After the Fischer inception, Eames goes back to work as an extractor, and Arthur joins his team. Due to circumstances involving a guy who may or may not be from Greenland, pop astrology, someone's broken limb, hormones, and convenience, they end up learning that love is what starts down below (and makes its way up your spine).

Political crisis managers AU. Arthur and Eames are operatives for rival presidential campaigns in a heated Democratic primary. Can they find love and happiness in spite of all the pies, Republicans, and publicity disasters in their way? Even in the face of the dreaded ELECTORAL COLLEGE SYSTEM? I DON'T KNOW! LET'S FIND OUT!

Ten months after a savage split, Arthur climbs down to pull Eames out of limbo.

"It's a shame we had to meet like this." She blasts his kneecaps, and then lays a volley into his gut. He's still screaming in pain when Dom finally puts him out of his misery with a quick bullet to the head.

"Ah," Yusuf says, lifting a reproving hand, "are we calling less than 24 hours of memory loss amnesia now?"

Possession is a two-way street. There is ownership in letting yourself be taken over. After all, a leash is a rope that works both ways, and both ways are about control.

Arthur isn't used to making mistakes.

Eames wakes up alone.

The first time they met, it took twenty-eight seconds for Eames to start hitting on Arthur. It took a good five hours for Arthur to point a gun at Eames’ head.

Eames is very good at pretending.

Eames secretly hates working jobs with Ariadne, because they always end up working out of Paris, so that she can still attend classes, and Eames hates Paris. Hates it with a passion so bigoted and without foundation that he suspects he inherited it.

“This isn’t something we do, Eames. It’s something we are.” Magical realism, soulbonding, d/s fusion.

Written for this prompt at inception_kink - "When the next generation of Somnacin compound gets released, people start experiencing odd side effects; they dream about their past lives. The next time Arthur & Eames share a dream, they come across a startling revelation - they've been lovers in every single incarnation of their past selves, finding each other no matter what their form, no matter what obstacles had stood in their way."

“Yusuf,” she says, dangerously, “did you give my point man a love potion?”

Arthur doesn’t quite know when renting a house in Westchester and pretending to be in a civil union with Eames came to constitute "lying-low" but however it happened, he wants a do-over. Pretending to be married fic!

In which Eames writes (sometimes horrible) horoscopes to woo Arthur, much to the chagrin of everyone (read: Dom), and manages to even mess that up. Go figure.

Arthur tries normal life as a bank manager after the Army shuts down its PASIV program, until Eames comes along and steals that normal life right out from under him.

Arthur and Eames sabotage each other's jobs-- until they can't anymore. Or: How Arthur and Eames Learned to Stop Worrying and Make Their Own Form of Social Capital.

"Look, I’m not going to beat around the bush here. You seem like you have a good head on your shoulders in addition to training and experience. I'm calling to offer you a job as Eames' fulltime bodyguard for his upcoming summer tour."

Eames is a movie star down on his luck. Arthur is the writer sent to interview him.

Arthur's known since he was young that he has a knack for cooking and baking, and beginning culinary school only makes him more certain. But no matter how good he is, it seems Eames is better – which does not endear him to Arthur in the slightest. Eames, however, is quite determined to get Arthur to open up and stop being so uptight and prickly by any means necessary. While each hones his skill in the culinary arts (and Arthur desperately tries to convince Ariadne that the desired structural integrity of her cakes violates basic laws of physics), they increasingly find themselves drawn together, inside the classroom and out. Given such close quarters in the kitchen, and the amount of sensory stimulation involved with preparing all manner of food, it starts to become difficult for Arthur to retain his customary level of distance and detachment. And, as Arthur will find, when it comes to unsatisfied appetites, hunger is often the best sauce of all.

After all this time, Arthur has too much pride to simply ask Eames to have sex with him. A story in which the job isn't always glamourous, Cobb thinks Arthur makes poor life decisions, and Eames steals everything (including, maybe, Arthur's heart).

That's the thing about Hollywood--everyone has a Hollywood story.

Christmas is about finding a place to call home. (Or, the one where Eames and Arthur have a Christmas...thing.)

“Oh,” Eames says. “A potential riot. I must be going love, ta!”

“Don’t get shanked!” Arthur yells, but Eames has already hung up.

“Arthur, you've rung me at 2:30 in the bloody morning from Soho where you appear to be on a street corner and shirtless, possibly drugged. I've no doubt you're capable of handling yourself under normal circumstances, but drunken blokes aren't always the most understanding sort, especially when you're not actually selling what you look like you're selling.”

Acquaintances, half-heart rivals: these words defined Arthur's relationship with Eames for years, until the Fischer job brings in another part to the equation--friendship. But the rules of engagement change completely during a night of drinks and suggestive conversation. What begins as a one night stand slowly turns into something much more complicated. Can you really be friends with benefits and feelings?

I'm the guy your boyfriend fucked last night, Arthur could say. I'm the guy who sucked his dick years before he even knew you existed. He wants to say, I'm the guy who'll still be here long after you've had enough because I'm Arthur and I'm a fucking idiot.

Arthur’s not sure if it’s the vodka, or the bitter fucking cold, but never has a single group of people been so completely adept at all forms of espionage and backstabbing.

As promised many moons ago: a coda where Arthur, freshly legal and bearing baked goods, shows up at Eames’s door.

