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When asked what constituted a perfect holiday, Arthur would shrug and turn back to his laptop, fingers never once having paused in their frenzied tapping. He wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t slow, but secretly he would think to himself. The thoughts conjured against the background of whirring machinery, spasming nerves, and stirring blood were plentiful in that there were many of them, but not plentiful in that there were many helpful ones.
These thoughts ranged wildly from a sunny cruise in the Caribbean to locking himself away in a hut with a log fire in the deep forests of Scandinavia, a mug of coffee constantly steaming and a bookcase permanently expanding. None of these thoughts could even be considered valid as Arthur had never taken a holiday. Not since he’d taken up Dreaming. The cogs of his brain and the wires running parallel to the nerves up his spine wouldn’t let him.
One
“Arthur’s a robot,” said Cobb. “He doesn’t rest. That’s too normal. Besides, have you seen any of those Transformatives catnap? No? My point exactly.”
“Transformers, Dad,” said James, plaintively.
Arthur didn’t say anything, he was too busy going through a stack of papers taller than James when placed vertically on the floor. (James had taken a perverse pleasure to this, to which Arthur had taken an intense displeasure upon seeing his formerly neat stack dispersed around the cramped study on the second floor of Cobb’s house.)
~
Eames walked into the building at the same moment Arthur allowed himself the luxury of massaging the fine nerve endings in his temples that had been pulsing for the past hour.
“A strong cuppa would solve that right away, darling.” Eames cleared his throat neutrally, a safe distance from Arthur’s encampment. He looked out of place in the empty, white-washed light. The glaring rays of the LED lights did nothing to harshen the soft paisley of his shirt, and the cogs in Arthur’s brain whirred as he turned around to glare at him.
“Mr Eames, I was under the impression that everyone on this job could read.” He lowered his glare to the atrocious shoes peeking out like saddened clowns from beneath ill-fitted trousers. Never let it be said he was lacking in common decency.
Arthur gestured in the direction of the heavy, double-duty fire doors. “I would have scribbled a crude drawing instead of a n--″ his eyes focused on the piece of paper loosely clutched in Eames’ right hand, --“is that my note?”
Eames slowly peered between his hand and Arthur. “…It would appear so. And might I commend you on your superb workmanship, darling. The finesse to the calligraphy of Do Not Disturb is simply-″ he did an over-enthusiastic chef’s kiss.
Arthur made a growling noise, starting at the back of his throat and working its way up electrical cords.
A paper cup was hastily deposited on his desk, on top of the report Arthur was busy compiling.
Eames beat a perfunctory exit, paisley billowing behind him. “I’ll tape it back. You just drink that and return to your human form.”
Arthur didn’t watch him go, alternatively staring between the steaming cup and the bullet points he’d been adding to. The circuit in his brain was strangely quiet for once.
His hands reached of their own accord towards his desk, grasping the cup and bringing it to his mouth for a cursory sip. Chai.
Disgusting.
Two
They were working a Paris job out of Cobb’s study. Again.
This meant that Arthur was constantly stretched between waving James and Phillipa away and waving Cobb closer to actually complete his share of the work. It also meant entertaining what were technically criminals in the Cobb residence under the guise of hosting dinner parties. To the criminals, they were dinner parties, to Cobb and Arthur they were target opportunities for selecting the appropriate Mark for a simple two-tier extraction on behalf of an employee cheated from a senior position in the company.
Cobb had proved himself an invaluable public speaker at social events consisting of wine-drunk and caviar-silly businessmen. Cobb had also proven himself absolutely useless at remaining himself sober at events consisting of wine-drunk and caviar-silly businessmen.
“That Levine fellow,” one such gentleman chorused grandly, “is such a stick-in-the-mud, Corn, if you don’t mind me speaking candidly. Can’t fathom why you work with him.”
“Cobb,” said Cobb, and if that wasn’t a sure sign of intoxication, nothing was. Cobb had had to be prompted to give his name to his own children. “And he’s not so bad. Efficient.”
Loyalty was a strong tie to a healthy friendship/partnership. Arthur was considering moving out the next day.
“Efficient,” the businessmen chortled, as if Cobb had told some massively funny joke. “Oh, Corn, Old Sport, you’re a chuckle on a stick.”
