bummed cigarettes, 2011, 5.3k
Dec. 8th, 2019 02:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beanariethis is another one that's part of a series, another one that involved plot so i couldn't deal. in this verse, eames and arthur and ariadne were running scams on the street together, then ariadne left, then the boys were busted, eames deported and arthur essentially drafted. it all got very convoluted in my head i think but i was having fun.
-
Mal Miles has been interested in architecture since she was in utero. At least, that's what her father likes to tell everyone. He isn't completely off the mark, though, so she's never disputed it. Even after she gets her degree and starts shopping around for a job, she still stops by his flat twice a week with takeaway Indian food, continuing their mission to find the best curry in Paris.
"Sweetheart," he says, kissing her cheek. "There's something I simply must show you."
The next thing she knows, they're buttering crumpets in her gran's flat outside London, the one that was sold when Mal was thirteen, a year after she spent six weeks there waiting for her parents to sort out their divorce.
It's the most amazing thing. At first it's a brilliant way of reliving memories in four dimensions. But really it's so much more than that. He shows her that it's actually a world, one with its own rules, one she can add to and manipulate to suit her whim. Intoxicated, she goes back as many times as he'll allow. They recreate the Oktoberfest he took her to when she was seventeen, because no daughter of Stephen Miles could grow to adulthood without an appreciation for good beer. She builds landscapes she saw only in paintings. American plains, mountain peaks in Chile. And she changes them.
Then she finds out the reason her father was given the device. He's meant to be training his students and recommending the most talented for a project with the military.
"I need to be on that list," she tells him.
"You'd be going down a rabbit hole there, pet," he warns, his hand out to accept the cup of tea in her hand.
She smiles and pulls the mug further out of his reach. "Put me on the list, Dr. Miles."
Her only regret is having to leave her boyfriend behind in Paris. The distance will make them stronger, though. Or it will be the thing that breaks them apart. Either way, they will end up where they're supposed to be. Letting this opportunity pass her by wouldn't change their fate.
So she relocates to San Diego, along with Willem Mondriaan, Nicholas Aichel and Jeremy Tong, the other architect-dreamers. Mondriaan and Aichel rarely speak to her outside of work discussions. Tong speaks entirely too much, about things like hydroelectricity and fuel injection systems that run on corn oil.
The architects are twitchy, intimidated by their surroundings. The dozen enlisted men assigned to escort the architects live up to their mindless, blood-lusting stereotype on a depressing level. Her only source of decent conversation is Dr. Breakspeare, the medical officer with the light Jamaican accent. The baby-faced private she tends to bump into at the cafeteria on Friday afternoons shows promise, though. The label on his uniform says "Strand", which she thinks is lovely in an indefinably romantic kind of way. Strand is quiet as a mouse and he would look about fourteen if not for his eyes. What she finds most endearing is that she's never caught him outside without a book.
"What is your first name?" she asks him one day. She takes a drag from the cigarette he allowed her to steal from his hand.
"Arthur," he says, and a slight flush rises in his cheeks.
Such a child. What is he doing in this place? "Don't be embarrassed. I think it suits you."
"I'm not embarrassed." He reclaims his cigarette. "I'm just tired of being called Pfc. Poindexter."
"What does Poindexter even mean? I've always wondered."
"It means they think they know me." His expression turns wry. "I used to go by Charlie," he admits. "It's my middle name."
"Arthur," she says with a decided nod.
Even though it shouldn't be up to her, he shrugs as if he doesn't mind at all. "Arthur," he agrees, smiling a little.
o0o
It's probably cruel to say that she actively hates someone's mind, but Spc. Yadao. Jesus, Spc. Yadao. Inside he's all hyper-violence and gore and blaring death metal. One day all his projections turn into zombies. No one, not even Yadao, knows how he did that.
At the cafeteria, the people seem too close all of a sudden. She can feel teeth on her forearm, her ankle, her throat.
Mal trips on her own feet, stumbling into Arthur like a drunk.
"You okay?" he asks, eyes wider than normal.
She runs a hand over the right side of her neck, feeling for blood mixed with saliva. Her pulse thrums almost reassuringly against her fingers. "I can't go back in there just now," she says, because she can't honestly say 'yes'.
The way he guides her by the elbow tells her that he has, had, a girlfriend, one who was quite a bit smaller than he.
Or a sister or a mother, but she prefers to think that it was a girlfriend.
They sit at a bench outside, where he lets her chain-smoke several of his Newports and they watch a male and female cadet play keep-away with a bag of chips while there are no superior officers around to stop them. His arm is around her waist, his other hand is stretched toward the sky, and she's grunting and laughing as she jumps for the chips.
Mal turns her gaze to Arthur's secretive, wistful little smile. "You have someone," she says.
A muscle goes pop in his jaw. "I did. He was-" He cuts himself off as he realizes what he just said. A look of fear passes across his face.
"You have a way out," she whispers, astonished. "Why haven't you taken it?"
"There's no draft, Mal. I'm here because I want to be." He notices that he's folding his paperback in half and stops himself. "This might be hard for someone like you to understand, but I don't have anything else."
"I'm going to change that," she says.
"You are."
"Yes." She meets his gaze straight on, challenging. "Anyway, what about-"
"Gone. Deported, presumably."
"You don't know for sure?"
He looks away. "Cops and lawyers, they don't fall all over themselves to tell you what happened to the people you got busted with."
"Oh, Arthur. Dearest."
o0o
It takes five weeks to use the right combination of words on the right combination of people, but in the end, Arthur has been assigned to Project Sandman.
And he's the replacement for Yadao. It's fabulous when things just fall into place like that.
He sets himself apart right from the beginning. While the others, the grunts, content themselves blowing great, gaping holes in projections and testing each other's pain tolerance, Arthur is interested in the structure and content of the dream. He goes under and instantly starts changing things. She feels horrible when the projections turn on him like a frothing school of piranhas, especially when they belong to her.
"Strand could be an architect," she proposes after a debriefing.
"He's not here to build," Lieutenant Colonel Swearingen says. "We've got you civilians for that."
This position is astonishingly short-sighted, but she knows not to argue. He's dwarfed by the scope of this project, that's clear for all to see. He needs to keep things labeled in neat boxes to be able to manage it all. That means being very rigid about things like titles and tasks and job assignments.
They kind of semi somewhat ignore Swearingen's edict. Amongst the fighting and the torture and the death, Mal finds pockets of time and space that she pulls Arthur into. And she shows him how to be an architect.
In their eighth dream, he builds her the Eiffel Tower. It's quite small, and in the wrong part of the city entirely.
