fic: Paint me a tale in breathless hours
Title: Paint me a tale in breathless hours
Pairing: gen (Arthur-centric), with a hint of Arthur/Eames at the end if you squint
Rating: PG
Word Count: approx. 3,700
Summary: Five times someone realized Arthur was dyslexic.
A/N: written for this prompt at inception_kink. I hope that I portrayed dyslexia at least somewhat properly, as I have very limited knowledge of what it's really like, even after doing a bit of research. I hope that I didn't offend anyone with an inaccurate representation of the condition. I assure you this was not my intent, but if anyone does feel offended, feel free to say so and I'll fix it.
I.
The first time anyone ever makes a big deal about it, Arthur is eight. He’s been falling behind in his ice cream cone, a reading activity his teacher has them do. All year long, they get to choose books to read out of the assortment the teacher provides, and with each book they read, they add one scoop onto the paper ice cream cones tacked onto the bulletin board at the front of the room. Each ice cream cones is labeled with the student’s name, and whoever has the most scoops on their ice cream cone by the end of the term gets a special prize. It’s an activity most of the kids enjoy, except for Arthur.
Arthur doesn’t like reading because it makes his head hurt, and it never makes enough sense for Arthur to get as excited about it as his classmates, so his ice cream cone remains bare, no scoops at all, until finally, his teacher notices that he’s falling behind. She pulls him aside one day and asks him why he isn’t doing his reading. Arthur shrugs.
“I don’t like it,” he says simply, concise even in his youth.
“Why not?” she asks.
“It hurts my eyes,” Arthur says. “The words move like bugs.”
His teacher hums at him thoughtfully. “Why don’t we do some reading together?” she offers. “Maybe I can help.”
Arthur doubts it’ll make much of a difference, but agrees anyways, because she’s the teacher and you can’t just reject teachers like that. It’s not until a few days later when Arthur’s mother comes up to him and tells him that she’s had a parent-teacher conference with his teacher that Arthur even thinks about that conversation he had with his teacher and sentences crawling like insects and that stupid, stupid ice cream cone again.
“She thinks you have dyslexia,” Arthur’s mother tells him.
“There’s something wrong with me?” Arthur asks, eyes wide with fear. He wonders if they’ll take him out of school, send him to the hospital, lock him up.
Arthur’s mother smiles at him fondly and pets his hair. “Of course not, honey,” she coos. She explains to him what dyslexia is, outlines all the symptoms he’s shown, the way he can’t read without words blurring together in a jumbled mess, the way he took so much longer than his classmates to learn the alphabet, the way he has a hard time learning new words, the way he sometimes still writes the R’s in his name backwards. She’s straightforward and matter-of-fact, something Arthur likes, because she doesn’t treat him like a delicate thing that will break at the softest touch. She treats him like he matters.
“Will I get better?” Arthur asks. He doesn’t want his classmates to think he’s stupid, because he’s not.
Arthur’s mother smiles. “We’ll do everything we can,” she tells him. “We’re going to work with your teacher to help you find ways to better cope with this, okay?”
Arthur is apprehensive, but his mother looks sure and he’s still young enough to think that mothers are infallible, so he nods, believing her wholeheartedly.
“Okay.”
---
II.
Arthur does improve rapidly over the years, more from his own self-destructive determination than anything else. He manages to keep up, excel even, but only because he puts in hours upon hours of studying, works harder than anyone. Migraines aren’t an uncommon thing in Arthur’s life, but he always have a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol at the ready, so it’s usually not a problem.
Arthur’s gotten very good at coping, hardly ever lets any symptoms of his dyslexia show, because he’s determined, more than anything, to seem normal. He doesn’t want to be singled out as strange or slow. He wants to fit in. This is why, years after being officially diagnosed with dyslexia, his classmates are still, for the most part, ignorant of his learning disability. That is, until one day when he’s working on a paper in the quad and some kid in his class decides it’d be a good idea to mess with Arthur.
Arthur uses a special typing software that utilizes word guessing software to complete sentences to write his papers, because often he’ll write out a sentence but it’ll turn out completely different on paper than it is in his head, wrong words written in the place of where he means to write “what” or “the” or “too.” The software he uses helps him correct words to make his sentences make sense, and he’s sitting in the quad, minding his own business, when some kid in his class comes over and sneers at Arthur’s laptop screen, at the jumble of words that are all out of place and nonsensical.
Arthur shoots the boy a sharp glare. “Do you mind?” he asks, politely enough, he thinks, considering the situation. “I’m trying to work.”
The boy laughs. “You call this work?” he says. “What even is this?” He gestures to the last sentence Arthur has written, full of spelling mistakes and misused words. “Are you stupid or something?”