Arthur has always been told he’s mature for his age. Maybe it comes from being an only child, or from having to step into his father’s shoes too soon, or maybe he’s just too serious for his own good. Whatever the reason, he doesn’t like having his foundations shaken. Going in for a physical is not something that should shake them.

Arthur loves Daniel, he truly does; but it’s Eames. There’s no point in drawing a comparison. It’s not apples and oranges. It’s apples and Goethe, apples and Rachmaninoff.

Being a freshman piano performance major at a prestigious New England conservatory is difficult enough without landing the school's star baritone as your singer, and inevitably, your hopeless crush.

It starts innocently enough (yeah, right), Arthur sends Eames a birthday gift as a sort of (ok, totally) signal that Arthur knows these things about him. But he spends what is probably an inordinate amount of time considering the gift itself. It has to be perfect.

In which Cobb decides two babysitters are better than one, Saito proves that money can buy happiness, and Eames is excellent with children. Oh, and Arthur's a fucking Disney princess.

"My friend wouldn't drag me into a job I didn't want to take and by extension a clusterfuck I certainly didn't need."

"No, your friend wouldn't," Eames agrees. "But apparently your husband would."

Arthur's mouth unhinges like a cartoon character.

On the first day of Christmas, Arthur comes home to find a stuffed partridge on his table and three hundred pears in his fridge.

"Eames," he says, and reaches for the phone before he even has a chance to take his coat off.

aka the juicebox fic. In which Arthur's ass is magic and Eames likes sticking his tongue into small, tight holes.

Arthur likes to invent things. And grow mustaches. He's a man of many facets.

As Eames turns to lead them around the building Arthur catches his hand. Eames doesn't flinch away or look down. Arthur taps in Morse code against Eames's palm.

SITREP

Eames taps back FUBAR.

After Mal dies Arthur moves in to help Cobb take care of the kids, Philipa starts at a new school with a new teacher Mr.Eames.

Eames is charmed by Arthur but thinks he can't have him because he thinks Cobb and Arthur are involved. Arthur really likes Eames but is getting annoyed that everytime he thinks they are getting somewhere Eames backs off.

Cobb just rolls his eyes and Philipa's family drawings are kind of confusing.

Arthur doesn't make mistakes and he doesn't forget. He goes into heat three times a year and he plans for it, every time, he's always ready to deal with this fucked up part of his Manticore legacy but fuck, fuck -

The job has gone south.

"I sent you an email."

"And here I am."

"And it had nothing to do with me being in Las Vegas, the Gambling Capital of the World."

"Las Vegas. Duluth. Athens. In cases such as this a good memory is unpardonable."

Arthur breaks all the rules of American high school films, as though he’s never even heard of John Hughes, and Eames can’t decide if, given the choice, he wouldn’t rather just become Arthur instead of having the chance to be with him.

On a family trip to Las Vegas, a bored Arthur decides it’s time to lose his virginity and Eames, the stranger a few tables over, is the man to help him.

Eames has a hard and fast rule against fucking anyone underage. Arthur would have the utmost respect for this rule, if he hadn't just gotten cockblocked by it at the age of twenty-three.

“You’re the first person to pull off inception,” Mal says, to Eames, not bothering to mask her own delight, “and you did it with your penis!”

"I hate giving a shit, it never ends well."

Thinking that a reporter genuinely likes you is pretty much on par with feeling like you really are special to that stripper.

He still couldn't believe it, that he'd done it. He could start paying off his loans. He could get his mom decent health insurance, finally. Starting Monday, he was an associate at Cobb and Ellis and he was going to get paychecks for being a geek about contracts and procedure – and not like the pay he'd gotten for the shitty jobs he'd had ever since he was ten years old but real money. Serious money.

As if everything else about this job isn't fucked up enough, the mark has an earworm.

Basically, no one in London gave two shillings for what Arthur did, which was why Arthur liked London enough to sell books on architecture, design, and engineering at a bookshop called The Robie House, a name he'd chosen on a whim when he was signing the papers and regretted ever since.

Eames has a mouth like a porn star.

It's not the most professional thought that Arthur could have upon their initial meeting in the deserted warehouse with three broken windows and an ant problem, but it's certainly the most prominent thought.

Arthur meets Mal first. He inherits Dom, after. Everything else is on him.

"Hello to you too, darling," Eames said and Arthur could just hear the gloating about to happen. "How's Switzerland?"

"Do. You. Have. My. Phone."

He changes his mind. "I may have made out with Eames a little bit."

Silence.

"What," Ariadne trails off.

'When does making out a little bit cross over to making out a lot?' Cobb asks vaguely.

Darling, sorry for leaving without waking you. Hope you will forgive me. I also took a picture of you while you slept, with your fantastic antique polaroid camera. (Those are so handy!) Anyway, I've an early flight back to Vegas, and I shan't tell a soul of our relations, so long as I retain my mental capacities.

It was so obvious, Arthur thinks to himself sometimes. He was so fucking obvious all the time.

They have hot dogs for starters.

It's not the fancy dinner over which Eames had planned to seduce Arthur. Not that Arthur knew Eames was planning to seduce him, but facts are so unimportant in the long run. Or the short run.

The line at the Pink's on La Brea is prohibitively long, but this is where Arthur wants to go, so this is where they are.

Actually, this is where Eames followed Arthur to.

"Never have I ever cheated," Ariadne said, lips quirked in a smile.

She came back for the creation, she stayed for him.