It's a constant shifting balance between the feline and the human. You are Arthur. You choose your own adventure ...

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.

Bang bang, we're beautiful and dirty rich.

The first time Arthur shoots Eames in the head at point blank range is when Eames falls in love. That’s the beginning. That’s the end. (Or: Tattoo!Arthur gone sideways.)

Sometimes Eames tells himself lies like he’s setting himself a dare, like how he tells himself he’s in love with Arthur, how he’s desperate to have Arthur love him back. That’s a good one.

Eames wakes up alone.

Arthur and Eames have broken up and moved on. Only they haven't. Sometimes their not-moving-on happens at the workplace and sometimes it happens in hotel rooms. On this particular occasion, it happens in a pool.

Arthur sketches the impossible. Eames does some manscaping. It's just another job, until it isn't.

Arthur and Eames are older, and they have never had sex in their own skin.

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.

In which Eames embarks on a campaign of seduction and Arthur mostly just wants someone to hang out with other than Cobb.

Hate him, love him. It doesn’t matter. He’s still Arthur’s.

“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 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."

One day Arthur finds a quote scrawled on his desk. His competitive streak forces him to reply.

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.

Dreamshare goes legal, Arthur goes corporate, Eames goes and (against his better judgement) falls in love.

“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.”

These moments, these secret meetings -- they’re borrowed, Eames knows this. He’ll take it if it means he gets to taste Arthur, to have him say Eames’s name like he can’t help it escaping him. He’ll take any scraped out time he can get just to feel Arthur’s hungry hands on his body.

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.

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.

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 is an ex-model and Eames is Vegas card dealer. Arthur wants Eames to help him with a con.

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.

"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.

when they analyse the solution a few days later, Yusuf swears and his mind pops up with the thought Oh, shit, how did that get in there? and Arthur wonders why he ever allowed himself to be a test dummy for the newer, stronger stuff Yusuf wanted to make for his dream basement.

“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!”

Arthur found himself staring deeply into Eames' eyes, which were very serious. "Don't worry," Eames assured him, "I'm a level eighty-five ret paladin."

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

"Pictures of Dom tonight, Eames,” Yusuf replies from the doorway, “or I swear to you, I will point out to Arthur that he has a stalker with no shame and a thousand dollar camera.”

He did not remember sinking like a stone through the white-capped waves. He did not remember how he came to be gasping upon the shore, clad only in tattered breeches. He did, however, remember strong arms around his waist, curious dark eyes in a beautifully severe face, a smooth, scaled hand brushing lightly over his exposed skin, and lips pressed to his forehead, remembered it with a clarity that burned like hot coals in his chest.

"I'll come bail you out," Arthur tells Eames loudly before hanging up, just to make his date splutter and start to wave down the waiter for the bill.

Still, as Arthur so kindly reminded him, it’s not his place to comment. Arthur is an adult, and more than capable of making his own decisions. If he wants to sign himself over to some hopelessly out-classed amateur who doesn’t deserve to lick the ground he walks on, that’s his choice.

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

In Arthur's spare time he shaves himself smooth and dresses up in panties, garters and stockings and does live cam shows. One evening, Eames stumbles on one of his shows and realizes who he's jerking off to.

"Simply put, dear Arthur, we go off to dreamland, I ask you some questions--"

"And then we see how long it takes for you to shoot him," Yusuf finishes.

The second dream is Eames', but the Arthur in it is just a projection.

Eames is a high-end thief. Arthur is a private investigator hired to catch him. Ridiculous events ensue; something like love happens somewhere along the way.

French toast, pancakes, steak and eggs -- I could make you anything in the world, pet, but no. Egg-white omelette, morning after morning. It shows a distinct lack of imagination.

Putting aside your truly appalling spelling, I do not think it very professional to name a dish… "taste’s realy goood." Do you, Mr. Eames?

"Darling, just hear me out. I need a wife."

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.

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."

Arthur and Eames both play WoW. They kick ass at Warsong Gulch, and when they team up they’re nigh on unstoppable.

They don’t know they’re playing with each other.

In which Ariadne still isn’t sure how she got here, Eames has Issues with Colin Firth, Arthur isn’t as boring as he’s pretending to be, and the world is full of unimaginative people paying a fortune to get laid.

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.

There are other thieves, but Eames is a forger. He does not debate the legality of his actions or the rewards for his head, but he wants to make that distinction very clear. Thieves take things, steal things, plunder, and violate—and they didn’t call you the morning after. Eames might have taken things, stolen things, plundered, and violated, but he always gave a little something in return.

"Saito? Did you buy the kink meme?"