→ this is gonna be reality,

[plagiary]

Who: Mr. Eames & you!
What: Considering that this is Eames' jam, anything goes. There will be two options under the cut, one from early on in the event and another when Eames just says fuck it to everything and uses his forging skills to cause mayhem.
When: Day 83 - 88
Warnings: There might be violence considering Eames is an actual dream criminal.

one. The heat in Mombasa is sweltering. It soaks the buildings and the roads and leaves a burn in its wake. Everything is too hot to the touch, prickles at skin as easy and as real as anything. It's busy too, when is Mombasa ever not? The projections scurrying around are carrying packages or chattering with one another off to the side. A few drive cars down the busy street slowly, beeping their horns when people simply won't get out of their way. Nobody pays any attention to the man loading his gun just outside a dusty chemist.

At first he had thought it real. Hadn't remembered ever leaving Mombasa behind. Didn't recall anything of Paris or the flight or the cape. It had only been when he stepped into Yusuf's shop that he realised. Dreams feel real when you're in them. But Eames had found an empty place - void of Yusuf and his potions or his tabbycat. The dream den had been equally as empty. And it had all flooded back.

The cape means he's wrongfooted. It did not act like any dream he knew. The projections too put together, the place too real. His totem had not worked and he couldn't forge and really, he lives in a world where a man's grip on reality can already be loose but he'd thought briefly he'd finally gone and done it, finally gotten lost. But the laws he knows work here. It adds evidence to the theory that maybe everyone in Kore is right. That he isn't dreaming. That he really has been kidnapped. As fanciful as it seems he still thinks it's ... feasible. Eames is a man who thinks with both his head and his heart and right now even his gut is in on the act.

To be in a dream now - where he can change the colour of his eyes, where he can dream up the gun in his hands - is like breathing after almost drowning. The panic is real, is bright and dangerous within him, but he can feel life inside of his veins and that's enough.

So he tucks the gun in his holster and he moves through the crowd as though to try and place where it is this is all coming from.

two. The first rule of dream-walking is to never use things that you remember. Eames usually attests to this rule, all things considered. However, without the use of a PASIV and the warning that going under usually gives, he's pretty much flouting all of those well worn laws. The bar is one he remembers from London, the rain peeling against the windows outside. It's dark and less crowded than Mombasa and instead of the usual stocky build he's slighter. Also blonde.

Also female.

That bit isn't from memory, unfortunately. But he smiles prettily at the bartender and thinks about the last time he'd ordered a drink in here, the hastily stitched bullet wound in his side and Arthur's frowning face in the mirror above the bar. The job had been rough but Eames would gladly trade over all of this to be back there again, where things made sense and he knew who and where he was.

( He doesn't miss Arthur though, or the way he'd nudged Eames in the stitches with his elbow, mouth turned down and an old misery in his eyes.

He doesn't. )

Comments

one;

[dowhatisays]

Charlie remembers summers like this in Italy. The sweltering heat, the ind that makes the world around you slow down.

But this isn't Italy. It's too dusty and too crowded for anything he remembers, and the chatter around him is incomprehensible to his ears. He looks for a cigarette, but puts off lighting it. The idea of lighting a match and contributing to the heat feels ridiculous.

He's leaning in doorway now, and his eyes are drawn to a man in the opposite one. Like no one else in the surrounding area is in any way consequential. He calmly watches him load his gun, and then begin moving through the crowd, and without thinking about it, Charlie begins following him.

[plagiary]

He knows he's being followed.

It prickles up the back of his neck but he keeps his stride even and his gait slow. The projections should all be his own - he assumes so anyway, even if he is the dreamer. But he conjured up a gun and maybe in this strange new place that's enough to make the mind realise it's being tampered with. Coming to the cape means he's so very aware of all the little facets of dreaming even he knows nothing about.

If Arthur could see him now he might just shoot him out of pity.

So Eames takes a right and ducks into an alcove he knows will be there. He waits until the footsteps approach and then he's grabbing for his would-be stalker to drag them in and press them against the wall. Less romance, more why are you following me, unfortunately.

"Jesus H. Christ, Charlie?"

[dowhatisays]

"The fuck you doing?"

OW. The guy has a grip like a fucking dock worker. He's gonna have a bruise the size of his back tomorrow. He doesn't make any attempt to hide his displeasure, scowling heavily.

"This how you say hello in fucking England or whatever?"

[plagiary]

"Mombasa."

He's briefly very glad that he hadn't gone for the gun behind his jacket, lets Charlie go with a frown of concern that is immediately overridden by intrigue. So the others can get in and out of his dream too. How interesting.

"Okay, first things first. Do you remember who I am?"

[dowhatisays]

Jesus, Eames. He just had this shirt pressed. He thinks.

"Yeah. You're the geezer from the airplane. Showed up heres a while back."

Charlie is taking a look around now, trying to avoid asking where the fuck Mombasa is and looking like an idiot.

[plagiary]

He'll make up for it somehow when he's not so very confused.

"All right, second question. How did you end up here?"

He sounds like bloody Cobb, fuck he hates his life.

[dowhatisays]

"The fuck do I knows? You tell me. You're the one fucking fits in here." Because it's clear as day to him that this is Eames' place, that he's an observer, an intruder. It hits him the way all knowledge does in dreams, fast and irrefutable.