Arthur tenses. If there’s one thing he hates, it’s people insulting his intelligence, because while he might have more difficulty with reading and writing, it has nothing to do with his intellectual capacity. He has plenty of brilliant ideas. He just has trouble getting them down onto paper.
“Leave me alone,” Arthur says, trying his very best to keep his voice level and calm, “Or I swear, I will hit you.”
The boy just laughs and goes on teasing Arthur like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t strike Arthur harder than anything. Arthur stands abruptly and punches the kid in the face. The boy cries out and crumples to the ground, cradling his jaw, eyes wide. Arthur’s knuckles bruise a deep, satisfying purple, and he ends up getting suspended for it, but Arthur isn’t too upset. After all, he tried to warn the kid, didn’t he? He’s not the villain in this situation.
---
III.
Once, when Arthur is seventeen, he has the misfortune of running into an English teacher who, he’s convinced, hates him. Even though Arthur had taken time to meet with her at the very beginning of the year to discuss his dyslexia problem and how the condition makes it difficult for him to read passages aloud in class as English teachers often require of their students, this particular teacher resolutely ignores this fact, and once every so often, Arthur has to stumble his way through line after line of words that jumble and jump and move and make his head pound.
It just so happens that at the beginning of the second semester, the track season starts, and the boy that Arthur has the most embarrassing crush on, Hayden, is the track star. He starts coming to Arthur’s English class sometimes because he usually has English the last period of the day, and sometimes he has to miss his last class for track meets. The first few times this happens, Arthur’s English teacher very mercifully doesn’t call on Arthur to read, but something like perhaps the seventh or eighth time, she looks straight at Arthur and asks him to read the next paragraph for them.
“I-I, um,” Arthur tries and then his voice dies, the tips of his ears growing slightly pink. He can feel his classmates’ eyes on him. His teacher looks at him firmly, and Arthur sighs, resigning to his fate.
He tries to focus on the block of text on the page, moving just one word at a time, but it’s not long before he’s tripping over his own words and he’s making no sense at all, and he’s so, so frustrated and it’s only making it worse. Arthur’s whole face feels impossibly warm, and he can hear his classmates snickering at him. Arthur chances a glance up and sees Hayden across the room, laughing and making a face like he thinks Arthur is completely incompetent, and Arthur feels a lump rise in his throat.
Arthur stuffs his things into his backpack and storms out of the classroom without another word, upset beyond all means and more embarrassed than he’d ever thought possible. He keeps walking, one foot in front of the other, as quickly as he can until he’s taking in big gulps of air and quite nearly sobbing. He leans against a row of lockers nearby and rests his head back against them, hating himself a little bit for making such a fool of himself, for being so painfully awkward.
---
IV.
If asked, Arthur would never say that he’d planned to be a dreamer for a living, but as it often happens, things don’t quite go according to plan. In his second year as an undergraduate at MIT, Course 10 (or, in layman’s terms, a Chemical Engineering major), he takes a class on this new technology being developed called “dream sharing” by a team of researchers, one of whom is a professor at MIT, Mallorie Cobb. The class sounds interesting enough, and Arthur needs to take it to help fulfill his distribution requirement, so he decides to take it.
The class is hugely popular, which isn’t a surprise at all, seeing as how this is such a fantastical new concept, and the whole class fills a large lecture hall. Arthur gets to class early and gets a seat in the front, because he can’t stand sitting in the back. Arthur’s interest is piqued immediately, as Mallorie Cobb, who insists that they all just call her Mal because Mallorie or, god forbid, Mrs. Cobb sounds far too formal for her.
“I’m a simple woman at heart, you see,” she says with a smile, a soft French accent lilting in her voice.
Arthur is so fascinated by the end of the first lecture that he stays after to ask Mal a few questions about what she’s discussed today. Unfortunately, there are many other people also hoping to talk to Mal, so Arthur has to wait a bit before he can speak to her, but she’s calm and patient, and when Arthur walks up to her, she looks at him expectantly in a way that almost makes him feel like she’s been waiting for him all along.
“I was just wondering,” Arthur says. “Theoretically speaking, if you’re able to construct various mazes and obstacle courses in people’s heads, would it be possible to navigate that with the purpose of uncovering… I don’t know, something about that person?”
Mal’s face lights up and she smiles a smile that’s very pleased and a little mysterious all at once. “You’re very quick,” she says, grey-blue eyes twinkling. “I was intending on discussing that later in this course, but yes. That is exactly what we’re hoping to figure out in the future with the advancement of our research.”
“Could I help you?” Arthur blurts out without thinking. He quickly backtracks and adds, “I-If you need it, I mean. I just- This is such a fascinating topic; I’d love to learn more about it and possibly help out if I could.”
