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anxiety-elemental-kay · 10 months

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Eidolon

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: Multi

Fandom: Trigun Stampede (Anime 2023)

Relationships: Meryl Stryfe/Vash the Stampede/Nicholas D. Wolfwood, Meryl Stryfe/Nicholas D. Wolfwood

Characters: Meryl Stryfe, Nicholas D. Wolfwood

Additional Tags: Post-Episode: e12 High Noon at July (Trigun Stampede), Mourning, Implied Sexual Content, Mashwood Week 2023, Prompt: Ghosts

Language: English

Words: 2,373

Summary:Vash was gone, but she saw his face everywhere.

He watched the purple star fall back to earth, bright and blazing, and JuLai destroyed in a blast of light.

Note: After the DDoS attack on Ao3, I’ve decided I’ll also start posting my fic here on Tumblr, but I’ll add a link to Ao3 for people who’d rather read there instead. This is for @mashwoodweek day 3, based on the prompt “Ghosts” Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48448810

Vash was gone, but she saw his face everywhere.

On new wanted posters, smiling face above the largest bounty ever issued on No Man’s Land. Wanted for plant theft, terrorism, and mass murder. Dead or alive.

“Why did they have to use this photo?” Vash complained to her once.

There were plenty of people who claimed to be Vash the Stampede, stories of a demon clad in red terrorizing a town, but each one she investigated turned out to be imposters. Each wielding Vash’s reputation like a sword. There were no confirmed sightings of Vash in two years.

“Idiot blew himself up,” Wolfwood said to her once, after they’d shared too many drinks in an effort to satisfy the yawning void of their shared grief. “He’s scattered across fifty square miles of desert. There’s nothing left to look for.”

Merl had no reason to believe otherwise. They’d both seen the same thing.

His image continued to follow her.

—

Nicholas remembered watching twin stars fly up and up into the sky, higher then anything he’d ever seen. He watched the purple star fall back to earth, bright and blazing, and JuLai destroyed in a blast of light.

As soon as he realized what was going to happen, as that purple light began to bloom in the city’s heart, he’d grabbed Meryl again and dove for the relative cover of her truck. Heat and air and the light of judgment roared around them, he tried to curl his body around hers, until it all faded. It left behind the smell of molten glass.

Meryl wanted to go search, try to find something, even giving his sleeve a tug, but he did nothing, so she left him behind. He’d considered stealing her truck, but didn’t have it in him to betray someone else who was too hopeful, too idealistic, too stupid and soft for their own good. Instead he walked, his namesake his only company.

He didn’t think Meryl would want him there when she came back, anyway.

Vash the Stampede, falling star, left a blackened crater where once stood a city. Leaving a blackened crater inside Nicholas.

—

They used the photos she took when they ran her story.

Meryl prided herself on her photography. Several of her pieces had been displayed in the November University annual art shows. Her parents were very proud, and had a couple hanging back in her childhood home.

She was inexperienced in journalistic photography, a lack quickly exposed once she was in the field. However, she could track her improvement over the months she’d traveled with Vash: her compositions improved, there was less blur in her unplanned shots, and she’d gotten better at catching small, important moments.

Vash was smiling in so many of those pictures, and real ones too: petting a stray black cat, sharing donuts with all of them during a quiet afternoon, Wolfwood catching Vash cheating at cards.

(She did not share those pictures.)

Bernardelli liked her photography, but hadn’t been as happy about her prose.

She’d earned respect at the office, when she’d finally stumbled back to civilization and reported in. Even when she told the story of Roberto’s death, the other journalists clustered around her, a weary empathy in their eyes. She wasn’t the only one to lose a mentor, a colleague, out in those hellish wastes. It would be okay, they reassured her, this is the scoop that’ll make your career.

But reporting that Vash the Stampede was trying to stop the destruction of JuLai? Nonsense. Everyone knew he was a monster, a force of pure destruction. Why else would he be called the Humanoid Typhoon? Why else would JuLai have been destroyed?

And no one was going to believe her story about an evil twin brother. Didn’t she know better than to believe such an obvious lie?

She’d been made to revise her story several times. The terror of JuLai still haunted her, the dual grief of losing Roberto, killed for her own recklessness, and Vash, disappeared because even though she had saved him, it hadn’t been enough. She moved through the world as if already in her grave too, so when her editor demanded she make changes, she didn’t object, and rewrote her article until they were satisfied.

There were a lot of things she would have done differently, if she had the chance.

—

The Eye of Michael did not call for him.

Nicholas would have gone back, like the loyal hound they’d made him. It didn’t matter what the contract said, at the end of the day it was only ink. If they went back on their word he would still obey them, for he had no other power that could possibly save the orphanage, and the children who shouldn’t share his fate, Livio’s fate.

But they did not call for him. He made no effort to reach out. There did not appear to be any consequences to this.

What was he even supposed to do now? Was the Eye spying on him? Did Conrad see him save Meryl, tell the rest of the order of his betrayal?

He went back to Hopeland and the orphanage was still there, untouched by time or malice.

Nicholas couldn’t stand to get too close, not that anyone there could ever recognize the thing their big brother Nico became. He’d gotten a pair of binoculars, got as close as he dared, and hoped no one would spot him spying on the orphanage.

All looked well. The most violent thing he saw were the occasional bandaged knee.

He remembered the last time he’d been to Hopeland, aboard the sand steamer he’d followed Vash onto. He’d hoped it would be boring, keeping the Typhoon on a tight leash because the moron would throw himself into danger the first chance he got. If only Livio hadn’t followed him there. If only a lot of things had been different.

It was also the first time he truly saw Vash.

Lit up by the blue glow of the plant behind him, a color so rare on this dry planet, Vash stared at them with a face and eyes lined with intricate patterns.

Monstrousness revealed. A thing none of them were meant to see.

Meryl had been the first to move then, to go to him when Vash fell. Nicholas had too much of his humanity stripped away to do anything but stare at the limp body, even as he wondered if this meant his mission was a failure. As human as Roberto was, the reporter had seen enough horrors to be cautious of Vash and his alien nature.

She’d been the only one brave enough to reach back out.

Now, Nicholas looked out over the orphanage’s courtyard, a home he could never return to. Miss Melanie peeled potatoes while keeping an eye on the children playing in the dirt, and Nicholas realized he missed Meryl too.

—

The first time Meryl went back to the crater, it was to construct a memorial.

Looters had already gone over what wreckage laid directly outside the blast zone, leaving only twisted metal behind. A chainlink fence had been erected around the crater, to keep the curious away. She spent several hours finding scraps that were the right size for her plan but light enough to carry, and hauled them over to her chosen spot along the fence.

Once she had her improvised gravestones erected, she flipped through a private album she’d brought along. She’d added to it ever since she first made it at the age of eight, when she first showed interest in photography. Each picture had a date written on its protective plastic sleeve, following Meryl through her life, from childhood to school to college and her very first job.

She’d added those pictures not meant to her bosses or the public.

There weren’t many group shots, heart sinking as she searched. It wasn’t a vacation, she’d been on the job, and though she had no idea what Vash would find in JuLai, she could have never known how suddenly and how violently their shared journey would end. She wished she’d taken more.

The perfect photo wasn’t one of hers after all. Wolfwood had stolen her camera, and turned the lens on all of them. Wolfwood made a goofy face, Vash flashed a hand sign he later explained the meaning of, Meryl was trying to snatch her camera back, and in the back Roberto looked over at the three of them with a weary fondness.

The tough and tender days they shared and loved.

She used a bent nail to pin the photo in place, and left a pack of Roberto’s favorite cigarettes at the memorial’s base. She added a new marker to her map, and drove away in mournful silence.

—

Nicholas hadn’t been looking for Meryl, but he still found her. He hadn’t recognized her at first when he walked into the nearest diner for some grub. There was something different in the way she carried herself, no longer read to him like a little girl trying to act tougher than she was. There was more steel in her now, and when she spotted him she was quicker to recognize an old companion. He waited for her to yell or scream or try to shoot him with that stupid tiny gun. She smiled instead, just like he might have.

Nicholas didn’t know if he was going to laugh or cry or break something.

“I missed you, asshole,” she said, with the kind of playful bite he realized he yearned for, so he did all three.

He apologized for getting them kicked out of the diner, but Meryl only laughed, bright and for a moment, untroubled.

—

They cross paths several times over the next two years.

To Nicholas’ surprise, Meryl chose to stay in the field. He thought about it, then realized that no, he wasn’t surprised. Little Miss shared Vash’s absolute absence of self-preservation and bottomless courage. Brave and stupid.

She’d given him a radio frequency to use if he wanted to get in touch. He didn’t have the guts to use it, but maybe if he heard a particularly wild rumor that a journalist might go and investigate, maybe he just happened to wander in that direction too. Entirely coincidence. He wasn’t desperate or anything.

Once, when they were both tired and lonely and full of the same grief, they’d rented a room together. They held each other close, and stripped each other of their carefully constructed armor. They kissed, they bit and scratch and pulled each other close. The only two living souls left who knew what happened, who knew the love and terror of No Man’s Land’s fallen angel. They were alone in the world, no one else like them left.

“Do you think this is how Vash feels?” Meryl asked, and Nicholas had never been good with words, so he clung tighter instead.

He felt awful, after. Like he’d soiled her by touching her after everything, like he’d betrayed Vash once again. He’d let himself forget he was a thing made of violence, that could only ever do violence to others.

“I liked it too,” she told him anyway, and he didn’t believe her.

—

They’d found the same lead independently of each other.

Meryl was already at the town’s bar when Wolfwood walked in. By now a glance was all he needed to ask her if she wanted him to join her, and she nodded, so he sat on the barstool to her left.

“You get a good look at the guy yet?” he asked, laying his covered cross against the chair to his own left.

“Nope,” Meryl said with a frown. “I’m not optimistic though, not from the things witnesses say about him and his gang.” She sipped her glass of tea, grateful the bartender had served it without condescension. “I still want to make sure, but it’s probably another imposter.”

Wolfwood grunted, a low, gruff sound he made when he didn’t want to admit to disappointment. Their fitful, improbable search was weighing on him more heavily than it did her. At least she got a story and a paycheck out of these ventures, which was cold comfort, but more than Wolfwood ever received. She feared one day he’d whittle himself down to his bones and there’s be nothing she could do for him.

“This is stupid,” he muttered.

“Too bad,” she said with an expression that was only half a tease. “You’re stuck here with me now.”

The bartender handed Wolfwood his drink. “Worse people to be trapped in hell with.” She punched his shoulder.

Two people burst into the diner, a tall man and a young girl, and all attention snapped to them. The locals soon turned away with rolled eyes with shared mutters of “Just Lina and Eriks”. The girl, about twelve maybe, scuttled over to the bar and started talking to bartender, clearly familiar with each other. As her guardian followed, Meryl felt her stomach drop to the uneven floor.

There he was, the phantom that haunted them both for two years.

She didn’t call out to him, wouldn’t expose him, not while a man with a mask of his face and wielding his unearned reputation like a sword terrorized this place.

She wanted to, wanted to call out his name and hear his voice in answer. At her side Wolfwood stared out at the void in their hearts, though he’d never say it, never admit to it, he’d never been that good at hiding what he truly felt. She could see what Vash had in those eyes, long ago.

A vacant stare found theirs, as the young girl at his side continued to chat with the bartender. Eyes so startlingly blue without tinted glasses to hide them were wide, as if he were the one who saw the dead among the living.

(In a few moments, a cannonball would crash through the bar’s door. A bandit would threaten a man’s life, demand a chance to punish a child. Instead a fallen angel would offer his body and pride in exchange. There would be gunshots and blood and rescues and reunions.)

Vash looked away, his hair hiding his face from them both.

#trigun #mashwood #kay writes things

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nysocboy · 3 months

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Gemstones Episode 1.8 Review: Kelvin's testicles, Jesse's butt, and ancient Philistine penises

In the last episode, Scotty kidnapped Gideon and Jesse, forced them to open the church vault, and stole the Easter offering money, incidentally confessing that he had been in love with Gideon. Judy and BJ had a breakup scene, but Kelvin and Keefe barely appeared. In Episode 1.8,, their romance is centric.

An Old Man's Dick: It's still Easter evening. After dropping off Judy at her house, Baby Billy asks Tiffany "Who wants to suck an old man's dick?" She goes down on him while they are driving down dark country roads near the estate. Suddenly Scotty, driving away with the money he stole, runs a stop sign and crashes into their car! They are unharmed, but Scotty is near death (Tiffany finishes the job by accidentally shooting him). Then they steal the money. An interesting call-back here: earlier Scotty implies that he forced Gideon into oral sex, and he dies while interrupting consensual oral sex, an ironic punishment of the sort you would see in 1950s horror comics.

Top five young ministers: Gideon admits to being Scotty's partner in the offering-theft plan, and is rejected by Eli and Amber. But he doesn't mention his part in the blackmail plan! We cut to Jesse telling his siblings that they are in the clear. But how do they know he won't tell later, and implicate them in the assault? Worried that he'll be arrested, Kelvin is having anxiety attacks and "sharp shit pains in my stomach" (hemorrhoids?). Even if he wasn't convicted, the scandal would destroy his career. "I was in the Top Five Young Ministers to watch last year -- I got a reputation -- a following." Wait -- if he's so famous, why is his whole plot arc about proving his worth?