"It's never looked more beautiful," she says, meaning every word.
Arthur doesn't say anything, but his eyes crinkle with pleasure.
o0o
It doesn't take long for Mal to decide that Arthur doesn't have enough fun (read: any at all) and builds him a nightclub. They don't have long before the techs shut down the lab for the night, but this hour of dream-time at least is just for the two of them.
She downs a shot of Goldschlager at the bar and smiles, relishing the familiar burn of cinnamon. They need to find some place where they can do this top-side. If only Arthur were legal. And around. He hasn't come back since he went outside for a cigarette.
The door to the restroom swings open as she walks past, exposing two young men deeply involved in exploring each other's bodies. She feels no shame in staying to watch. These aren't people, so it isn't quite voyeurism.
When one of them turns, she realizes how wrong she was.
"Putain," she says loudly. Then, slightly chagrined, she walks back the way she came.
His face flushed bright red, Arthur soon joins her at the bar, where he tips back a few ounces of tequila and sits heavily on the floor.
He bumps up against her leg and doesn't move. She lets him stay.
"Arthur." She drops a hand on his head and strokes his hair in clumsy circles. "Hope you enjoyed yourself. It's the last time I'll act as your pimp. Fucking a projection in my dream. Really."
He lets out a strangled laugh.
"Look, you do like girls as well, yes? We'll find you someone. Someone real, who won't get you kicked out of the army."
He mumbles something that she can't make out.
"What? Get your face out of my thigh and then speak." But then her brain catches up. "Oh. Oh. Was that...?" Her curiosity skyrocketing to an almost excruciating level, she regrets not paying much mind to the projection. All she can remember now is a thin frame and a strange haircut.
"Yeah." He hits himself in the face, despondent and tipsy. "Fuck."
"Not here, mon chu. Not like this. Love can't live just in dreams." He doesn't respond, so she says it outright. "You need to move on."
He makes a sad, resigned noise. "I'm pretty sure I can't."
Not knowing what exactly to say to that, Mal pets his hair and lets out a sigh, thinking about Dom, and how his graduation date needs to be two months closer to today than it is currently.
o0o
The boy who appears alongside her is a projection. That much is clear.
[it's eames. He shows how he's kind of roughly charming and eventually steals her engagement ring.]
o0o
Dom waves at the unstable stacks of periodicals on his living room table. "Can you find last week's TV Guide for me?" he asks, his nose stuck in an old New York Times crossword.
"Last week's TV Guide," she says.
"Mm." Without looking up from the page, he grabs his coffee cup and takes a long sip. "There's an article in there... I'm stuck on six across."
She sinks both hands in his fluffy, unbrushed morning hair. "I love how you wouldn't make sense to anyone but me," she murmurs, planting a kiss on the top of his head.
[she finds a square jewelry box underneath a Home & Gardening magazine, and, duh, it's a ring in there]
"What happened to the boy I met at Uni, the one with all the grand ideas about the obsolescence of marriage?"
"I had a dream," he says, taking her hands. And kneeling, because for all his intellectual claptrap, at heart, he's more French than she is. "A very persuasive dream."
She reclaims one of her hands to smooth a lock of hair away from his forehead. "Tell me about this dream."
"I saw myself in fifty years," he says. "I had enormous coke-bottle glasses and I was wearing a sweater like Mr. Rogers. There was a woman next to me, shrunken, holding a cane. At first I couldn't see her face. You know what I thought?"
"For once, I haven't the slightest idea."
"I bet Mal's still just as beautiful."
"Dom," she whispers.
"It turned out I was right."
She should have seen this coming, but she didn't. Somehow, she really didn't.
"There's no one else, Mal. You are the only one who will fit next to me on that bench. Say yes. Say you'll grow old with me."
"Yes," she breathes, wanting it so much her chest hurts.
He slips the ring on her finger and pulls her down to meet him.
A short time later, they are lying naked on the living room rug. She is half on top of him, her arms propped on his chest so they can look into each other's eyes. The smile on his face has an air of self-satisfaction that refuses to dissipate.
"We are living on different continents," she reminds him, poking at the tip of his nose. "How is this going to work?"
He bobs his eyebrows at her happily.
"You..." She quirks her mouth. "Oh, Dominic Francis. You ass."
"It's not right, me dreaming safely in your father's classroom while you're in the trenches. I was the TA. I trained most of the architects in the project. Really, I should have been in on this from the beginning. Now that I've finished my doctorate, there's nothing preventing me."
o0o
The assignment already having been set in motion, only a few weeks pass before Dom's first day on the project. That morning everything between them is really appallingly domestic, and she pounces on him just to add some filth to the scenario. When she finally lets him zip up and look at a clock, they're a good forty-five minutes past where they should be. Dom is horrified. She tells him not to worry, that they haven't shot someone on sight for being late in at least a few days.
As they're arriving at the lab, Sergeant Nevins is shunted past them, eyes wild, arguing with someone she can't see. "I-I don't know what you want. What do you want? Just say it. Fucking big man."
A lot of people are milling about in a distressed fashion. Swearingen looks grim and tired and aged by the bruises hollowing out his eyes.
"What the hell is going on?" she shouts, unrepentant.
From across the room, he glares at her and walks out.
That leaves Breakspeare to approach. "The compound," he says. "Or the dream. Maybe the PASIV device itself. I don't know what went wrong. Everything seemed fine for the five minutes they went under. Then it all just..."
"What?"
"It hit the fan. Watt and Nevins are fighting with imaginary foes. Padilla's got eyes like saucers and he won't speak to anyone." He drags a hand across his mouth. "They got Mondriaan out of here first. Last I heard, he still hadn't woken up."
"Arthur was off today?" she asks. Breakspeare favors her with a blank look. "Corporal Strand. He wasn't here?"
Say yes, she thinks. Say yes, say yes say yes.
"...No. Shit, you're right. There were five. What happened to him?"
One of the techs turns around. "Watt had Strand in a head lock as everything started going to shit. Once Strand was freed, he just got up and walked out."
"No one stopped him?" Dom asks.
Without saying a word, the tech distinctly broadcasts, 'Who the fucking hell are you?'
"Dear God," Breakspeare says. "I guess it's too much to hope for that he wasn't affected?"
o0o
It's not down to her, whether they find Arthur or not, and in what condition. Regardless of how wretched she feels, knowing that he wouldn't be out there if not for her, she's hardly skilled in taking down unbearably high post-adolescent boys. Feeling obligated because it matters to Mal, Dom wants to stay and help, but he doesn't know the base. Ultimately, neither of them are of any use here.