Mal laughs, easy and lighthearted. “We need all the help we can get,” she tells him. “This is such a new project; there’s still so much to discover.” She reaches into her bag and pulls out a thin stack of papers, handing them to Arthur. “Why don’t you familiarize yourself with the material first, and then come talk to me again sometime? I’m sure we’ll find something for you to do.”
Arthur nods and says that he will. In the following week, he hardly gets a wink of sleep because in addition to doing all his normal work, he’s trying to read all of the papers that are full of technical terms and complicated words that he doesn’t recognize, and his eyes hurt a little from staring at the papers for so long trying to force the words to make sense, but it’s the best he’s felt in a while. He emails Mal later that week after he’s finally made his way through all the information she’d thrown at him, after a few more of her lectures, which are quickly becoming his favorite part of his day. He emails her asking if they can meet sometime, and she suggests they meet up for coffee the following day.
They agree to meet at one o’clock, and while Arthur’s waiting for Mal to arrive, he’s frantically trying to catch up on some reading he’s falling behind on for an English seminar he’s taking. The problem is, he’s trying to speed read his way through it, and he isn’t quite able to do so without giving himself a massive headache and retaining absolutely no information in the process, so by the time Mal arrives, he’s just glaring angrily at his book, as if he can beat it into submission by doing so.
“Did it insult you?” Mal asks, light and joking. She slides a cup of coffee over to Arthur. Arthur makes an expression like he’s going to protest that she bought it for him, but she waves it off as nothing. She gestures to the book. “What are you reading?”
“Inferno,” Arthur tells her. His seminar is focused around reading and analyzing all three parts to Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Mal huffs out a breath, raising her eyebrows. “Heavy stuff,” she comments, sounding impressed.
“I don’t understand it at all,” Arthur admits, and normally, he wouldn’t be one to admit defeat so easily, but he’s gotten nearly no sleep all week and he’s more than a little frustrated with the damn thing.
Mal laughs and pats his hand reassuringly. “No worries,” she says. “I didn’t understand it when I was in school, and I was a Literature major.”
Arthur furrows his eyebrows at this, wondering how a woman who majored in Literature could now be a scientist. “But you-”
“I switched majors,” she says, “To Chemistry. It seems like a big leap, but you must understand that literature and science are both immense passions in my life.” She takes a sip of her coffee and adds, as something of an afterthought, “You know, my husband and I were on the team of researchers who first isolated the key compound in Somnacin.”
Arthur nods, wanting, now more than ever, to be a part of that, to be a part of something that could change the world forever. He glances at his book laying tauntingly on the table next to his coffee. He sighs.
“I just wish I wasn’t required to take English courses,” he says with a laugh. “I’m terrible at English.”
“Well, we can’t all be good at everything,” Mal says easily enough.
Arthur shrugs and stares at his coffee. He’s suddenly overcome with the overwhelming urge to be unabashedly honest with Mal like he’s never let himself be before. Maybe it’s because Mal seems so honest herself, like she has nothing to hide from the world. Maybe it’s because she exudes a sort of calm that Arthur doesn’t quite know how to react to. Or maybe it’s simply because she’s younger than most of the faculty and she’s very pretty. But whatever it is, it prompts him to say to her, softly:
“I’m dyslexic.”
Mal draws in a breath and her eyes widen. “Oh goodness, why didn’t you tell me?” she asks. “I wouldn’t have given you so much extra reading to do if I’d known.”
And it’s this reaction, this reaction that isn’t negative or derisive or disdainful in any way, this reaction that Arthur’s never encountered before when people find out that he’s dyslexic, that makes him laugh.
“It’s no big deal,” he says, even though he should be frustrated beyond all means because his eyes hurt and he’s had an on-and-off headache for the past week and he’s so, so tired. “It was really interesting stuff. I didn’t mind.”
Mal smiles at him and reaches over to squeeze his hand. “We’ll find something for you to do,” she says, and it sounds like a promise. “You’re very bright, Arthur. We could definitely use you on our team.”
---
V.
Something like five years down the road from first meeting Mal, Arthur is now a full-fledged dreamer. He works almost exclusively with Mal and her husband, Dom, though he’s been known to take a few smaller jobs with other teams. Dream sharing went rogue a few years ago, and the industry has grown exponentially ever since, various competing companies and jealous spouses and political forerunners throwing money at dreamers to discover incriminating evidence tucked away in the recesses of peoples’ minds. Arthur enjoys it, the hard work, the travelling, the adrenaline rush, and, of course, the money. There’s a lot to be had in this business, and while it hasn’t been easy coping with his dyslexia to become the best point man dream sharing has ever known, it’s worth a couple nights of missed sleep.
