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unhinged-summer-fun · 3 years

Text

triptych

The Thief x Marcus Pike x F!Reader (22+)

chapter 1: the heirophant

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Summary: A thief, an artist, and the head of the Art Crimes program in the FBI all share a soul-bond. What could go wrong?

Series tags/warnings: Sexual content, art crime, light angst, art history and criticism, soulmate-identifying marks, slow burn, f!reader, a reader who doesn’t always do the right thing.

Chapter warnings: none.

More notes at the bottom! Referenced works linked in the text.

also on AO3.

Special Agent Marcus Pike wasn’t having a particularly good week.

To be perfectly honest, it was less depressing for him to think about this week being not good instead of the more brutally-honest alternative: that things hasn’t been any semblance of good since October, and the fiasco with his ex... well, calling her an ex-fiancee seemed a bit too overstated, considering their engagement lasted for all of three hours and ended over a text message and a blocked number.

Not that he was dwelling on it.

This specific week was a whole other story than his own, however. Thankfully.

Another piece of high-profile Baroque art had been stolen, this time from a gallery in Vaduz. While INTERPOL was investigating on location in Liechtenstein, he was being copied into every break in the case, meaning that by quitting time in D.C., he was still well past his bedtime, and new emails were coming in at one in the morning from the art theft agents on site.

Information about the painting taken kept him awake in addition to the regular bureaucracy of coordinating International Art Theft resources. It was from a lesser-known apprentice to van Dyck, and included studies of Charles I at the Hunt on the back of the wooden board, in addition to a long-debunked smudge which had caused quite a stir when art historians falsely claimed it had been a lipstick kiss. Still, the photographs the Vaduz gallery had supplied caught his interest.

For as long as he could remember, he’d been drawn to light. Specifically, light in art, until that interest had morphed into a general affection for art itself, and later a career in art theft prosecution. Whether it was a romantic notion, borne from the outline of the triptych shape that made up his soul-mark over his heart, or simply pure personal interest, Marcus didn’t know. But what he did know was that there was something about Baroque and even Rococo art that caught not only his eye, but his breath, at times. When he’d been a child, newly 18 and on a trip around the museums on the East Coast, he’d been... well, lucky wasn’t quite the word for it. He never considered himself lucky, no. He had a strange relationship with timing, is all.

He’d been one of the last people to lay eyes on the works stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum before they vanished five days later. He’d seen them on his birthday, and within a week they’d vanished, with a hundred little traces no one wanted to follow. Maybe that was the push to focus him into art history in college, and then criminal justice for his masters. Perhaps it was the frustration with the lack of real headway or investigation into the heist, and then the overwhelming coverage about the mafia trial happening in Boston following the scandal. Thirteen priceless pieces of art culture, gone forever.

The same helpless frustration had come over him in 2003, just over nine years since his 18th birthday, with the looting of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad. He knew much of the chaos had been brought from fear of American forces invading, which had made him second-guess his intention to get into federal criminal justice, until the FBI stood up the Art Crimes Team in offices across the country. His frustrations then had an outlet.

An outlet, which of course, only served to upset him even more. Most of the recovered works they did find in the ACT were damaged beyond repair, fences having been spooked into destroying the pieces rather than catching heat for selling them. Marcus had stood with his hands full of broken idols, and felt just as shattered a dozen different times.

The only hope he really ever held was looking in the mirror, staring down at the simple shapes that made up his soul-mark. His mother had been concerned about its never-changing status, despite him traveling all over for his job. He didn’t share that one time because he’d rather quite forget it. It never filled itself in, not how her mark had filled in to become brilliant orange poppies when meeting her future husband for the first time. Even after all these years, after he had died, that mark was still just as deep and rich, a garden where her love grew no longer.

His father had described the experience of his mark filling in quite simply: “I met her, and it felt like all the light I’d looked for had finally been let into my soul.”