[plagiary]

"You're dreaming."

He stands back, shifts on to his left foot to peer back into the street. For some reason this feels more solid and more familiar than his first day within the cape. And so it begins to slot into place. That was real. Or any definition of real. Here is the dream.

"You're in my dream actually. But one I didn't actively decide to build and so I'm a little concerned as to how we're both here."

[dowhatisays]

"The fuck are you going on about?" Charlie re-adjusts his tie, only slightly petulantly. He hasn't noticed yet that he's dressed back how he does at home, even though his suit's remained hung up in his closet for weeks. These clothes feel right on him, after all. Far more like what he's picture himself in. Not anything he'd question in a place like this.

[plagiary]

Eames barely holds back a sigh.

"This is a dream. You and I are trapped in it. It's mine, because I live here. Because everything on this street is a product of my memory."

His totem is telling him he's dreaming, his ability to shift into a forgery is back. There's no denying they are asleep. "You have to stay calm, Charlie. Any shift in your emotion could bring the vast army of projections down upon us. I don't know about you, but I don't wish to be torn limb from limb."

[dowhatisays]

"You had me pinned to a fucking wall and you wanna tell me to stay fucking calm? You got some nerve, pal." Charlie is just so damn done with this. He's done with people talking about things he's got not clue about like he's some kind of idiot. Why the fuck did he start following him again?

[plagiary]

A sigh and then he's dreaming up a gun in his hand. He flicks it so he's holding it by the barrel and holding it out to Charlie handle first. "Take this, I don't know if the projections are going to turn on us. I don't want to have to watch out for you if we do get attacked."

A pause, "You do know how to use one of these, don't you?"

[dowhatisays]

Oh bitch please, Eames. "Yeah. I knows how to use one."

one. Night 84

[happytobleed]

Castiel's seen more of the world than most humans have. Really, he's seen all of it, though some places get more attention than others. Because of this, Mombasa isn't quite as foreign to him as it might be to someone like Dean, but it's not entirely familiar, either.

The crowd is dense, but he slips through it almost as if he's been greased to slide through. It's tight, but it parts around him, just enough for him to walk steady and straight.

That's really what gets his attention; he's walking as if there's no one there and not bumping a single shoulder, at least not until he very nearly bumps shoulders with Eames, the one person who hasn't made a move to avoid him, as if by magic.

He stops where he is and squints at Eames suspiciously. "What are you?"

[plagiary]

"A tourist, mate."

His normal english accent is replaced by a thick Irish brogue, an eyebrow arching upwards as he looks to the man in front of him. Immediately Eames is aware of several things, that he is not a projection, and that he is definitely not a people person.

"Padraig's my name."

[happytobleed]

"No. Not what--what." Castiel's eyes narrow. "You're not human. Where have you brought me?"

He assumes that the thing already knows who he is and that Padraig isn't its name at all.

"Gabriel?"

[plagiary]

"Now that's offensive."

His accent is no longer Irish. He figures with everything he's heard about the citizens stuck with him he might as well just start being honest. ... Fuck, he's already coming out in hives.

"I'm as human as they come."

[happytobleed]

Dropping his disguise doesn't entirely make him look honest or trustworthy to Castiel.

"If you're human, what is this and who brought us here? It's not natural."

There's something ethereal and familiar, but he can't quite put his finger on what it is. The dream is keeping his hold on logic just fuzzy enough that he can't place anything.

[plagiary]

"You're dreaming, mate."

So blunt, so very used to it. "This is a dream, well, my dream I suppose as it's my Mombasa. I don't know how the bloody hell you got here but here you are."

[happytobleed]

"I can't be dreaming. I don't sleep." He shakes his head. "And I don't remember trying to enter your dreams. I don't even know who you are,"

It's disconcerting if it's true. Something is wrong. He has... nodded off a few times, but he's been attributing that to his healing after the massive damage he took. The fact that he isn't just dreaming, but accidentally visiting the dreams of others is worrisome. If he's unknowingly using his powers, he could be doing harmful things, too.

"Are you a new resident of the Cape or are you someplace else?"

[plagiary]

"New. Got here a few days ago. Already involved in the shenanigans."

There's more that meets the eye to this bloke, he can tell already. Maybe it's the way he stands, maybe it's the way he talks. But Eames knows something is off. "Haven't made everyone's acquaintance yet."

[happytobleed]

"My name is Castiel. I've been here for a few months. This isn't even the strangest thing this place has done to us."

He looks around. "You really believe this is a dream?"

[plagiary]

"I know it, love."

He glances around himself, at the blank faces of the projections. "It's a dream and you're technically not supposed to be in here."

[happytobleed]

"No, I should be able to come and go as I please, if this is a dream. What concerns me is that I didn't intent to come here and I don't seem to be able to leave as easily as I should."

He feels trapped and he doesn't like that feeling when he's already trapped in the cape. At least there, he has allies. Here he has unresponsive shadows and a stranger.

[plagiary]

"I don't remember giving you an invitation."

His dreams are usually locked tight, would require a PASIV either way and Eames hasn't the equipment here. But he steps into Castiel's space and looks at him thoughtfully, as though if only he would stare long enough he'd get the answers he needed.

"What do you mean should be?"