Arthur meets Eames on a job in Copenhagen with Mal and Dom. It’s a simple enough extraction (though really, simple is a relative term, but they all made it out in one piece, so they just say simple), and Arthur knows that Eames, with his sharp observation skills, quick mind, and keen intuition, almost immediately picks up on something Arthur’s trying to hide. But of course Arthur has to hide his dyslexia, because while he’s not ashamed of his condition as he was as a child, it does tend to cause people to doubt his abilities as a point man, which are not lacking by any means.
That first job, Arthur leaves as soon as they receive payment, and he leaves no time for Eames to go nosing around in his business.
Arthur manages to avoid Eames’ constant inquisitive glances, for the most part, for upwards of a year. He works with Eames on various occasions but always makes an effort to keep their relationship strictly professional, always keeping Eames at arm’s length. Eames probably assumes Arthur’s just cold. Arthur is simply acting upon an instinct of self-preservation that he can’t shake.
It isn’t until Munich that Eames catches him.
Arthur’s up late at the warehouse one day, trying to make his way through just this one last document before he turns in for the night. His vision is swimming and his eyes are starting to cross, but he presses on, fighting a migraine, and squints at the paper in front of him, rubbing his temples irately. When Eames pops up beside him, Arthur actually jumps, because it’s late and he’s tired and he’s not expecting it at all.
“Jesus Christ, Eames,” Arthur hisses, cradling his head in his hands. His headache is coming on full-strength now. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
He probably doesn’t mean to sound as harsh as he sounds, but he’s overworked and undercaffinated, and that just doesn’t make for a healthy state of mind. Eames pays this no heed, however, and pulls up a chair anyways.
“I thought you could use a little company,” Eames grins, straddling the chair to sit beside Arthur.
Arthur shoots him a look like he thinks Eames is lying through his teeth. “Since when do you care?” Arthur grumbles, turning back to his papers. And then he adds, as if it will get Eames to go away, “I’m busy.”
“I can see that,” Eames says, and he sounds amused. He makes no move to leave.
Arthur sighs and turns back to his reading, trying and failing quite miserably to continue reading. He’s just too tired and frustrated and distracted, and he realizes that he’s read the same sentence a dozen times without retaining any of it. And it doesn’t help that all the while, Arthur can feel Eames’ eyes focused solely on him, unwavering.
Arthur slams his hand down and whips his head around to glare at Eames again. “Can I help you with something?” he asks, words rough and impatient.
And then he notices that Eames is looking at him differently now, eyes careful and calculating like when he’s observing a subject to forge. Arthur has known Eames for long enough to know that this is Eames putting two and two together; he knows that Eames is just seconds away from making a startling discovery.
Arthur’s not quite sure what to expect next, but what he surely isn’t expecting is for Eames’ face to go soft, and for him to say quietly, “Arthur, are you-?”
“Yes, I’m dyslexic, okay,” Arthur snaps. “Now, can you fucking leave?”
He doesn’t even know what he’s so angry about. If he were thinking logically, he’d notice that Eames isn’t being one bit contemptuous or snide like he could; in fact, Eames is being fairly, well, nice, about it, for lack of a better term. But he’s not thinking logically, and he’s fucking pissed off at Eames, for no other reason than that Eames is Eames and he’s here, talking to Arthur, when all Arthur wants to do is bang his own head against the table until he passes out.
Eames holds his hands up in surrender. “I’m not here to mock you, Arthur,” he says.
Arthur narrows his eyes at Eames. His head is pounding. He wants to sleep. Eames gestures to Arthur’s papers.
“Do you want me to read to you?” Eames asks. “Would that help?”
Arthur blinks, taken aback, completely thrown off guard by how soft and round Eames’ voice sounds, the heavy sincerity of it, the way Eames looks at him and just seems to know, even though he couldn’t, even though he doesn’t; he doesn’t know what it’s like. Arthur nods once. Eames stands from his chair and stands behind Arthur, hands leaning on Arthur’s worktable, completely caging Arthur in, so he can read over Arthur’s shoulder. And then he starts reading, and his voice is a gentle cadence, and Arthur follows the path of Eames’ fingertip, highlighting and marking the page with symbols only he knows the meaning of as appropriate, as Eames moves his finger across the page with every word he reads.
And Arthur thinks, hazily, that perhaps he’s completely misjudged Eames’ character. But he stows that thought away for the morning, for when his mind is less muddled with sleep deprivation and the soft purr of Eames’ voice and the kind of numbness that can only come from working one’s mind far beyond its capacity.
END.
---
A/N: I'm actually half-asleep as I'm posting this, which probably means I missed a million and a half typos and grammar mistakes, because all my fics are unbetaed, though proofread a thousand times over. ummmm I felt like I had something interesting to say about this fic, but now I kind of forget (can you tell how awake I am atm?) so just thank you for reading!
comments/concrit is always welcome and very much appreciated!
