Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Claire sat hunched over her most recent project when she felt the warmth of Arthur’s arms wrap around her waist as he bent to place a soft, lingering kiss to her neck. She’d been so wrapped up in her new design, she hadn’t heard him enter the lab. Chuckling, she reaches up to take off her soldering glasses, and one of her hands reaches up and behind her to run her fingers through the hair at the base of his neck.

She looks up and notices that there is no longer any light coming through the windows. Oh, I’ve worked straight through  again. She closed her eyes and relished the moment of closeness with Arthur. How she could feel the way his simulated breath warmly tickled over her neck, the beat of his heart through where he pressed himself closer to where she sat on the lab stool, and how the heat of his embrace was rapidly alerting her to how tired her body was.

Arthur’s mellifluous voice broke through her revelry, “You told me,” he peppered kisses along her neck, “...that you were coming to bed hours ago.” Claire couldn’t help but smile at his phrasing, the colloquial, inexactness still amazing her after all this time. Pressing further back into him, she sighs, wishing she could let the warmth lull her to sleep.

“I wouldn’t mind, you know. I could hold you right here while you slept. But I rather expect your back might have you regretting that decision when you awoke.”

Her eyes were closed, but they rolled in their sockets despite her. “Arthur, were you reading my vitals?” She smirks when his body stutters for a nanosecond. He started placing kisses on her neck again, blatantly disregarding the question.

“Arthur, why were –”

“I was worried about you.” He puts his hands on her hips and turns her to face him. He cups her chin with a smooth hand, and gently coaxes her face up to look at him. “I always worry about you. Since reading your file, all I’ve done is worry about you.” She saw the exact moment that Arthur’s programming cascades back into those memories and their associated emotions. The gentle blue of his eyes shifts to stormy gray, and flicker away from her gaze. “Though looking back, I understand that my own selfishness undermined that worry at least one particular time.”

She doesn’t let him dwell on it. She grabs him by the front of his cardigan and draws him to her, using her legs to wrap around his and pull him even further, erasing any space between them. “That is in our past Arthur. I have nightmares about waking to a reality where this has been nothing but a dream. And I push past throngs of people on board just to get to the bar, and your face is there, but—” A sudden pinch of his fingers desperately grasping her shoulders cuts her off. Her hands push on the backs of his arms, prompting him to disengage his grip and wrap himself completely around her, somehow managing to gather her even more snugly to his chest.

“You made it right a million times over again when you convinced me to go back to sleep. I saw your pain, Arthur, everything that put you through.” Though this was meant to soothe him, even hidden beneath the soft flesh of his torso, the immediate rigidity of his muscles at her words was obvious.

“But Claire, if I had—I took— damn it!” His breathing glitched with his thoughts, and instead of shorting out, he was left gasping for air he didn’t need. He buried his face in the top of her hair and she felt tears fall to her scalp.

She released her grip and her hands sought the hem of his shirt and cardigan, lifting it so she could rest them on the warmth of his back, fingers lazily trailing over his skin, feeling all the fine hairs, the imperfections that had come since she had put him together.

“You were forgiven for that, long ago.” She quietly mumbled into his chest, though she knew he could understand her. Her heart ached for him. As advanced as he was, no one – human or android – was made to deal with the guilt Arthur put himself through.

They stayed like that for a few moments; each lost to the touch of the other while Arthur’s breathing evened. A long exhale ruffled her hair, and she could feel his lips twitching into a smile above her.

“You’ve no idea how vast humanity’s capacity for forgiveness can be, when it lets go of what can’t be changed.”  

His voice came out quiet, but with its usual warmth. She smiled at the beauty of the sentiment, 

“Where did you come up with that?” She asked, wondering from where he’d cataloged it, or if he’d come up with it on his own. A mass release of tension fell over Arthur with a chuckle, and still being held firmly against him, she could feel the laughter in the movement of his soft belly against her.

She pulled away from him just enough to look up to his face; his eyes were slowly shifting back to a twinkling green/blue, the dimples in his cheeks and lines at the corners of his eyes reassuring her that he had found something good to pull him from beneath the aggressive wave of guilt that had come over him so suddenly. 

His eyes flit over her face for a moment, looking her over like she is the answer to an important question that he didn’t yet understand either half of. 