Arthur completed the point-work and extraction himself the next day. And if he extracted more than company secrets, then Cobb was too busy nursing a crippling hangover to notice.
~
He was wearing one of his best suits—Reiss Garth, with a silk tie—when he strode into the warehouse. The assorted team were sat in a circle, varying degrees of attentiveness on each of their handsome, criminal faces.
The architect, a stout, German woman was pointing to a maze she had constructed with the glowing end of a cigar. Every aggressive tap resulted in a pile of ash smearing itself into the parchment paper.
Eames was the first to look up, and a broad smile stole across his features. “Arthur, you’re just in time! Hilde was wrapping things up in preparation for your presentation.”
“Nein,” said Hilde, and another clump of ash dropped on the floor. Arthur stared at it. “I vas not, Eames. Ve still have the second floor.”
Eames looked suitably chastened. “Heavens, Hilde. I beg your pardon. Do go on.” He slanted a private smile in Arthur’s direction when Arthur stifled a laugh.
A faint chiming noise at the back of Arthur’s mind.
Unbuttoning his jacket, Arthur made his way into the circle and pulled up a chair beside Yusuf, who was doing a poor job of pretending to pay attention, eyes lidded, and head bowed.
“What did I miss?”
Yusuf startled violently, upsetting his chair and landing in a pile of Hilde’s ash. It smeared the floor in miniature skid marks, as if the world’s tiniest racing cars had taken a spill in the exact spot surrounding Hilde’s shoes.
“Hell’s bloody bells, Arthur.” He righted his chair, nodding apologetically at the architect, who had paused in her stumbling explanation of the dream’s labyrinthine system. “If you took your job seriously, you’d have been on time to hear it for yourself.”
Arthur decided to forgive Yusuf that distinctly untrue remark on account he had startled the man.
Eames had no such qualms. “Excuse me, Hilde--″ a stupidly charming smile, that was as on-brand as it was effective— “Yusuf, kindly shut your bloody mouth before it lets out another comment as insipid as the first.”
Arthur swallowed to the hum of computing devices.
Holding up his hands in surrender, Yusuf settled back into his seat.
Poor Hilde privately debated leaving the Westerners to it and hopping on the next plane back to the Fatherland.
Three
This time, Arthur had deserved it. In all fairness, he had accidently spilt Chai all over Eames’ profiles.
“I-I apologise, Mr Eames,” he breathed, mentally berating himself, all the wires at the back of his neck cringing into a ball. Looked at the pool of liquid taking no prisoners upon the trestle table.
But Eames didn’t say anything, just placed strong hands on Arthur’s shoulders and steered him across the room until the table was out of sight.
“Why don’t you work over here, darling? Less of all my clutter distracting your brilliant little mind.” His hands were extremely warm. So was his voice.
“But--!” Arthur tried to turn around. His messenger bag swung, bumping into their knees. “All your hard work, I--″
Eames chuckled deeply. There were slight lines around his eyes. “Laminated, darling. Aren’t I just an oracle.”
Arthur sat, placated, at the desk before him, taking out several items from his bag. He was too busy sorting through his notebooks to notice Eames carrying several dripping, ruined papers to the dumpster outside.
Four
Cobb scrunched his eyebrows, squeezing at the wrinkle between them.
Arthur stood opposite him. He still had a suit on, despite it being past midnight, CET.
“Just take a break, Arthur,” Cobb was saying. Arthur still hadn’t forgiven him for the incident with the businessmen.
“No,” he replied. “You know that’s not what I do.” My machines and wires and gears won’t let me was left unsaid.
Cobb sighed and moved across the kitchen, fixing a hot water bottle for Phillipa. His hands were firm as he gripped the kettle to pour steaming water into the hot water bottle, no drops landing on the chequered counter.
“I’ve got it handled here,” Cobb muttered, fixing the top and screwing it on tight. Except he didn’t, because what sane man took his children with him on a dream heist. What was a sufficiently-filled plate was rapidly filling to overflowing; Arthur now not only had to worry about protecting the team with his gathered information, but had to glean particles of wheat from a completely harvested field in a desperate attempt at keeping Mal’s babies safe.
Arthur left the kitchen, throwing over his shoulder, “Let me do what I’ve always done, Cobb. It’s no skin off your nose.” Let my cogs whirr and don’t point it out.