Denim brings lunch: We cut to scenes where Baby Billy and Tiffany leave town with the offering money, Eli worries that the whole enterprise is corrupt, and Jesse apologizes to Gideon for pushing him away and starting the whole mess. Eli admits, for the only time in the series, that the church's finances are not entirely above-board.

Next, Judy tries to mend her relationship with BJ by bringing him lunch at the optometrist office. Whoops, his coworker Denim already picked up lunch. "So you're having sex with BJ?" No, she's a lesbian -- she has a wife. This does not convince Judy, who calls her: "One of those benevolent lesbians, out to meet a hot guy, make friends with him, so you can sample-suck some clean dick." BJ's nonchalance about LGBT people, plus Judy's sort-of nonchalance, will become important later.

He refuses to take Judy back, so she storms into the parking lot and starts destroying cars, finally getting arrested.

Hemorrhoids and Testicular Tumors: Keefe is swimming while Kelvin tries not to look at the body that is giving him so many unwelcome desires. He wants to know how he can rid the world of darkness, when he's surrounded by it: his mother died, Eli was assaulted, the church was robbed. He concludes that God is punishing the family for "not being who we say we are." But Kelvin had nothing to do with those things. How does "not being who we say we are" apply to him?

"Don't you think God is being a little harsh?" Keefe asks. We all wear masks; we hide things even from ourselves.

Kelvin laugh/cries and says "I think we're getting off easy...when the Philistines stole the Ark of the Covenant, God punished them with hemorhhoids and testicle tumors."

He's referring to an obscure story in 1 Samuel 4-5, where the Philistine thieves were punished with opalim. The King James Bible translates the Hebrew word as "emeroids" (now "hemorrhoids") and the NIV as "tumors." An article in Biblical Archaeology Review points out the importance of penises in Philistine art, and suggests"flaccid penises." No one mentions testicles; apparently Kelvin invented it, to correspond to the glimpse of Keefe's testicle that began his recognition of his homoerotic desire.

Next: "You should go, Keefe." Keefe doesn't understand: "You want me to make a store run?" Kelvin becomes angrier and angrier: "Go. Leave. Get out. I am no longer fit to lead you!"

Kelvin scratches his butt as he says this. Apparently he has hemorrhoids, and thinks that God is punishing him -- an ironic punishment for having anal sex? Will testicular tumors come next?

Keefe disagrees: "There's no one more worthy than you."

"Get the fuck out of here! Now! Do I need to call security, motherfucker?" This is shockingly aggressive.

Keefe wades away, holding his swimsuit like he held his shirt during the mushroom head scene. The intimacy he enjoyed that night has been revoked. Kelvin falls into the pool and screams and cries.

Why does Kelvin send Keefe away? If he's no longer qualified to be a spiritual leader due to the assault of the blackmailers, they could certainly continue to live together. It must have something to do with the "hemorrhoids and testicular tumors," the intimacy they shared, or even homoerotic desire itself. Kelvin believes that it is evil, demonic, that Keefe is a serpent who tempted him. I don't care much for this association between LGBT identities and sin, but the show has been careful to establish that it's in Kelvin's head, not a general theme, structurally or in-universe.

Jesse's Butt: Jesse invites his crew and their wives to "movie night," but the movie is actually the video of their sex-and-drugs party. He has decided to come clean: "These flawed men and myself have participated in some illicit, sinful activities." Is this a callback to Kelvin's belief that he has participated in "illicit, sinful activities" with Keefe?

No one wants to see the video except Mandy, Chad's wife. Jesse advises that she might not want to because it features "Chad's gray testicle." Another testicle reference? Is seeing that, like, the belly of the beast? But they all go to the screening room, even Chad's underage kids (um...that's illegal).

As they watch, the wives storm out in anger and disgust. Amber starts throwing things at Jesse, yelling that he drove Gideon away and destroyed the family. Then she grabs an assault rifle and shoots him (with buckshot) in the butt, a symbolic anal rape.

We cut to shots of Baby Billy and Tiffany rolling around in their loot, Eli using his influence to get Judy out of jail, Keefe driving away crying, Scotty's van being dredged up, and Jesse yelling "She got me in my meat! She broke my butthole!" The background song is "Oh, Lord," by Geordi:

Oh Lord, what's wrong with me. I can't seem to be what I wanna be

And it's not for the sake of tryin'

I tried so hard, God know, and felt like dyin'

And if you've been watchin', you woulda seen me cryin'

So, O Lord, won't you give me your hand?

The siblings and their partners have broken up. Gideon is gone. This is the low point of their lives, and there's just one episode left for things to get better.

Next: Episode 1.9 Review: Jesse is racist, Judy is a rapist, and Kelvin is the Devil

#the righteous gemstones #kelvin gemstone #keefe chambers #kelvin x keefe #Jesse Gemstone #Judy Gemstone

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turtlethon · 1 year

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“Artless”

Season 7, Episode 5 First US Airdate: October 2, 1993

The Turtles clash with a pair of intergalactic art thieves.

“Artless” is the fifth episode of the “Vacation in Europe” side season of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Doug Molitor returns to the series as the writer of this adventure after an extended absence, his prior contributions being “Beware the Lotus” and “Four Musketurtles” back in season three.

Continuing their journey through Italy, the Turtles arrive in Florence, where April reports from the monastery where Leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper. Watching in addition to our heroes are an alien couple, floating blobs Dob and Yikum, who happen to be passing through our solar system and decide to acquire the painting for themselves. As April quizzes Professor Marco about the restoration work needed for the painting, it’s surrounded in pink light, vanishing seconds later.

The Turtles discuss retrieving the painting, though Michaelangelo fails to see what makes it so important. Splinter of course is a noted fan of the Rennaissance masters, having named the Turtles after them, and takes his students out onto the streets of Florence with a view to educating them. Despite attempting to keep a low profile, our heroes attract the attention of a group of sightseers who mistake them for movie stars. (Mikey remarks on the absurdity of this as “who’d pay to see a movie about us?”, a gag that probably landed much more effectively in 1990 – when this episode was written, and the first TMNT movie was breaking records – than it does for anyone watching in the US in 1993, months after the poor showing of the third film.) The group are eventually able to lose the onlookers, meeting up with April and explaining to her their intent to help track down the missing painting.

Elsewhere, a pair of museum guards are horrified to find themselves face to face with a pair of enormous aliens in the shape of Dob and Yikum. The men open fire – notably, with real weapons instead of the laser blasters often used by police and the military in TMNT - but their ammunition has no effect. Both guards flee after being physically ejected from the building.

Splinter follows through on his plan to educate the Turtles about the work of their namesakes, taking them to see Michelangelo’s statue of David. Strategic camera angles are used in close-up shots to get around rendering a fully nude man in the show (in wider shots, the offending details are simply omitted). The statue begins to glow at the same time Dob and Yikum arrive, now smaller in size than when they confronted the guards. They announce that they’re from the planet Lookra and intend to take the statue for themselves. The Turtles step in to stop them but are thwarted by a forcefield and having their attacks easily brushed off. Splinter intervenes and is also quickly dealt with. Dob and Yikum shrink both themselves and the statue of David down as the Turtles are sent flying through the roof’s glass dome. This ascent only lasts so long, and our heroes begin falling, about to meet their demise upon hitting the streets of Florence as the first act concludes.

The Turtles are still plummeting when act two begins, with Donatello producing a rocket pack from his shell to break their fall. Our heroes land on the side of a roof, sliding down before finally arriving at ground level, a group of onlookers waiting for them. This time the crowd is considerably less friendly, all of them acting on the assumption that the Turtles must be responsible for the recent art thefts. April and Splinter – who for some reason wasn’t sent into orbit earlier – arrive in the Turtle Van, providing the green teens with a means of escape.

April replays her own report in the back of the van, recounting the recent theft of another statue, this time Donatello’s depiction of St. George. With thefts of pieces by Leonardo, Michelangelo and now Donatello all taking place, a pattern seems to be taking shape. Each work of art was reported on by April prior to being stolen, hence the assumption is that Dob and Yikum are monitoring the news broadcasts. With that in mind – and given that April will be reporting on the works of Raphael next, in Rome – the Turtles hatch a plan to strike back.

The green teens don robes as they sneak into Vatican City. After waving them goodbye, April is accosted by a distraught Vernon, who declares he’s been “a nervous wreck” since her disappearance while they were in Florence, and that their next broadcast will begin momentarily.

Based on April’s research, Raphael’s mural “The School of Athens” is the most likely target for the two aliens. The Turtles arrive to find it already missing, and noting a crowd of screaming tourists, determine that their foes are now in the Sistine Chapel. There, Dob and Yikum are seen discussing the possibility of taking the whole roof back with them to sell on to other aliens. Splinter attempts to reason with the raiders, but to no avail; the Chapel begins glowing with pink light, heralding its imminent teleportation. We get a rare moment of interaction between Peter Renaday’s most prominent characters next, as Vernon arrives with April and Splinter pleads with both to flee the area; Vernon remarks that while he can handle shockwaves, “It’s giant rats that freak [him] out”. April finds herself tossed into a crowd of tourists, separated from both her co-worker and Splinter.

The Turtles are transported to underground catacombs near Rome, where they again confront Dob and Yikum. After the alien couple learns of their names a misunderstanding unfolds, wherein the Turtles are mistaken for the creators of the stolen artworks. Our heroes attempt to turn this to their advantage, representing themselves as the Rennaissance artists and asking for their works to be returned; this backfires, as Dob and Yikum are keen to take the creators of the works back to their own galaxy.

As act three opens the Turtles are placed in stasis, stripped of their weapons. The team try and reason with their captors, pointing out they’re not the actual Rennaissance artists, but these pleas fall on deaf ears, with Yikum declaring that the Turtles can produce “nick-naks” for them back on their home world.

April drops a coin in a fountain as she wishes to be reunited with her friends, and moments later Splinter arrives to greet her. After April bemoans that the two aliens are too powerful to be defeated, the mutant rat points out that “the secret of martial arts is to turn your foe’s very strength against him”. With that in mind, he has devised a way of hitting back. Later, April and Splinter are seen convincing Vernon to help with a news broadcast at the coliseum. This attracts the attention of Dob and Yikum, who lift the entire structure, but the energy required places an enormous strain on their equipment. This allows the Turtles to break free of the forcefield restraining them and escape through the warp field, arriving in the coliseum.

Having been stripped of their weapons – please ignore the fact that Raphael is still drawn with his sais – the Turtles suit up with gladiator weapons mounted within the coliseum. Dob and Yikum arrive to confront them, hurling bricks and weapons at our heroes. With their systems overloading, the two aliens are briefly captured but escape again, the Turtles heading off to confront them once more.

The thieves are performing repairs on their equipment when the Turtles arrive at the catacombs in their van, with Leonardo declaring that “First we’ll take back [our weapons], then we’ll take back that artwork!”, which would make a lot more sense if the team weren’t drawn emerging from the van with their weapons. A battle unfolds in which the team begin doing damage to the alien technology. This concludes only when April intervenes, informing everyone that this battle is over “a bunch of worthless junk”. Splinter steps in to point out stickers placed on each item declaring that they were “Made in the Crab Neubla”, each of them a forgery rather than the genuine article. Concerned at being seen to be frauds on their own world, Dob and Yikum are convinced by Splinter to return the artworks.

Later, Splinter reveals to the Turtles that the stickers were placed on the items to convince Dob and Yikum the artworks were forgeries. Meanwhile, April carries out a follow-up report on The Last Supper with Professor Marco, who is horrified to find the sticker still present on the painting, believing this to be an indicator that “Leonardo was a space alien!”

“Artless” is perhaps the strongest episode of the Vacation in Europe arc so far, a step up in terms of both production values and storytelling compared to the outings that preceded it. In the wider scope of the series villains other than Shredder are almost invariably underwhelming, usually some schmuck – typically a gangster or a scientist – flanked by two goons who winds up with a machine, ray gun or another macguffin that the Turtles need to deal with. None of this applies to Dob and Yikum who represent the kind of far-out villains more in keeping with the fantastical aspects of the series, and present the team with a meaningful challenge. I’m not convinced there would be much mileage in them making a return appearance after this, but as a one-off they provide a welcome break from the norm; as we established in the Turtlethon entry for “Venice on the Half-Shell", attempting to integrate Krang’s usual plots to revive the Technodrome into these European adventures, which are focused much more on art and history than on scientific themes, simply wasn’t working.

“Beware the Lotus” was the forty-seventh episode of the series and the last time we looked at a story contributed by Doug Molitor, all the way back in November 1989. Approximately one hundred Turtlethon entries have been and gone since then (counting only the actual episodes and not supplemental material), though given that the Vacation in Europe episodes only appear here due to being broadcast as the first half of season seven after gathering dust for years, that doesn’t really count for much. Mr. Molitor will provide one more script for the show, “Turtles on the Orient Express”, later in this odd little stretch of the series.