Unable to keep from lingering, they stop for coffee at the 7-11 just outside the gates. When the girl at the counter asks her manager about the creeper going through their garbage out back, Mal knows there's no reason to think anything of it. But she goes to check it out, Dom following close behind like a golden-haired Saint Bernard.
There he is, sitting with his back against the wall a few feet from the dumpster. His hands and shirt are filthy. There is a half eaten Snickers bar lying close by.
"Arthur," she says. Her stomach twinges as she looks at the candy. He didn't even have a dollar in his pockets? "Arthur, darling."
The only proof that he can hear her is the way he twitches each time she calls his name.
"Charlie?" she says. Now he turns his head.
The expression on his face is pure relief and gratitude, like he's been sitting here for years, decades, waiting for her and didn't realize it until she showed up. It bowls her over.
Though she probably shouldn't, she lets him touch her face. "I told him we should just forget about you," he says, brushing a dirty thumb along her cheekbone. "But it's kind of easier said than done. Fuck, hi." He embraces her, clinging just this side of too tight.
"Hi." His breathing in her ear sounds wrong, too quick and shallow. His skin is cold and slippery with sweat. As they break away, she rubs his neck, smiling sadly when he ducks his head, accepting her touch with a happy groan. "Honey, we have to go. You're sick."
He grins, slow and lazy. "Fucking sky's made out of grenades and spinning rainbows, Rocky. I'm not sick. I'm tripping balls."
"Yes, well-"
"Did you see him? He's around somewhere. I wouldn't have done this alone."
"I-"
Then he catches sight of Dom and he scrambles to his feet.
"Shit," Dom mutters.
"Uh, hey." Head bowed, Arthur holds up a warding hand. "Try behind the Blockbuster, man. I'm not... Not tonight." He looks at a piece of gum stuck to the wrapper of the Snickers bar and grimaces. "Maybe, um. Maybe. Check back later."
"Shit," Dom says. His eyes are enormous.
Though he has to pause every few seconds to catch his breath, Arthur's voice is impressively steady. He sounds very close to casual. "She's off limits, too. Virgin. No clue what to do." He talks like he personally knows exactly how much of a lie he just told, and the wink in his words has her fighting the mad urge to smack him. "Also, if you touch her, I'll fucking kill you."
"Listen. Kid. I'm not here for that. Your friend is right; you're not well. Let me help get you to a hospital."
Arthur hits the wall and slides, wheezing, his hand on his chest. Mal pulls out her phone, swearing in French as she fails to dial seven or eight times before she finally hears Breakspeare pick up.
Dom automatically goes to help Arthur.
"Nnn." Arthur shakes his head, his face twisting. "I said later. Fuck you. I- I can't-" Then he brings his elbow up, right into Dom's nose.
Falling on his ass, Dom cries out, much louder than he probably means to, as Arthur whispers to her to run, to "find Tink". His lips are turning blue.
Mal once watched Arthur die five times over the span of a single day. Not at any point did she come close to feeling the way she does now. There's no way to truly duplicate some aspects of reality. The cold, sick certainty that she can't wake up from this, that can only happen here. "You don't get a medic here in ten seconds," she spits into the phone, cutting through Breakspeare's aggravatingly worthless questions, "I will kill your family. Do you hear me?"
Arthur gives a horrible, labored gasp and pitches forward. Dom vaults ahead, catching Arthur before he hits the ground and flipping him onto his back. "This has to be the Somnacin," he says, his hand covering Arthur's narrow chest. His voice is thick, and he's coughing and spitting out blood as he presses his fingers to the underside of Arthur's jaw. "It's like they gave him too much. Way, way too much."
They prop up his head and shoulders. With the loss of consciousness, he isn't actively struggling to breathe, and he gets quieter and quieter.
The sudden silence terrifies her so much she can't move.
Distantly she hears Dom say, "We have to lay him flat. He's not- Mal. You have to get him breathing again."
Four medics descend on the area. Three of them force tubes down Arthur's throat and needles in his skin--because he hasn't had enough of that by now--and trundle him into the ambulance. The fourth pulls Dom away.
Mal takes Dom's reaching hand and kisses it on the knuckles. "It's all right," she says. "I'll follow in the car."
But her knees have turned to water, and by the time they've somewhat solidified, everyone is gone. Making matters worse, there are three hospitals in the area in addition to the infirmary at the base and she didn't think to ask where they were going.
"Fuck," she says. Hating the useless quaver in her voice, she leans her forehead against the steering wheel and gives in to the urge to shake uncontrollably until Dom calls twenty minutes later.
o0o
After she finds out what actually happened. Mal feels somewhat less ashamed of her threat to Breakspeare's loved ones, and she almost doesn't care at all that he was discharged. As the doctor, he should have known that there was something wrong with the drugs they were administering. Really, the fault lies with the chemist who's been selling Somnacin to the Chinese and cutting the Americans' supply with increasing amounts of an unrelated sedative. But unlike the man who used to sometimes chat with her about blues singers, the chemist is a faceless entity and thus, is much less satisfying to blame.
Arthur laughs when she tells him. She wants to be irritated by that. Mondriaan's dead. This really isn't funny. But Arthur just spent a day on a respirator and two more in intensive care and he's still weak and pale and so damn young. It'll be a while before she can fault him for being amused about anything.
"Typical," he says. "Stupid, corrupt fucks no matter where I go. Can't believe they thought they could get away with this."
The next day Corporal Padilla wheels past her, the grin on his face tempered by confusion. "This is the best news. I don't get that guy."
So she stops him. "What news?"
He lightly thumps his chest. "No marching for us no more. Doctors say we got fucked up too bad. Honorable discharge, baby. Yeah." His eyes light up anew. "Now I can go back to Houston and my kid and I can finally tell his mom fuck you in person for banging my cousin George."
As Mal laughs, liking Padilla for the first time, the sharp tang of missed opportunity reminds her that she never bothered trying to get to know this man. She squelches it. "Take care of yourself, Ray," she says, touching his shoulder before she walks on. She's never had any use for regret.
Arthur is looking out the window. His eyes are so lost. "Hey," he says, and smiles.
She takes his hand, tsking affectionately. "Don't be stupid."
o0o
Arthur is lying on the futon in her spare room, dressed in a green t-shirt and BDU pants because he doesn't have any civilian clothes.
"I did have some," he says. "There was a mix-up at the barracks, Watt told me. Somehow they got me confused with a guy who went AWOL a few weeks back. They threw all my shit in the incinerator." To her sympathetic noises, he only lifts a shoulder. "It's not that big a deal. I don't get attached to things."
"That means you need a better class of things," she says. "When you're up to it, we're going shopping."