~
Eames took one look at the dark circles beneath Arthur’s eyes and whirled on Cobb so elegantly he was hardly out of breath. “I have an urgent matter I need to discuss with you, Cobb.”
He and Cobb left the room for a secluded, suspicious corridor, probably.
Fingers hot-potatoing over the laptop keyboard, eyes glued to the company receipts, Arthur paid them no mind. He had a job to do.
When Cobb re-entered the room, his shirt collar was ruffled, and his blazer had crumbling pieces of plaster littering the shoulders.
Eames came a few minutes later, carrying a folder neatly labelled ‘Competency To Make Up For Incompetency’. He’d drawn smiley faces into the O’s. Arthur wanted to snap at him—wires in his brain—for interrupting his research but swallowed all complaints at the indecipherable movements underlying Eames’ careful placement of the folder on the table.
“To make your research easier,” Eames said, then departed from out of Arthur’s space. It felt strangely akin to a vacuum with all oxygen being slowly and excruciatingly siphoned out.
The screws and bolts worked as if recently oiled.
Five
A cruise to the Caribbean would have been too expensive, too time-consuming, anyway. A log fire would have smoked out the room, messed with the chemicals coursing through the rubber tubing protruding out of his neck.
“I’m leaving,” Arthur told the room. He received grunts in response.
Strolling along the Thames, clouds and trees and buildings obscuring his view of the London Eye, he released a breath he wasn’t aware he’d been clutching in his chest. There was a certain serenity to knowing you’d completed every research aim, picked apart each angle, scoured through fact upon statistic upon detail.
Arthur had forgotten what that felt like.
The longer he spent in the Business, the longer it took him to compile his meticulous lists, folders, and presentations.
“Brilliant little mind,” Eames had said. It could’ve been condescending, but Arthur felt warm in a spot directly next to the one that glowed whenever he found a particularly useful piece of information. That was over a year ago, now.
Eames had taken the break that everyone urged Arthur to take: holed up somewhere in the Tropics, sipping on alcoholic concoctions like a fever dream. He knew when to stop, everyone said. He wasn’t a damn machine.
Arthur would show them machine.
The problem with machines was that even they needed love, or at the very least, a special amount of care, a little maintenance.
~
The job only pulled through at the last minute because Arthur had caught the mistake. It was so trivial, so seemingly innocuous that it was labelled his fault, slapped onto his forehead like a warning.
It hadn’t been his notes.
He took responsibility, gears working overtime to sort out the mess they’d landed themselves in. When at last the team separated in Heathrow airport, Arthur didn’t bother looking back over his shoulder.
The burner phone should have been thrown away immediately after. Instead, Arthur stared down at the harmless text, typed inscriptions burning their way into the back of his retinas:
Darling—it is no surprise you have a waiting list of people wanting to work with you, you incredible, marvellous invention. (P.S, have a nap, you deserve it.)
The job hadn’t been that big that news would have travelled through the Dream community so quickly. Eames had personally been keeping up with him. The thoughts, this time, were plentiful and useful. They reminded him to take a nap because someone cared.
+ One
“Will you be done after this section?” Eames asked, shrugging his burly shoulders into his jacket. “We could get a bite to eat in, say, half an hour—after you’ve cleaned up--″ he glared in the extractor’s direction— “this mess.”
The wires in his spine made not turning to Eames like a sunflower to the sun impossible. His wires and gears and bolts liked Eames.
“That’s an adequate plan,” he managed. The keys beneath his fingers suddenly appeared to stick.
Eames stopped, surprized, then grinned, darkly, promisingly. “Adequate? Why darling, why not just crawl into my lap right now? I certainly wouldn’t be complaining.”
Arthur desperately tried to press the ENTER key, the BACKSPACE, anything.
“We can reward you for all your hard work, if you want,” Eames continued. “Let you know how proud I am of you. How clever you are for working so much better than everyone else.” He’d stepped forward, hands hooked in trouser pockets.
“Eames,” Arthur breathed.
Half an hour. Now.
Finish their work. Start his own personal project.
He slammed the laptop closed, gathered his coat, and pulled Eames to the exit.
He chose his own personal project and wanted to start working on it now. After all, machines never stopped, but given the proper care, they’d carry on forever.