NEXT TIME: The Turtles arrive in Portugal for “Ring of Fire”!

#Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #TMNT #TMNT 1987 #1992 #1993 #Vacation in Europe #Artless #Dob #Yikum #Dob & Yikum #Dob and Yikum #Ninja Turtles #Turtlethon

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ghoulsister1 · 2 years

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Updated Profile For My OC Gruber Hellstrom❤️‍🔥

Born on the 4th Of January in Berlin, Germany 2 minutes after his brother Dieter. They are non identical twin brothers.👨‍👩‍👦‍👦

Suffers from migraines that make him feel nauseated. Poor Gruber☹️🤕

Had a fear of dogs, particularly large dogs after a childhood incident involving a large Great Dane that chased him and his best friend after the dog saw them on his owner's field. No one was hurt but the incident left Gruber very frightened of large dogs for a long time.🐕

But recently has been going to therapy and has been slowly letting go of the fear of large dogs. He did it for his fiancé who has 3 dogs and two of them are large and one is a small dog. And Gruber loves the dogs to bits and wants to not be afraid of large dogs ever again.🐶💗

Proud gay man who isn't ashamed of who he is and supports the LGBTQ. Helps organise events for the community with his friends like bake sales, concerts and even a beautiful art exhibition where his friends made their own art work to display by the seaside complete with a big BBQ.🥓🍢

Apart from his native German, Gruber also of course speaks English but is also fluent in French but cannot speak Spanish. He does understand a little Italian though.🗣

Big Rammstein fan! But also grew with oldie music from 1940s to 1960s. Loves listening to 1970s to 1980s music. Loves to party!🎶📻 Big fan of Queen.

Does drink when out partying and special occasions. Schnaps, Jägermeister, Kräuterlikör and the occasional Schwarzbier. But Spezi is his favourite! Also is a big wine drinker like his parents.🍷

Loves American retro diners! Favourite thing is strawberry milkshakes. He absolutely loves them and can't seem to go a week without at least having one or two in his system. Also loves burgers.🍔🥤

That being said, Gruber has a big sweet tooth. The dentist knows this all too well.😅🦷

Is studying courses in fashion, gaming technology and criminology.👗🔍🖥

Lives with his fiancé Omar but goes to his parents house in the weekends for family time and invites Omar with him. 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦

Loves playing video games. His favourites are Legend Of Zelda Breath Of The Wild, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto, Sims and Red Dead Redemption 2.🎮

He is currently interested in the Pokemon video games and the new video game Stray.🎮

Plays scary games only with Omar.☠️

Loves watching movies and TV shows. Has a Netflix account.🖲

His favourite shows to watch are The Good Wife, Dexter, American Horror Story, Gossip Girl, Stranger Things, Safe, Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, Riverdale, Good Girls, First Kill, Friends and Family Guy.📺

His favourite movies are Suite Francaise, Army Of Thieves, Letters To Juliet, Isn't It Romantic?, Tammy, 3:10 To Yuma, Munich The Edge Of War, 9, The Witch, Fantastic Mr Fox, Crimson Peak, The Shape Of Water and Pan's Labyrinth.🎬

Also loves the old Spongebob episodes and has a whole collection of them that he watches.📼

Reads books from time to time and loves graphic novels.📚

Also has a small pile of plushies. His favourite is a Squidward Tentacles plushie that he cuddles up with in bed whenever he has his migraines.🧸

Omar helps Gruber out with his migraines by making sure the curtains are closed and the room is dark and at a good temperature. He also makes sure Gruber eats and drinks to help him. Omar also makes sure Gruber takes his medication for his migraines. 💊

Gruber loves Omar to bits and Omar loves Gruber so much he's sometimes afraid of screwing up and losing him.😰

But Gruber always is quick to reassure Omar that he loves him so much and could never bare the thought of spending his life without Omar by his side.🥰

They love each other so much💘

His favourite aesthetics are Diner, Cuddle Party, Lightingwave, New Romantic, Vibrant Academia, Soft Boy, Tropical, 70s Disco, Rainbowcore and Arcade.💝

Here's some pics of various aesthetics for you to see.

💖Hope you like the new and updated profile of Gruber Hellstrom!💖

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afearing · 4 years

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id like to submit an official comment that i think pinterest deserves to burn to the ground for looking like that, trying to force me to make an account every time i accidentally end up on their site, being a den of fried jpeg reposts of original content from real websites, and also making image searches the absolute worst

#text post #the user experience also seems awful #and it's definitely one of the worst sites out there for ENCOURAGING art theft #it makes sense that its users would be stuck in the year 2011... couldn't be me!#also as someone who watched 9 seasons of supernatural and 5 episodes of dr who... there's very little merit in any of the three shows lol #i could bitch more about spn but honestly it's been done who cares #ok fine just a little: sexist homophobic white man pity party with no plot #also no offense but i cant believe some of you are STILL getting gaybaited by d/es/tiel cmon. like. think for one second please

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carriagelamp · 3 years

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Art of Aardman

I found myself a cheap copy of the Shaun the Sheep movie, so I was rewatching a bunch of Aardman films earlier this month and decided to hunt down some books too. For anyone that doesn’t know, Aardman is a British stop-motion studio that does fantastic work like Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Chicken Run, Early Man… tons of cool stuff. They’re always quirky and funny and warm-hearted. This was just a very nice art book for anyone that’s a fan of Aardman stop motion and wants to see a bit extra; it shows some cool concept art and blows up the neat details in Aardman work, especially in their intricate stuff like The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!

Asterix and the Picts (Asterix and the Chariot Race, and How Obelix Fell Into The Magic Potion)

I decided to try a couple of the new Asterix comics that were done by the new team, just to see if they stand up to the old ones (that and How Obelix Fell Into The Magic Potion cause I’d never read that one before). They were pretty decent! Asterix and the Picts was my favourite of the two though I wouldn’t say either are going to contest for my favourite Asterix comic... but still! The art looks good and the stories felt like what I would expect, they made for a pleasant couple evenings of reading especially since it’s been so long since I’ve read a new Asterix comic. If you’ve never read Asterix it’s one of the biggest name French comic series in North America, as far as I know and very worth the read. It’s about a single Gaulish village that’s holding out against the invading Romans through sheer force of will, slapstick hijinks, and a magical super-strength potion brewed by their druid. Lots of fantastic visuals and cute wordplay, even in the English translations.

Bear

I found out about this bastion of Canadian literature via tumblr post that was losing its collective mind over the fact that some bizarre bear-based erotica novella somehow won the most prestigious literary prize available in Canada. Since I too found this hilarious and unspeakably bizarre I had to give it a read, obviously. And yes, the flat surface level summary is... a librarian moves out into rural Ontario and falls in love with a literal for-real not-supernatural-not-a-joke bear. And I have to say… it is actually worthy of an award, which I was not expecting given that I was there for a laugh. It has beautiful writing, and the subtextual story is pretty interesting… it kind of makes me think of The Haunting of Hill House actually in terms of themes. (Womanhood, personhood, independence, autonomy partially achieved through escaping the male gaze by claiming non-human lovers... listen if I were still in university I would right a paper comparing the two novels).

I dunno man, it’s fucking weird. Actually a well-written book, but sure is about a woman falling in love with a literal bear. Give it a read if you want something bonkers but like… high-brow bonkers.

Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites

Best book I have read in like… a while. A long while. I am not a fast reader, and I consumed 90% of this book over a weekend. It’s not at all like Terry Pratchett, but at the same time it scratched an itch for me that I haven’t had satisfied since Pratchett’s death. A very clever, hilariously funny poly romance between a disabled werewolf, an anxious vampire lord, and an incredibly powerful woman, with heaps of social satire, political commentary, and sinister undertones. The whole thing reads a bit like fanfiction and I say that in the most flattering way possible -- it is so easy to jump right in and be immediately taken over by the characters and the world and the plot, you never feel like you’re fighting to engage even though the world-building is fascinating and expansive. It welcomes you in right away, it was the book equivalent of a quilt and a hug which is something I sorely needed with all this pandemic bullshit. If you read any of the books on this list, go read that one while I sit here in pain waiting for the sequel.

Kid Paddle

I watched the cartoon of Kid Paddle as a kid and was thinking about it recently, so I decided to hunt down some of the original comics online. They’re fun and weird, with a cute art style and fantastic monsters designs. (My favourites are always about Kid either daydreaming or playing games that involve Midam’s weird warty troll creatures. It’s like a cross between Calvin and Hobbes and Foxtrot with the fun sort of quirks that I love in Belgian comics. Unfortunately, unlike Asterix, I’ve only come across these ones in French, but if you can read French it’s totally worth popping over to The Internet Archive and reading the ones they have available.

The Last Firehawk: The Golden Temple

The lastest Firehawk book. Despite being written for quite young readers, I did enjoy the early books in this series quite a bit. They’re about a young owl and squirrel who found an egg for a magical species that was believed to be extinct. With the newly hatched firehawk, the three of them head off on a mission to find an ancient firehawk magic that could save the entire forest. Very basic adventure story but a good intro to the tropes for children. Unfortunately the quality really feels like it drops with each subsequent book; this will probably be the last one I bother reading.

Lumberjanes: The Moon Is Up

I honestly think I enjoy these Lumberjanes novels even more than the comics just because it really gives time to delve into each story and examine how the camper are really thinking and feeling about everything. (Also I’m always weak for novelizations of anything.) The Moon Is Up is a book that focuses more on Jo, and takes place during the camp’s much anticipated Galaxy Wars, a competition between cabins that goes over several days. While the campers prepare for these challenges though, they also run into a strange little creature with a penchant for cheese and theft. Roanoke cabin needs to keep ahead in Galaxy Wars and somehow deal with the fearsome Moon Pirates that a closing in...

Lumberjanes v4 (Out Of Time)

One of the Lumberjanes comics, a cool, girl-focused, queer comic series. Honestly, this is just a fun series that I never got as into as I should have. My advice is honestly to skip book one because it gets better as it continues, and I’ve really been enjoying the later books now that I’ve given it another go. It follows five campers at Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for Hardcore Lady Types (Jo, April, Molly, Mal, and Ripley) as they handle all sorts of challenges, from friendship to crushes, camp activities to supernatural horrors, getting badges to not being brutally killed. Great if you liked the vibe of Gravity Falls but want it to be queer-er.

Mooncakes

Another queer graphic novel, but unfortunately not a very good one. It really looked appealing and I had high hopes, but the book itself really didn’t hold up… I actually couldn’t even finish it, the plot was just too… non-existent. The art is fairly mediocre once you actually look at it, especially backgrounds, and it feels very… placid. Not much conflict or excitement or even a very compelling reason to keep reading. If you just want a soft queer supernatural you may get more mileage out of it than me, but it didn’t really do it for me. There’s better queer graphic novels out there.

New Boy In Town

One of the worst books I have ever read. My girlfriend had ordered a very different book online but through a frankly stupendous error was sent this 1980s pulp romance instead. Absolutely nauseating on levels I couldn’t even begin to enumerate here. Naturally we read the whole thing out loud. Probably took us 10 times longer to finish than it warranted because I had to stop every two sentences to lose my mind. If you like bad decisions, baffling hetero courting rituals, built-in cultural Christianity without actually calling it that, and gold panning then boy howdy is this the book for you.

(seriously, you better have patience for gold-panning if you attempt this one, because I sure learn that I don’t)

Piggies

This was a picture book I enjoyed as a kid and had a reason to reread recently. Honestly it’s just very cute and simple, and the art is completely mesmerizing. Wonderful if you know a young child that would enjoy a simple goofy boardbook.

Shaun the Sheep: Tales From Mossy Bottom

Related to my Aardman fascination earlier this month. I tried reading a varieties of Shaun the Sheep books — most of which are mediocre at best — but the Tales From Mossy Bottom Farm series is genuinely good. Just chapter books, of course, but the illustrations match the series’ concept art and each story feels like it could have jumped directly out of an episode. They’re just cute and feel-good! Kinda like Footrot Flats but more for kids, and from the sheep’s perspective moreso than the dog’s.

#aardman animation #shaun the sheep #lumberjanes #kid paddle #asterix #the last firehawk #hunger pangs: true love bites #marian engel #bear #canadian literature #canlit #queer lit #book review #book reviews #chatter

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waitimcomingtoo · 4 years

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Paranoid

Pairing: Peter Parker x reader

submitted by @7teenbl-ck : your Criminal Minds obsession gets you paranoid about crime in your neighborhood. Everything scares you now, even Peter

Masterlist

(this gif has nothing to do with the story but omg look at it)

“Baby, wake up.”

You jolted awake when Peter shook you, your laptop sliding off your stomach and onto the bed.

“What time is it?” You asked groggily as you rubbed your eyes.

Sleepy you was peters favorite version of you, so he took a minute to answer as he admired the way your hair stuck up in every direction.

“It’s not even nine yet. I just got back from patrol.” He told you as he rubbed your hip.

“I must’ve fallen asleep watching Criminal Minds again.” You said before hiding a yawn behind your hand.