"Kmart," he mumbles, closing his eyes. "S'not far."
A rush of affection has her smiling and playing with his hair. "We'll see about that," she says in a near whisper.
She draws the blinds and pads out quietly, not returning until Alex Trebek is on the tv.
"How long was I out?"
"A while."
He makes a face when he sees his watch. "Dammit. I didn't mean to waste the whole day. Can I use your computer? I should get started on my college applications."
"Dinner first," she says. "Come on. Dom came home bearing pad thai."
"Right, Dom. The boyfriend." He sits up and rubs his eyes. "I'll be down in five."
She smiles when he doesn't ask again whether Dom is all right with Arthur staying here. Baby steps.
"Arthur, this is Dominic. He loves me and I love you, so we'll all get along fabulously."
Before Dom can even say hello, Arthur takes in the cut across Dom's nose, the fading bruise in the inner corner of each eye, and he gives a visible start.
"I, um. Excuse me." Then he walks out.
"Shit," Dom says, putting his beer down with a sigh.
"Start eating," she orders, wanting to point him to a dictionary. "I'll deal with this."
"You thought you dreamt it?" she asks gently.
"Yeah. Whatever." He rubs at the fuzz on his head as he smokes. "I'm not ashamed of anything. I'm not. It was better than what I had. Getting locked in a closet, it, uh. You'd be surprised how quickly that gets old."
His smile is tight and strained and, though clearly meant to be reassuring, it makes Mal want to blow something up. "Are you ready to come inside?"
"He's not...?"
"Arthur, Dom is the least judgmental person I have ever known. He's also-" She leans in confidentially. "-Notoriously forgetful. Trust me. In a week, two days minimum, it'll be like it never happened."
"We're redoing our introductions," she announces. "This is my fiancé Dominic. During your first meeting, you sort of propositioned him and then broke his nose. He was holding your head when you stopped breathing."
Dom blinks. "Most people avoid awkwardness at any cost. I love how you really don't."
"You're not allowed to be weird around each other. I won't have it." Then, so she feels less like Arthur's new foster mother, she hands Arthur a Stella.
"Are you twenty-one?" Dom blurts out. Her hand itches to hit him.
Arthur chuckles, and she changes her mind. "In three months?" Arthur says. "Wait. Two."
She grins. "That gives us plenty of time to plan the party. You like clowns, yes?"
"I think I'll be busy that day," Arthur deadpans. "But make sure you videotape it for me."
"Applying for jobs."
"Huh. It must be an adjustment."
"I, um. I was more of a thief, actually. So, it's pretty big, yeah."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Mm-hm."
"Steal from Mal or myself and I'll break your legs."
"Fair enough."
Her childhood self would have been incredibly disappointed in the wedding she ended up having, but that's just too bad. Her parents are there, Dom's outspoken Irish mother is there, and Arthur is there. The rest of the trappings would only have weighed her down.
She needs her focus for work. Project Sandman could have killed Arthur. It could have killed all of them. She simply can't let that go. Dom may have just gotten here; they may have only scratched the surface of the unquantifiable potential of lucid dreaming. None of it matters if its for the benefit of an employer that poisons and discards its workers without a second thought. There is a way out of this, somehow. Mal resolves to keep her eyes open.
It starts when Tong takes out a silver case in a dream.
"Wait," she says. Sixteen young men with buzz-cuts are hungrily stalking and killing each other in the desert Tong created. The two of them would have to set up a napalm stand for anyone to pay them the slightest bit of attention.. "Wait. What is that?"
Tong shakes his head as he opens the PASIV. "I knew you weren't listening."
"Jeremy," she hisses.
He looks up at her, his smile slight and his eyes, cynical. "You know my name. You, whom I have only been working with for a year plus."
She wants to stab him for this nonsense, for treating her like a distant, spoiled beauty like the ones who have undoubtedly stepped on him all his life.
Especially because she deserves it, at least a little bit.
Instead she kneels down, half conscious of the fact that she's unbuttoned the cuff of her shirt. "Does it work?" she asks.
"Well, we're about to find out, aren't we?"
In the space of a blink, she's trying on all the wedding dresses she couldn't afford. Arthur is sitting mostly patiently on the fitting room couch. Only it isn't Arthur because he's at home, studying for his midterms and creating a mountain of cigarette butts on the side of the building.
"You officially need more female friends," fake Arthur is saying lightly. "I don't care how shallow the women in Southern California are. There must be someone you can relate to. This is ridiculous. I can feel my hard-earned street cred diminishing by the second."
"Oh, tosh." Mal bites her lip as she sees herself in the mirror. This Vera Wang would have been lovely.
"I was stationed overseas before I met you, you know," he says as he zips her up. "I killed people. Two burly Balkan people. Kittens don't do that."
The real Arthur would never be this flip about his history. Her subconscious must want him to be more calloused, more protected.
Dom is ecstatic. He wastes no time testing it out himself. He spends as much time on lower levels as they'll allow him.
Mal is also thrilled by the implications, she also loves exploring. But she sees another angle to this.
As soon as she can, she corners Tong to ask about the possibility of recreating a PASIV on the outside. To her surprise, he is very much not a dick about it.
"You know what we do is different," he says, his brow furrowed in thought. "But I do have friends and I have been paying a lot of attention. ...It could be done, I think."
"Talk to them," she says. "Discreetly."
"Will Mondriaan and I were assigned as roommates our first year of post-grad," he says. "We didn't make it one term. He was a fundamentalist homophobic asshole. And a slob, God. But I went to Rotterdam for his funeral because that's what you do. At least it should be. None of the brass from this place could be arsed."
"They won't go to yours, either," she says, and she knows she has him.
Soon after that, Mal skips a period. She doesn't think anything of it at first. Her cycles have always been irregular. Because of the ballet she studied as a girl, because of her tendency to burn the candle at both ends as a student, because she spends a good part of every work day on drugs.
But now it's because she and Dom are growing a baby.
"Pregnant. Really." Arthur looks more puzzled than anything. "Well, that's- that's fantastic. Congratulations."
Mal tilts her head. She thought he would be happy, but he isn't. Not quite.
Heralded by quiet, cheerful whistling, Dom enters from the kitchen, handing Arthur a coffee and Mal a pineapple juice. "How's that Psych paper?" he asks.
Arthur tears his gaze away from her, blinking. "What? Um, it's fine. Just need to stretch it out one more page."
"Want me to go over your citations?"
"...Yeah. I think I'm okay, but this guy's a punctuation Nazi. Couldn't hurt to have someone double check. Thanks."
"No problem." Dom shoots her a wink as he follows Arthur out of the room.
