The First and Simplest Emotion

[scatterbones]

Title: The First And Simplest Emotion
Author: cherry_road
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Minor, minor gore it almost isn't even there, and minor character death.
Word Count: 9,080
Betas: The lovely emilie_kitten and lady_fro. ♥ Also major props to my artist, red_rahl for basically being my soundboard and for creating such a beautiful piece of art to be inspired from. You are fantastic, m'dear, and I hope this fic lives up to your expectations.
Summary: But Eames-if Eames were to find out about Arthur the Android, and Arthur almost snorted at the alliteration, if Eames were to find out... Well, Arthur would miss moments like this.
Author's Notes: Written for the i_reversebang. Do not fear - more will be coming from this 'verse shortly.

To see the absolutely amazing art by red_rahl for both this story and the other written off of the same prompt, click here!

1

“I will not disappoint you, Mr. Eames.”

“I know you won’t, darling.”

2

The question of whether Arthur could feel intense emotions was answered the day Miles died. Some intel Arthur had picked up a few days prior had alerted him to the fact that a group of potential government agents were moving toward their location. This meant absolutely nothing to Miles-they were in Los Angeles, and there could be (and were) a whole host of reasons why government agents would move toward Los Angeles.

Nevertheless, Arthur had been programmed to be paranoid. He realized what Miles didn’t, or couldn’t: that Arthur was the biggest and most threatening reason the government had to be in Los Angeles, and that those agents would not be content to just leave Miles with another warning.

Miles refused to leave the lab, even when Arthur placed all of the information he knew regarding the arrival of law enforcement in a careful and precise manner, intended to persuade. Arthur knew that Miles was stubborn, yes, but not so stubborn as to risk his life for absolutely nothing. What would Arthur do without Miles, his inventor? It wasn’t as if he had many other human acquaintances to rely on.

Arthur constructed his face into a disapproving glare, but Miles didn’t budge. In fact, he seemed to take the whole idea as some sort of a game. “Here, Arthur,” Miles said, an unknown smile on his face, “I will show you how much you shouldn’t worry about me. Get away from here and hide out for a few days, after which the agents will have most likely either gone or gotten what they came for, which is neither you nor me. Come back after those few days and we will see who’s right.”

Annoyed at how reckless Miles was acting, Arthur left, making sure to recharge beforehand. He made his way somewhat inconspicuously around the better parts of Los Angeles, where he felt he was less likely to be involved in violence. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t survive a bullet wound or a knife wound, because he certainly would, just that the people who would be attacking him would start to question why Arthur was not bleeding.

So Arthur wandered the streets, browsing shops and never buying anything, just performing mindless activities to waste his time while he perused the free internet connections available almost everywhere. He researched the American government and acquired a few bits of information regarding himself. He also researched human emotions, a bit of a pastime for him.

Arthur waited three days exactly, down to the hour, before making his way back to Miles. He was worried, of course he was worried, but he didn’t feel it as intensely as his research would suggest. He didn’t feel extremely afraid of what he would find when he opened the door to the laboratory, because he knew what he would find, and his face only showed mild shock at the dead body on the floor.

He wasn’t human, he knew. He didn’t have a fingerprint so anyone investigating the case would be unable to pin him to the murder. There would be no newspapers with the front-page title of Rogue Android Murders Inventor. Arthur’s inventor, the one who had not given him life, exactly, but sentience, had just died a brutal murder and Arthur could only feel vague regret at not forcing Miles further.

It was the day he, paradoxically, felt remorse.

3

“Arthur, I’d like you to meet Eames,” Cobb announced when he entered the main house’s living room. Arthur stood up from his seat on the couch and smiled politely. He wasn’t quite sure what to expect from someone whose international criminal record was-and Arthur was only vaguely exaggerating-a mile long but who presented himself as a rather trusting and reliable person. That persona, Arthur reminded himself, must be precisely why his criminal record was as such.

“Enchanté,” Eames leered in a passable French accent, very obviously eyeing Arthur’s torso as he stuck out his hand. Arthur tightened his jacket more firmly around his abdomen, a bit of a paranoid tick; Eames most certainly couldn’t see through Arthur’s four layers and onto the machinery beneath.

“Hello,” Arthur replied, shaking the hand presented to him strongly and quickly.

“Eames, this is Arthur, the best point man in the business,” Cobb continued as he motioned for everyone to sit down around the coffee table Cobb had improvised as home base.

“So Benjamin has retired at the tender age of thirty five?”

Arthur frowned slightly. Cobb shot a look at Eames and Eames said, “I certainly can recognize the psychology behind repetition until belief.” But he shot a smile at Arthur afterwards, and Arthur figured it was only Eames’ way of joking around.

Eames then sat himself down next to Arthur on the couch while Cobb took the armchair next to him. Arthur shuffled, unnecessarily worried. It had been two long and grueling years since he had first come to Dom Cobb after Miles’ death, the only human Arthur had ever actually met while Miles was alive save for his own inventor, and in that span of time Arthur had easily learned many tricks to being a point man for Cobb’s illicit extraction jobs. Eames was the first human outside of Miles, Cobb, and Cobb’s children that Arthur had met. Cobb’s children didn’t necessarily count, in Arthur’s eye, because they weren’t old enough to fully understand about androids or even suspect that some of the people around them weren’t actually human. That was what Arthur hoped, anyway. But Eames? Eames was an adult who could perfectly well have heard about Miles Thomas’s American government-funded experiments, as well as his death, and Arthur’s sudden appearance in anyone’s records on the dreamsharing front, and then put everything together. Arthur didn’t doubt Eames’ highly-developed reasoning skills.