“Why are you so obsessed with fake crime when you have a boyfriend out there fighting real crime?” Peter pouted, moving your laptop off the bed so you wouldn’t lose it.

“I watch it for the plot.” You smiled sleepily at him, and he saw right through you. Peter let out a short laugh and brought your hand up to his mouth to kiss it.

“You watch it because you’re in love with that stupid agent Reid or whatever his name is.” Peter grumbled, his jealousy making you smile.

“It’s Doctor Reid.” You corrected, and he rolled his eyes at you.

“You’ve been watching that damn show every single night when I come back from patrol.” Peter whined as he pulled you into his chest and rubbed your back. “Why don’t you let me tell you about the real unsubs I see?”

“Fine, baby.” You patted his knee and curled into his chest, still half sleep. “Tell me about patrol tonight.”

“I saw a pigeon l in the backseat of a moving taxi.” Peter said excitedly, and you chuckled against his chest.

“How is that a real crime?” You teased him.

“That’s theft of service. That pigeon could get get fined up to $4,000.” Peter argued and you let out a laugh.

“Who would waste their time trying to bring a pigeon to justice?” You asked, and Peter fell silent.

“Peter? I need you to be honest with me.” You said, your tone suddenly seriously.

“Okay, sure” Peter sat up a little to give you his full attention.

“Did you go after the pigeon?” You squinted at him in the dark. Peter was quiet again and you could see him chewing his bottom lip in the moonlight that came through your window

“Peter.” You repeated in a warning tone.

“It was a slow night! The pigeon needed to be set free before he committed a misdemeanor.” Peter defended.

“You know who never has a slow night?” You wiggled your eyebrows.

“Don’t say the BAU” Peter groaned.

“The BAU!” You cheered. “Let’s watch Criminal Minds.”

“But I want to cuddle.” Peter whined. It not that he didn’t like the show, he just wasn’t in the mood for it. He’s much rather hear about your day or just about anything else you wanted it tell him.

“We can do both.” You insisted as you pulled your laptop into your lap. Peter scooted between your legs and let you be the big spoon as you clicked on an episode.

You spent the entirety of your Saturday watching Criminals minds while Peter was at his SAT prep class. He told you he’d be over around 5 to keep you company, something that had slipped your mind around the fourth episode you played. This episode in particular hit a little too close to home, as it took place in New York. As the episode went on, you began to feel fear bubble up in your tummy. It didn’t help that your parents were away for the weekend, leaving you all alone in the apartment. You paused the episode and went to make sure that your door was locked. You sighed a breath of relief when you saw that it was, and leaned your back a against it. That’s when it dawned on you.

You have so many windows.

And windows are just tiny glass doors that criminals can come through.

You rushed throughout your apartment, shutting and locking every single window you had. You shut all the curtains before returning to you bedroom to resume the episode.

While it played, you googled crime statistics in New York.

“443 out of 100,000 people in New York are criminals?” You read out loud to yourself, suddenly feeling very unsafe. You began to google crime in your immediate neighborhood when the episode caught your attention.

“Our unsub is a white male in his mid to late 30s. He’s going to be physically fit and may have already inserted himself in the investigation.” Emily Prentiss said, making the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

“I know some physically fit white males in their mid to late 30s.” You whispered in fear.

“He’s only attacked cars at first, but he recently escalated to apartments.” Derek Morag added and you gulped.

“I live in an apartment building.” You realized as white hot fear shot through your body.

“His last victim was a high school girl. He broke into her apartment when her parents weren’t home and attacked her while she was drinking a glass of water in her bedroom.” Hotch explained.

Your eyes shifted to the glass of water you had beside your bed. You swiftly punched the glass, making water spill all over your carpet. You had just turned your attention back to the screen when you heard a knocking at your window. You let out a scream and dove under the covers, saying a prayer in every language you could think off. You let out another shriek when they knocked again.

“Who’s there? Are you the criminals? From the statistics?” You yelled form under your covers.

It wasn’t until your panicked breathing calmed down that you heard your boyfriends voice.

“Y/n? It’s Peter. Open up.” He called, his voice muffled through the window. You peaked from beneath your covers and saw Spider-Man perched at your window. You sheepishly got out of bed and opened the window for him, locking it the second he got inside. You peaked through your curtains for anyone who might be watching and shut them tightly.

“Why was it locked? I thought you always left it open for me?” Peter grumbled as he took off his suit. He put on the clothes he left in your room as you sat on your bed.

“But leaving it open for you Peter is the same as leaving it open for all the criminals in New York. All 443 out of 100,000 of them!” You exclaimed and he paused as he was sliding on his shirt.

“What?” He asked, his eyebrows knitting together.

“I have been googling crime statistics in New York all day. Do you know how bad the crime has to be for it it warrant statistics?” You asked him, panic evident in your eyes. He took a seat next to you and took your hands in his.

“Baby, this neighborhood hasn’t had a crime since the guy on the fifth floor stole that lady’s package. And he returned it once he saw it was a cat bed, so no one was even arrested.” Peter reasoned with you but you still looked scared. “What’s got you all worked up?”

You looked at Peter as you nervously chewed your lip and it clicked.

“Don’t say the BAU.” He groaned and buried his face in your neck.

“The BAU!” You protested and he muttered something against your skin before picking his head up. He could see that you were genuinely afraid, so he pulled you into his arms and rested his chin on the top of your head.

“Sweetness, that show isn’t real.” Peter sighed as he rubbed your back. “It’s dramatized and fake and unrealistic. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

“The show isn’t real, but the criminals in New York are.” You said quietly. “There are a lot of bad people in the world and New York is full of them. And then you tell me about all this crazy kinds of bad people with giant wings and illusion technology that the rest of the world doesn’t even know about.”

Guilt twinged in Peters chest at your words. He never should’ve told you about the guys he was fighting if you were already paranoid. He picked up your head and held it between your hands, giving you a gentle smile to calm to down.

“You know what those guys have in common?” Peter asked you and you shook your head.

“No, what?”

“I took them down.” Peter said with a cooks grin and you rolled your eyes at him. “Beck is dead and Toomes is in prison. They can’t get to you.”

“But-“ You began.

“And neither can anyone else.” Peter finished. “My job as Spider-Man is to keep New York safe, but my job as your boyfriend is to keep you safe. You’re always gonna be my number one priority.”

You smiled slightly as Peter and pulled him into a long kiss to thank him.

“Thank you.” You mumbled against his lips. “I guess I shouldn’t be this paranoid. I just kinda forgot my boyfriend was Spider-Man.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m here.” Peter chuckled. “To remind you.”

Tag List 🏷

@maybemona @foreverxholland @writing-for-hours-on-end @lavender-writer @captainmandeestudent17 @whatareyouhidingpeter @takenbyheartstrings @ultrunning @imyourliquor-youremypoison @theolwebshooter @andreasworlsboring101 @guksmyfav @waiting-to-be-myself @letsloveimagines @peterparkoure @a-villain-vying-for-attention @justcallmehitgirl @averyfosterthoughts @jackiehollanderr @tiny-friggin-human @celestial-skylines @mara-twins @iamaunicorn4704 @delicately-important-trash @spideygirl2003 @the-crazy-fanfictionist @maryjanee23 @spacebitch2 @geeksareunique @emmamarshmellow @jillanaholland @unbelievableholland @rebekkah4766 @flixndchill @sovereignparker @wendaiii @thisisthebiplace @spideydobrik @every-marveler-ever @undiadeestos @caelestii-e @eridanuswave @itscaminow @thegr8kush @solarxmoonchild @where-art-thau-romeo @canyouevencauseicant @probablyparker @illwritetomorrow @thehappygrungelife @saysomethingspiderman @parkerboop @smilexcaptainx @hes-amarillo @quaksonhehe @kelieah

#peter parker x reader #peter parker fanfiction #peter parker imagine #peter parker fluff #peter parker x you #peter parker x y/n #peter parker angst #criminal minds #tom holland fluff #tom holland x reader #tom holland imagine

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shinelikethunder · 4 years

Text

Rewatching Hannibal 1x07 Sorbet, and noticing how much of it is about what happens when you don’t become the mask you wear for the rest of the world. What happens to the part of you that’s stubbornly distinct from your façade, when it’s been trapped behind it for so long that even you aren’t sure what it might look like when viewed (...seen). The fear that it’s malformed and pitiable, followed by the slim, terrifying hope that the person who glimpses it might care more about it than about your meticulously-ornamented shell. (Which, among other things, hoo boy if that ain’t a Big Queer Mood... fitting, really, that this is the episode with a gratifying little revenge fantasy about medical homophobia, serophobia, and hostile assumptions about what “ugly little secret” you must be hiding.)

And in that context, one of the Thomas Harris quotes remixed into this episode makes a lot more sense to me than it did on previous viewings: “I see [the Ripper] as one of those pitiful things sometimes born in hospitals [...] They let it die. But he doesn’t die. He looks normal. Nobody can tell what he is.” It’s a demonstration of the thing Hannibal finds most terrifying and alluring about Will: he keeps seeing through all the personae and person suits. At this point it’s through a glass darkly, but still with shocking clarity, considering he doesn’t even know what--who--he’s seeing. Hannibal spends the episode coming up with new misdirections on the spot to test him: the “Chesapeake Ripper or organ harvesters?” red herring, the little game of “two lies and a truth” with the Ripper photos in Quantico. And every time, Will demolishes the misdirections and acknowledges the tiny scraps of truth, almost effortlessly, without even realizing what he’s doing. The episode ends with Will skipping out on the Extremely Person Suit dinner party to go examine its ugly underbelly: the Ripper cases that put the food on the table. Of course Hannibal is secretly delighted at the snub.

It’s the prospect of being seen that forces Hannibal to reckon with what the thing under his many masks might look like. The thing that so stubbornly refuses to die, even when starved of connection or recognition. And the unpleasant truth is that that thing looks a lot more like Franklyn than he’d ever want to admit.

Franklyn is so cringe-inducing to watch as a character--and no doubt even more unpleasant to interact with--that, as with Freddie Lounds, the audience kinda has to wonder why Hannibal hasn’t killed him already. I suspect the answer is that he has a weird soft spot for Franklyn as a form of painful self-recognition. Trying to help Mr. Secondhand Embarrassment Personified is like watching a well-hidden, well-guarded part of himself walk around naked, no manners or charm or cultivation, none of the protections that make his person suit so well-tailored. The part that craves connection but has no idea how to go about it, the part that’s fascinated with (curious about) other people but avoids looking at the stunted void it fears is where its sense of self should be. Or, to get all purple about it: Franklyn is a man who flinches at the threshold of his innermost self, but shorn of all the exquisite mental architecture Hannibal's built himself to live in, reduced to begging anyone nearby for shelter.

Even in the next episode, Hannibal goes out of his way to encourage Tobias not to murder Franklyn, which is about as much mercy as he ever shows to people he has personal affection for but wouldn’t hesitate to kill for pragmatic reasons. Of course, because he’s Hannibal, he ends up murdering the poor bastard himself with no hesitation or remorse--but it’s not because of some line of unbearableness that Franklyn finally crossed. It’s because his desire to spite Tobias was stronger than any hope of sparing Franklyn, who by that point had probably seen too much anyway. In his next session with Bedelia he tells her one of his little sideways truths--yes, it’s funny on its face to see him go “I feel responsible for what happened to him” about the man whose neck he snapped with his own hands, but I do think he feels regret if not remorse, for not managing to engineer a situation that kept his cringey shadow self out of the line of fire.

(Side note: I suspect the reason Freddie Lounds didn’t get eaten in the very second episode is that she was the only other person to see through Will’s protective suit of “socially inept smol bean who is very distressed by the insights he gets from his Unspecified Problems Disorder.” Sure, she’s an absolute bitch about it, but she’s an absolute bitch who can pull off outfits even more outrageous than Hannibal’s--she appeals to his sense of fun. As soon as he realized she’d clocked Will as absolutely fucking seething with all kinds of dark potential 24/7, he decided her rudeness and vulgarity were far outweighed by the entertainment value of having her around to cause problems on purpose.)

(Side note #2: All of this neglects the main casefic plot, which does connect to the same themes, but somewhat less directly. The other person going around without a mask in 1x07 is Devon Silvestri, who’s also kind of an inept schlub when viewed for what he really is. He didn’t arrange that crime scene to look like a Ripper murder, he just panicked and GTFO’d--all the conflation comes from Jack Crawford’s desire to find the Ripper and from Hannibal seizing on it as an opportunity for misdirection. It does lead to some fun playing with “are the mutilations for Art (artifice, performance) or for more prosaic uses of the organs?” when the answer, of course, is that the difference between the Ripper murders and the botched organ theft is “why not both?” Silvestri’s one real deception is to pass himself off as an emergency first responder (his day job) while he’s working his less altruistic sideline, and we also get some fun triangulation when Hannibal has to take on that role for real. Will sees him, gets his first good look at Hannibal’s mastery of this skillset that he once cultivated as part of his person suit, but also sees him looking absolutely in his element as he uses his power over life and death to preserve life. He sees it even more clearly against the backdrop of Silvestri’s dubious competence and furtive discomfort with what he’s doing. In his conscious mind he accepts the best possible interpretation of that glimpse, even as he feels a bunch of less-conscious connections snap into place at the sight--ones he isn’t ready to face yet, but boy is he having Big Feelings about it. Some of which may or may not be diverting blood from his brain, and/or setting him up for uncomfortable wet dreams about Hannibal’s hands in his viscera, but thaaat’s probably a topic for another post.)

