Possibly, I'm Insane

Requested by anonymous

“You don’t know how to ski?” Eames is incredulous.

“Not everyone does,” Arthur says defensively. “That’s not a big thing.”

“Good thing you didn’t get the snow world on the Fischer job.”

“I was busy kicking ass in a world without gravity,” Arthur replies shortly.

Eames raises his hands in an I surrender gesture, then suggests, “I could teach you.”

Arthur snorts. “No, thanks.”

“Or we could just pretend to go skiing and cuddle by a fire instead. That’s the best kind of skiing anyway. I can make hot cocoa.”

“Well,” Arthur admits. “That is a better offer than skiing.”

Requested by anonymous.

“I don’t think she should ever be allowed to go out on a first date,” proclaims Eames.

“That seems unreasonable,” says Arthur.

“I don’t think so. What does anyone even need dating for? We found each other without dating, didn’t we?”

“I think we were dating, actually, it was just…non-traditional.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust her,” Eames continues. “It’s that I don’t trust anyone else.”

Arthur snorts. “Oh, and you think I do? I plan to meet this date while I happen to be casually in the middle of cleaning my gun.”

“That’s more like the Arthur I love.”

Requested by anonymous.

Eames had adopted a dog.

Arthur knew this because he called Eames for a job he was running that needed a forger and Eames said, “Absolutely, petal, as ever, at your beck and call, but also, Brutus has to come along.”

Arthur said, “Who?”

Brutus was a Pomeranian. Who Arthur had to make sure someone was around to watch whenever they were under.

“Someone’s got to watch the PASIV anyway,” Eames pointed out.

“Why, in our line of work, would you get a dog?” Arthur growled.

“Darling, I love him. Don’t be jealous.”

“I’m not,” Arthur denied. Maybe somewhat unconvincingly.

Requested by swtalmnd 

Arthur brings home mincemeat pies. 

Eames is very excited by the mincemeat pies. Kid-on-Christmas-morning. Arthur’s happy he got them. “What I really love, though, is figgy pudding,” Eames says, and sighs.

So Arthur calls Eames’s mom and asks for her figgy pudding recipe. He labors over it and presents it on Christmas Eve as a present.

Eames is absolutely delighted. He says, “And now for the best part—”

“We are not lighting it on fire,” Arthur says swiftly. “Don’t even think about it. Your mother and I are of the same opinion on this: you, fire, figgy pudding, no.”

Requested by nia_kantorka 

Every fucking year Eames went overboard with tinsel.

Which was predictable. Eames would be obsessed with the most annoying holiday decoration.

“Why is it we’re always working together during Christmas?” Arthur asked, picking tinsel off of his suit, out of his hair, why was it everywhere.

“Because, darling, it’s our tradition. Come help me put more tinsel on the tree.”

“The tree needs more tinsel because all the tinsel is somehow gravitating toward me,” Arthur grumbled.

“That’s because you’re the most attractive thing in the room,” replied Eames.

“Whatever,” said Arthur, and helped with the tinsel to shut Eames up.

Requested by kageillusionz

Arthur was a traditionalist at heart. Eames longed to spend Christmas on a beach somewhere, but Arthur wanted snow and sleigh rides and hot cocoa. It surprised Eames, because Arthur, after all, didn’t even celebrate the holiday. But their first Christmas together Arthur sulked in the sand until Eames suggested skiing in the Alps, and that settled it. On Christmas Eve, no matter where they were in the world, they flew toward snow, and they watched Christmas morning arrive, snuggled by a roaring fire, underneath mistletoe.

It was too domestic by half; Eames wouldn’t have traded it for the world.

Requested by jbluphin.

“I’ve never been on a boat before! This is going to be such an adventure!”

Arthur refrained from mentioning that she had been smuggled out of her homeland on a boat.

Lucky stood right by the railing as the boat chugged away from the shore and out into the Mediterranean, and Eames pointed out pretty bits of shoreline, and birds swooping overhead.

Lucky frowned and said, “Okay, what happens next?”

“Nothing,” Eames said. “This.”

“This is boring,” Lucky said. “I thought there’d be adventure.”

“Only if the boat sinks,” Eames said.

Lucky brightened.

Arthur said, “We’re not sinking the boat.”