(anon commenting is on, so feel free to leave some feedback, anons!)
Pairing: gen (Arthur-centric), with a hint of Arthur/Eames at the end if you squint
Rating: PG
Word Count: approx. 3,700
Summary: Five times someone realized Arthur was dyslexic.
A/N: written for this prompt at inception_kink. I hope that I portrayed dyslexia at least somewhat properly, as I have very limited knowledge of what it's really like, even after doing a bit of research. I hope that I didn't offend anyone with an inaccurate representation of the condition. I assure you this was not my intent, but if anyone does feel offended, feel free to say so and I'll fix it.
I.
The first time anyone ever makes a big deal about it, Arthur is eight. He’s been falling behind in his ice cream cone, a reading activity his teacher has them do. All year long, they get to choose books to read out of the assortment the teacher provides, and with each book they read, they add one scoop onto the paper ice cream cones tacked onto the bulletin board at the front of the room. Each ice cream cones is labeled with the student’s name, and whoever has the most scoops on their ice cream cone by the end of the term gets a special prize. It’s an activity most of the kids enjoy, except for Arthur.
Arthur doesn’t like reading because it makes his head hurt, and it never makes enough sense for Arthur to get as excited about it as his classmates, so his ice cream cone remains bare, no scoops at all, until finally, his teacher notices that he’s falling behind. She pulls him aside one day and asks him why he isn’t doing his reading. Arthur shrugs.
“I don’t like it,” he says simply, concise even in his youth.
“Why not?” she asks.
“It hurts my eyes,” Arthur says. “The words move like bugs.”
His teacher hums at him thoughtfully. “Why don’t we do some reading together?” she offers. “Maybe I can help.”
Arthur doubts it’ll make much of a difference, but agrees anyways, because she’s the teacher and you can’t just reject teachers like that. It’s not until a few days later when Arthur’s mother comes up to him and tells him that she’s had a parent-teacher conference with his teacher that Arthur even thinks about that conversation he had with his teacher and sentences crawling like insects and that stupid, stupid ice cream cone again.
“She thinks you have dyslexia,” Arthur’s mother tells him.
“There’s something wrong with me?” Arthur asks, eyes wide with fear. He wonders if they’ll take him out of school, send him to the hospital, lock him up.
Arthur’s mother smiles at him fondly and pets his hair. “Of course not, honey,” she coos. She explains to him what dyslexia is, outlines all the symptoms he’s shown, the way he can’t read without words blurring together in a jumbled mess, the way he took so much longer than his classmates to learn the alphabet, the way he has a hard time learning new words, the way he sometimes still writes the R’s in his name backwards. She’s straightforward and matter-of-fact, something Arthur likes, because she doesn’t treat him like a delicate thing that will break at the softest touch. She treats him like he matters.
“Will I get better?” Arthur asks. He doesn’t want his classmates to think he’s stupid, because he’s not.
Arthur’s mother smiles. “We’ll do everything we can,” she tells him. “We’re going to work with your teacher to help you find ways to better cope with this, okay?”
Arthur is apprehensive, but his mother looks sure and he’s still young enough to think that mothers are infallible, so he nods, believing her wholeheartedly.
“Okay.”
---
II.
Arthur does improve rapidly over the years, more from his own self-destructive determination than anything else. He manages to keep up, excel even, but only because he puts in hours upon hours of studying, works harder than anyone. Migraines aren’t an uncommon thing in Arthur’s life, but he always have a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol at the ready, so it’s usually not a problem.
Arthur’s gotten very good at coping, hardly ever lets any symptoms of his dyslexia show, because he’s determined, more than anything, to seem normal. He doesn’t want to be singled out as strange or slow. He wants to fit in. This is why, years after being officially diagnosed with dyslexia, his classmates are still, for the most part, ignorant of his learning disability. That is, until one day when he’s working on a paper in the quad and some kid in his class decides it’d be a good idea to mess with Arthur.
Arthur uses a special typing software that utilizes word guessing software to complete sentences to write his papers, because often he’ll write out a sentence but it’ll turn out completely different on paper than it is in his head, wrong words written in the place of where he means to write “what” or “the” or “too.” The software he uses helps him correct words to make his sentences make sense, and he’s sitting in the quad, minding his own business, when some kid in his class comes over and sneers at Arthur’s laptop screen, at the jumble of words that are all out of place and nonsensical.
Arthur shoots the boy a sharp glare. “Do you mind?” he asks, politely enough, he thinks, considering the situation. “I’m trying to work.”
The boy laughs. “You call this work?” he says. “What even is this?” He gestures to the last sentence Arthur has written, full of spelling mistakes and misused words. “Are you stupid or something?”