Arthur had already heard everything Cobb was explaining to Eames. He wasn’t sure why Cobb insisted he stay here for the second debriefing, once they’d gotten waist-deep into this case only to realize that the safest option was to forge the mark’s-a businessman’s-lawyer in order to reveal some inheritance information. Cobb had revealed that he could only passably forge as a female version of himself, or males quite similar to himself, but never for very long. After an explanation of what, exactly, forging in the dreamsharing community meant (because while Arthur looked up many definitions of the phrase to forge online while he was updating his database, none of them seemed to have any relation to dreamsharing), Cobb rushed off to go get Eames from somewhere in southern Asia.

Thus, here Arthur was, sitting next to an unfamiliar human. A human who could probably tell Arthur’s body temperature was just slightly higher than it was supposed to be; that if he touched Arthur’s arm it might not feel exactly as skin, muscle and bones should feel; that Arthur wasn’t blushing, because he had no blood vessels in his face; that Arthur wasn’t human.

Arthur pinched the skin on his left hand quickly, alerting his pain receptors and trying to divert his attention there rather than at his paranoid thoughts. He supposed Miles purposefully made him more paranoid than was necessarily called for as a self-preservation technique, because he was pretty sure if the government ever found him, they would not hesitate to break him and sell him for the worth of his parts.

“Interesting,” Eames commented, eyeing the PASIV device once Cobb finished going over the details of the case. Eames was studying a few pictures of the lawyer he was going to impersonate. “So we have a week until the job?”

Cobb winced. “Unfortunately, yes. Arthur and I are both willing to take a pay cut to compensate for your decreased preparation time.”

“No need.” Eames waved his hand dismissively, then landed it lightly on Arthur’s thigh. Arthur begun to overheat. He was so caught up in the thought of What if he figures it out? that he didn’t realize when Eames’ hand had gone, or that Eames and Cobb had both stood up, the former smirking and the latter starting to clean up some of the research.

Arthur didn’t blush, exactly, but he did avoid Eames’ gaze. As if that would help Eames not to be more suspicious of him.

11

“Remind me again why we’re bribing government officials to get me put into the loony bin?” Eames asked from the passenger seat.

Arthur’s driving skills had improved over the years, but they still left quite a bit to be desired. Mostly Arthur was just bad at making the split-second decisions that are necessary when behind the wheel. He wasn’t bad at splitting his attention between the road and his conversation with Eames, however. “Because you need to tail Edward Moore in the only place he’s allowed to be.” Arthur made a too-quick left turn to avoid a collision with oncoming traffic and swore under his breath. “Also, don’t be so insensitive, Eames. It’s a mental hospital.”

“Duly noted,” Eames replied, staring out the window and only looking slightly put-off by Arthur’s driving.

“You’ll still need to, y’know, act like a delusional schizophrenic while you’re in there.”

Eames barked out a laugh. “Of course I know that, love, that’s the fun part. Though being locked away from you? Not quite as exciting, I must say.”

Arthur forced himself not to smile at another one of Eames’ meaningless flirts. “I’ll be keeping watch over your private room from the air ducts.”

“Exactly. I’ll be locked away from you.”

Arthur only shook his head as he pulled the car to a stop in front of the main doors of the mental hospital. “Good luck, Mr. Eames. I’ll be in communication with you in an hour, once you get into your own room. I called the administration already, they should be expecting you.”

“Lovely,” Eames replied as he opened his passenger door. He smiled at Arthur, then turned a slight grimace toward the building. “Ta, love. Try to work a bit on your driving for when you pick me out of this place, yeah?”

7

“Now that we’re all here,” Cobb started, rolling up the sleeves of his button-down. “We can get down to business.”

Arthur was ready with his moleskine notebook and entirely-overpriced-but-completely-worth-it pen. “SensaGear has come up with a revolutionary idea; apparently they have devised a completely functional and safe way to transfer consciousnesses to different people. VivaTech wants this information but are unable to access it because of SensaGear’s extreme security measures. However, there is one weak area for SensaGear-Edward Moore.” Arthur was thoroughly engrossed in whatever Cobb and Eames and Ariadne and Yusuf were discussing, how exactly they could go about infiltrating a mental hospital to get to a mark and perform an extraction there; Arthur definitely wasn’t cataloguing the ways in which Eames was different to Cobb at all.

Arthur didn’t notice how Eames’ body posture was always more open and relaxed than Cobb’s was, how Eames had a definite air of confidence that many people-many people who also didn’t have cause for such an air, Arthur’s brain helpfully supplied-did not possess. Arthur certainly didn’t notice that, while Cobb and Eames both had this sort of casual intelligence, Eames was much more creative than Cobb’s one-way thinking was, and that Eames was the fire that ignited most of their conversation that afternoon. Arthur did not notice that Eames seemed to treat every interaction as if it were part of an ongoing game that most people did not even know they were playing. Arthur didn’t notice Eames’ small smiles in his direction when he hit a particularly good idea and Cobb nodded at him to take notes.

Most of all, though, Arthur certainly did not notice the way Eames looked at him, open and conspiring, as if they were in on some secret joke together. Arthur didn’t notice how Cobb regarded him with a shadow over his pupils, while Eames truly saw him.

Arthur didn’t notice any of these things at all, and he most certainly didn’t place them into a subfolder in his database with the innocuous title of E.

9

“Do you come up with these systems of organization on your own, darling, or were they truly systems devised thousands of years ago? Systems that you just happened across in your copious amounts of research and have taken a liking to?” Eames asked as he sidled up to Arthur, apparently with nothing better to occupy his time.