It was no wonder he was so obsessed with artwork that focused on the play of light across stones, through trees, between clouds. It was no wonder he didn’t mind the east-facing windows in his tiny D.C. apartment, nor the heat which came with it. He kept crystal light-catchers and stained-glass art in the windows, sending rainbow prisms across his room, across his skin every morning. He’d look where the colors filled in the mark over his heart, and he’d hope and dream and pretend until he could get out of bed in the morning.

All this being said, the painting was that of a sunrise.

Two lovers had been painted over in the long grass at the focal point, hidden by paint strokes to keep their morning rendezvous a secret, even by this apprentice. For a piece of Baroque art, it wasn’t stingy with the colors, adding an almost-anachronistic hint of Impressionism to the scene. It was the kind of piece that Marcus knew he’d need a chair to look at, which made it a shame that he was sitting in a desk chair, looking over details on his laptop, while the painting could have been anywhere in the world.

At least his French wasn’t as bad as it had been before.

“The canvas dimensions match those of common briefcases, I doubt there’d be many opportunities at border checkpoints to uncover it, unless we asked every man in a suit in Europe to show us his paperwork.” The INTERPOL agent on the other line barked a laugh at his logic.

“Perhaps not that paperwork, no.”

Their teleconferences occurred several times a day with high-profile cases such as these. Most of the time, curators had no idea something had been taken from their galleries. The smarter burglars came prepared with forgeries, counterfeits ready to go while the actual art left with them out the door. The fact that this piece was noticed missing so soon gave the team an advantage, the theft having taken place less than a week ago - the start of the not a very good week.

Marcus may not have been a behavioral analyst, but he could tell when Jean-Pierre was frowning over something else.

“What is it? Something else come up?” Marcus asked, sipping his coffee.

“Yes,” Jean-Pierre said slowly, like he was still turning over the thought in his head. The fact he’d switched to English wasn’t a good sign. There was a brief moment where the INTERPOL agent didn’t speak, which made the hairs on the back of Marcus’s head stand on end. Jean-Pierre was typing in their WhatsApp thread, alleviating none of the anxiety which had sprung up in a particular office in D.C.

JP Benoit: Veduz had a Bernini.

Those four words made too much sense in their shared line of work, and Marcus sighed, rubbing at his temples. He tapped out a response back.

M Pike: Which Bernini.

JP Benoit: David.

“Fuck,” Marcus muttered to himself, standing from his desk but keeping an eye on his phone. No wonder Jean-Pierre couldn’t say anything out loud. “Fuck,” he repeated, realizing that he didn’t have enough coffee for this. Jean-Pierre still had that look of I haven’t gotten to the worst part yet, which made Marcus frown even deeper. “You think it’s him.”

“I don’t know why, it’s... smells like him.”

Marcus let out a dry laugh. “He doesn’t leave enough for us to smell.”

There was a crack theory among international art theft investigators, some kind of urban legend responsible for most of the unsolved thefts in the last thirty years. Marcus didn’t know if he believed it - most gangs and thieves were caught within a decade or so, braggarts all. This list of unknowns had sprouted legs and walked off with some of the most beloved paintings galleries had to offer. Fragonard’s The Swing. Francesco Hayez’ watercolor Il Bacio, and all three pieces of his Vendetta triptych. Aivazovsky’s Constantinople Sunset. Van Gogh’s unsigned but popularly-attributed Cafe Terrace at Night. Several Ladell still-lifes. A metric fuck ton of Henry Fox Talbot photographs. All of these pieces had several things in common - scenes of love, and scenes of light. Hell, Jean-Pierre had once told him the thief had walked off with five of Monet’s Charing Cross Bridge paintings. The most popular attribution was that of the thirteen pieces from the Gardner.

That last theory had been enough for Marcus to dismiss the concept entirely, and Jean-Pierre kept his conspiracies to himself after that.

Until this week, though.

“When can you get on a secure line?” Marcus asked, wanting to know more about the missing six-and-a-half-foot sculpture.

“Sometime tonight,” Jean-Pierre sighed, rubbing a hand over his face wearily. “You need some more sleep if you’re going to hear about this from me.”