“Oh Claire, how can somebody so clever, not remember their own words?”

Chapter Text

“So, my dear genius, just what exactly is it that you’re currently using as an excuse to work too much this evening?” The mischievous twinkle in his eyes betraying his, quite frankly, very impressive sarcasm to Claire. Rolling her eyes (something she had come to find herself often doing in his company) she turned back towards the table, Arthur’s arms never breaking their embrace, only loosening so that she could shift comfortably. 

“Hopefully, it’s going to be a new nervous system for the human prostheses we’ve been working on.” Arthur had been instrumental in their work. An android who could easily connect himself to a prosthetic limb with a prototype upgrade, who could read the feedback data from the programming in the limb nearly instantaneously, and interpret and expand upon the abstract concepts of the response and feel of the limb. And then, help even further by coming up with his own ideas and suggestions for the mechanical upgrades, and his own android dexterity was invaluable as he became someone she could trust to do fine, detailed work without hovering over him. 

The exponential speed at which they were making progress had Claire breaking her promise to Arthur to take care of herself, as she got lost in the seemingly miraculous loop of endless progress they were making. She didn’t do it on purpose, but when they were learning how to better people's lives so quickly… she simply lost herself in the euphoria of doing truly life-altering work that would affect so many.

He huffed into her hair with a light, breathy chuckle, and reached around her to grab the mold she had been working on, bringing it close enough that he could manipulate it with both arms still somehow embracing her. She felt him pause for a split moment when he had turned it over in his hands a few times. 

“Claire, this is a new mold”

“Yes, clearly Arthur,” she laughed

He playfully swatted her thigh, “yes Claire, clearly, I can see it’s a new mold. But why ? There are plenty of molds to produce neural pathways at any rate we could possibly need, the only variables there bring labor and availability of materials.” 

“It’s to test a new type of material for compatibility with the artificial nervous systems. The geologists found a new alloy in ore they’ve been finding at various sites on homestead II. It’s nearly a perfect match of conductivity to true human neural tissue. With this, it’s possible we could eliminate nearly all response time lag as the signal crosses the bridge formed at the ends of the person’s biological nervous system and the synthetic nervous system. Giving people back nearly 100% functionality in movement and sensation as their natural appendage.”

“However, the material requires a much higher temperature to liquify, and the current mold material would not withstand the heat, so I was making a prototype from a new material.” 

Arthur had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout her explanation. Usually chiming in and out of her explanations, finishing her sentences when the thoughts connected in his brain, and drifting off when he latches onto a thread that leads he pulls and pulls in his mind until he’s all but unraveled the very idea that sent him off in the first place. 

She shifted to turn slightly, lifting her head up to look at his face. 

His face was stuck with his mouth in a slightly agape smile, the peridot shade of his eyes deep as they often were when lost in his thoughts, though his gaze remained focused and centered on her as if she was some great mysterious precious antiquity that held many lost mysteries. 

“Arthur? What’re you thinking about?”

“About the human ability to create something entirely new, the art behind what it is you're doing. Taking something that is in your head, and then making it from nothing.”

“Well, you help me with the molds all the time, what are you talking about?”

“That’s not the same. I can replicate what I see, and when you have me work on the molds, you’ve always drawn out a model beforehand, so all I must do is replicate that.” he smiled wistfully and his voice softened, “But when it comes to taking a concept from within, and then giving its own  life…” she felt his body slightly droop all around her, and he let out a long-suffering sigh, “That’s something uniquely human.”

Claire stopped for a moment, processing what Arthur had just said.

“Wait wait wait. Did you, the android who birthed his own consciousness, say that art was a uniquely human thing? her mouth gaping slightly as her eyebrows shoot up in disbelief.”

“What? Claire, yes. You don’t have a hearing problem and my volume was at a perfectly acceptable level for the waves to reach your --” she covers his mouth with her hand, laughing. She often forgot that while Arthur had mastered his own brand of sassy android sarcasm, he had yet to grasp understanding it coming from anyone else. 

“Arthur, for goodness, sake. When did you try?”

He stared blankly at her.

“Arthur?”

“I do not remember the exact date of my last attempt.” he shifted his gaze away from her, flitting to different areas of the room. 

“Do you not remember your last attempt, because it never actually happened?”