Title - Keep the Car Running (1/31)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - Adult
Characters - Arthur, Eames, Sherlock, John, Mycroft, Moriarty, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Dom Cobb
Spoilers - Through "His Last Vow" in the Sherlock universe. This takes place post-movie, so I guess spoilers for "Inception"? But just for the basic fact that it's about dream thieves, nothing in this story depends overly much on the movie's plot.
Disclaimer - I don't own any of them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - If Mycroft Holmes lived in a world where people could steal information from the subconsciouses of others, tell me he wouldn't be all over that when he had Moriarty in custody.
Author's Notes - OMG YOU GUYS IT'S INCEPTIONLOCK TIME.

Okay. So. Long intro. Starting with: Once upon a time, completely and utterly out of the blue, I fell so totally in love with Arthur/Eames as a couple that it was *ridiculous.* And then I had the idea set forth in the summary of this fic. And then it *wouldn't go away.* And then I was like, "I have to write this."

If you haven't seen Inception or you've only seen it once and don't remember it, no worries. Because if you're sitting there like, "Wait, I've seen this movie, I don't remember this couple in it," it's because they *literally* share, like, two minutes of screen time. LITERALLY. HERE. YOU CAN WATCH IT ALL AND BE TOTALLY CAUGHT UP WITH CANON. There are, like, two other good shippy moments not contained in there but nothing really crazy, just stuff you cling to when your entire canon is two minutes.

And that is what drew me in so thoroughly about Arthur/Eames. To the extent that they exist, they are almost entirely fan-created. Some really good, clever people had some really good, clever ideas about these characters and they *wrote,* oh, God, some of the most beautiful, fantabulous fics I've ever read, it's astonishing. And what it all means is that I'm kind of just writing to fit in with fan tradition. And, if I've done my job right, you should fall in love with Arthur and Eames on their own merits, almost like they're original characters, without knowing anything about their backstory. Because other than two minutes of sniping flirtationyness if you squint, they don't *have* a backstory. The fans made it all out of wholecloth and it is amazing and remarkable and I *love* it.

So. If you come here as already an Arthur/Eames fan (and there are so many more of you than I realized! Why did you not tell me about this awesome ship before?? I am frowning at all of you), I hope you like my take on them. And if you come here as not yet an Arthur/Eames fan, I hope the same thing, and that you *are* an Arthur/Eames fan by the time this fic is over. I am hoping to convince you. I've given myself 31 chapters within which to do it. They're not, I don't think, very much like any other characters I've ever written before, on one level. And, on another level, maybe they're exactly the same. I don't know, it did turn out that Arthur and Sherlock got along much better than I thought that they would, and it's hard to be objective about them anymore, I've lived with them so long that I've become ridiculously protective, especially of Arthur, who stole my heart very unexpectedly during the writing of this fic.

If you get totally smitten and want more Arthur/Eames, YAY. Or if you just want to do some background reading. Knackorcraft over on Tumblr has done THE MOST AMAZING JOB of compiling a bunch of Inceptiony goodness for newbies to the fandom. She is single-handedly trying to start an Inception insurgence here. (She's got fics on her rec list I haven't stumbled across yet and you have no idea how much I am resisting reading ALL OF THEM TONIGHT.)

The story also has a playlist. The title does come from the Arcade Fire song (and it will be said by a character at some point, for those who like when the titles show up in the fics ;-)), but the main writing song of this fic was Josh Ritter's "Change of Time."

SO many people to thank this time around. I was *so nervous* about writing these characters, you have no idea. I kept roping people into reading it over to make sure I wasn't insane. Thank you to snookiescookies, who inspired me to try my hand in this fandom in the first place and whose compliment on my Eames voice meant the world since she writes my literal favorite Eames in the entire fandom. Thanks to Kristin, who read over the first couple of scenes when I was freaking out about having put them on paper at all and said, "HOW DO YOU KNOW SO MUCH ABOUT BEING A CRIMINAL. WRITERS ARE AMAZING," and that's basically my favorite comment on writing ever. Thank you to mykmyk, who read it over and soothed me that I wasn't a crazy person and it did work. Thank you to knackorcraft, who has been cheerleading like crazy and has these really deep thoughts about my writing that make me feel like I need to pretend that I totally intended to be all Aristotelian, yup. And to arctacuda, who is *so* long-suffering and probably has no idea how much I completely appreciate it. She is always my first and last sanity check, and extra-thanks to her for so patiently going through it to be like, "People who have not spent the last nine months of their lives mainlining Arthur/Eames fic will probably need this explained."

ON TO THE STORY.

( Chapter 1 )