Anyway. Sorbet as an episode is about the exact opposite of “fake it ‘til you make it”--it’s about the self that doesn’t become what it performs, the wonder of having someone glimpse it no matter how well-hidden it is, and, crucially, the terror of finally examining what someone else may have glimpsed and finding it stunted, ugly, even pitiable in its isolation. Neither the “thing that doesn’t die” quote nor any of the stuff with Franklyn makes sense, IMO, without the realization that Franklyn is an uncomfortable mirror of what’s under Hannibal’s human veil--and that Hannibal is equal parts intrigued and freaked the fuck out that Will keeps catching glimpses of him through the veil.

#hannibal #meta #sorbet #hannibal lecter #will graham #franklyn froideveaux #freddie lounds #sure is a bunch of tasty Mortifying Ordeal bullshit in this episode #here have some tl;dr about it

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july-19th-club · 3 years

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do i actually particularly value your opinion on media or do we just have the same birthday? i guess we'll never know! but you steered me well on soc so: i tried watching the first episode of leverage but i could not get into it because 1. gender and 2. it seemed like it was being silly when it should have been serious and serious when it should have been silly. do you have takes on this? is there a later episode i should have tried for my first go? whats the recipe for enjoying leverage

honestly unless you’re REALLY into the specific genre of ‘underproduced corporate thrillers from the early-mid aughts’ then you’re *not* gonna enjoy the leverage premier enough to be interested in the rest of the show, but you, zezander, are in luck because this ask has functioned as a sleeper phrase that triggers the release of the July’s Leverage Greatest Hits List, which i will herewith paste below. i’ve only listed episodes i think are really worth slowing down and enjoying, and i’ve included a few notes with each one as to why i think it’s worth the time; note that s1 was not released in the same order as it was aired so the order you watch it in literally does not matter at all except for the finale. without further ado:

SEASON ONE:

The Miracle Job (the first episode where things really have a rhythm; nate backstory that doesn’t suck eggs)

The Stork Job (strong parker/hardison ep.)

The Wedding Job (CHEESY - but extremely fun)

The Juror #6 Job (one of my personal favorites because i love a good trial bit)

The First David Job & The Second David Job (two-parter & v. good; maggie is here)

SEASON TWO:

The Order 23 Job (funny and fucking weird as hell)

The Fairy Godparents Job (another funny one & surprisingly touching)

The Three Days of the Hunter Job (god this one is weird. I love it)

The Two Live Crew Job (rival heist crew; sexy)

The Lost Heir Job (TARA! introduces one of my favorite characters)

The Bottle Job (the gold standard for bottle episodes and simple cons you can run at home)

The Future Job (STRONG parker ep. about fake psychics)

and honestly at this point just finish out the season it’s plottier but still good + i love jeri ryan

SEASON THREE:

The Reunion Job (another sneaky parker/hardison ep.)

The Inside Job (clever escape episode; not really a heist)

The Scheherazade Job (the hardison’s unearthly violin solo episode)

The Studio Job (lots of people really like this episode and it’s good, I just don’t watch it often because i don't really like country music. Alona Tal is in it tho and i love her)

The Rashomon Job (told in flashbacks from each character’s perspective; very clever)

The King George Job (hardison hacks history; his arms look great in that tank top)

The Morning After Job (a very clever con)

The San Lorenzo Job (OH this fucking episode. It’s just very well put-together and Goran Visnjc is the big bad he’s all throughout the season really. sophie SHINES)

SEASON FOUR:

The Long Way Down Job (emotional parker/eliot ep; features extreme winter mountaineering)

The Van Gogh Job (fan favorite; hardison & parker play star-crossed lovers in wwii)

The Hot Potato Job (fun roleswap ep. for sophie)

The Grave Danger Job (emotional hardison/parker ep.)

The Queen’s Gambit Job (incredibly clever sterling episode, good parker/hardison content)

The Experimental Job (this one is good but it’s a Lot for me; i’m not sure why that is tho. premise: the team infiltrates a psychological experiment, requiring hardison to go undercover as a frat boy and eliot as one of the experiment ‘volunteers’)

The Office Job (fan favorite; heist shot like the office; just a fucking bucket of fun. The Sandwich(™) is here)

The Girl’s/Boy’s Nights Out Jobs (two-parter - the team splits up for extracurriculars; return of tara and harley)

The Gold Job (hardison runs the con roleswap ep.; some good parker/hardison/eliot)

The Last Dam Job (lots of old recurring characters in this one, incl. Tara and Mr Quinn)

SEASON FIVE:

The French Connection Job (eliot goes undercover as a chef; eliot ensues)

The Gimme A K Street Job (extremely clever episode about cheerleading)

The D.B. Cooper Job (another good flashback-starring-the-team ep. a la the van gogh episode)

The Broken Wing Job (bottle episode *man punching stage* TWO)

The Rundown Job (thee ot3 episode; lots of good parker/hardison/eliot stuff; biological warfare)

The Frameup Job (the last sophie’s art theft adventures job & quite fun)

The White Rabbit Job (team confronts the ethics of pulling off the world’s toughest con)

The Long Goodbye Job (series finale, emotional and also quite good)

as you can see, i really like season four, and i’ll be the first to admit that the show has a slow start. but there are gems all throughout and i hope this helps break it down/give you a starting point!

#leverage #zezander #i know other ppl have asked too so let this be a primer :)

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secretpajamas · 4 years

Text

Undercover– a Marcus Pike fic

pairing: Agent Marcus Pike x female reader

genre: smut/humor/coworkers-to-lovers

rating: explicit

words: 3.7k

a/n: you don’t need to have seen The Mentalist to read this fic (but I do recommend watching Pedro’s episodes, he’s SO perfect in this role)! All you need to know is that Marcus Pike is an FBI agent working for the Art Theft department. Scroll down to the end to “content” if you want to know specific smut content before reading :)

–

So far, the operation had been a bust; you had hoped to catch the reclusive money-laundering gallery owner at the fundraiser event tonight, but he hadn’t shown. After conceding defeat, you and Agent Pike slipped into one of the roped-off side rooms in the museum to discuss a way forward.

You felt incredibly uncomfortable in your attire for the night: a silky slip of a dress that showed far more skin than you were accustomed to showing. But this was a “trendy” look, supposedly, and you were masquerading as art critics at this stupid event. Your FBI-issued handgun was concealed in a hidden panel in your purse and you hated not having it on your hip in your trusty uniform holster. You hated everything about this outfit. The fact that you had to youtube “how to apply an adhesive bra” just to wear this godforsaken dress tonight—

“You alright?” Pike asked, looking at you with a furrowed brow. You realized your face was scrunched up in a scowl, thinking about your goddamned flimsy bra, which had thankfully stayed on the whole night so far.

“Yeah,” you said, “just yearning for my uniform right now.”

“Tell me about it,” Pike said, gesturing to his outfit. “I’m wearing skinny jeans.”

It was decidedly not his style. You usually saw him in business casual or his FBI uniform. When you met on the weekends for coffee, he’d wear a leather jacket—and as far as you could tell, that was as adventurous as he got when it came to fashion. Skinny jeans? Not Marcus Pike, not in a million years. (But he did have nice legs, you had to admit.)

“So, our friend hasn’t shown,” you said, changing the subject to more pressing matters.

“I had a feeling,” Pike muttered. “Back to the drawing board, I guess.”

“Well, it was worth a shot,” you said with a sigh. “Let’s call it a night.”

Suddenly, Pike tensed, his face paling. You took a breath, about to ask him what was wrong, when he whispered harshly:

“Someone’s coming.”

You jumped when you heard it: footsteps sounding from the hallway where you came in. You whipped your head around, looking for another way out, but the only other exit was a door that read ‘EMERGENCY EXIT – ALARM WILL SOUND’.

Shit.

“I’m sorry about this,” Pike said in a rush, bracketing himself around you, effectively pinning you to the nearby wall, in between two paintings. “Just play along.”

“Sorry for wha—”

Then he kissed you.

Marcus Pike kissed you.

You froze. What the fuck was he doing? How was this supposed to help? What was this—

Your train of thought was interrupted by his thigh wedging its way between your legs, sending a jolt of pleasure up your spine and making a filthy noise tumble from your throat, unbidden.

“Good,” he whispered, mouthing kisses along your neck. “Louder.”

You moaned again at his words, not really understanding why. Just play along, he had said. Whatever the hell that meant.

Suddenly, a booming voice rang out. “This section is CLOSED!”

Pike jumped away from you. You snapped to attention, head whipping around to see a familiar face: one of the lackeys of the corrupt museum owner stood some distance away, a blinding flashlight trained on you. You’d seen this man on surveillance footage in your briefing this week. He was the muscle. Usually the very armed muscle. Shit.

“S-sorry,” Pike said, his voice suddenly meek, that of a geeky art critic and not a federal agent. He raised a hand to scratch the back of his head, making a big fuss of the movement, while the other hand subtly reached behind him, hovering near where his gun was covertly tucked in the back of his belt. “My girlfriend and I—”

“Section’s closed!” He barked, gesturing with his flashlight. “Get a room.”

You felt your stomach drop back into place. He just thinks we’re horny artists. Thank god.

“Sorry, sir,” Pike said, taking you by the hand and making a swift exit.

–

You didn’t speak a word to each other as you scurried out of the gallery and into the side street where Pike had parked. He rummaged in his jacket pocket for his keyfob and frantically pressed at it until his car’s headlights flashed up ahead. Once you were inside, you put your head in your hands and let out a huge breath you didn’t know you were holding.

“Holy shit,” you rasped.

Pike didn’t respond, just methodically put on his seatbelt, started the car, and drove away. At the next red light, Pike reached over and buckled you in. You were so out of it that you had forgot.

“Thanks,” you said, voice a little more steady than it was previously.

“I’m sorry about what happened back there,” he said, eyes on the road.

“Uh, me too? I thought we were done for,” you said. You thought you were going to get shot, but you didn’t dare say it.

Pike shook his head. “I mean, I’m sorry I kissed you. It wasn’t right.”

“What are you apologizing for? You saved our asses.”

“By assaulting you? Yeah, great job I did,” he said.

You rolled your eyes. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, you didn’t assault me, Pike. It was... surprising, but I wasn’t upset.” Quite the opposite, actually.

Pike gripped the steering wheel a little too tightly—you could hear the fake leather squeak against his hands. “Nevertheless, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” You sighed. “Seriously, I’m okay. Stop getting in your head.”

He didn’t seem totally convinced, but he didn’t protest any further. You sat in silence for the rest of the car ride.

–

“This is you,” Pike said when he turned onto your street, gesturing with his head towards your apartment building. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was in a considerably nicer neighborhood than your first DC apartment, that’s for sure.

“Indeed it is,” you confirmed.

Pike parked his car and turned off the ignition. He still looked like a kicked puppy—god, he wasn’t still worried about the kiss, was he?

Fuck it. You’d been working with the man for nearly two years now, and at this point, you considered him a good friend. You never felt judged when you confided in him. Why not just be honest?

“I liked it,” you said, oddly calm.

Pike’s face scrunched up. “Huh?”

“The kiss,” you said, and now your heartbeat was starting to ratchet up. “I liked it.”

His eyes widened. “Oh,” he said, voice soft.

“Yeah,” you replied. “You can... do it for real, if you want.”

Pike looked at you silently, his gaze flickering from your eyes to your mouth.

The adrenaline from earlier in the night must have been fueling your courage, because you soldiered on. “Do you want to come in?”

–

Pike followed you wordlessly to your apartment, the tension so heavy in the air you thought you might suffocate. With shaking fingers, you managed to unlock the door and flick on the lights.

As soon as the door closed behind Pike, he held you by the waist and kissed you soundly.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he said when he pulled away.

“We kissed like, an hour ago—”

“A real kiss,” he specified, bringing one hand to cup your cheek. He brushed his thumb along your lower lip like it was something precious. He kissed you again, just a soft press of lips, ever the gentleman. You thought about his thigh between your legs earlier that night and god, you wanted that again. You kissed him back, firm and insistent, curling your fingers in his hair.

When you gave his hair a gentle tug, his whole body seemed to shiver, and his kiss became more daring—his tongue in your mouth, his hands inching down, down, stopping just shy of your ass.

Suddenly, he pulled away from the kiss. “I should go,” he said—but the tone of his voice made you doubt that he wanted to leave.

“What’s the matter?” You asked.

“I’m moving too fast,” he said with a wistful smile.

“I’m the one who invited you in, Pike,” you said.

“Fair point,” he said. He let his hand rest on your waist again, his fingers stroking the silky material of your dress. “It’s just—I haven’t done this in a while. Not with someone I... care about.”

