Great breakdown. The "taking it on the chin" feels right to me, as does the idea of Arthur leading an end-of-project review. I'm really looking forward to reading your story because (a) it sounds fascinating (b) I love relationships slowly building and evolving--based on your description alone this fic seems like it's going to hit SO MANY of my narrative kinks--and (c) you are obviously making a huge effort to get the characterization exactly right. This post as well as previous posts and discussions makes me think that we agree on Arthur as a character. Also, I've really been hoping for someone to include in a story the nature-of-Arthur's-job related information zanzando put in her post and the fact that you link it makes me excited.
Ha ha, tl;dr. Thanks for this!