Possibly, I'm Insane

Title - Keep the Car Running (31/31)
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 - Here we are, somehow, already. At the end of Part I. YES. PART I. THAT'S HOW LONG THIS FIC IS. I remember when I started posting I was like, "Oh, look how lovely and long it is, I'll buy myself all sorts of time to write other stuff!" Which I did. But it was so long ago that I was still so worried about my Arthur and my Eames and now I read bits of this fic over and I'm like, "Aww, look at my babies, we've come so far together, boys." Heh. Fics are journeys for all of us.

I have, of course, as always, so many people to thank. I thanked them in the first chapter, and I bookend with thanking them here: snookiescookies and mykmyk and Kristin for checking my sanity; knackorcraft for doing a close reading and making sure it made sense and the characters worked and generally seven million other things; and arctacuda, as ever, who always knows just how something should be tweaked to re-work it and is very patient when I go off on crazy tangents and copes with my constant mild hysteria. Through their efforts, this fic is a much, much, much better fic than it was when it first came out of my head.

Also, thank you to all of you for sticking with it, if you were new to the Inception fandom or the Sherlock fandom or if they were both already favorites of yours. Your comments were unfailingly good feedback and you helped to shape this fic more than any of you know because you don't get to see how the drafts change in response to how you guys react. But you're all so helpful, and lovely, and delightful, and I love to write for all of you, so thank you for reading.

( Epilogue )

Title - Keep the Car Running (29/31)
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.

( Chapter Twenty-Nine )

Title - Keep the Car Running (26/31) and (27/31)
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.

I couldn't get LJ to work for me last week so here are AO3 links to Chapter 26 and Chapter 27. 

Title - Keep the Car Running (24/31)
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.

( Chapter Twenty-Four )

Title - Keep the Car Running (21/31)
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.

( Chapter Twenty-One )

Title - Keep the Car Running (19/31)
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.


( Chapter Nineteen )

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 )