Eames and Mal have been seducing each other for years. But this time, Mal brings backup.

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).

Still, the wisdom of leaving a family to a man named Dom Cobb was questionable. The phrase "Don Cobb" didn't exactly roll off the tongue, and "Don Dom" was even worse. "Don Dom Cobb". A travesty.

In deserts, wheat fields, and rose gardens, Eames finds Arthur and shakes off the remnants of war. AU, very vaguely based on The Little Prince.

During eight hours in the warehouse on an ill-advised bet, Arthur discovers that Eames is a man with no scruples.

Arthur and Eames suck at phone sex.

Bang bang, we're beautiful and dirty rich.

Arthur is forced to move in with Eames. The world moves.

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.)

It took some time for Eames to realise that his relationship with Judaism was no longer entirely based on his relationship with Arthur.

Arthur only ever works with Dominic Cobb.

Eames can't get the taste of Arthur out of his mouth.

Eames doesn’t know what he thought worst-case scenario was, but it was never this.

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.

No one has better timing than a mother.

Or worse timing, depending on what said mother wants.

"Mum, no," Eames says into the phone, kicking the refrigerator door closed with his bare foot since his hands are currently full of ale bottles and sable paint brushes.

There's no such thing as an origin, only an origin-story.

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.

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.

"Not that your sex confessions aren't entertaining, Eames, but I call bullshit."

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.

“I don't think the definition of 'easy' includes being shot at by Russians and getting cock-blocked by your best friends!” Arthur shouts.

This could be the beginning of something amazing ... if Dom and Mal will only stay out of Arthur's way. A story in which there are Russians, Arthur spends a lot of time in his underwear, and (sadly) no one gets laid.

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.

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

Eames is a demon. Arthur is a priest. Predictably, they fall in love.

From the beginning of their relationship, Eames has always been the one to find Arthur. A story in which Arthur is kidnapped, Eames is a hopeless romantic, the past informs the present, and true love conquers all.

The story of how Eames and Arthur meet is one of the great legends of the dream-sharing profession.

In it, there's a dark alley, a foreign country, a bar, a punch in the face, a loaded die, a poker chip, a three-piece suit, and a kiss. Not necessarily in that order. And not necessarily all the time.

Eames probably would have been pleased with a sandwich, but Arthur's got a knack for making Eames happy in surprising ways.

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

Eames doesn't deal in fractions.

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.

Arthur and Eames are on the verge of giving up mind crime when Cobb convinces Arthur to be his point man on one last job — which rather inevitably goes wrong. Eames is pulled into the mess as Cobb’s simple heist spirals into an attempt on inception. It’s time to stop trespassing on the dreams of others; building a home takes two sets of hands.

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.

Saito's job referral draws Arthur, Eames, and Ariadne together for an extraction in Finland that proves unexpectedly dangerous and difficult, pushing the three of them past all limits and into a precarious and tender three-cornered relationship. In which Ariadne loses the future she'd planned, Eames loses the past he thought he'd already thrown away, and Arthur loses his distance, secrets are revealed and a dance for two becomes a tango for three.

They're in Kiev the first time it happens – it's a complex job with a condescending extractor who has a grudge against Arthur that no one can adequately explain, and Arthur gets so wound up, and comes so close to snapping. It's disconcerting to witness him losing his ever-present cool, so Eames defies self-preservation instinct and pulls him aside with stern, bracing words, with a firm grip and a level voice, Get a hold of yourself, I fucking mean it. The fact that this actually works is categorically unexpected.

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

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

Eames would gladly welcome comparisons to other dashing bearded men, but Eames rarely gets what he wants when it comes to Arthur.

“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.

Mal makes them tell stories. Mal makes them fumble for something to touch. Mal makes them fuck, but maybe that's not the important part.

Eames's dealings with Arthur over the last couple weeks have been limited to text messages about how senior year is kicking his arse and, on one occasion, a phone call that ended with Arthur getting himself off in a study carrel in his school library. The poor thing really does deserve a break.

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

Five months ago, as Arthur had been readying to leave their hotel room, Eames (still naked, still half-asleep) had said come find me whenever.

Apparently, this is whenever and Eames is an arsehole.

Arthur’s face shifts from interrogatory focus to something soft and slack and longing, almost within a bare second.

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.

"I'm next," Eames says. "If you don't smother me in blankets and tape me together my voice will be no use to you either. I'll probably sing in French instead of German or something equally disastrous."

When Eames travels, the thought of Arthur travels with him.

"I'll have my wallet back. Nice form, but points off for hitting the one and only mark in this crowd that can recognize the art." Eames holds out his hand and Rusty smiles wide wide like the sky opening up after a storm. Eames narrows his eyes. He knows a pro when he is nearly sexually assaulted by one on a street corner.


"Rusty." He wipes salt and oil off his fingers onto a linen handkerchief and sticks his hand out.

Eames runs a porn studio, and has a very inconvenient crush on their newest bottom.

"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.

"Forgive me, Father," he says, "for I have sinned."

"Of course you have," says Arthur, dry.

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

Arthur/Eames domestic adventures. Or: the mystery of Eames' disappearing underpants. Or: what Arthur wants to do on his birthday. Or: how Arthur and Eames learned to live together, put up with each other's weirdness, and learn that being a BAMF doesn't mean you can't also be a dork.

Eames used to think a long fuck was an hour, when at the end of it his hips are sore and he's got a fucking charley horse and everybody's gasping for air and dying for oxygen — he didn't know shit.

Maybe in another life, in another time, Arthur would have ended up sharing his life with someone else and be still alive. Maybe all it took was to have a life with Eames.

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 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.

He didn’t mind the vast amounts of money he could charge, he didn’t mind the glory, but now he had a flat, a car parking space, and a warm body to sleep next to--he was beginning to mind all the travelling.

“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!”

"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.

Eames approaches the bedroom door quietly, fully expecting Arthur to be asleep. But there’s a crack in the door, and the distinct sound of bedcovers rustling, accompanied by low moans.

Before today, Eames had this ridiculous idea in his head that Arthur slept standing up, and ‘powered down’ seemed a more appropriate phrase than ‘slept’. This is one of the few times in his life that Eames has enjoyed being wrong and he has no idea why."

The inception works, but not as planned. Robert Fischer decides he will be better than his father, one tender moment with a pinwheel a mere drop in an ocean of a lifetime of resentment. Saito refuses to sell, and then it is all out corporate war. Fischer’s subsidiaries rebel, and it turns into actual war.

And he certainly couldn't get Cobb to help him out. Cobb was the master of purple prose. Everyone bowed down to him on his purple prose throne. The only pairing he wrote was him/Mal with the occasional him/Saito - but that was no surprise, since everyone shipped themselves with Saito.

"Saito? Did you buy the kink meme?"

"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."

Eames orders a mail order bride and gets Arthur.

When Mal leans into his office and asks Eames what he did to his back, he can't exactly say, "the new graphics intern," so he says, "Oh, just stress, love."

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.

In which pants are underwear, okay, and Eames comes in his.

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.

"Did you lock—" begins Eames.