Mal places her hand over the spot where her stomach is just beginning to swell. "Hope you don't mind, bébé," she says, looking down. "But we kind of already have a firstborn."
-
Mal Miles has been interested in architecture since she was in utero. At least, that's what her father likes to tell everyone. He isn't completely off the mark, though, so she's never disputed it. Even after she gets her degree and starts shopping around for a job, she still stops by his flat twice a week with takeaway Indian food, continuing their mission to find the best curry in Paris.
"Sweetheart," he says, kissing her cheek. "There's something I simply must show you."
The next thing she knows, they're buttering crumpets in her gran's flat outside London, the one that was sold when Mal was thirteen, a year after she spent six weeks there waiting for her parents to sort out their divorce.
It's the most amazing thing. At first it's a brilliant way of reliving memories in four dimensions. But really it's so much more than that. He shows her that it's actually a world, one with its own rules, one she can add to and manipulate to suit her whim. Intoxicated, she goes back as many times as he'll allow. They recreate the Oktoberfest he took her to when she was seventeen, because no daughter of Stephen Miles could grow to adulthood without an appreciation for good beer. She builds landscapes she saw only in paintings. American plains, mountain peaks in Chile. And she changes them.
Then she finds out the reason her father was given the device. He's meant to be training his students and recommending the most talented for a project with the military.
"I need to be on that list," she tells him.
"You'd be going down a rabbit hole there, pet," he warns, his hand out to accept the cup of tea in her hand.
She smiles and pulls the mug further out of his reach. "Put me on the list, Dr. Miles."
Her only regret is having to leave her boyfriend behind in Paris. The distance will make them stronger, though. Or it will be the thing that breaks them apart. Either way, they will end up where they're supposed to be. Letting this opportunity pass her by wouldn't change their fate.
So she relocates to San Diego, along with Willem Mondriaan, Nicholas Aichel and Jeremy Tong, the other architect-dreamers. Mondriaan and Aichel rarely speak to her outside of work discussions. Tong speaks entirely too much, about things like hydroelectricity and fuel injection systems that run on corn oil.
The architects are twitchy, intimidated by their surroundings. The dozen enlisted men assigned to escort the architects live up to their mindless, blood-lusting stereotype on a depressing level. Her only source of decent conversation is Dr. Breakspeare, the medical officer with the light Jamaican accent. The baby-faced private she tends to bump into at the cafeteria on Friday afternoons shows promise, though. The label on his uniform says "Strand", which she thinks is lovely in an indefinably romantic kind of way. Strand is quiet as a mouse and he would look about fourteen if not for his eyes. What she finds most endearing is that she's never caught him outside without a book.
"What is your first name?" she asks him one day. She takes a drag from the cigarette he allowed her to steal from his hand.
"Arthur," he says, and a slight flush rises in his cheeks.
Such a child. What is he doing in this place? "Don't be embarrassed. I think it suits you."
"I'm not embarrassed." He reclaims his cigarette. "I'm just tired of being called Pfc. Poindexter."
"What does Poindexter even mean? I've always wondered."
"It means they think they know me." His expression turns wry. "I used to go by Charlie," he admits. "It's my middle name."
"Arthur," she says with a decided nod.
Even though it shouldn't be up to her, he shrugs as if he doesn't mind at all. "Arthur," he agrees, smiling a little.
o0o
It's probably cruel to say that she actively hates someone's mind, but Spc. Yadao. Jesus, Spc. Yadao. Inside he's all hyper-violence and gore and blaring death metal. One day all his projections turn into zombies. No one, not even Yadao, knows how he did that.
At the cafeteria, the people seem too close all of a sudden. She can feel teeth on her forearm, her ankle, her throat.
Mal trips on her own feet, stumbling into Arthur like a drunk.
"You okay?" he asks, eyes wider than normal.
She runs a hand over the right side of her neck, feeling for blood mixed with saliva. Her pulse thrums almost reassuringly against her fingers. "I can't go back in there just now," she says, because she can't honestly say 'yes'.
The way he guides her by the elbow tells her that he has, had, a girlfriend, one who was quite a bit smaller than he.
Or a sister or a mother, but she prefers to think that it was a girlfriend.
They sit at a bench outside, where he lets her chain-smoke several of his Newports and they watch a male and female cadet play keep-away with a bag of chips while there are no superior officers around to stop them. His arm is around her waist, his other hand is stretched toward the sky, and she's grunting and laughing as she jumps for the chips.
Mal turns her gaze to Arthur's secretive, wistful little smile. "You have someone," she says.
A muscle goes pop in his jaw. "I did. He was-" He cuts himself off as he realizes what he just said. A look of fear passes across his face.
"You have a way out," she whispers, astonished. "Why haven't you taken it?"
"There's no draft, Mal. I'm here because I want to be." He notices that he's folding his paperback in half and stops himself. "This might be hard for someone like you to understand, but I don't have anything else."
"I'm going to change that," she says.
"You are."
"Yes." She meets his gaze straight on, challenging. "Anyway, what about-"
"Gone. Deported, presumably."
"You don't know for sure?"
He looks away. "Cops and lawyers, they don't fall all over themselves to tell you what happened to the people you got busted with."
"Oh, Arthur. Dearest."
o0o
It takes five weeks to use the right combination of words on the right combination of people, but in the end, Arthur has been assigned to Project Sandman.
And he's the replacement for Yadao. It's fabulous when things just fall into place like that.
He sets himself apart right from the beginning. While the others, the grunts, content themselves blowing great, gaping holes in projections and testing each other's pain tolerance, Arthur is interested in the structure and content of the dream. He goes under and instantly starts changing things. She feels horrible when the projections turn on him like a frothing school of piranhas, especially when they belong to her.
"Strand could be an architect," she proposes after a debriefing.
"He's not here to build," Lieutenant Colonel Swearingen says. "We've got you civilians for that."
This position is astonishingly short-sighted, but she knows not to argue. He's dwarfed by the scope of this project, that's clear for all to see. He needs to keep things labeled in neat boxes to be able to manage it all. That means being very rigid about things like titles and tasks and job assignments.
They kind of semi somewhat ignore Swearingen's edict. Amongst the fighting and the torture and the death, Mal finds pockets of time and space that she pulls Arthur into. And she shows him how to be an architect.
In their eighth dream, he builds her the Eiffel Tower. It's quite small, and in the wrong part of the city entirely.
"It's never looked more beautiful," she says, meaning every word.