“That I do.” Marcus sighed in the same manner, shaking his head. “Alright. If... if you think he’s taken what he’s taken, then I trust you. It’s your case. Send me everything you have on him and I’ll get spun up.” He didn’t apologize for his initial brush-off of the concept of such a prolific thief, but if they were going to catch them, they needed to be on the same page.

Jean-Pierre wisely didn’t send any of the profile for several hours, knowing Marcus was a light sleeper and practically lived on his phone in the middle of a new case. This allowed the agent to get at least a few hours of sleep in, shoddy as they were, what with the neighbor’s new baby being extremely displeased at existing most hours in the day.

Me too, kid, Marcus thought dryly, before passing out.

With at least the pinpointed moment of his bad week in the calendar, Marcus watched his bad week extend to a bad month. The Bernini, and Lovers at Sunrise, and now three more pieces from a private collector had all vanished, traceless save for the conspiracy. The photos provided by the collector - a rather unpleasant man from Menlo Park, New Jersey who considered federal investigations, in his words “gauche” - only made Marcus more suspicious. It felt like he was seeing things in a new light, when applying this masterful thief theory to the story.

He was good, Marcus knew. Too good. He didn’t pay off guards, didn’t break down doors or windows, he instead breezed past tripwires and security protocols with little more than a small gasp in the security system. Whoever it was, they were a real thorn in his side, and a walking migraine for all involved.

JP Benoit: We obviously can’t follow him. We have to trap him.

Marcus smoothed down the mustache he’d grown out of stress, too distracted to trust his normally-steady hands.

M Pike: I might have an idea.

He did more research, and didn’t bother querying online, or even over the phone. An agreement like this was bound to be sniffed out sooner or later, so keeping things on paper or simply in the air would be safest. He got approval from his superiors, and drove to a little loft in Shaw.

He almost missed the building three times, the colorful brick buildings and decorated industrial edifices catching his eye in the early-morning light. He was quite-but-not-quite undercover for this venture, a suit and jacket replaced by a hoodie and jeans, his briefcase now a worn blue backpack, and his shoes one of the pairs that still fit him from grad school. He still felt too exposed, like this. Everyone knew that feds walked every street in D.C., a fact he was a bit too aware of as he pressed the buzzer next to the...

What?

Next to the buzzer for number 313 was an empty triptych.

“Hello?” your voice came through, and Marcus found himself freezing up on the sidewalk. “Uhh did I order food?”

Marcus scrambled to respond. “No, no. This is uh.” Oh Jesus, why did he use his middle name for this? “Ithas.”

A few seconds passed in silence, presumably with you laughing behind the mute button on the speaker. “Come up, O Prometheus, and bring your thefted flame.”

He had no time to recover before the buzzer for the door sounded, and he caught it before it locked again. The inside of the building was just as... interesting as the outside. It must have been some kind of artist collective, common in the artsier enclaves in D.C. He was a little sidetracked, when ascending the tiled stairs, he caught sight of a massive and detailed mural of The Swing, though with considerably less clothes, and the mistress in a sex swing. He blushed furiously, and went up to the third floor.

The door to 313 was propped open by a large cement frog, and as Marcus drew closer, he heard a grunt and something dragging across the floor. Warily, he knocked on the spot below the numberplate, and poked his head in. “Hello?”

“Prometheus? That you?” You walked around the corner, dusting your hands off on a dirty blue apron. Your hair was in some kind of style that may have once been a bun, and your makeup looked left over from the previous night. Maybe meeting a creative type on a Monday morning wasn’t the best idea he’s had. You looked him up and down, expression morphing from curiosity to intrigue in a few seconds. “You don’t look like an Ithas.”

“It’s a, uh, it’s a middle name.”

Your eyebrows pushed up. “Ooh, codenames before coffee. You must be a fed.”

Marcus didn’t have too good of a poker face, especially around people as beautiful as you. You take in his nonverbal answer and laugh, throwing your head back.

