Possibly, I'm Insane

For hominysnark 


“You are criticizing my driving and it is absolutely uncalled for,” Eames announced.

“You are failing at navigating this roundabout,” Arthur replied calmly.

“Well, who puts a fucking roundabout in a fucking dream?” Eames demanded. Then cut the car straight through the traffic to the other side.

“That was cheating.”

“I do know all about roundabouts, by the way. We are on my home turf right now. Driving on the right side of the road. The correct side, I mean.”

“And yet,” Arthur murmured. “You remain a terrible driver on both sides of the Atlantic.”

“We are in a dream!”

For queenofonions

“This is a time of wonder,” Eames is proclaiming.

“Whenever you’re around me is always a time of wonder,” Arthur mutters.

“What a lovely thing to say, darling!”

“I wonder what new and exciting way Eames will find to irritate me this time,” Arthur explains.

“Ha ha. I meant Christmastime. Christmas is a time of wonder and joy. Not just me.”

“I didn’t say you were a time of joy. Just wonder.”

“That’s okay. I have time to convince you of the ‘joy’ part later.”

“How?” Arthur asks suspiciously.

“Darling, you’re going to like it so much,” Eames promises enthusiastically.

For anonymous.

“I think,” says Eames, “that it’s very important that we pretend to be dating.”

Arthur stares at him. “What? Why?”

“I think the mark will be more likely to trust us if he thinks we’re madly in love with each other.”

“Why?” Arthur asks again.

“People who are obviously beloved by wonderful people—” Eames indicates himself—“are considered by strangers to be more trustworthy than frowny, uptight people on their own. Studies show this.”

“What studies?”

“Lots of studies. Stop quarrelling, darling, and hold my hand, quick before the mark concludes that you’re frowny and uptight and not beloved.”

Requested by edheldimmm

Arthur has an inventory of their Christmas ornaments.

“Look,” Arthur says. “This is the only way we can keep organized. You own over a thousand ornaments.”

“We own over a thousand ornaments.”

“Yes, and sometimes you say things like, ‘The only thing we can put on this branch is the ice blue metallic boot we bought in Lucerne that trip we took when your wisdom teeth started bothering you.’”

“And then you save the day, darling, as you always do, by pulling up your inventory and knowing exactly where that ornament is.” Eames beams at him and kisses his earlobe.

Requested by sdlibrarian 

Arthur was the dreamer, so Eames was expecting the dreamscape to be perfect, pristine, as Arthur’s dreamscapes were.

Eames was definitely not expecting the octopus. Right there, in the middle of the suburban mall.

The mark said, “Is that an octopus?” and Eames engineered a distraction.  

When the job was over, and the team was berating Arthur, Eames said, “It turned out fine.” But then, to Arthur, “An octopus?”

Arthur muttered, “Sorry.”

“Everyone makes mistakes, darling. It’s just…an octopus? What were you thinking?”

“The way you sleep,” Arthur admitted, blushing. “Like an octopus. Arms and legs everywhere. Whatever.”

Eames grinned.

Requested by anonymous

Arthur had been typically pragmatic in his teenage parenting approach. “We cannot expect her to tell us everything, Eames. Who tells everyone everything? Everyone has secrets. We cannot condemn her for keeping secrets sometimes.”

Eames agreed, because he had despised hypocrisy in his parents and had vowed never to be that kind of father (when being a father at all became a possibility).

Then Lucky met The Boy, and Arthur hired a world-class assassin to follow him. “Don’t hurt him. Just tell us what you think.”

Eames didn’t even think this was overkill. He thought this was merely more pragmatism.

Requested by pureimaginatrix 

Arthur has a checklist, because of course he does. Arthur’s running point on Lucky’s first day of school.

Eames says, “Darling, it’s just school, it’s not a job.”

“School is the most important job,” Arthur tells him sternly, because he would.

“I know, darling, but it’s not like—”

“We are sending her, out into the world, out of our control, and if you don’t think I’m going to make sure that I have done everything I can to make sure she’s safe – I would have done it for Cobb, of course I’ll do it for Lucky.”

Eames can’t argue.

Requested by nia_kantorka 

“This architect,” Eames remarked, “is still pretty green.”

“She’s learning,” Arthur said between gritted teeth. “I’m training her.”

“And how’s that training going, pet?” asked Eames casually.

“It’s going fine,” Arthur insisted.

“Because, from where I’m standing, she has forgotten to include lightbulbs.”

“Yes,” Arthur snapped. “I can see that.”

“No,” said Eames, “I think you mean to say that you cannot see. Because it is very dark in this dream. Because it has no lightbulbs.”

“Shh,” said Arthur.

“You know what’s an ideal activity in the dark?”

“Murder?” suggested Arthur.

“Well, I was going to say ‘snogging,’ mine’s better.”

Requested by anonymous.

“You know,” says Eames. “It’s a dream.”

“I’m aware,” he agrees drily.

“Just saying. Watch out, love.” Eames leaps atop the balustrade. Arthur, rolling his eyes, steps back as Eames slides his way down the length of the spiral staircase.

“Perfect balance in a dream,” he calls up to Arthur from the bottom. “Come on, darling, have a bit of fun.”

Arthur, after a moment, smooths the stairs into a slide and slips his way down, landing in a heap at Eames’s feet.

Eames blinks at him in astonishment.

Arthur grins. “Someone once told me to dream a little bigger.”

So yesterday I was stressed out about My Life and what happens when that happens, as we all now know, is I write fic, and corpsereviver2 over on Tumblr was all like, "Why don't we do a DIY / HGTV ficathon?" and I have long, long, loooong wanted to write all the HGTV AUs, okay? I watch HGTV for comfort television, which means I watch A LOT of HGTV, and I usually watch them thinking, "Ha! Wouldn't this show be hilarious if Sherlock was the designer?" because my mind is a crazy-person place a lot of the time.

So lo, corpsereviver2 made a collection on AO3 and I was like, "Well. That's it, now I have to write something." And so I wrote a paragraph and then I wrote a scene and then the thing is that I could see this fic *so clearly* that I was like, "Okay, we're doing this whole thing tonight, ready, set, GO."

My favorite comment on this fic so far (and I'm paraphrasing madly) is something like, "I told my husband I was going to read a fic about the two guys from Inception being the people on Love It or List It and I guess when you say it like that it *does* sound strange." HAHAHAHAHA! Strange AND AWESOME, okay?

The fic wasn't even titled until after all the chapters had gone up in my crazy-person "I shall write this fic in real-time, if you happen to be up in the middle of the night you can sit and watch it take shape before my eyes" writing method last night. (Which, actually, was kind of fun, because I was literally getting feedback in while I was drafting the next chapter, and it was crazy and I wouldn't recommend doing it all the time, but yeah, I enjoyed it.) But anyway, now it is called Fixer-Upper (I know, huh? Pretty good for a last-minute title, right?) and, just like the comment says, it's a fic in which Arthur and Eames are the stars of "Love It or List It."