“A little bit of both,” Arthur replied, never taking his eyes off his laptop screen. His fingers didn’t even lose their quick rhythm at Eames’ interruption, either.

“I see you aren’t using the handwritten notes in your moleskine, either,” Eames surveyed, plopping himself down on the corner of Arthur’s desk and rummaging through a few papers without truly reading any of it. The papers only listed information on Edward Moore that he already knew.

"I've gone over them so many times that they're unnecessary at this point," Arthur said, mostly to keep himself from saying Because I have a literal photographic memory which would most likely either spurn a drawn-out discussion or stun Eames so much that he would just leave. Eames leaving Arthur to his business was second to, well, Arthur's personal business.

"Ah, I see," Eames replied, smirking. "So you don't need your handwritten notes and you have a complicated organizational system that apparently only you can truly parse?"

"I suppose."

Eames only made a "hmm" sound in agreement as he continued to look at Arthur's face and his laptop. That piqued Arthur's interest, because he wasn't quite sure what Eames was trying to get at-the conversation in which Eames had engaged him seemed inconsequential, at least the surface meaning of it. Eames probably didn't care about how Arthur organized his research as long as Arthur did his job well enough so that Eames could do his job well. But what was Eames trying to get him to divulge?

Arthur got his answer later that afternoon when he stopped over to the kitchenette area to ask Ariadne a question and overheard the end of whatever Eames was trying to say. "He's like a bloody robot, I swear." Eames laughed and then took a sip of his coffee.

Ariadne giggled at the comment, then stopped abruptly where she saw Arthur coming in behind Eames' back. Eames had the nerve to look sheepish when he turned around to face Arthur's unyielding glare.

"Hello, love, Ariadne and I were just-"

"I have a question for Ariadne about the dream layout," Arthur interrupted a little coldly, still eyeing Eames. Ariadne nodded and stepped out in front of the forger, her eyes shining with amusement. She thankfully didn't say anything else.

After Arthur had spoken with her, he made his way back to his own desk and sat down in his chair a little more forcefully than he had really meant to. He didn't know why Eames' comment bothered him so much. Eames had obviously meant it as a joke, and Arthur doubted that Eames would seriously believe he was a robot, even though it was true. But it did mean that Eames was watching Arthur closely and noticing the ways he didn't quite fit in with other humans, the ways in which he betrayed himself. He cursed under his breath and looked over to Eames' desk-he seemed to be immersed in some of his own work, but that could also be a front. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility that Eames was secretly paying attention to Arthur's habits even then.

Fuck, Arthur thought, distressed. His status may become compromised, and he didn't know if Eames was someone he could trust, even though he wanted to trust the forger very badly.

4

Their first job went well enough, even if Arthur found out Cobb was actually serious about splitting their share in order to pay for Eames’ rushed, if not near perfect, work. Arthur was astounded the first time they went into the dreamscape and he saw Eames try on the lawyer’s skin. It was unreal to see Eames as one being and then transform himself so entirely into another completely different being. He wouldn’t ever admit aloud that it made him forget about freaking out over Eames’ presence and, for the first time, admire Eames for the talents he possessed.

Eames invited Arthur out for drinks to celebrate a successful job. Arthur was astonished that he himself contemplated the idea, even though he knew that alcohol would mess with his internal wiring. He almost felt bad when declining Eames’ invitation, if only for the disappointed expression that flashed across Eames’ face before he smoothed it out into a smaller smile with a, “Perhaps another time, then.”

10

Arthur rubbed his hands over his eyes out of habit and willed himself to focus on the laptop screen in front of him. He knew that Eames hadn't gone home, and his self-preservation instincts had kept him from recharging until Eames left even though it was making work incredibly difficult. His battery was about to die, but damn it, if he was going to recharge in the warehouse it would be when there wasn’t anyone else around to see him.

It wasn't the logistics of the mental hospital that was the problem. Finding out the layout, hand-picking a room for Eames that would be both close to Edward's Moore's room and easy for Arthur to access through the ventilation system, and figuring out how he was going to keep getting in and out of that hospital without being seen by the hospital staff; all of that stuff was the easy part. The difficult part was getting enough background information on Moore so that Eames didn't fly in blind, trying to get information from a paranoid schizophrenic who most likely would not even attempt to trust Eames. He was fruitlessly hoping for Eames' natural talents to pick up the slack, but Eames shouldn't be held responsible for that much, Arthur knew that.

If only SensaGear hadn’t gotten rid of Edward Moore’s information like they needed to be rid of him that badly… Arthur sighed and leaned back in his chair, hands still resting on the keyboard as he read over the other note document in his personal database. Outwardly, he appeared to be staring blankly at the screen of his laptop, his eyes unblinking, which was probably why Eames decided he was going to get Arthur's attention before he left.

Eames' hand on Arthur's left wrist was surprising and unwelcome-if only for the fact that Arthur sort of lost his shit whenever anyone touched him. What if Eames could feel that underneath Arthur's three layers, there wasn't muscle and bone but flexible metal and wires? What if Eames could feel that Arthur was actually just circuitry and artificial intelligence? What would he do then? Would he yell at Arthur for not telling him sooner? Would he go out and sell the information to the highest bidder, convinced that robots couldn’t hold down relationships? Would he even still look at Arthur the same way he does, sometimes, all the time, the way Ariadne and Yusuf don’t quite get to, the way Cobb could never?