Oh. You knew what this was about. Teresa, the woman he was with just before he moved to DC. They were supposed to get married, but she left him for another man. You didn’t know much beyond that, but he had told you enough—that he felt he moved too fast and scared her away.

“If you want to stop now, I get it,” you said. “But I’m here to tell you I’m not going anywhere. I’ve waited two years, I can wait some more.”

You didn’t realize the weight of your words until after they left your mouth. Shit. He wasn’t supposed to know you’d had doe-eyes for him since the day you joined the Art Theft squad. You looked down at the floor, anywhere but his face right now.

“Two years?” He asked softly.

“Yeah,” you whispered.

“But—what about that guy you dated from Quantico?”

“He was a nice distraction,” you said.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” He asked.

You didn’t respond for a moment. Slowly, you looked back up from the floor to his face. His features were kind and reassuring. You took a deep breath. “Well, I’m saying it now,” you said.

He smiled. “Let’s make up for lost time, then,” he said, snaking his arm around your waist and pulling you in for another kiss.

–

After kissing you breathless, you lead him by the hand to your bedroom. He went with you eagerly, and when you sat on the edge of your bed, he followed suit.

You pushed at the lapels of his tweed jacket, getting it off his arms and onto the floor. He reached behind you, searching for your dress zipper. He found it, grinning triumphantly for a moment before pulling the zipper down. The dress fell off your shoulders, revealing—

Oh god, that fucking adhesive bra.

“I’m sorry,” Pike said, sounding utterly baffled, “What is this thing?”

You laughed. “You’re asking me? I had to consult the internet just to put the damn thing on.”

“How is it on?”

“Adhesive,” you said.

“Do you just... rip it off? Like a bandaid?” Pike said.

“I guess?” You replied, picking at it with your fingernail. A corner of it peeled off without much force. Damn, it was flimsy.

You peeled it off the rest of the way and chucked it across the room. “Good riddance.”

Pike laughed, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Here I was thinking skinny jeans were a pain,” he said.

“To be fair, those do look a little tight,” you said.

“They are. My dick hurts.” He winced, reaching down to adjust himself. “Too much information?”

You rolled your eyes. “My tits are out, Marcus, I think you’re good.”

At the mention of them, Pike was suddenly gazing at your breasts—as if he hadn’t realized he was allowed to look. He tentatively reached out and cupped one, stroking at it gently with his thumb. You sighed, arching your back. He ran his hand from your breast to your arm, where the strap of your dress had fallen. He dragged the strap down, and with a little wiggling from you, managed to get your dress on the floor, leaving you only in your underwear.

“You have way too many clothes on,” you said, working at the buttons of his shirt. He nodded, helping you get it unbuttoned the rest of the way before shrugging it off. Pike then reached for his jeans, sighing in relief as he popped the button of his fly and dragged the zipper down.

“These fucking jeans,” he grumbled, wriggling his hips back and forth as he peeled the denim off his legs. When he finally got them off, they took his socks with them. He kicked the heap of clothing into the corner, landing somewhere near your dress and that flimsy piece of foam masquerading as a woman’s foundational garment.

Now it was your turn to stare. From the plane of his chest, to his soft belly, to his straining hard-on in his gray boxer-briefs—he was beautiful, and you didn’t know what you wanted to touch first. The outline of his cock was the most tempting, though, and you slowly ran a hand up his thigh, stopping just short of where he was hard and aching.

“Please,” he said in a hushed tone, hitching his hips up just a little. You brushed your hand over his bulge, feather-light at first. Then you pressed a little more firmly, slowly dragging your palm against him. He groaned, hands gripping the bedcovers tightly.

Feeling bold, you got off the bed, kneeling in front of him. You tugged at the waistband of his boxers and he lifted his hips, letting you pull them down and off.

You delighted in the sight of his thick cock jutting up against his belly, the tip pink and glistening. God, you wanted him. You leaned forward and licked a hot stripe from root to tip, and the noise he made was so exquisite you could cry. Taking a light hold with your hand, you guided him into your mouth.

“Ah, fuck!” His hips jerked up off the bed, but you quickly held them down. You took him in as far as you could, and he moaned again—louder, more desperate. You found a rhythm, bobbing your head and hollowing your cheeks, your hand wrapped around what your mouth couldn’t reach. Pike offered a tentative hand to stroke your hair with reverence, his hips trembling with the effort not to move too roughly.

After a particularly sly maneuver with your tongue, Pike tensed and stilled your head with a gentle touch.

“If you don’t stop now,” he said between ragged breaths of air, “this’ll be over before it even starts.”

You pulled off of him slowly, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand. “Sorry,” you said, your voice light and teasing.

“Don’t be,” he replied. “Fuck, that was good.”

You couldn’t help but feel a burst of pride at the praise from him.

Pike patted the bed next to him. “Get up here so I can return the favor.”

You crawled up the bed, heart hammering and head dizzy with excitement. He motioned for you to lie back and you did so, taking a deep breath to try and still your racing pulse.

Pike propped himself up on his elbows and slowly kissed a path down your thigh. Your cunt throbbed in anticipation and you bucked your hips up, desperately seeking sensation. He smiled at your eagerness and held your hip down with one hand. With the other, he pushed the sodden gusset of your panties to the side and slowly slid a thick finger inside of you.

You let out a needy sound, clenching around him as he added a second finger. You were so wet that the movement of his fingers made loud, slick noises that were absolutely obscene.

Pike kissed your thigh again. “Gorgeous,” he murmured against your skin. He then pulled his fingers out of you and you whined at the loss.

“Need to get these off,” Pike explained, hooking his fingers into the elastic of your underwear and pulling them down and off.

Pike’s face was between your thighs, now, and you sobbed at the first touch of his tongue to your clit. He slid his fingers back inside your cunt and the jolt of pleasure was like a lightning strike.

“Please,” you begged, not sure what you were asking, but needing it all the same, “please.”

You moaned loudly as he lapped at you ever-so-slowly with the flat of his tongue in time to the rhythm of his fingers. His unoccupied hand moved from your hip to your hand, lacing your fingers together. You squeezed his hand tightly as you found yourself already dancing dangerously close to the edge.

You started to grind your cunt against his tongue, needing the pressure just so, and he eagerly let you use his mouth for your pleasure. He alternated between licking and sucking on your clit, and you were so fucking close that you could hardly stand it.

Pike pulled his mouth off you for a moment. You whined and tilted your hips up, trying to chase his tongue.

“Close?” He asked, keeping the rhythm of his fingers firm and steady inside of you.

You didn’t trust your mouth to form words, so you nodded vigorously. He got back to work, faster this time, relentless, and the heat in your belly coiled tighter and tighter until you were coming so hard you saw stars. Your thighs clamped like a vise around his head but he didn’t seem to care in the slightest, working you through your orgasm with his tongue and fingers.

You clenched around him through every aftershock. He pressed a final little kiss on your thigh before pulling his fingers out and wiping them on the sheets.

Gazing into his warm brown eyes, breathing with him in tandem, it took you a minute to realize something.

“Oh, fuck,” you said. “Condom.”

You wondered if you still had any in your bathroom cabinet from when you were still with your ex, but it had been a long time since you’d broken up. Shit.

Pike snapped to attention. “Yeah, um,” he started, hopping off the bed to retrieve his jacket, “think I have one in my wallet.”

He rummaged around in his jacket pocket, retrieving his wallet and rifling through it.

“Gotcha,” he proclaimed. He turned the foil packet around in his hands, looking for the expiration date. “And it’s still good.”

“Hallelujah,” you remarked, throwing your head back in relief. “Get over here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Pike said, making his way back to you. He knelt on the bed as he ripped open the wrapper and rolled on the condom.

Settling between your legs, he took himself in hand and rubbed at your swollen cunt before easing himself inside. You gasped at the feeling of him fully seated inside you, the delicious stretch of it achingly perfect. After a moment, he ground his hips into yours, moving out barely an inch before rocking back in. You scratched at the expanse of his back and shoulders, hitching up your hips, urging him to move.

“You’re beautiful like this,” he whispered, fucking you slow and deep. You made keening little noises with every thrust, unable to help it. You felt so full.

Pike began to move faster, now, his kisses swallowing up your sobbing cries. The sweet ache in your belly was building up again, and the moment you thought you would tumble over the edge, he slowed his pace. You groaned in frustration, gyrating your hips, needing him to fuck you, damnit, but it felt too fucking good to complain.

When Pike slipped out of you, though, you definitely wanted to complain. However, all that came out was a petulant huff. He just chuckled and urged you to lie on your side. Slotting behind you, he guided himself back inside of you before wrapping his arms around you, holding you close to his chest. The new angle was heaven and you writhed in his arms, feeling him absolutely everywhere.

He snaked a hand down to rub your clit while he fucked you, faster now. You cried out and grasped at his arms for something to ground you, something to keep you connected to reality, because this felt so fucking good it very well could have been a dream.

“I’m—P-Pike—Marcus, I’m gonna—” You found yourself babbling, barely coherent.

“I’ve got you,” he said, the low rumble of his voice warm in your ear as he worked at your swollen little clit. That was it; you were shaking apart, trembling as he fucked you through your orgasm. The muscles of your cunt fluttered around him, every nerve in your body on fire.

Pike’s movements were becoming more erratic. Every thrust was harder than the last, and he moved his hand to grasp at your hip as he rutted into you frantically. You squeezed down on his cock, wanting to push him over the edge.

“Fuck, fuck!” He lasted a few more desperate thrusts before he was coming, too, biting into the skin of your shoulder and holding you tightly to him.

You both stayed there for a while, breathing heavily, all fucked-out and blissful. You nestled closer into him and he hummed into your shoulder.

“Be right back,” Pike mumbled, holding himself at the base and easing his cock out of you. You sighed at the feeling of emptiness—part of you wished he could just stay there all night.

As you stretched out on your bed, he shuffled off into your bathroom. You heard the tap run for a moment before he returned, condom off—presumably in the trash—and a damp washcloth in hand.

The press of the cool washcloth felt good on your hot and throbbing cunt; he then wiped down your thighs, where an embarrassing amount of your slick had dribbled down.

“Thank you,” you murmured as you looked up at him. He kissed your cheek.

It was bugging you, and you couldn’t help but ask. “You tied the condom off and threw it out, right?”

Pike raised an eyebrow. “Yes?” He said. “What, did Quantico not tie them off first?”

“Worse,” you grumbled, “he flushed them.”

Pike snorted. “That’s a new one on me.”

“Had to call a goddamn plumber,” you continued.

“Please tell me at least the sex was good.”

“It was awful,” you groaned. “You should have kissed me sooner.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll make up for it.”

“You better, Agent Pike,” you teased before giving him a peck on the lips.

He was having none of that; he pulled you in for a proper kiss. “I will,” he said, “I promise.”

–

a/n: well, it turns out I’m eternally a sucker for the undercover-as-a-couple trope.

original prompt from @lannister-slings-and-arrows! Thank you my dear :)

And in case you’re curious: Marcus Pike gets called Agent Pike way more often than he gets called Marcus in the show, so that’s what I went with here. And FYI, Quantico is the county in Virginia where the FBI training academy is. Just a fun little detail.

content: surprise kiss (“fakeout makeout”), oral sex (m and f), missionary, cuddle-fucking (spoon-fucking? side-fucking? whatever you’d like to call it lol)

#marcus pike #marcus pike x reader #pedro pascal #pedro pascal fanfiction #agent marcus pike

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detectivedreameater · 3 years

Text

Off The Record || Metzli and Marley

TIMING: Current PARTIES: @deathisanartmetzli and @detectivedreameater SUMMARY: After a very expensive painting is stolen from Metzli’s gallery, they run head first into the perfect person to help them. Marley’s ready to get back into the game. CONTENT: Blood, Death, A fuckton of sarcasm

The key slid into the lock with a satisfying click, and Metzli made their way to their office to shut off the security system. Everything was in order, everything was in its place. As the air conditioning blew on their face, they grabbed their clipboard, and began their daily ritual. Everything had to be perfect before the curator could open the gallery in 15 minutes.

Making their rounds around the gallery, something was definitely amiss. Section one, check. Section 2, check. Section 3, che—wait a minute. The print out with their fresh check marks must be in error. No, there’s no way Metzli would have made a mistake like that. Upon further inspection, they discovered the Murakami painting they acquired two weeks ago, was gone. “No! No, no, no!” They exclaimed and began to pace angrily.

From the outside, people could see Metzli yelling expletives, but they didn’t care. All that mattered right now was finding the culprit and tearing them apart. How did they get through their security anyway? No, focus. Track. Charging furiously outside, there was plenty of cloud cover thanks to the snow to spare them any pain. Blinded by their mission, they ran into something, no, someone.

Today was routine. No, really, it had been, up until someone had run headlong into Marley, sending her stumbling back a few inches in the crusty snow that had hardened on the sidewalk. She hadn’t really been paying attention to where she was walking, so maybe this was her fault, but she’d had other things on her mind. Namely, Erin. And also that place that her mind kept going back to, with the man and the water and the tree.