Arthur tenses. If there’s one thing he hates, it’s people insulting his intelligence, because while he might have more difficulty with reading and writing, it has nothing to do with his intellectual capacity. He has plenty of brilliant ideas. He just has trouble getting them down onto paper.
“Leave me alone,” Arthur says, trying his very best to keep his voice level and calm, “Or I swear, I will hit you.”
The boy just laughs and goes on teasing Arthur like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t strike Arthur harder than anything. Arthur stands abruptly and punches the kid in the face. The boy cries out and crumples to the ground, cradling his jaw, eyes wide. Arthur’s knuckles bruise a deep, satisfying purple, and he ends up getting suspended for it, but Arthur isn’t too upset. After all, he tried to warn the kid, didn’t he? He’s not the villain in this situation.
---
III.
Once, when Arthur is seventeen, he has the misfortune of running into an English teacher who, he’s convinced, hates him. Even though Arthur had taken time to meet with her at the very beginning of the year to discuss his dyslexia problem and how the condition makes it difficult for him to read passages aloud in class as English teachers often require of their students, this particular teacher resolutely ignores this fact, and once every so often, Arthur has to stumble his way through line after line of words that jumble and jump and move and make his head pound.
It just so happens that at the beginning of the second semester, the track season starts, and the boy that Arthur has the most embarrassing crush on, Hayden, is the track star. He starts coming to Arthur’s English class sometimes because he usually has English the last period of the day, and sometimes he has to miss his last class for track meets. The first few times this happens, Arthur’s English teacher very mercifully doesn’t call on Arthur to read, but something like perhaps the seventh or eighth time, she looks straight at Arthur and asks him to read the next paragraph for them.
“I-I, um,” Arthur tries and then his voice dies, the tips of his ears growing slightly pink. He can feel his classmates’ eyes on him. His teacher looks at him firmly, and Arthur sighs, resigning to his fate.
He tries to focus on the block of text on the page, moving just one word at a time, but it’s not long before he’s tripping over his own words and he’s making no sense at all, and he’s so, so frustrated and it’s only making it worse. Arthur’s whole face feels impossibly warm, and he can hear his classmates snickering at him. Arthur chances a glance up and sees Hayden across the room, laughing and making a face like he thinks Arthur is completely incompetent, and Arthur feels a lump rise in his throat.
Arthur stuffs his things into his backpack and storms out of the classroom without another word, upset beyond all means and more embarrassed than he’d ever thought possible. He keeps walking, one foot in front of the other, as quickly as he can until he’s taking in big gulps of air and quite nearly sobbing. He leans against a row of lockers nearby and rests his head back against them, hating himself a little bit for making such a fool of himself, for being so painfully awkward.
---
IV.
If asked, Arthur would never say that he’d planned to be a dreamer for a living, but as it often happens, things don’t quite go according to plan. In his second year as an undergraduate at MIT, Course 10 (or, in layman’s terms, a Chemical Engineering major), he takes a class on this new technology being developed called “dream sharing” by a team of researchers, one of whom is a professor at MIT, Mallorie Cobb. The class sounds interesting enough, and Arthur needs to take it to help fulfill his distribution requirement, so he decides to take it.
The class is hugely popular, which isn’t a surprise at all, seeing as how this is such a fantastical new concept, and the whole class fills a large lecture hall. Arthur gets to class early and gets a seat in the front, because he can’t stand sitting in the back. Arthur’s interest is piqued immediately, as Mallorie Cobb, who insists that they all just call her Mal because Mallorie or, god forbid, Mrs. Cobb sounds far too formal for her.
“I’m a simple woman at heart, you see,” she says with a smile, a soft French accent lilting in her voice.
Arthur is so fascinated by the end of the first lecture that he stays after to ask Mal a few questions about what she’s discussed today. Unfortunately, there are many other people also hoping to talk to Mal, so Arthur has to wait a bit before he can speak to her, but she’s calm and patient, and when Arthur walks up to her, she looks at him expectantly in a way that almost makes him feel like she’s been waiting for him all along.
“I was just wondering,” Arthur says. “Theoretically speaking, if you’re able to construct various mazes and obstacle courses in people’s heads, would it be possible to navigate that with the purpose of uncovering… I don’t know, something about that person?”
Mal’s face lights up and she smiles a smile that’s very pleased and a little mysterious all at once. “You’re very quick,” she says, grey-blue eyes twinkling. “I was intending on discussing that later in this course, but yes. That is exactly what we’re hoping to figure out in the future with the advancement of our research.”
“Could I help you?” Arthur blurts out without thinking. He quickly backtracks and adds, “I-If you need it, I mean. I just- This is such a fascinating topic; I’d love to learn more about it and possibly help out if I could.”