Arthur tensely turned his head around to look up at Eames’ face as he said, "Arthur, darling, it's really quite late." Neither of them moved when their eyes met, save for Eames' subtle petting. Arthur was again reminded of how, if anyone else were to find out about his robotic nature and flee in horror, the only thing he would be worried about would be if he or she went to the government to divulge his location. But Eames-if Eames were to find out about Arthur the Android, and Arthur almost snorted at the alliteration, if Eames were to find out...

Well, Arthur would miss moments like this, where Eames was looking at him so openly and so…so tenderly that Arthur momentarily forgot that he wasn't a human, because Eames doesn't see him that way. Eames so carefully believed that Arthur is a human-a human with fantastic abilities bordering on what would be considered robotic, yes, and Arthur can still replay that memory crystal-clear in his head over and over again, and it leaves him feeling as though he hasn't recharged in two weeks-and, because of Eames' sureness in that sense, Arthur believed he was human, too. He believed in that instant. Arthur’s only focus is on Eames' face, so vulnerable, so obviously concerned for his well being. It was truly stunning.

But Arthur couldn’t let Eames know that. Just because Arthur was a ridiculous android, trying to pawn himself off as a human in the presence of one of his colleagues, does not mean that he actually had to give in to such an impulse. He couldn’t let himself get too reckless with Eames, because Eames was still a criminal who disappears for months at a time and Arthur couldn’t depend on him with this large of a secret, with this huge liability.

So it was with a strain that, as Eames gently started to pull Arthur around in the chair to more properly face him, Arthur jerked his hand back out of Eames' grip and breathed out, "Was there anything you needed?"

And the moment was gone.

Eames's face closed off slightly, not a large change but a change significant enough to note for someone who was looking for it. Arthur was looking right at Eames' face, his own most guarded and blank look on, trying to put tender thoughts of Eames' hand settling on his own aside.

"It's late, Arthur. I figured you'd want to go home, and since I'm headed out now I figured we could catch a cab together," Eames answered easily, leaning himself up against Arthur's desk as he finished buttoning up his jacket.

"No, thank you," came Arthur’s stiff reply. "I have some more research to be doing."

"Forgive me for saying so, but you don't look like you could keep awake for another fifteen minutes, love," Eames said gently, leaning into Arthur's personal space.

Arthur bristled and opened up one of his note documents, only in order to keep up appearances. "I'll be fine. Good night, Eames."

Arthur didn't watch Eames retreat out of the warehouse, but he did listen to the soft sound his shoes made on the tiled floor.

5

"Arthur, come look at this." Cobb's voice cut through the still air of the backyard. James and Philippa were playing on the play structure, James cheerfully gliding down the slide then climbing the rope ladder back up while Philippa had an intense lesson for her invisible schoolchildren underneath. Arthur was sitting in a lawn chair, sleeves rolled up (but he had remembered his skin replacement for his forearms, this time, so the kids wouldn't ask questions about why Uncle Arthur's arms were made of black metal) with his laptop sitting comfortably on his lap. He wasn't plugged into it, because a cord sticking out of the back of his head wasn't quite inside his circle of comfort while he was both outside and in the presence of people, but he was browsing through some philosophy e-books.

"What?"

"I think I've got a new job lined up for us." Cobb opened the patio door and stepped onto the deck, a glass of ice water in one hand and a manila folder in the other. Arthur took the folder and opened it up to see some information regarding two rival companies (so simple corporate espionage, not something they were unfamiliar with), a seemingly impossible idea about transferring consciousness, and their mark: Edward Moore, a paranoid schizophrenic at the nearby Hope Mental Hospital.

As Arthur read through the finer details, Cobb continued speaking. "I was thinking we'd need a few more people on this job. Probably Ariadne," Cobb's voice got slightly wistful and Arthur consulted his internal database-Ariadne Carter, architecture student in Paris, created a wonderfully modern and slightly mystical small-town for the Henderson job three months ago, has just started classes two weeks previous but could probably take some time off to fly out to LA to design some levels for them if Cobb asked-and nodded his head, imperceptibly, as Cobb carried on without interference, "And I think we're going to need a good actor, someone who could infiltrate the hospital and keep an eye on Edward Moore. I was thinking Eames." Cobb slanted his eyes at Arthur, questioningly, and Arthur's obvious tell-stillness-gave him away once again.

Eames. It had been six months since Cobb and he had worked with Eames. Arthur and Eames had worked on a total of five jobs together in the last three years, since Arthur had become Cobb’s point man; mostly, this was due to the fact that many jobs didn't require forgers, and Eames often had other jobs where he worked as an extractor, whereas Arthur exclusively worked as the point man to Cobb’s extractor. More often than not, however, Eames had illegitimate real-world crime jobs in which to take part, and couldn't be bothered to mess around with pretending to be a mark's daughter or mistress or long-lost friend from graduate school.

But Arthur couldn't deny the anticipation and, strangely, excitement at getting to work with the man again. He remembered every single job he and Eames had worked on together, and all of them were pretty much the best-executed jobs that he’d been a part of. It would be extra security, Arthur thought, to have Eames there when their mark's subconscious would most likely be unstable.

He met Cobb's eyes and Cobb continued talking, not looking away from Arthur's face. "I already called Eames and he says we should get a chemist, Yusuf, on the job. Eames says he's working with him now and he's doing a good job. Do you think he's trustworthy?"

Arthur realized the request for what it was: Dig up some information on Yusuf to see if he's worth buying a plane ticket from Africa for this job. Not having a last name to go by didn't hinder Arthur's quick research on his laptop; Arthur figured that Yusuf wasn't an especially common name, after all. After a few minutes the worst thing Arthur found out about Yusuf was an unauthorized dream den beneath his shop in Mombasa, but they hardly had a leg to stand on regarding illegal activities, so he replied to Cobb, "He's fine."