She’d been so out of it, she hadn’t even realized she wasn’t wearing her sunglasses. The cloud cover made it enough so that she didn’t feel sluggish or heavy in the afternoon light, but looking up, she found herself blinded for a moment by the glare of sunbeams off of snow drifts. She squinted through it, towards the person they’d plowed into (pun intended) and ruffled her brows. “Slow down there, speedracer,” she grumbled, rubbing her shoulder where they’d collided. “Got somewhere to be?”

Sputtering nonsense for a few moments, it took Metzli everything they had to calm down. Their curly black mane was disheveled from the impact and it took a hand brushing through to set it back in its perfect place. “Yes, I have somewhere to be! One of my most expensive paintings was stolen!” Any attempt to keep cool was out the window and continued to pull their hair in frustration.

Many more expletives were shouted as they gathered themselves together and they took a deep, unnecessary breath. Metzli already had their plate full and now they had to pretend to be polite. Great. “Apologies. The painting is one of a kind by Murakami. So…I’m quite frazzled at the moment.” This time their tone was much more put together and sounded like they were actually sane.

Marley watched with a bored expression, groaning only a little bit internally when it was announced that something had been stolen. And she, as a cop, had a “duty” or whatever. She rustled through her pockets for a moment and picked out her sunglasses, sliding them onto her face as the person in front of her fussed, rather anxiously, with their hair. “Careful,” she said, speaking in her normal deadpan, “you don’t wanna ruin that perfect head of yours.” She couldn’t help but chuckle at the back track, stuffing her hands in her pockets once again. “You don’t have to apologize to me. In fact, I’m probably the best person you could’ve run smack dab into.” She held out her hand, and in it was a business card. “Marley Stryder, Detective.”

She hadn’t wanted to work on an off day, but, hey, duty call or whatever. And a missing painting was much more exciting than the five or so cases that had crossed her desk today about public defacing and noise complaints. Sometimes, on low weeks, White Crest was more boring than Albany. “So, you wanna slow down and tell me what happened? I think I might be able to help.”

With widened eyes, Metzli took the business card, analyzing its legitimacy. Lo and behold, it truly was legit. “Marley Stryder, I’m Metzli Bernal,” Their tone now was a stark contrast to their earlier more frantic one. It was a total one-eighty. The dull and cold tone Marley had did wonders on their little episode.

“I opened maybe fifteen minutes and during my routine checklist, I noticed the Murakami was missing. No security trips, no tapes, and now a 1.8 million dollar painting is just gone!” Metzli was getting worked up again. “I’ll rip apart whoever did this!” Running a hand through their hair once more, they forced air out. “I’m cool, I’m cool. Sorry. This doesn’t happen to me. It’s never happened to me.” There was a certain layer of defeat that coated the last sentence. They felt bested, and that wasn’t a feeling they were familiar with or liked.

Tilting her head as the other person examined her card, Marley waited. She could be patient when needed. It wasn’t like she had anything to do today, really, besides muse on her own misgivings and what she was supposed to do about it all now. “Nice to meet ya, Metzli Bernal.” She tapped the card. “You can keep that.” A glance around the street showed Marley that it was that time of the afternoon where people slid into lazy comas, waiting for time to breech into evening. Aside from dusk, when eyes went from dull to red, it was her favorite time of the day.

“Alright, why don’t you show me the gallery and where the missing painting was hung up,” she offered, pointing down the street from the direction they had come from. “Maybe I can see something you didn’t. And, hey, if we happen to find them, say, before the rest of the squad arrives, I’ll give you a go at ‘em.” Especially because this sounded like something supernatural, and Marley wasn’t interested in coming up with a lie today. “Today’s your lucky day-- I’m the best on the force at finding missing things.”

A smile slowly formed on Metzli’s face. Marley had already proven to be not only a strong ally, but a fun one at that, in a short amount of time. “You’re not a typical detective, are you?” They asked, already knowing the answer. Without saying anything more, the vampire moved back into the gallery, holding the door for Marley.

“The painting was taken from the area over there,” Metzli pointed as they walked. “If you’re the best, I will be forever grateful. Will this reach the news? I don’t think Murakami would be pleased to find out that his painting was stolen, even if it was recovered.” If it were up to them, no one but the two of them would know about this. They would eliminate the culprit and take the painting back. No loose ends, no breaking news.

“Depends on what you consider typical,” Marley answered evenly, following the other person back towards the gallery. It looked fairly new, Marley certainly didn’t remember it ever existing on her nightly rounds of the city. She didn’t mind new places, though, and she certainly didn’t mind new cases, as long as they were interesting. It was a little sad that her most interesting case right now was an art theft. She’d take what she could get. She followed Metzli’s instructions and headed over to the spot where the painting had previously been hanging up. The only clue that anything was missing was the empty gap in the wall space between two other pieces. Marley traced her hand along the way, but it felt as smooth and cool as she expected it to. Nothing had touched it. “Any flickering lights or weird, unexplained events before this?” she asked, bending down to look at the space beneath the painting. No trace of anything on the ground, either.

“Besides some annoying ass ravens that kept following me everywhere? No. Those pendejos were taken care of a while ago. Yesterday was no different from the others either.” Metzli answered confidently. Being able to sense danger and take care of it was in their nature. This had to be a filthy, good for nothing human.

Metzli scowled at the spot where the painting once hung, grinding their teeth together in anger. “If you’re thinking it was an abnormal thing, I doubt it. It smells…too human,” They admitted, thinking out loud so that the two could collaborate together. “Don’t know why an abnormal entity would want such a human thing. The only thing it’s worth is money in most people’s eyes. Then again, they need money too.”

“Ravens?” Marley asked, standing back up and glancing around once more. “Just normal ones or--” she lifted her hands for air quotes-- “ravens.” There were quite a few supernatural species’ that it could be, if it were ravens, but Marley wasn't’ versed in the more critter-like beings. But corvids were her favorite type of bird, so she knew enough about them and the ones that shared the same world as her. A brow rose. “Smells human?” There were a few species that could smell well, vampire and werewolf among them. Marley wasn’t exactly excited to have to deal with a moody maneater, though, if that was the case.

“Not sure a human could’ve walked in here in broad daylight and not leave behind a trace,” she pointed out. “Could’ve been motivated personally. Maybe they really like the piece, or maybe they just really don’t like you. Made any enemies in town yet?”

Metzli quirked their head in curiosity. Marley definitely smelled off, but they couldn’t quite place what species she was yet. “Valravyns. Wouldn’t get off my ass for weeks.” They answered truthfully. “Took a bit of research but I finally figured out what they were and got rid of ‘em.” Shoulders rose and fell in a shrug, dismissing the event as if it were a typical thing.

“Haven’t made very many enemies yet. Give me a few more months though. I’ve kept to myself for the most part. You’d be surprised how well prepared these humans can be in this place. Especially since they’re surrounded.” Metzli didn’t particularly care for humans, but they especially didn’t care for human art criminals. And with such a prestigious piece of work on the line, they were ready to kill.

“I’m assuming they did this in the middle of the night. But what do I know? You’re the detective.”

“Valravyns? You had valravyns on you?” Marley asked, a bit surprised. She hadn’t encountered too many of them in White Crest, but it wasn’t that rare, really. It wasn’t them, though, then. Valravyns had no need for a painting. She didn’t have her duster with her, but that might not be necessary. She held out her hand. “Get me some tape,” she demanded, “clear, if you have it.” There were other ways to dust for fingerprints, and find the proof she was looking for. If nothing showed up, it was likely supernatural.

“Where are all the doors? That’s the front entrance, is there a backdoor? If they picked the lock, which they must’ve if no alarms went off, I’ll be able to tell.” And if it was a human, it’d be easy enough to tell.

“Yes, the cretins ruined a bit of my business, but they’re no longer an issue. Must’ve eaten a body I ate first.” They thought aloud, and mentally shrugged. “Okay, your majesty, I’ll get that for you.” Metzli mocked a little, showing the side that disliked authority and being commanded.

Due to the activities necessary to run an art gallery and be a curator, they were prepared and retrieved clear, artist grade tape for Marley.

Watching as she worked, they answered, “Front entrance, back entrance, and a large delivery door. But that one only has a lock on the inside.” Metzli appreciated the transparency of Marley’s investigation. Her thinking out loud helped them put everything together alongside her. Piecing everything together fueled their anger and they growled. “Will you actually let me get a piece of them before contacting your friends? Or can I actually take the trash out? That’s what I’m used to doing.”

It was becoming increasingly clear what kind of person Metzli was. Marley used to be that way, she supposed. Cold, closed off, angry with and at humans. Maybe she still was like that, some days. If a human knew what she was, what she did, they would hate her, call her a monster. And maybe she was, and maybe she’d been leaning into that for a while now, but it still hurt, sometimes. Here they were, the two of them, so human looking, but probably so far from it. She peeled the tape away and stuck it to the wall near where the edge of the painting would have been, then did it with a few more pieces, lining them up on the edge of a stand before examining each one in turn. “There’s definitely prints here,” she said, “human. Let’s check the front and back doors, see if anything matches.”

She paused at Metzli’s last questions. Marley hadn’t killed anyone in a while, and this was a case that the police could actually get their grubby hands on and punish the culprit. But what good had they been to her lately? Through broken ribs and interdimensional portals and a crushed skull, they had told her she couldn’t be the detective she used to be. Marley stood up and brushed the front of her jacket off. “Friends? Oh, I don’t have any friends at the precinct. Obviously, you happened to find the culprit before I did. Maybe I wasn’t even here,” she shrugged, “maybe justice took it upon itself to deal with this.”

Marley was quickly becoming a character that Metzli liked. A cop that was not only supernatural, but absolutely willing to throw away the rule book. Good. Rules were meant to be broken anyway. Or so the vampire believed. They caught on easily to what Marley was implying and appreciated her offer. “Justice is funny that way. Coming and going at the most opportune times. I do like your style, Marley.” They smiled wickedly and began walking back towards the back entrance. “I doubt they used the front to break in. Too much foot and car traffic to be discreet. Let’s check back here.”

Expensive shoes clacked on the white tile floor, and hands were clasped behind their back. Anger still brewed within, but with a plan and distinct goal, Metzli’s anger was much more structured. Vampiric hands would rip apart the criminals and they’d retrieve the artwork, and maybe they’d have a friend to join in on the fun. “When we catch this imbecile, or even imbeciles, will you be partaking in the justice?” They asked rather excitedly. Killing alongside someone was something they actually missed about being in a clan. The teamwork could and would always get fun.

Marley followed Metzli towards the back door, holding onto the tape as she did, stopping at the door and wrapping a few pieces around it to try and lift some more prints. As she worked, she was relatively quiet, listening to what her companion was saying. She was still uncertain of Metzli’s species, but she supposed it was something that preyed on humans. They all sort of did, didn’t they? That’s what made them monsters. She pulled the tape away and found more prints. “Looks like your human theory is panning out.” She held the tape up before depositing it on the stand next to her. She pulled the door open and checked around the outside, examining the ground, the wall, the space in the alley.

A smile spread across her own lips as she stood up. It was never the hunt that excited her, but the chase. In that way, she supposed, perhaps they’d make a good team. The hunter and the killer. She glanced back at Metzli. “Depends, I suppose,” she shrugged, “I can probably get what I need from them without bloodshed. I’ll save that part for you.” She supposed just finding them might even provide her enough fear to feed from. She pointed down the alley. “Footprints, leading this way. You good?”

Having their theory proven correct seemed like it was a given to them. Of course it was correct. They’d lived long enough to know, to smell when an event was done by a human. “Figured as much. Though it’s nice to have it confirmed by a professional such as you.” Metzli said politely, and with no indication of the thoughts they carried internally. Pleasantries needed to continue if Marley was going to help them. That and she seemed like genuine fun. Fun people deserve pleasantries. At least the people they deemed fun.

“Blood will be all mine if that’s the case. Preferred too. It tastes best when the feeding is full of vengeance. I’ll leave the chase to you and reap the reward. But by the sounds of it, we’ll both benefit from this.” They peered down the direction Marley pointed and nodded. “I’m good. Getting excited, actually. The fun part starts now it seems.”

Metzli could smell them now. They could smell the trail growing stronger, the scent matching exactly what was in the gallery. “You’re right. Let’s head down this way. Can’t stay too long in the sun though. I try not to do it for more than twenty minutes.” It wasn’t likely that they’d stay out very long, but they wanted to be on the safe side. Watching enough crime shows, Metzli figured they’d find some sort of tire tracks from the getaway vehicle.

“Oh, you’re so very welcome,” Marley deadpanned, “I live to validate others.” She adjusted her sunglasses before they headed out into the sunlight, feeling it drag on her once again, longing for the shadows that clung too close to the walls. The mention of sunlight and blood clicked it together in Marley’s brain-- Metzli was a vampire. That checked out. They had the brooding, grumpy facade down. She wondered what might lie beneath that, or if they still had that shiny, fun thing called a soul. She’d met enough vampires-- soulless and not-- in her life to not care much either way for them. They were the lucky ones, after all-- they’d been human once before. They understood what they lost. Marley had never been human, only forced to pretend to be. She would never know what that felt like.