“Oh, wow. Please, come in.” You disappeared around the corner you came from, and he stepped in. The murals on the walls in the hall bled into - or perhaps from - your apartment, which was an open-plan loft with lots of windows and natural light streaming in. Several canvases and half-formed clay sculptures sat around the space more like clutter than actual decor, but Marcus found his eyes distracted, bouncing from one beautiful thing to another, yet always skipping back to you. “Do you drink coffee, fire-stealer?”

Marcus grimaced. “You can just call me Marcus. And yeah, if you’re offering.” He sits at your counter, at the safest place that wasn’t covered in sketchbooks, supplies, and a slightly-terrifying pile of bills. He didn’t like knowing so much about people all at once, but his training had another idea.

“Marcus,” you said, tilting your head to the side and considering him again. He fought the urge to shiver at the way his name sounded on your tongue. “Yeah. Marcus. You seem more like a Marcus to me.”

“...Thank you?” he said, unsure how to respond. You barreled through with the rest of your train of thought.

“Sometimes people grow into their names, and sometimes their names become them. Middle names are a bit of a mystery, though. In Ancient Rome, middle names, or cognomen, were related to the branch of your family line you were raised by. Well, unless you were a woman. Over time, it became a means of honoring deceased relatives, or providing individuality in an aristocratic family that just named everyone John. Yet somehow, my mother came upon Titania, and decided that I needed to fill the shoes of Shakespeare’s queen of the faeries.” You pushed the coffee cup over to him, with a small tray of cream and sugar in little mismatched cups.

“You’d think fairy shoes would be small and thus easy to fill,” Marcus said, recovering and adding in probably a little too much cream and sugar to qualify his drink as coffee. He won a small smile from your lips, like he’d passed a test of some kind.

“Surely none as large as Prometheus.” You drank from your own mug, smiling as you sipped.

“I don’t think I ever let my name determine my path in life. I’m certainly no thief.”

“Certainly,” you echoed, before setting down your drink, a serious glint catching in your eye. “Now, to what do I owe the pleasure of Uncle Sam at my door? The tax thing was handled years ago.”

“I’m-I’m not that kind of fed,” he stuttered, fishing his badge out of his pocket. “Special Agent Marcus Pike, FBI Art Crimes Team. I’m the head of the International Art Theft squad, and it’s a bit of a story.”

Your once-open and playful expression had shadowed some. Marcus wished he could take back the words that dulled your sunshine. He floundered a little more. “I’m not here to arrest you for anything. In fact, I need your help. Oh, this is all backwards.”

“Hey,” you said softly, reaching over and stilling his flustered hands from where they were trying to pull on the stuck zipper of his bag. He looked up at you, all big brown eyes and pouty lips. It floored you for a moment, how little he tried to hide of his feelings. It made your fingers twitch, and something near your heart burn. “It’s okay,” you reassured him. “I’m not worried about all that. You work in art theft. I’m an artist. You’re trying to catch someone.”

He deflated, relieved you could infer as much. “Yes,” he said simply. The bag finally opened. “There’s been this... anomaly.” He scrunched his face up at the word, which you found endearing. His face made a lot of different and interesting lines, and you loved it instantly. He explained the theory about the thief, and pointed out the pieces attributed to him. There was a shadow investigation coordinated among INTERPOL, Scotland Yard, the FBI, and the Ministry of Intelligence in England. As he was the only one in the U.S., aside from the Director, who knew about this squad, he couldn’t tell you, but he could tell you what he needed, and hope that smart mind did the rest.

“So why come to me? I know it doesn’t look it, but I’m not a thief.”

The paintings and sketches and sculptures you were working on, or kept stored and in sight, all shared styles with other master painters. A cubist recreation of a blue sedan could have been a Picasso, if he’d ever seen a Honda Civic. The short wax ballerina flipping off the viewer was so close to a Degas sculpture that Marcus had to take another look just to be sure. The lovingly recreated and cheekily altered Fragonard in the hall had your mark on them as well. You were a painter of styles not your own. Your hands remained ill-at-ease unless they were mimicking another, rhyming with the past.