Arthur doesn't say anything, but his eyes crinkle with pleasure.
o0o
It doesn't take long for Mal to decide that Arthur doesn't have enough fun (read: any at all) and builds him a nightclub. They don't have long before the techs shut down the lab for the night, but this hour of dream-time at least is just for the two of them.
She downs a shot of Goldschlager at the bar and smiles, relishing the familiar burn of cinnamon. They need to find some place where they can do this top-side. If only Arthur were legal. And around. He hasn't come back since he went outside for a cigarette.
The door to the restroom swings open as she walks past, exposing two young men deeply involved in exploring each other's bodies. She feels no shame in staying to watch. These aren't people, so it isn't quite voyeurism.
When one of them turns, she realizes how wrong she was.
"Putain," she says loudly. Then, slightly chagrined, she walks back the way she came.
His face flushed bright red, Arthur soon joins her at the bar, where he tips back a few ounces of tequila and sits heavily on the floor.
He bumps up against her leg and doesn't move. She lets him stay.
"Arthur." She drops a hand on his head and strokes his hair in clumsy circles. "Hope you enjoyed yourself. It's the last time I'll act as your pimp. Fucking a projection in my dream. Really."
He lets out a strangled laugh.
"Look, you do like girls as well, yes? We'll find you someone. Someone real, who won't get you kicked out of the army."
He mumbles something that she can't make out.
"What? Get your face out of my thigh and then speak." But then her brain catches up. "Oh. Oh. Was that...?" Her curiosity skyrocketing to an almost excruciating level, she regrets not paying much mind to the projection. All she can remember now is a thin frame and a strange haircut.
"Yeah." He hits himself in the face, despondent and tipsy. "Fuck."
"Not here, mon chu. Not like this. Love can't live just in dreams." He doesn't respond, so she says it outright. "You need to move on."
He makes a sad, resigned noise. "I'm pretty sure I can't."
Not knowing what exactly to say to that, Mal pets his hair and lets out a sigh, thinking about Dom, and how his graduation date needs to be two months closer to today than it is currently.
o0o
The boy who appears alongside her is a projection. That much is clear.
[it's eames. He shows how he's kind of roughly charming and eventually steals her engagement ring.]
o0o
Dom waves at the unstable stacks of periodicals on his living room table. "Can you find last week's TV Guide for me?" he asks, his nose stuck in an old New York Times crossword.
"Last week's TV Guide," she says.
"Mm." Without looking up from the page, he grabs his coffee cup and takes a long sip. "There's an article in there... I'm stuck on six across."
She sinks both hands in his fluffy, unbrushed morning hair. "I love how you wouldn't make sense to anyone but me," she murmurs, planting a kiss on the top of his head.
[she finds a square jewelry box underneath a Home & Gardening magazine, and, duh, it's a ring in there]
"What happened to the boy I met at Uni, the one with all the grand ideas about the obsolescence of marriage?"
"I had a dream," he says, taking her hands. And kneeling, because for all his intellectual claptrap, at heart, he's more French than she is. "A very persuasive dream."
She reclaims one of her hands to smooth a lock of hair away from his forehead. "Tell me about this dream."
"I saw myself in fifty years," he says. "I had enormous coke-bottle glasses and I was wearing a sweater like Mr. Rogers. There was a woman next to me, shrunken, holding a cane. At first I couldn't see her face. You know what I thought?"
"For once, I haven't the slightest idea."
"I bet Mal's still just as beautiful."
"Dom," she whispers.
"It turned out I was right."
She should have seen this coming, but she didn't. Somehow, she really didn't.
"There's no one else, Mal. You are the only one who will fit next to me on that bench. Say yes. Say you'll grow old with me."
"Yes," she breathes, wanting it so much her chest hurts.
He slips the ring on her finger and pulls her down to meet him.
A short time later, they are lying naked on the living room rug. She is half on top of him, her arms propped on his chest so they can look into each other's eyes. The smile on his face has an air of self-satisfaction that refuses to dissipate.
"We are living on different continents," she reminds him, poking at the tip of his nose. "How is this going to work?"
He bobs his eyebrows at her happily.
"You..." She quirks her mouth. "Oh, Dominic Francis. You ass."
"It's not right, me dreaming safely in your father's classroom while you're in the trenches. I was the TA. I trained most of the architects in the project. Really, I should have been in on this from the beginning. Now that I've finished my doctorate, there's nothing preventing me."
o0o
The assignment already having been set in motion, only a few weeks pass before Dom's first day on the project. That morning everything between them is really appallingly domestic, and she pounces on him just to add some filth to the scenario. When she finally lets him zip up and look at a clock, they're a good forty-five minutes past where they should be. Dom is horrified. She tells him not to worry, that they haven't shot someone on sight for being late in at least a few days.
As they're arriving at the lab, Sergeant Nevins is shunted past them, eyes wild, arguing with someone she can't see. "I-I don't know what you want. What do you want? Just say it. Fucking big man."
A lot of people are milling about in a distressed fashion. Swearingen looks grim and tired and aged by the bruises hollowing out his eyes.
"What the hell is going on?" she shouts, unrepentant.
From across the room, he glares at her and walks out.
That leaves Breakspeare to approach. "The compound," he says. "Or the dream. Maybe the PASIV device itself. I don't know what went wrong. Everything seemed fine for the five minutes they went under. Then it all just..."
"What?"
"It hit the fan. Watt and Nevins are fighting with imaginary foes. Padilla's got eyes like saucers and he won't speak to anyone." He drags a hand across his mouth. "They got Mondriaan out of here first. Last I heard, he still hadn't woken up."
"Arthur was off today?" she asks. Breakspeare favors her with a blank look. "Corporal Strand. He wasn't here?"
Say yes, she thinks. Say yes, say yes say yes.
"...No. Shit, you're right. There were five. What happened to him?"
One of the techs turns around. "Watt had Strand in a head lock as everything started going to shit. Once Strand was freed, he just got up and walked out."
"No one stopped him?" Dom asks.
Without saying a word, the tech distinctly broadcasts, 'Who the fucking hell are you?'
"Dear God," Breakspeare says. "I guess it's too much to hope for that he wasn't affected?"
o0o
It's not down to her, whether they find Arthur or not, and in what condition. Regardless of how wretched she feels, knowing that he wouldn't be out there if not for her, she's hardly skilled in taking down unbearably high post-adolescent boys. Feeling obligated because it matters to Mal, Dom wants to stay and help, but he doesn't know the base. Ultimately, neither of them are of any use here.
Unable to keep from lingering, they stop for coffee at the 7-11 just outside the gates. When the girl at the counter asks her manager about the creeper going through their garbage out back, Mal knows there's no reason to think anything of it. But she goes to check it out, Dom following close behind like a golden-haired Saint Bernard.