Mal laughs, easy and lighthearted. “We need all the help we can get,” she tells him. “This is such a new project; there’s still so much to discover.” She reaches into her bag and pulls out a thin stack of papers, handing them to Arthur. “Why don’t you familiarize yourself with the material first, and then come talk to me again sometime? I’m sure we’ll find something for you to do.”
Arthur nods and says that he will. In the following week, he hardly gets a wink of sleep because in addition to doing all his normal work, he’s trying to read all of the papers that are full of technical terms and complicated words that he doesn’t recognize, and his eyes hurt a little from staring at the papers for so long trying to force the words to make sense, but it’s the best he’s felt in a while. He emails Mal later that week after he’s finally made his way through all the information she’d thrown at him, after a few more of her lectures, which are quickly becoming his favorite part of his day. He emails her asking if they can meet sometime, and she suggests they meet up for coffee the following day.
They agree to meet at one o’clock, and while Arthur’s waiting for Mal to arrive, he’s frantically trying to catch up on some reading he’s falling behind on for an English seminar he’s taking. The problem is, he’s trying to speed read his way through it, and he isn’t quite able to do so without giving himself a massive headache and retaining absolutely no information in the process, so by the time Mal arrives, he’s just glaring angrily at his book, as if he can beat it into submission by doing so.
“Did it insult you?” Mal asks, light and joking. She slides a cup of coffee over to Arthur. Arthur makes an expression like he’s going to protest that she bought it for him, but she waves it off as nothing. She gestures to the book. “What are you reading?”
“Inferno,” Arthur tells her. His seminar is focused around reading and analyzing all three parts to Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Mal huffs out a breath, raising her eyebrows. “Heavy stuff,” she comments, sounding impressed.
“I don’t understand it at all,” Arthur admits, and normally, he wouldn’t be one to admit defeat so easily, but he’s gotten nearly no sleep all week and he’s more than a little frustrated with the damn thing.
Mal laughs and pats his hand reassuringly. “No worries,” she says. “I didn’t understand it when I was in school, and I was a Literature major.”
Arthur furrows his eyebrows at this, wondering how a woman who majored in Literature could now be a scientist. “But you-”
“I switched majors,” she says, “To Chemistry. It seems like a big leap, but you must understand that literature and science are both immense passions in my life.” She takes a sip of her coffee and adds, as something of an afterthought, “You know, my husband and I were on the team of researchers who first isolated the key compound in Somnacin.”
Arthur nods, wanting, now more than ever, to be a part of that, to be a part of something that could change the world forever. He glances at his book laying tauntingly on the table next to his coffee. He sighs.
“I just wish I wasn’t required to take English courses,” he says with a laugh. “I’m terrible at English.”
“Well, we can’t all be good at everything,” Mal says easily enough.
Arthur shrugs and stares at his coffee. He’s suddenly overcome with the overwhelming urge to be unabashedly honest with Mal like he’s never let himself be before. Maybe it’s because Mal seems so honest herself, like she has nothing to hide from the world. Maybe it’s because she exudes a sort of calm that Arthur doesn’t quite know how to react to. Or maybe it’s simply because she’s younger than most of the faculty and she’s very pretty. But whatever it is, it prompts him to say to her, softly:
“I’m dyslexic.”
Mal draws in a breath and her eyes widen. “Oh goodness, why didn’t you tell me?” she asks. “I wouldn’t have given you so much extra reading to do if I’d known.”
And it’s this reaction, this reaction that isn’t negative or derisive or disdainful in any way, this reaction that Arthur’s never encountered before when people find out that he’s dyslexic, that makes him laugh.
“It’s no big deal,” he says, even though he should be frustrated beyond all means because his eyes hurt and he’s had an on-and-off headache for the past week and he’s so, so tired. “It was really interesting stuff. I didn’t mind.”
Mal smiles at him and reaches over to squeeze his hand. “We’ll find something for you to do,” she says, and it sounds like a promise. “You’re very bright, Arthur. We could definitely use you on our team.”
---
V.
Something like five years down the road from first meeting Mal, Arthur is now a full-fledged dreamer. He works almost exclusively with Mal and her husband, Dom, though he’s been known to take a few smaller jobs with other teams. Dream sharing went rogue a few years ago, and the industry has grown exponentially ever since, various competing companies and jealous spouses and political forerunners throwing money at dreamers to discover incriminating evidence tucked away in the recesses of peoples’ minds. Arthur enjoys it, the hard work, the travelling, the adrenaline rush, and, of course, the money. There’s a lot to be had in this business, and while it hasn’t been easy coping with his dyslexia to become the best point man dream sharing has ever known, it’s worth a couple nights of missed sleep.