“I know that,” Marcus said. “What I’m asking is... I’d like to commission you. Three pieces, inspired by the pieces we think he took. To be safe, probably a sculpture, a scenic painting, and whatever other media you think would attract him.”

“You want me make art with the goal that it will be stolen,” you deadpanned, lacing your fingers together and resting your chin on them. “Am I getting this right?”

“We’ll have trackers built into the frames, the paint you use, the materials you need. If he takes them, we’ll be able to track him a lot better than the historic masterpieces he’s nabbed before.” You looked at him like he’s grown another head, because the idea was so obviously crazy that you had no idea how it would even work.

“I have rates,” you said after a moment, and he grinned. “I’m charging more because it’s the government.”

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t,” he said joyfully.

“And my process is unique and important to me. I’m not going to half-ass art that’s doomed to be hidden forever.”

“Of course.” He nodded, smiling so hard the corners of his eyes crinkled up.

“You really wanna catch this guy, don’t you?” you asked, tilting your head the other direction than before. Marcus didn’t correct you, but you could tell this was getting a bit personal for him, just by his reaction. “Alright, I’ll... I’ll see what I can do. Give me a week to think it over, and I’ll meet up again to see what you think.”

“We can’t meet at the office, unfortunately. This is a very off-the-books kind of investigation, and we’ll need to make it look like a legitimate commission.”

“Then breakfast.”

“What?” he asked, losing the thread for a moment.

“Then we’ll meet for breakfast next Monday. For all intents, it’ll look like two friends meeting for pancakes. You like pancakes, right?”

“I love pancakes...” he said, some kind of faraway look in his eye. He wanted to ask about the symbol on your call box, but the words died on his tongue at your sweet smile.

“This is my number,” you said, writing it on a scrap of paper nearby. “I’m awake pretty much all the time except when I’m not.” He exchanges your number for the envelope of pictures he’d brought for reference.

“This is all the pieces we know of, in case you need some inspiration.”

“Thanks.”

“There’s also $3,000 in there.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” He got up and looked around a little more, before awkwardly waving and making his goodbyes. He was nearly out the door when the mark on his chest surged and burned. He turned to look at you. You were watching him with another strange, curious look in your eye. He almost asked, again, but chickened out once more. “Did you—? Did you paint the—”

“Les Hasards heureux de la sex swing?” you answered, smugness apparent on your lips. “Yeah, about four months ago. You a fan?”

“I think I could be.”

“Have a good day, Marcus Ithas Pike.”

“And to you, Queen Titania.”

Authors Notes:

- I have only watched the Marcus Pike crumbs of the Mentalist. I don't give half a shit about the rest lmao. - Some of the pieces I reference are actually stolen, but not all. A lot of them come from @moodsworks's art she made of the Thief among his hoarde, which is the main inspiration for this whole nonsense. Please please go look, I'm eternally in awe and I'm hanging this piece in my home as we speak. - Prometheus was nicknamed Ithas or Ithax by a 5th century grammarian Hesychius. It's where the placename Ithaca comes from! - Titania is the name of the Queen of the Faeries in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Her husband's name is Oberon. You can tell where I'm going with this. - All the drivel about middle names is true. - The real-life FBI Art Crimes Team was stood up in 2004 because of the looting at the National Museum of Iraq in 2003. I'm pretty sure it's currently run by the same woman who started it then. I don't think there's an actual International Art Theft department, but governments often help one another out in these kinds of high-profile incidents. - Learn more about why the Gardner heist was such a headache in the Netflix docuseries This is a Robbery. - The referenced stolen painting in Vaduz is made up, as is the sex swing painting. - We meet the Thief in next chapter, and he's going to eventually have a name, sorry. If you want a fic where we don't ever know his name, I've got one of those too.

#marcus pike x reader #the thief x reader #pedro pascal fanfiction #marcus pike/reader #the thief/reader #unhingery #self insert #dean mccoppin voice: ART!#triptych #marcus pike x the thief x reader

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