Work Text:
Arthur’s an adrenaline junkie.
It started innocently enough, climbing too high and racing down hills on his bike, hands in the air, wind in his face, crowing as he rushed toward the stop sign at the bottom. No one put a name to it until he fell through the ice one spring. They pulled him out, shivering and laughing, half frozen and hypothermic. It was the most alive he’d ever felt.
He buys a dirt bike at 17. Six months later he totals it, and when he heals he joins the army. During the day he takes orders and sneaks blueprints out of the records room. At night he slips out and back into the most secure base in the country, avoiding the sentries and the guards, heart beating a mile a minute because he’s in civies and if they spot him he’ll be shot on sight.
He earns medals of valour and distinction, rushing into enemy fire for the thrill of it and saving lives as a side effect.
When he’s conscripted into Project Somnacin he learns a whole new meaning for the word thrill . Now he spends his days running, and shooting, and jumping off cliffs with no parachute, only to wake up panting, fingers itching for the needle in his vein. He’s addicted, and when they shut it down and ship the guinea pigs to the four corners of the earth, Arthur puts his internal hard drive to work and walks away with not one, but all three PASIVs constructed by the US Army.
As a civilian, Arthur drives too fast on the highway and starts shaving with a straight razor, eyes closed and half hard. He starts fights at seedy bars and fucks dangerous strangers in dirty bathrooms with one hand on the knife strapped to his hip.
When Mallorie Cobb sits down across from him in a coffee shop ten miles from his house, Arthur’s heart rate spikes and the next five years are a blur of epinephrine and speed.
He’s twenty-seven years old and has endangered his life so many times he’s lost count. He’s been shot at and beaten, run over by a tractor and jumped from the roof of a speeding train. He’s crashed a boat, a plane, and on one memorable occasion, an Amish wedding. He’s broken bones, windows, cyphers, and hearts, and all of it has fed his need for more.
And none of it, not one single life-threatening, heart-stopping, pulse-pounding second, prepares him for the moment he meets Eames.
Eames is graceful and sharp. He turns on a dime and has a mind as fast as a McLaren F1. He’s dynamic and capable, and sometimes he loses just for fun. He’s the single most dangerous risk Arthur’s ever taken and he dives in with both eyes open, wind in his face, and crowing as he rushes towards him at top speed.