"Good." Cobb sipped his water. "We'll start in three days. I know you like to do your preliminary research."

Arthur nodded, because it was true, but the first thing he pulled up on his laptop was a timetable flight from Mombasa to Los Angeles. It didn't hurt to know when Eames would be flying in, nevermind that this wasn't technically part of Arthur's regular initial research.

12

After dropping Eames off at Hope Mental Hospital, Arthur drove around for an hour. Actually, he drove to an abandoned parking lot, checked the ammunition in the Glock hidden underneath the driver's seat, and went through the procedural notes in his database for an hour. He was to go back to the hospital, reach the air ducts through a basic hole in the air conditioning system near the back of the building, and make his way silently to Eames' assigned room to check in and make sure things would start as smoothly as possible. But too much had been left to chance, and it was making Arthur nervous. What if the attendants hadn’t put him in the correct room? What if the staff refused to leave him alone on his first night? What if they didn't believe Eames was actually schizophrenic? What if-

No. Arthur stilled, blinked. He knew Eames could-and has-fooled anyone, even Arthur himself. It was explicitly in his job description, that he inhabit another personality so thoroughly that a person's subconscious doesn't register the foreign presence. Eames could surely handle this. Arthur just needed to calm down and stop being so paranoid. The job was still in the research stages. Eames’ job was to tail Edward Moore to find out more about who he was and if their plan of one fantastical level (which Ariadne had drawn up gleefully, designing large trees, twinkling lights, brightly-colored tents of all sizes; Eames said, "He's schizophrenic, not a little kid. He doesn't need to go to the fair," and Ariadne argued, "We agreed that an unassuming landscape was best until you figured out what we really needed after you get to know Moore," and Cobb snorted at the play on words) was going to be able to get the job done or if they’d have to start over completely.

Arthur glanced at the clock shown on his dashboard and put his car into gear. Showtime.

8

"Good morning," Eames announced as he sauntered into the warehouse that morning. "I come bearing gifts!"

Arthur looked up to see Eames carrying a tray full of coffee cups with a logo that displayed that they were from the small-time coffee shop down the street. Arthur arched an eyebrow.

"Don't be so dour, love," Eames told him when he approached Arthur's desk after handing out all of the other coffees to the team. He also had, apparently, a list of specific coffees and lattes that the team had asked him to buy, because this stunt apparently made him The Coffee Man according to Yusuf and backed up by Ariadne. "It's coffee, to help you start your day, not that you don't look as impeccable as always."

Arthur scrunched up his face a little. "I don't like coffee."

"What?" Eames had a look of exasperation, surprise, and perhaps a bit of disappointment. "It's the quintessential caffeinated beverage of the American populace! Whoever detests coffee detests their nation."

"I guess I don't have very much national pride, then." Arthur shrugged, thinking It's crazy how little. After all the government has decidedly not done for me. "I don't know, I've never really had a taste for it."

"Well, then," Eames replied. He left the cup on Arthur's desk, anyway, perhaps in the hope that Arthur would change his mind.

Arthur didn't take a sip. Eames grabbed it and dumped it in the sink at the end of the day.

Unfortunately for Arthur, that wasn't the end of it. The next day, after Eames had delivered the preferred coffees to the team, he plopped another cup down on Arthur's desk.

"I thought I said I'm not too fond of coffee."

"You did," Eames acknowledged. "But you said nothing about tea." Eames skillfully laid out a host of different teabags leaning up against Arthur's coffee cup in a way that made Arthur think, exasperatedly, that Eames was ridiculous. Of course, Arthur already knew this to be true.

Arthur sighed at Eames' grin. "I'm not too fond of tea, either."

Eames' face fell a little and Arthur hastened to add, "But thank you for the, uh, water."

Eames walked away from Arthur's desk again, hopefully to review some notes. This time, Arthur took the cup of hot water to their little kitchenette (after he had neatly stacked each of the teabags; perhaps Ariadne or Cobb would make better use of them, he didn't want to waste them like he had wasted the coffee) and placed an exorbitant amount of ice cubes into it. Once the water was at least room temperature, Arthur began drinking it.

Arthur caught Eames' smile at him as Eames left the building later that evening.

The following day, Eames brought Arthur a cup of ice-cold water. Arthur smiled at him, a little, and Eames beamed. "So you like water. Just...water, then?"

Arthur nodded. If he drank anything else, his inner circuitry and machinery would be irreversibly damaged, especially since Miles was gone. But Eames didn't know that, didn't need to know that.

Eames shot him a quizzical look, but continued to bring Arthur cold water every morning until he had to go in for some reconnaissance. It was, strangely, something he missed.

13

Arthur easily slipped around security and into the small entryway he'd made for himself near the air conditioning system. Once in the ducts, he closed off the opening-something he hadn't thought of the first time he came in to check on Eames, and he had almost been attacked with squirrels running through the system. Cobb had told him that he needed to stay and catch all of the squirrels, because the security staff was bound to get suspicious about small animals running around their facility. It was not a pleasant experience. But Arthur was not an android who made the same mistakes twice.

Before arriving above Eames' room, Arthur had to take off his clothes. It was too hot in the ducts, and his machinery might not work correctly otherwise. Unfortunately, this left his plastic outer shell exposed (he refused to call it skin, because what he had versus the skin-like replacement he could use occasionally, which didn't allow for as much air circulation, were two completely different things). It was true that he hijacked the inefficient security in the air conditioning system, but he could still talk face-to-face with Eames through his ceiling vent. Eames hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary so far, so Arthur counted things to be going smoothly.