He turns his head to the side, his perfect nose held up in the air, his lips pursed while he sucks on his teeth, an unconscious tell he’s picked up watching her. 

“HAH. you’ve never tried it before, have you?” she couldn’t help the shot of excitement racing through her as all the possibilities of an android that could actually create his own art. The scientist within her coursed ahead of her consciousness and started immediately imagining various trials that she could set up for him, to see what he was capable of. 

But that’s not how art is created. It’s not something you do because someone asks it of you; for some sort of test. Her heart told her, halting her brain in its tracks.

Claire, no, stop it. This is not an experiment. This is Arthur. This could be the perfect sort of distraction for him when he gets a little overwhelmed. 

Rarely did he get overwhelmed anymore, but there were still a few times a month where she would find him somewhere, silently shaking while various parts of him glitched and his eyes lost everything ‘Arthur’, and were left only with fear and confusion -- the look of a lost child in an unfamiliar place. Too much input and not enough experience to work his way through it. 

“No ma’am, I know that look.” Arthurs eyebrows also shot up, and he pointedly lowered his head down at her with lips pressed into a thin, dissatisfied line. “You are not about to start another project, when you have not slept for at least the last 24 hours period!”

“Oh relax. This project is all for you! Just let me gather a few things, won't take but a moment!” Claire yelled behind her as she ran off to find the nearest cart bot. 

Several minutes later.

“There! Everything you could possibly need for any creative whim you might have!” It was all taken from the kids’ art supplies that she’d had a cart bot retrieve from the storage unit wherein was kept all the supplies the Homestead II colony would need once there were children running around. 

Brightly colored paints, glitters, any type of coloring media you could want, google eyes, pom poms, even elbow macaroni -- all the necessary stuff. 

“Claire… What am I meant to do with all of…”? He gestures widely to where all the supplies are arranged on the cleared off central table of her lab, “… this?” 

“Ah ah ah, that’s for you to decide, Arthur. That’s the whole point of art. You take what you have, and you make it something your own. If you look at something, and you like it, use it in some way - ANY way! Do whatever pops into your head first!”

“Claire, my thoughts are not located --”

“Dah! Mmm! Nope! You know what I mean! I know you do!”

His eyes flickered anxiously to the table, and then back to her, and she melted.

“Arthur, this doesn’t need to be stressful. I shouldn’t have pushed you. I’m sorry, let’s get this all stored back away-”

“Claire, no. I’m just...I’m not quite sure how to put it...I don’t want to make something primitive and have you disappointed by it… I-- I’ve never done anything like this before… What if I can’t?” He pulled the unbuttoned sides of his blue cardigan tightly around his middle, tucking his hands beneath his elbows.

Oh, if ever she had doubted his humanity... his self-doubt and insecurity could rival that of any human she’d ever known. 

“Oh Arthur, there is absolutely, positively, 100% no way at all that you could ever disappoint me”.  She unwrapped his arms from his middle, and slid her arms underneath his cardigan, urging him to cocoon her with him, feeling complete when she was fully enveloped by him. And she knew that her wrapping around his middle was helping to calm him. She could feel his stomach expand and contract with his breathing against her chest, and she smiled into his plush embrace.

“Anything you could possibly make will amaze me, Arthur. Art is all about fun, if you have had fun at the end of this, I will be the happiest woman in this galaxy. 

A hand came up to stroke her hair, and he lay a kiss on the top of her head. 

“Besides, if you don’t want to do this, I don’t have to go to sleep... so honestly at this point --

“Oh, Claire alright, alright! Goodness. Take yourself away to sleep.”

They break away from one another and Claire raises up on her toes to lightly peck his cheek before turning and walking to their bedroom and leaving him to his creativity. 

She didn’t make it two steps before he reached out to grab her hand, stalling her.

“I love you Claire, thank you, for always believing in me.” He said with a suppressed sigh. Still wrestling with it underneath it all but trying to move forward anyways. She looked over her shoulder at him, a quick pang ringing through her heart at the rich brown, sad puppy eyes plucking away on her heart strings. “You’ve a human spirit alright, Arthur. There’s no doubt about that.” A spark alighted his eyes, and his face softens into a smile. “I love you too Arthur.” She gave his hand a gentle squeeze and then actually walked off to their room. 

I cannot wait to see what he comes up with.