Darling,

“I think,” Mal had once said to Arthur late one night after a long day in and out of dreams in preparation for a job, “That it would be a good idea for you to invest in a totem.”

Arthur had looked at her in confusion. “A totem?” he had asked. “What do you mean?”

Mal had smiled at him and reached over to her coat pocket and pulled out a small, silver top for him to see. “A totem,” she had explained, “Is something only you know, a small object you can carry around with you at all times, preferably heavy, that has a certain definitive quality, a certain uniqueness that only you know. For example, only I know exactly how this top works. Only I know how it behaves in reality versus how it behaves in dreams. And by making sure I am the only one who knows, I know that I will always be able to tell whether I am in a dream or not.”

Arthur had looked at the top in Mal’s hand with a rather doubtful look, not entirely sure what the point of this all was.

“Arthur,” Mal had said, putting her top away. She’d cupped his face in her hands and run her fingers along his jaw. “Arthur,” she’d said, voice softer, “We are spending more and more time in dreams these days. We are becoming more well-known in the dream community. There are people who will want to get us, to take us down. There will be times where we might spend so much time in dreams that it will begin to feel like reality. I don’t want you to lose yourself, Arthur. Consider it, okay?”

Arthur had told her he would, because he didn’t want her to worry, because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. And, though it had seemed like a crazy idea back then (he likes to think of himself as a very grounded person, always sure of what’s real and what’s not), it’s beginning to seem more and more appealing now.

Arthur thinks this to himself as he steps off the plane and goes to the airport parking lot after he lands at LAX. All during his drive back to Mal and Dom’s (he promised them he’d go check on Phillipa as soon as he landed, as his flight was due back first out of the three), he considers this, wondering what his totem would be if he decided to get one for himself. He thinks about it as he greets Mal’s mother, Adélie, who has taken to caring for Phillipa while they’re away, and she tells him in that sweet, motherly way that he looks terrible and really needs to take care of himself better. He tells her that he knows and then she leaves, and he sits Phillipa in front of the TV to watch Aladdin.

He thinks about getting a totem as Phillipa giggles and sings along with the cartoon characters dancing across the screen, and he’s still thinking about it when Mal arrives back. He tells her about this and she smiles.

“Try thinking about something meaningful,” Mal suggests. “You might get some ideas that way.”

He nods and thinks about this some more when he goes back to his apartment and unpacks what little he brought with him on this trip. He thinks about it and gets dinner and thinks about it some more until he just doesn’t want to think anymore. He ends up wandering around, going nowhere in particular, and winds up in a part of town that’s a little shady, to say the least. He thinks why not, he’s got money to spare, and goes to waste away some time gambling.

The thing is, Arthur is terrible at poker. You’d think he’d be quite good, as he’s got the best poker face in the world, but no, he’s just terrible at poker. He’s more for games like craps, things that are completely up to chance. He’s quite fond of games like that, actually, though he couldn’t for the life of him say why. He just is.

He spends a good hour or two gambling and drinking, and he’s just thinking about leaving and going home when he looks down at the dice in his hand, translucent red cubes with white dots painted on, and suddenly it hits him. He collects whatever money he’s won and pockets one of the dice.

When he gets back to his apartment, he sits out on his sun-warmed patio and tinkers with the red die for lord knows how long until it’s weighted just so. He rolls it across the tiles a couple times to make sure it’s right and smiles, feeling accomplished. He picks up the die again and rolls it around in his palm, memorizing the weight and feel of it. No one will ever know, he thinks, and he’ll never forget. Something about that makes him feel safe, powerful almost.

He closes his hand around his die, his totem, his little slice of reality, and stares out at the city around him. And then he begins wondering again. Why, he asks himself many times, why now? Why the three? Why a die? Why?

Well, the answer to the first question is easy, however difficult it is to admit to himself. All this business with Eames in Melbourne has gotten to his head and he’s confused and bewildered and not sure what to make of it. It’s knocked him off balance, and it’s nice to have something to keep him firmly on the ground when everything else seems so precarious (he doesn’t want to say this to himself, though, because it makes him look weak, and he’ll be the last to admit that Eames has gotten to him like this).

The three, well the three is simple as well. It was simpler when it was just the three of them – Mal and Dom and Arthur. The instant Eames waltzed into his life with all his British charm and stupid, ridiculous wit and humor, Arthur had felt unsettled, like something could go wrong at any moment. It wasn’t a good feeling, and he’d much rather it be three again.
The die, Arthur doesn’t know why he picked it. It seemed fitting. It seemed important at the time. That’s the best explanation he can offer. He thinks he’ll probably never figure out why it feels so right.

He slips the die into his pocket and stands to go back inside, feeling suddenly much better, much saner, much less like he’s about to fall off the edge of some unseen cliff all the time.
In dreams, his die will no longer be weighted, will have an equal opportunity of landing on any of its six faces. In reality, it will always land on the three. There is still some chance involved, for in dreams, it can still land on the three, but Arthur likes it better this way, after all hasn’t his life been determined by chance? It works. It makes sense.

-

The next time Arthur sees Eames, it’s in Johannesburg, and for some reason he doesn’t know, it’s not awkward at all. Eames teases and flirts and invades Arthur’s personal space like always, and Arthur just glares and sends death threats Eames’ way. Neither Mal nor Dom say anything, simply watch with amusement as Arthur and Eames bicker as has become commonplace with them. They squabble and pick on each other and Eames kicks over Arthur’s chair when he leans too far back and Arthur never misses an opportunity to pick on Eames’ ever worsening taste in clothing.

They’re like kids in grade school, pulling pigtails and calling each other names, but when it really comes down to it, when the time comes to go under and complete a job, they’re strictly professional. They get the job done, so people put up with them. Arthur highly suspects that Mal thinks they’re cute, because she smiles this knowing smile at him like he’s some stupid teenager with a crush, which he absolutely is not.

He can’t stand Eames. He can’t even count on his two hands how many times he wants to murder Eames on a daily basis. Every time Eames opens his mouth to speak, Arthur internally cringes in anticipation of what he might say. Eames is a loose cannon and Arthur is all about impeccable control; they just fundamentally clash. There’s absolutely no way they could possibly be civil with each other, unless, Arthur thinks, unless Eames suddenly learns how to keep his mouth shut overnight, which has about the same chance of happening as hell freezing over.

So they get on each other’s nerves and get the job done, and then before they each go their separate ways, Eames somehow finds his way into Arthur’s hotel room and melts away all the tension that’s built up in Arthur’s body since they last met. He unravels Arthur with his skilled and experience hands and lips and tongue, and in the midst of the intense pleasure only Eames seems to be able to give him, Arthur forgets why he hates Eames so much, but then the next morning, when he wakes up to an empty bed and cold sheets, his mind clouded with jumbled memories and phantom touches, and he reaches for his die to make sure that he’s not dreaming, his chest aching for reasons he can’t even begin to fathom, he begins to remember again why he hates Eames with such a deathly passion.

Because Eames is the only person Arthur has ever met who has made him question his reality.