door swings open.

It's stepping through when things turn strange. Once he's through the door, Arthur feels himself floating upward, staring down a very familiar hallway. Walking on the roof, Arthur tries to get his bearings until a jolt turns the hallway another angle and sends him falling, and then bouncing off, the opposite wall. Whatever force is driving this seems to calm and Arthur floats in space, staring down at the open door.

[[Arthur is currently floating through the zero gravity hallway. Your pup will be similarly affected when stepping in, going through periods of no gravity or else turbulence. Tag Arthur, tag each other, have fun with the crazy hallway.]]

kaiju_groupie

The siren blared out behind Newt as he ran with the flow of the crowd, trying not to trip over his own feet or someone else's feet, or to run into anyone. He didn't speak Chinese, so he couldn't understand any of the announcements coming through the speakers on the streets, but figured that as long as went with the flow of the crowd and pretended he knew where he was going, it would be almost as good.

A public shelter. People did this all the time. Of course, people didn't usually go running to a public shelter just after having drifted with a kaiju and accidentally tapping into their entire species memory. Oh god, he was going to die. They were going to find him, and he was going to die.

Even so, Newt couldn't help but wonder just what kind of kaiju had come through the breach this time. What category? Was it something new? Well, Newt figured it couldn't be completely new, considering what he'd figured out about kaiju essentially being clones of each other. Manufactured by those beings he'd seen when he Drifted with the portion of kaiju brain—

—precursors.

He still wasn't over how weird it was that he'd known what they were without actually knowing. Maybe rangers were used to it, but seeing as Newt's first and only Drift had basically been with an entire species, he figured that his Drift hangover was probably a little worse than most.

The crowd turned and Newt followed, heart racing, nearly out of breath. God, this sucked. But he was better inside than he was out on the streets where he'd probably be killed. Or taken hostage, since he'd basically shared humanity's plans to destroy the breach with the very beings they shouldn't be shared with. Okay, so he'd made a mistake, but he'd also been really right about kaiju being clones, and that was more important.

The masses thinned as they all rushed through the doors of the shelter, and suddenly, the crowd disappeared, the air seemed less heavy, and Newt began to wonder just when they started decorating public kaiju shelters with couches and chandeliers.

This... was definitely weird, but somehow, not the weirdest thing that had happened to him today.

weighted_reality

He's turning into Cobb. It's not a good thing. It's not acquiring the boundless creativity and subtlety of construction that the man strives for in dreams and extraction. It's not the ability to love something and fight for it so fully that onlookers can only wonder how he hasn't collapsed. No. It's none of that.

It's the shades in his mind and the doubting, darting glances that he's barely controlling. It's the questions, the roll of the loaded die and the increasing worry when it lands again, and again, on the same number. It's the assurance that he's part of reality now, even though this hotel can't be. The hotel is too strange and circuitous and maybe there are no closed loops or tricks of vision, but Arthur can't believe this is real. Real life doesn't just allow for the opening of the door to lead to an entirely new world.

Every single part of it is becoming a puzzle that he is increasingly more desperate to solve.

Soon. Too soon, Arthur thinks. Soon he's going to exactly like Cobb, sitting at the coffee table of a hotel room, watching his totem fall with a loaded pistol in hand. His totem will call the shot.

Today, Arthur hasn't gone that far, not yet thank God. He's gotten as far as a bar with a gold-brown glass of bourbon warming his insides and making all of this seem at least a tiny bit more possible.

weighted_reality

The more he tries to make sense of it, the more difficult it becomes to find something solid. Doors open into carnivals and storms pass over only the front lawn. Arthur tries to build, to reach out and shift the walls and paradoxes, but unlike in the dreaming nothing gives. He can't alter or control anything nor can he really accept that this is reality.

In a situation like this, where he can't control his world, Arthur decides to control himself. The hotel's gym seems to be a fixed point and so he visits it regularly.

This morning, he's the only occupant. Light on his feet, Arthur moves and boxes against an invisible partner. He's eschewed his usual tailored suits for boxing shorts and an old t-shirt.