Things were not going exactly as smoothly as Arthur would have liked, however. Once he reached Eames' room, he found it completely empty. Arthur unsuccessfully attempted to hack into the main security system to get a look around the whole facility, but his internal WiFi connection up there was shoddy at best, so he was forced to remain waiting, incredibly curious and a tad bit worried.

After twenty tense minutes, Eames finally appeared. Or, rather, was unceremoniously pushed into his room and the door locked after him.

Eames stood, touched his jaw, then looked up at Arthur in the vent and smiled. "Hello, love. Sorry about the delay."

At least he had remembered that Arthur was supposed to be there, and that he was late. "What the hell was that?"

"It was the corridor's community time," Eames replied, pacing back and forth, still fingering his jaw. "They wouldn't let us come back to the rooms for another hour unless we caused some trouble." Eames looked up at Arthur again, and from this angle Arthur could see where a large bruise would start to form on his jaw, and how he was still bleeding slightly from his lip. "Unfortunately, the trouble I caused seemed to trigger our dear Mr. Moore."

"Are we compromised?" Arthur starting going through some back-up plans in his head.

"No, no. Not at all, darling, he doesn't know why I'm really here." Eames waved his hand. "But he doesn't trust me one bit anymore."

Arthur bristled. "I could have waited, you didn't have to endanger yourself and the job in order to-"

"I did," Eames interrupted, a serious expression on his face. Arthur stopped talking. "I did because it has given me very useful knowledge about Edward Moore."

Arthur looked at him silently, and when it was apparent Eames was waiting for a cue, Arthur supplied it. "Yes?"

"It seems we have underestimated the paranoid aspect of paranoid schizophrenic." Eames rubbed his jaw absently and he winced, supposedly forgetting that the area was sore. "You remember we were getting on okay, before?"

"Yeah, he seemed to trust you." Arthur shifted, eyeing Eames more warily.

"Well, he now thinks I'm part of an international conspiracy set up to take over his life." Eames sighed.

"So, what, he tried to punch you?"

"We had a bit of a scuffle, yes," Eames laughed a little. "But he also has this delusion, a friend of his who works for his security team? I could forge him and I'm sure I could get the information that way."

Arthur nods. "Do you know what he looks like?"

"That's where you come in, love." Eames smiled ruefully. "As part of the cognitive-behavioral therapy they're trying on him this go around, his therapist asked him to describe this man. If you could get access to the therapist's notes for me..."

Of course Arthur could. "Sure." A beat. "So we basically have to start from scratch?"

"Afraid so. Keep me posted, darling, and tell Ariadne she won't need to grovel to my superior intellect until after we complete the job."

Arthur huffed out a small laugh. "I'll be back in two days. Should we move our time around, in case you have any more mishaps?" Arthur didn't want to add that he did not exactly enjoy seeing Eames in pain for no reason.

"If you could come at around ten at night, that would be lovely," Eames replied, lying down on his bed. Arthur nodded as he started to move back down the corridor. He heard the, "Goodnight, darling. Safe travels," through the air duct system when he was already five feet away from it and smiled.

6

Arthur was recharging in his personal living room when Cobb came and knocked on the door. Arthur appreciated that, even though Cobb owned the small guest house on his property, he recognized that Arthur thought of it as his safe haven. Just because he wasn't human didn't mean he didn't want to feel secure.

"Yes?" Arthur called, standing up and unlocking the door before he could really think about the reasons why Cobb would be coming to see him at such a late hour. He pulled out the cord from the back of his head at the last minute, reminded again of Cobb's shadowed eyes and his inability to get past Arthur's machinery.

"Listen, I know we're going to be working with Eames again-" Cobb started, taking small steps into Arthur's living room.

Arthur frowned. "What does Eames have to do with anything?" Arthur didn't mention that his laptop still had a map and timetable open of where Eames was and when he was supposed to arrive in Los Angeles from earlier that afternoon.

"I just know how you and Eames are."

Arthur frowned even deeper.

Cobb sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I just-if anything happens, if Eames tries something, you have to be prepared to let him know."

"Let him know?" Arthur felt lost in this conversation, his mind working frantically to connect the pieces of Cobb's fragmented conversation. He was never exceptionally good at parsing Cobb's vague terms and metaphors.

"Let him know what you are," Cobb said lightly as he eyed Arthur. His stance was defensive.

Arthur’s voice turned low and slightly cold without Arthur’s consent, "What the fuck, Cobb." It was completely out of Cobb's realm to even think that Arthur would tell Eames about him being an android, and much less for Cobb to say it so degradingly.

"I didn't mean it like that." Cobb frowned, eyeing Arthur skeptically. "I just meant-Eames doesn't see that you're different, and I don't think it would be fair of you, if you really liked him, to keep him in the dark." Cobb paused, searching Arthur's face. "That's it."

Arthur nodded, once, then turned away to go back to his laptop and his charger, not comfortable with the conversation any longer. Cobb let himself out.

The thing was...Arthur didn't know how he felt about Eames. He knew that he felt a fondness for him, a lowered sense of his own inhibitions. He didn't feel so tightly wound up and protective of himself like when he was with Ariadne and Yusuf. He didn't feel as though he was dirty like he did when he was with Cobb. But Arthur didn't know what any of that meant, exactly.