Arthur meets Eames on a job in Copenhagen with Mal and Dom. It’s a simple enough extraction (though really, simple is a relative term, but they all made it out in one piece, so they just say simple), and Arthur knows that Eames, with his sharp observation skills, quick mind, and keen intuition, almost immediately picks up on something Arthur’s trying to hide. But of course Arthur has to hide his dyslexia, because while he’s not ashamed of his condition as he was as a child, it does tend to cause people to doubt his abilities as a point man, which are not lacking by any means.
That first job, Arthur leaves as soon as they receive payment, and he leaves no time for Eames to go nosing around in his business.
Arthur manages to avoid Eames’ constant inquisitive glances, for the most part, for upwards of a year. He works with Eames on various occasions but always makes an effort to keep their relationship strictly professional, always keeping Eames at arm’s length. Eames probably assumes Arthur’s just cold. Arthur is simply acting upon an instinct of self-preservation that he can’t shake.
It isn’t until Munich that Eames catches him.
Arthur’s up late at the warehouse one day, trying to make his way through just this one last document before he turns in for the night. His vision is swimming and his eyes are starting to cross, but he presses on, fighting a migraine, and squints at the paper in front of him, rubbing his temples irately. When Eames pops up beside him, Arthur actually jumps, because it’s late and he’s tired and he’s not expecting it at all.
“Jesus Christ, Eames,” Arthur hisses, cradling his head in his hands. His headache is coming on full-strength now. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
He probably doesn’t mean to sound as harsh as he sounds, but he’s overworked and undercaffinated, and that just doesn’t make for a healthy state of mind. Eames pays this no heed, however, and pulls up a chair anyways.
“I thought you could use a little company,” Eames grins, straddling the chair to sit beside Arthur.
Arthur shoots him a look like he thinks Eames is lying through his teeth. “Since when do you care?” Arthur grumbles, turning back to his papers. And then he adds, as if it will get Eames to go away, “I’m busy.”
“I can see that,” Eames says, and he sounds amused. He makes no move to leave.
Arthur sighs and turns back to his reading, trying and failing quite miserably to continue reading. He’s just too tired and frustrated and distracted, and he realizes that he’s read the same sentence a dozen times without retaining any of it. And it doesn’t help that all the while, Arthur can feel Eames’ eyes focused solely on him, unwavering.
Arthur slams his hand down and whips his head around to glare at Eames again. “Can I help you with something?” he asks, words rough and impatient.
And then he notices that Eames is looking at him differently now, eyes careful and calculating like when he’s observing a subject to forge. Arthur has known Eames for long enough to know that this is Eames putting two and two together; he knows that Eames is just seconds away from making a startling discovery.
Arthur’s not quite sure what to expect next, but what he surely isn’t expecting is for Eames’ face to go soft, and for him to say quietly, “Arthur, are you-?”
“Yes, I’m dyslexic, okay,” Arthur snaps. “Now, can you fucking leave?”
He doesn’t even know what he’s so angry about. If he were thinking logically, he’d notice that Eames isn’t being one bit contemptuous or snide like he could; in fact, Eames is being fairly, well, nice, about it, for lack of a better term. But he’s not thinking logically, and he’s fucking pissed off at Eames, for no other reason than that Eames is Eames and he’s here, talking to Arthur, when all Arthur wants to do is bang his own head against the table until he passes out.
Eames holds his hands up in surrender. “I’m not here to mock you, Arthur,” he says.
Arthur narrows his eyes at Eames. His head is pounding. He wants to sleep. Eames gestures to Arthur’s papers.
“Do you want me to read to you?” Eames asks. “Would that help?”
Arthur blinks, taken aback, completely thrown off guard by how soft and round Eames’ voice sounds, the heavy sincerity of it, the way Eames looks at him and just seems to know, even though he couldn’t, even though he doesn’t; he doesn’t know what it’s like. Arthur nods once. Eames stands from his chair and stands behind Arthur, hands leaning on Arthur’s worktable, completely caging Arthur in, so he can read over Arthur’s shoulder. And then he starts reading, and his voice is a gentle cadence, and Arthur follows the path of Eames’ fingertip, highlighting and marking the page with symbols only he knows the meaning of as appropriate, as Eames moves his finger across the page with every word he reads.
And Arthur thinks, hazily, that perhaps he’s completely misjudged Eames’ character. But he stows that thought away for the morning, for when his mind is less muddled with sleep deprivation and the soft purr of Eames’ voice and the kind of numbness that can only come from working one’s mind far beyond its capacity.
END.
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A/N: I'm actually half-asleep as I'm posting this, which probably means I missed a million and a half typos and grammar mistakes, because all my fics are unbetaed, though proofread a thousand times over. ummmm I felt like I had something interesting to say about this fic, but now I kind of forget (can you tell how awake I am atm?) so just thank you for reading!
comments/concrit is always welcome and very much appreciated!
(anon commenting is on, so feel free to leave some feedback, anons!)