There he is, sitting with his back against the wall a few feet from the dumpster. His hands and shirt are filthy. There is a half eaten Snickers bar lying close by.
"Arthur," she says. Her stomach twinges as she looks at the candy. He didn't even have a dollar in his pockets? "Arthur, darling."
The only proof that he can hear her is the way he twitches each time she calls his name.
"Charlie?" she says. Now he turns his head.
The expression on his face is pure relief and gratitude, like he's been sitting here for years, decades, waiting for her and didn't realize it until she showed up. It bowls her over.
Though she probably shouldn't, she lets him touch her face. "I told him we should just forget about you," he says, brushing a dirty thumb along her cheekbone. "But it's kind of easier said than done. Fuck, hi." He embraces her, clinging just this side of too tight.
"Hi." His breathing in her ear sounds wrong, too quick and shallow. His skin is cold and slippery with sweat. As they break away, she rubs his neck, smiling sadly when he ducks his head, accepting her touch with a happy groan. "Honey, we have to go. You're sick."
He grins, slow and lazy. "Fucking sky's made out of grenades and spinning rainbows, Rocky. I'm not sick. I'm tripping balls."
"Yes, well-"
"Did you see him? He's around somewhere. I wouldn't have done this alone."
"I-"
Then he catches sight of Dom and he scrambles to his feet.
"Shit," Dom mutters.
"Uh, hey." Head bowed, Arthur holds up a warding hand. "Try behind the Blockbuster, man. I'm not... Not tonight." He looks at a piece of gum stuck to the wrapper of the Snickers bar and grimaces. "Maybe, um. Maybe. Check back later."
"Shit," Dom says. His eyes are enormous.
Though he has to pause every few seconds to catch his breath, Arthur's voice is impressively steady. He sounds very close to casual. "She's off limits, too. Virgin. No clue what to do." He talks like he personally knows exactly how much of a lie he just told, and the wink in his words has her fighting the mad urge to smack him. "Also, if you touch her, I'll fucking kill you."
"Listen. Kid. I'm not here for that. Your friend is right; you're not well. Let me help get you to a hospital."
Arthur hits the wall and slides, wheezing, his hand on his chest. Mal pulls out her phone, swearing in French as she fails to dial seven or eight times before she finally hears Breakspeare pick up.
Dom automatically goes to help Arthur.
"Nnn." Arthur shakes his head, his face twisting. "I said later. Fuck you. I- I can't-" Then he brings his elbow up, right into Dom's nose.
Falling on his ass, Dom cries out, much louder than he probably means to, as Arthur whispers to her to run, to "find Tink". His lips are turning blue.
Mal once watched Arthur die five times over the span of a single day. Not at any point did she come close to feeling the way she does now. There's no way to truly duplicate some aspects of reality. The cold, sick certainty that she can't wake up from this, that can only happen here. "You don't get a medic here in ten seconds," she spits into the phone, cutting through Breakspeare's aggravatingly worthless questions, "I will kill your family. Do you hear me?"
Arthur gives a horrible, labored gasp and pitches forward. Dom vaults ahead, catching Arthur before he hits the ground and flipping him onto his back. "This has to be the Somnacin," he says, his hand covering Arthur's narrow chest. His voice is thick, and he's coughing and spitting out blood as he presses his fingers to the underside of Arthur's jaw. "It's like they gave him too much. Way, way too much."
They prop up his head and shoulders. With the loss of consciousness, he isn't actively struggling to breathe, and he gets quieter and quieter.
The sudden silence terrifies her so much she can't move.
Distantly she hears Dom say, "We have to lay him flat. He's not- Mal. You have to get him breathing again."
Four medics descend on the area. Three of them force tubes down Arthur's throat and needles in his skin--because he hasn't had enough of that by now--and trundle him into the ambulance. The fourth pulls Dom away.
Mal takes Dom's reaching hand and kisses it on the knuckles. "It's all right," she says. "I'll follow in the car."
But her knees have turned to water, and by the time they've somewhat solidified, everyone is gone. Making matters worse, there are three hospitals in the area in addition to the infirmary at the base and she didn't think to ask where they were going.
"Fuck," she says. Hating the useless quaver in her voice, she leans her forehead against the steering wheel and gives in to the urge to shake uncontrollably until Dom calls twenty minutes later.
o0o
After she finds out what actually happened. Mal feels somewhat less ashamed of her threat to Breakspeare's loved ones, and she almost doesn't care at all that he was discharged. As the doctor, he should have known that there was something wrong with the drugs they were administering. Really, the fault lies with the chemist who's been selling Somnacin to the Chinese and cutting the Americans' supply with increasing amounts of an unrelated sedative. But unlike the man who used to sometimes chat with her about blues singers, the chemist is a faceless entity and thus, is much less satisfying to blame.
Arthur laughs when she tells him. She wants to be irritated by that. Mondriaan's dead. This really isn't funny. But Arthur just spent a day on a respirator and two more in intensive care and he's still weak and pale and so damn young. It'll be a while before she can fault him for being amused about anything.
"Typical," he says. "Stupid, corrupt fucks no matter where I go. Can't believe they thought they could get away with this."
The next day Corporal Padilla wheels past her, the grin on his face tempered by confusion. "This is the best news. I don't get that guy."
So she stops him. "What news?"
He lightly thumps his chest. "No marching for us no more. Doctors say we got fucked up too bad. Honorable discharge, baby. Yeah." His eyes light up anew. "Now I can go back to Houston and my kid and I can finally tell his mom fuck you in person for banging my cousin George."
As Mal laughs, liking Padilla for the first time, the sharp tang of missed opportunity reminds her that she never bothered trying to get to know this man. She squelches it. "Take care of yourself, Ray," she says, touching his shoulder before she walks on. She's never had any use for regret.
Arthur is looking out the window. His eyes are so lost. "Hey," he says, and smiles.
She takes his hand, tsking affectionately. "Don't be stupid."
o0o
Arthur is lying on the futon in her spare room, dressed in a green t-shirt and BDU pants because he doesn't have any civilian clothes.
"I did have some," he says. "There was a mix-up at the barracks, Watt told me. Somehow they got me confused with a guy who went AWOL a few weeks back. They threw all my shit in the incinerator." To her sympathetic noises, he only lifts a shoulder. "It's not that big a deal. I don't get attached to things."
"That means you need a better class of things," she says. "When you're up to it, we're going shopping."
"Kmart," he mumbles, closing his eyes. "S'not far."
A rush of affection has her smiling and playing with his hair. "We'll see about that," she says in a near whisper.