He knew that he must not be able to feel very many intense emotions, if Miles' death was anything to go by. Emotions were difficult. They were subjective. Arthur had no base for comparison for the things he supposedly 'felt' with Eames. He had stories and research, sure, pages upon pages of notes that he’d taken over the years, learning about human emotions and what they feel like and how to deal with them. But he wasn’t human, and all of the metaphors in the world couldn’t help him to truly comprehend human emotions. How could he, an android, be able to understand subtle emotional clues that humans were so adept at figuring out?

Arthur sighed and plugged his cord back into his head.

14

The night before the extraction was set to take place, Arthur and Eames had a last minute meeting. Arthur made his way expertly through the air ducts by now, not having to consult the map in his head even once. He tapped softly on the Eames' vent.

"Hello, darling," Eames called out. He was sitting on his bed and not looking at the ceiling vent, wearing a blue tank top instead of his usual white t-shirt, and the tattoos took Arthur by surprise. It wasn't as if Arthur didn't know they were there, in a rational sense; he had even seen them underneath Eames' white t-shirt. But now they were right there, unfiltered, and Eames didn't mind Arthur seeing them. Eames so often wore largely patterned button-downs and jackets on the job, and now he was in very casual clothes. Arthur's brain circuitry went only a little haywire.

Arthur snapped himself out of his reverie, confused at what his lack of focus and its cause even meant. "Hey," Arthur replied smoothly. "I got Ariadne to redesign the dream to fit Moore's home, per your request. You're going to go into the home after five minutes of dream time. Cobb will be there as backup in case you need him, he's going to be behind the door of the den. Moore should stay in the living room. Ariadne’s the dreamer and she’ll be in the house next door." Arthur doesn't mention that he'll be around waiting to pick off projections, or that Eames should cover for him if Edward Moore sees Arthur shooting projections all over the place. It's always implied.

"All right." Eames sighed.

Arthur looked at Eames more carefully. He didn't notice anything physically out of the ordinary, except for the bruise on his jaw which was almost completely healed. "What is it? Is there anything wrong with the job?"

"No, no, everything should be fine." Eames huffed. "I've just had a bit of a trying day."

Arthur figured that any day where he had to constantly be another person when in any sort of company whatsoever would have been a trying day. Then again, he wasn't Eames and he didn't essentially act for a living. He also didn't look like he had gotten into any more fist fights with their mark, however. "What happened?" Arthur asked at length, and he wasn't all that surprised to find that he actually wanted to know.

"Had a visitor today," Eames replied, locking his hands together and not meeting Arthur's gaze. "Apparently they recorded me into their books and an old teammate of mine heard I'd gone crazy."

"What the fuck, they weren't supposed to leave any trace of you in their records, I specifically told them not to."

Eames shrugged. "I know you did, darling, but they aren't the most competent bunch. They still keep letting me in the same room as Moore even when Moore is a second away from strangling me."

"You could take him," Arthur replied easily.

"But they don't know that," Eames said, and Arthur had to agree.

They sat in silence for a moment, Arthur looking at Eames and Eames looking at his crossed hands. "What happened with this teammate of yours, that shook you so badly?" Arthur asked in a quieter voice.

Eames shrugged, then scratched at his bruise even though it still made him wince. "He was always a right arse, and I tried to work with him as little as possible. Almost left me to the Thai authorities after a particularly fucked-up job. Has gotten me shot more than once." Arthur stilled.

"And what about today?"

"Still a fucker," Eames said quickly, with heat. "Laughed in my face, said he knew all along something wasn't right with me, said he was glad I was locked up with all the other crazies. And fuck, Arthur, I know I'm not schizo and I wouldn't really take offense to it personally but there are people here who have legitimate mental issues and he has no-no fucking right to disrespect them like that." Eames was almost yelling by the end.

Arthur nodded even though Eames couldn't see him. And it was such a welcome change from before, when Eames had said, "Remind me again why we’re bribing government officials to get me put into the loony bin?” and Arthur had scolded him for being inconsiderate. That Eames had somehow mentally matured since before, that he now defended people who couldn't help what they were and what they had become, that he might have a new understanding of such people. He might be able to understand me, Arthur thought, and for once didn't quite try to bury the thought.

"You're better than that, Eames. You are so much better than that asshole." Eames looked up to the ceiling vent, finally, and Arthur could see in his eyes that he was troubled. "Forget about him, who the fuck cares? He doesn't matter." Arthur paused while Eames seemed to take in what he had to say. "The job matters. You matter."

Eames made a noncommittal noise and nodded. Arthur could tell he still wasn't convinced, but Arthur didn't really know what else to do.

"When's the job?" Eames said, softer than before.

Arthur welcomed the subject change, since he was sort of flying by his theoretical knowledge of human emotions and how to deal with them, and he didn't feel very secure. "It will be in Moore's room. The extraction is set for tomorrow evening. I'll have Moore ready." Eames nodded, and Arthur was struck by a thought that was suddenly very important to him. "I will not disappoint you, Mr. Eames." Arthur said it carefully, a little bit slower and softer than his usual speech. He desperately needed to make that point clear to Eames, that Arthur would never fuck him over like his previous teammate, that Arthur wouldn't leave him hanging on a job. Arthur may not have been human but he understood the concept of loyalty, and it was something that ran deep with him. Arthur hadn't been lying when he said that Eames mattered.

"I know you won't, darling," Eames replied, a little bit soft around the edges. He wasn't looking at Arthur through the ceiling vent but Arthur knew, he knew that Eames meant it.

15

Of course, the pre-extraction meeting with Eames had left Arthur a little out of sorts. The next day at work, while everyone was just reviewing what they had to do and the information they needed and the layout of the dream, Arthur was having a bit of crisis sitting at his desk. He appeared to be reviewing his notes on his laptop, but in fact was absently scrolling while his mind was working overtime and his circuitry started to run hot.