Breathe in, breathe out. Move. Jab. Dodge. He knows his body and what it can do. For now, that serves as reality.

concierge

The black sign positioned in front of the Dining Hall's main entrance reads:

New Guest Reception
TODAY
6 PM - 8 PM

All guests welcome

In the Dining Hall itself, the chairs have been pushed up against the walls and the long dining table turned into a buffet stocked with finger foods. At the far end of the room is a small bar serving beer, standard cocktails and non-alcoholic drinks.

hearnospeakno

This is a medical emergency. I need alcohol. I will pay you back.

This is what you may find held up to you on Nick Andros' palm, if you seem like the kind of person who might buy a guy a beer on credit. If you're not, or he just hasn't gotten around to you yet, Nick is the skinny guy hassling people in the Smoking Room.

It's been one of those days.

Nick doesn't like this. He's paid his own way for years, and he's been buying his own drinks since he was first able to bluff his way into a bar. But he's not going to steal, and he hasn't carried cash since--he doesn't even remember when he stopped thinking about having money in his pocket. It's been a while.

If this is whatever comes next, Nick has some pointed questions to ask whoever runs the place about why he gets a room free, but not a drink. (Nick's experience with hotels doesn't extend to the kind with minibars, so he didn't think about going up there first. He's honestly not thinking much.)

He's not begging. He's done that before, and it left a sharp, slippery taste in his mouth like sweaty pennies. Whatever is going on, wherever this is, Nick is asking for a loan, not a handout. It might be a stupid thing to be hanging onto, but under the circumstances--

Under the circumstances, Nick just wants a break. Five minutes to sit, drink a beer, and try to reconcile this bustling, beautiful place with what came before.

(He indulges in enough bitterness to think that isn't very fucking likely, but hey. He can dream.)

rangerbecket

( cut for spoilers from Pacific Rim )

He closes his eyes and just stays in the Drift when they hit water, trying not to think about how the sensors in his suit have sent pain relaying down his back and through every limb. He hates whoever decided that was a good idea, to interface the circuitry with sensors that detect damage and relay it as pain, but he guesses it's good motivation in a fight.

Hitting the water means damn near blacking out for a moment and Raleigh feels like every single nerve in his body is alive with pain. He blinks, surprised that his body's still intact, and chances opening his eyes: it's not the fucking Pacific ocean.

He's inside a building of some sort and he's obviously not linked with Mako anymore, nor has he felt the pain and anguish that might say she's injured or dead. There's just nothing in the Drift, like he dropped out and woke up here, and it's damned weird.

He's not sure if his legs are going to work but he manages to wrench off his helmet and just lays there, waiting, and hopes someone will help him up. He's not above taking some help in a situation like this.

weighted_reality

He presses play and he can hear the crescendo leaking out of Eames’ headphones as he slots himself into a corner of the elevator. One hand locks on the bar for stability and the other holds the detonator. Édith has begun to sing and Arthur begins to count. Even in dream time, the seconds don’t seem to follow the proper measure. His heart beats like a hummingbird’s but the music he can hear through the dream layers sounds even slower than it should be.

No, nothing from nothing. No. I regret nothing. Arthur translates in his head, taking measure through the words. None of the good, none of the bad. It’s all the same to me. Édith’s voice swells despite her lyrical indifference and Arthur takes the words as a promise, hoping that this will work. He presses the button and distantly, he can hear explosions. The elevator shakes and he closes his eyes and hopes.

He falls in zero gravity, hits the floor. The elevator dings and Arthur opens his eyes, flooding with panic. This isn’t the truck falling into the river. He’s suddenly alone, half sprawled on the floor of a different elevator, watching the doors open into a lobby he doesn’t recognize. This isn’t his dream. Or Yusuf’s. Or Eames’. And this sure as hell isn’t the airplane.

Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong and Arthur can only assume he’s fallen into limbo.

He has to find a way out.

All Inclusive

Reboot Marker

Valentine Delivery Service

When you kiss me, heaven sighs

Challenged to Change Ourselves

Gathering: Summer Party

no subject

It's a very subtle art

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We are the greatest pretenders in the cold morning light

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no subject

Gravity plays favorites. I know it 'cause I saw.

no subject

no subject

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Gathering: New Guest Reception

the broken window and the pretty blue sky

no subject

It's all the same to me

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