She draws the blinds and pads out quietly, not returning until Alex Trebek is on the tv.
"How long was I out?"
"A while."
He makes a face when he sees his watch. "Dammit. I didn't mean to waste the whole day. Can I use your computer? I should get started on my college applications."
"Dinner first," she says. "Come on. Dom came home bearing pad thai."
"Right, Dom. The boyfriend." He sits up and rubs his eyes. "I'll be down in five."
She smiles when he doesn't ask again whether Dom is all right with Arthur staying here. Baby steps.
"Arthur, this is Dominic. He loves me and I love you, so we'll all get along fabulously."
Before Dom can even say hello, Arthur takes in the cut across Dom's nose, the fading bruise in the inner corner of each eye, and he gives a visible start.
"I, um. Excuse me." Then he walks out.
"Shit," Dom says, putting his beer down with a sigh.
"Start eating," she orders, wanting to point him to a dictionary. "I'll deal with this."
"You thought you dreamt it?" she asks gently.
"Yeah. Whatever." He rubs at the fuzz on his head as he smokes. "I'm not ashamed of anything. I'm not. It was better than what I had. Getting locked in a closet, it, uh. You'd be surprised how quickly that gets old."
His smile is tight and strained and, though clearly meant to be reassuring, it makes Mal want to blow something up. "Are you ready to come inside?"
"He's not...?"
"Arthur, Dom is the least judgmental person I have ever known. He's also-" She leans in confidentially. "-Notoriously forgetful. Trust me. In a week, two days minimum, it'll be like it never happened."
"We're redoing our introductions," she announces. "This is my fiancé Dominic. During your first meeting, you sort of propositioned him and then broke his nose. He was holding your head when you stopped breathing."
Dom blinks. "Most people avoid awkwardness at any cost. I love how you really don't."
"You're not allowed to be weird around each other. I won't have it." Then, so she feels less like Arthur's new foster mother, she hands Arthur a Stella.
"Are you twenty-one?" Dom blurts out. Her hand itches to hit him.
Arthur chuckles, and she changes her mind. "In three months?" Arthur says. "Wait. Two."
She grins. "That gives us plenty of time to plan the party. You like clowns, yes?"
"I think I'll be busy that day," Arthur deadpans. "But make sure you videotape it for me."
"Applying for jobs."
"Huh. It must be an adjustment."
"I, um. I was more of a thief, actually. So, it's pretty big, yeah."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Mm-hm."
"Steal from Mal or myself and I'll break your legs."
"Fair enough."
Her childhood self would have been incredibly disappointed in the wedding she ended up having, but that's just too bad. Her parents are there, Dom's outspoken Irish mother is there, and Arthur is there. The rest of the trappings would only have weighed her down.
She needs her focus for work. Project Sandman could have killed Arthur. It could have killed all of them. She simply can't let that go. Dom may have just gotten here; they may have only scratched the surface of the unquantifiable potential of lucid dreaming. None of it matters if its for the benefit of an employer that poisons and discards its workers without a second thought. There is a way out of this, somehow. Mal resolves to keep her eyes open.
It starts when Tong takes out a silver case in a dream.
"Wait," she says. Sixteen young men with buzz-cuts are hungrily stalking and killing each other in the desert Tong created. The two of them would have to set up a napalm stand for anyone to pay them the slightest bit of attention.. "Wait. What is that?"
Tong shakes his head as he opens the PASIV. "I knew you weren't listening."
"Jeremy," she hisses.
He looks up at her, his smile slight and his eyes, cynical. "You know my name. You, whom I have only been working with for a year plus."
She wants to stab him for this nonsense, for treating her like a distant, spoiled beauty like the ones who have undoubtedly stepped on him all his life.
Especially because she deserves it, at least a little bit.
Instead she kneels down, half conscious of the fact that she's unbuttoned the cuff of her shirt. "Does it work?" she asks.
"Well, we're about to find out, aren't we?"
In the space of a blink, she's trying on all the wedding dresses she couldn't afford. Arthur is sitting mostly patiently on the fitting room couch. Only it isn't Arthur because he's at home, studying for his midterms and creating a mountain of cigarette butts on the side of the building.
"You officially need more female friends," fake Arthur is saying lightly. "I don't care how shallow the women in Southern California are. There must be someone you can relate to. This is ridiculous. I can feel my hard-earned street cred diminishing by the second."
"Oh, tosh." Mal bites her lip as she sees herself in the mirror. This Vera Wang would have been lovely.
"I was stationed overseas before I met you, you know," he says as he zips her up. "I killed people. Two burly Balkan people. Kittens don't do that."
The real Arthur would never be this flip about his history. Her subconscious must want him to be more calloused, more protected.
Dom is ecstatic. He wastes no time testing it out himself. He spends as much time on lower levels as they'll allow him.
Mal is also thrilled by the implications, she also loves exploring. But she sees another angle to this.
As soon as she can, she corners Tong to ask about the possibility of recreating a PASIV on the outside. To her surprise, he is very much not a dick about it.
"You know what we do is different," he says, his brow furrowed in thought. "But I do have friends and I have been paying a lot of attention. ...It could be done, I think."
"Talk to them," she says. "Discreetly."
"Will Mondriaan and I were assigned as roommates our first year of post-grad," he says. "We didn't make it one term. He was a fundamentalist homophobic asshole. And a slob, God. But I went to Rotterdam for his funeral because that's what you do. At least it should be. None of the brass from this place could be arsed."
"They won't go to yours, either," she says, and she knows she has him.
Soon after that, Mal skips a period. She doesn't think anything of it at first. Her cycles have always been irregular. Because of the ballet she studied as a girl, because of her tendency to burn the candle at both ends as a student, because she spends a good part of every work day on drugs.
But now it's because she and Dom are growing a baby.
"Pregnant. Really." Arthur looks more puzzled than anything. "Well, that's- that's fantastic. Congratulations."
Mal tilts her head. She thought he would be happy, but he isn't. Not quite.
Heralded by quiet, cheerful whistling, Dom enters from the kitchen, handing Arthur a coffee and Mal a pineapple juice. "How's that Psych paper?" he asks.
Arthur tears his gaze away from her, blinking. "What? Um, it's fine. Just need to stretch it out one more page."
"Want me to go over your citations?"
"...Yeah. I think I'm okay, but this guy's a punctuation Nazi. Couldn't hurt to have someone double check. Thanks."
"No problem." Dom shoots her a wink as he follows Arthur out of the room.
Mal places her hand over the spot where her stomach is just beginning to swell. "Hope you don't mind, bébé," she says, looking down. "But we kind of already have a firstborn."