He hadn't known he could feel like he was feeling with regard to any human being. Miles had been his inventor, a man who created him from nothing, who gave him sentience, who gave him-for lack of a better word-his own personality, and at the end of Miles' life Arthur had felt only regret at not being able to prevent his death. He didn't feel close at all to Cobb, though he was grateful Cobb gave Arthur skills and a job and a place to live and a life; he had only felt a vague sense of sympathy for Cobb when he learned of Mal’s death, back when Miles was still alive, but that was hardly anything to base a solid relationship on. He thought James and Philippa were cute, but he didn't have a certain fondness or warmth for them; the Cobb children were only children, not fully grown adults, and there wasn't anything special about them as far as Arthur was concerned. Ariadne was nice and intelligent, Yusuf did his job well, but Arthur didn't feel...well, anything for them besides professional respect.

But Eames.

Eames was a different story entirely. Arthur figured it must have been something that had been building and building ever since he and Eames met that afternoon, on that job where Cobb and Arthur had gotten themselves too deep and needed another team member, where neither of them had done all of the research. But Eames had saved them, and had taken a liking to Arthur. Arthur startled at the thought that Eames had been flirting with him pretty consistently ever since, and Eames must really like him, then, if he hadn't given up on Arthur yet.

There was a certain warmness to Eames when he was around Arthur, an interaction that surely could not have been faked. He seemed calm, happy even, to be in Arthur's presence. Arthur didn't really get that from other people. Eames also saw him as a human, not as some disjointed piece of machinery; he sought to understand Arthur as a whole and not just as the sum of his parts, and for that Arthur thought he would have practically fallen for the man, anyways.

It was a bit of an unwise choice, however, because even though Eames made Arthur feel human, that didn’t mean that Arthur was anything but an android. In fact, that was the main reason that Arthur had been steadily pushing him away. Who wanted to be in a relationship with someone you know isn’t human? How would they even know that Arthur wasn’t faking it? How would Arthur know he wasn’t just going by what he had read about?

Arthur was still sort of reeling from this realization as everyone piled into their cars, each driving independently to Hope Mental Hospital at different, pre-arranged times. Arthur had called ahead and had the on-call night staff secure Edward Moore's room. They fed him a sedative in his evening meal, and Arthur sincerely fucking hoped they hadn't fucked up this time. Edward Moore should, with the sedative Arthur sent along to them, continue to be knocked out until eleven that night, so when Arthur arrived a little after eight, Edward Moore was still unconscious.

Arthur smiled and set down the PASIV on the bed next to Moore. Cobb came in, with Ariadne and Eames behind him. Yusuf filtered in after them, closing the door securely behind him. Arthur started to set up the leads and everyone took their places.

Cobb took his lead from Arthur and inserted it into his left wrist, lying down on the floor. Ariadne took the next lead and leaned herself up against the opposite wall. Arthur put his own lead into his wrist (he didn’t necessarily need the Somnacin to connect his consciousness to the PASIV device, yet it would make everyone suspicious if he didn’t use a lead like everyone else, and he didn’t really mind cleaning the Somnacin from his internal cavities, anyway)and leaned himself against the edge of the bed. He looked over at Eames laying himself on the floor.

Eames was back to his white t-shirt, but Arthur could see the blue tank top underneath. Arthur gave him a small smile as he handed the lead over to the forger, and Eames looked shocked and pleased.

"Sweet dreams," Yusuf said as he depressed the Somnacin release button on the PASIV, and the next thing Arthur knew, he was standing on the sidewalk a couple houses down from Moore's home with a couple firearms hidden in his clothes.

16

After they woke from the job-successfully, Arthur thought a little giddily, because a successful job has never been something he didn't feel the need to be grateful for-Arthur packed up the PASIV and each of them filed out into the parking lot with Edward Moore still unconscious in his bed.

Arthur placed the PASIV in the trunk of his car. He stepped back to close it, but Eames came from out of nowhere, seemingly, and slammed it shut.

Arthur looked at the forger in slight surprise. Eames grinned and said, "D'you mind if I drive, darling? No offense meant, but you're kind of shit."

A small laugh fought its way from Arthur's throat. "That's really true." Arthur pulled the keys from his pocket and tossed them to Eames. "Have at it."

Once they were situated in Arthur's car, Eames visibly relaxed. "I'm so bloody glad to be a free man again."

Arthur nodded. "It's good to have you back." He smiled, and this time Arthur didn't try to hold anything back, wasn't aiming to distance himself from Eames-he knew how he felt and he was going to embrace it.

Eames shot him a grin and placed his hand comfortably on the gear shift. "You know, I've always had a bit of a soft spot for point men who care deeply for my well-being when it's somewhat unnecessary."

"Is that so?" Arthur kept his gaze on Eames' face. The car was silent until they came to their next red light.

Eames turned his gaze to meet Arthur's face and said, "Would you like to go out for drinks to celebrate?" His face was serious and his eyes were hopeful.

And Arthur got it now. Arthur understood what Eames was trying to get from him, that Eames was never really concerned with the drinks at all. Each time Eames asked him out for drinks at the end of each and every job they had ever worked together, Eames wasn't looking to just celebrate the end of a successful job. Arthur got it the same way that he now got how humans could deal with emotions. The past twenty four hours had been a bombardment of feelings and information, but Arthur could deal with it, now, could deal with human relations and emotions, so he responded, "Yes,” and placed his hand over Eames’ on the gearshift.