“Don’t worry,” she tapped the side of her head, “nothing escapes my eyes.” Even in the shadows, her vision was perfect. The steps led not to a car, but an old abandoned building. A warehouse. Marley peered through one of the broken windows and found a truck inside. It was loaded with more than just the painting. “Smugglers,” she announced quietly, pointing inside. “Looks like you’ll get your meal and dessert, if you want it.”

Metzli couldn’t help but laugh at Marley’s sarcasm. She was a total delight, and they enjoyed her personality greatly. “God, you’re a lot of fun. After this, I think I’ll buy you some drinks if you’re up for it.” They offered, fully meaning every word. People like Marley weren’t easy to find, and if they could befriend her, they felt like they could make their life that much more exciting. “If more people were like you, this place would be better and I’d probably have more friends.”

It was true, they firmly that. The compliment was rare in that it was genuine and honest. “Son of a bitch.” Metzli peered inside, needing to look away before they lost whatever composure they had collected. “What do you get out of these humans anyway, if not the blood or meat?” They asked, wanting to focus on something else now. The urge to explode was too great to think about what was inside the warehouse.

Avoiding the subject was no use, though. And they began to fume internally. Smugglers. Fucking smugglers bested them! Not for long though. Metzli was sure they’d get the last laugh. They were going to savor every drop.

At that, Marley had to smirk. A rare display of emotion crossing her face. It wasn’t that she tried to seem so blase and deadpanned, but she couldn’t really help it at this point, it was just how she was. Except around certain people. She used to savor the thought of killing, especially those who thought they could get away with abusing their power. Smugglers weren’t exactly in her repertoire, but there was a sheen about this one that made Marley almost able to feel the smuggness. If they weren’t careful, they’d expose a side of this town no one wanted to know about. Therefore, they needed to be stopped.

“Wanna watch and find out?” she grinned, maliciously, before removing her sunglasses and pulling the door open. The shadows were her home and she nearly faded into them, wishing it were darker, even. Nighttime was her home, but these would do for now.

The clack of her boots alerted one man. She didn’t have the ability to sense or smell which one was the painting smuggler, but she didn’t really care. All he had to do was look into her eyes as she smiled and waved and he crumpled to the ground. It was nice to be back, she supposed. She hadn’t been able to drop someone like this in months. His fear tasted like salty candy and she liked her lips. The man in the car hopped out, fumbling for his weapon. “Oh, good,” she said, standing up straight, hovering over the screaming man, “seconds.”

Watching Marley work was like watching a beautiful live art piece. A personal show just for Metzli to marvel in. The men dropped like flies, a striking show of her power that made their mouth hang slightly open. As thoughts raced in their mind, they tried to figure out just what Marley was until they put it together. A Mara. A sweet, dangerous, and efficient Mara. It took a few moments, but they gathered themselves enough to remove their suit jacket and dress shirt so they they wouldn’t get blood on them. Pants and binders were easy enough to replace. Suit jackets were the expensive part.

Leaping forward, Metzli’s face contorted to bare their now showing fangs. A predatory show of power and the fate that was to befall the criminals. Screams bellowed from their first victim. Blood gushed as they tore through arteries and consumed, quickly leaping onto the next victim. “You really know how to put on a show.” They said with bloodied lips. Making a mess didn’t matter, not right now. Not when scum was being taken care of and no one would miss them.

“Who knew a mara and a vampire could work so well together?” Another bite into a man, who’s groans were fading into nothingness.

Marley stepped back, sliding her glasses back on, as she allowed Metzli to partake in her prize. Honestly, she wished it had been harder, but humans were often careless, and with a bloodhound vampire on her side, finding them had been easy. She stuffed her hands in her pockets as she watched the bloodshed and wondered if she should feel bad. What would Erin think of her? They were criminals, though, and they needed to be stopped. It stood to reason that they were probably even part of a larger ring, but she could worry about that later. Maybe it would even lead her to a supernatural body sitting at the top, extorting humans and human objects to make money in a town that already took so much from others. She frowned.

“I’m nothing if not dramatic,” she said, raising a brow. Where she was quiet and restrained, barely lifting a finger to drop her prey, Metzli was messy and efficient, reveling in their kill. Marley admired it, a little. A mara could not sip blood from a body, but stealing breath was just as tantalizing. “Must be our collective appreciation of the night,” she went on, coming over to the dead body Metzli was still drinking from. She prodded him with her foot. “Guess they got their comeuppance, huh? Feel better? Bet your paintings right here in the back.”

Both hunger and the thirst for vengeance had been sated. Getting rid of the bodies would come later, as Metzli knew the warehouse was clearly abandoned. Cleanup could easily be done under the cover of the night. “Presentation and drama has always mattered to me, so I appreciate your showmanship. Much cleaner than mine, but I like to represent brutal strength. It’s messy, but fun.” Blood covered lips smiled, finally done feeding. Their lips were then promptly wiped by the back of Metzli’s arm. “I feel almost euphoric, thank you.”

Taking a moment, they took in a big gulf of air and practically ripped open the big crate they smelled the painting in. Metzli eyed the box, noticing they were just about ready to ship everything. “We got here right on time. Looks like they were packing everything to ship. Probably a much bigger organization. Art theft is common thanks to the money in it.” The painting was surrounded by packing materials to prevent any wear and tear, but it was all the wrong materials. “Fucking idiots,” Metzli spat angrily, splintering the wood underneath their hands. “What now, anyway?” They decided to distract themselves with whatever Marley had to say for now.

“Hence why you’re an artists, huh?” Marley chuckled. Sometimes people were pretty transparent, and she didn’t mind that. While mystery intrigued Marley, sometimes she didn’t mind having the answers presented to her. Sometimes it was a relief not to have to psycho-analyze everyone and everything, even if her brain never shut off about it. She took in a deep breath, almost sighing when the fear in the air dissipated, signaling the death of both men. She was almost disappointed but it was a satisfying snack and she could grab a real meal later, under the cover of dark. “Brutal strength is something to display. I prefer the more...subtle method.”

She strolled over behind Metzli as they tore into the truck, and the crate that held their prized possession. The Murakami painting. Admittedly, Marley had no idea who that was. Art wasn’t much of an interest of hers, but she could appreciate it all the same. “Not damaged, is it?” she asked, tilting her head. “Don’t think I have enough to compensate for that if it is.” She rolled the idea around in her head. “Well...I doubt anyone’s coming back here. When the shipment doesn’t show up, whoever was expecting it is likely to come looking. So we can do one of two things--” she lifted her hand, two fingers raised. “Clean up this mess and leave them wonder what happened. Oooorr--” she drew out the word, a wicked smile curling up her lips-- “we come back and wait for them to find the mess. Take a real meal.” And maybe she was a little excited to have someone gawk at her abilities again. It wasn’t every day you got to watch someone suffocate on air.

Marley was intriguing Metzli in all the right ways. She had not only gotten them a large meal, but helped them locate the painting. For once, they wanted to make sure someone was repaid appropriately. “Subtle is a valid route. And no, no damage done. There would have been though. The idiots don’t know how to properly package shit.” Hands waved to the packing nuts they used, the only thing they used. It was an insult to any artist of notoriety.

Fingers tapped as thoughts swirled in Metzli’s head. Both options were great, amazing even. “God, you’re so full of good ideas. I like the meal option. We can even prepare to cater to us, and maybe get you that fear you actually want.” Working with someone was out of character, but Marley made it hard to pass up the opportunity. She was just too fun and so powerful. Things that Metzli could actually admire in a person, and they had no problem admitting that to her. “What do you say we do that, and with my gallery so close, I’ll keep an eye on the place. Keep you updated. We do make one hell of a team. Deal?” Their hand extended, ready to shake Marley’s. It was a really good idea, one that both of them can get behind happily.

“Good,” Marley nodded, even if she hadn’t actually planned to compensate for anything. It wasn’t her job to do that, but it had felt nice to actually have done some part of her job. She missed it, fuck, she missed it. But until her seizures were under control, the Captain still wasn’t letting her into the field. Yet she’d done this perfectly fine, even caught the culprits and was planning on coming back to finish the job. She ruffled her brows. “Better get that back to your gallery, before someone else shows up. Maybe get some better security, too.”

She waited patiently for Metzli’s answer, pleased at the idea that they thought so highly of her. “Deal,” she answered, without hesitation, reaching out to take their hand. It was cold, and even if she’d expected it, it was still strange to feel. People were usually warm, even she was warm. But she gave them a firm handshake before nodding at them. “You keep an eye out and just gimme a call when you see something, yeah? I can be there in a jiffy. I always feel much better at night. Don’t you?”

Metzli let out a laugh, enjoying Marley’s input to the conversation. She seemed like she had just as much fun as they did, and were excited to do it again. “Yes, I do. Thank you again, Marley. I’ll be seeing you soon for a night of fun.” Picking up their clothes after wiping their hands on the gentleman’s clothes, Metzli made their way back to the gallery, but before doing so, they stopped at the warehouse entrance. “You really are a creature to marvel at. I’m looking forward to watching your little show again.” With that, they disappeared into the alleyway.

#chatzy #wickedswriting #chatzy: metzli #off the record #metzli

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dindjarindiaries · 4 years

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Bittersweet - Chapter 3: Flirting With the Enemy

summary: As Marcus pursues Lisbon, you try to think of a way to prevent his heartbreak, and even consider teaming up with an unlikely ally.

warnings: angst, guns, food, i don’t remember all the details of this episode and i didn’t want to rewatch it so i tried my best okay

rating: T

word count: 3.896k

previous part ⟸ masterlist ⟹ next part

chapter 3: flirting with the enemy

Your morning routine is filled with nothing but strings of curses and wild rushing, feeling relieved that you at least don’t have to dress up as per usual—or at least, that’s the text you woke up to from Marcus. Probably because it’s a day you’re not supposed to be working. But, according to the homicide team, you’ll finally be getting your thieves, and somehow proving the murder in the process. That’s still the last thing on your mind as you realize that, thanks to your late-night grieving session with Andy, you woke up much later than you wanted to.

You don’t even get to eat breakfast—again—as you arrive to work, praying that the elevator moves faster somehow as you ascend up to your floor. You practically toss your stuff onto your chair when you get to your desk, leaning your hands on top of it and taking a deep breath before you turn around to find your partner.

Yet, he’s already found you, extending both a cup of coffee and a granola bar out to you as he raises an eyebrow. “Tough morning, Sunny?” Marcus asks, chuckling a bit when you eagerly accept both things from him.

“Yeah,” you agree with a huff, breaking into the granola bar with relief, “I guess you could say that.”

Marcus shakes his head and he’s about to say something, but your focus has gone haywire because your tired brain can only think about how the hell he looks so handsome today when he’s only wearing a casual t-shirt, jacket, and jeans instead of his usual suit. You practically rip off a piece of the granola bar in frustration—whether it’s towards him or yourself, you don’t know. Marcus continues with whatever he was about to say as he furrows his brow. “That’s two days in a row, partner. Is everything okay?”

Your exhausted and exasperated mind is so close to telling him the truth, to confessing that you’ve been in love with him for longer than you can keep track of and the idea of him pursuing a woman that’s in love with another man makes you want to go absolutely batshit crazy, but you swallow the words back with the bite of your granola bar as you manage a smile. “I’m fine, Pike. Thanks for the concern, though. Let’s just say it’s… personal.”

Marcus purses his lips and nods knowingly. “Ah. It’s Andy-related? You’re sworn to secrecy?”

You shrug. He’s given you the perfect lie to run with. “You know how it is.”

Marcus smiles and lightly punches your shoulder. “What a good friend, always giving advice at the expense of your own sanity and sleep—myself included.”

You try not to let your smile falter, but damn. Being put in that friendzone is just the cherry on top of this crazy morning. “Yep. You know me.” You force an awkward chuckle with the words. You hope Marcus can accost your strange behavior to your lack of sleep.

He takes a deep breath, gesturing with his head out towards the place where Wiley works at the computer. “Well, Sunny, I hope the coffee helps, because we’ve got quite the stunt to pull today.”

You raise an eyebrow as you finish off the granola bar and toss the wrapper inside your garbage can, reaching for your coffee and starting to follow Marcus to Wiley’s desk. “What do you mean? I thought we were just catching them.”

“Oh, we are.” Marcus lowers his voice as he goes on, making sure only you can hear him. “But, I guess Jane’s got some elaborate plan to lead us to his lair and prove he killed that man. I don’t know.”

You roll your eyes and take a sip of your coffee. “Of course.” You keep your voice hushed just like Marcus did as you continue. “They obviously don’t know how we keep things short and to the point in the art theft department.”

Marcus chuckles. “Whatever works for them, I guess.”

“Well, whatever you pick up from this—,” you gesture with your arms to the homicide team’s space you’re now entering, “—please don’t bring it to our cases. It’s way too complicated.”

“Alright, Sunny. I won’t.”

You give Marcus a grateful smile that he returns, making you pray that you don’t get weak in the knees as you arrive behind Wiley’s desk. He fills you in on the progress so far this morning, trying to explain at least part of Jane’s wild plan and how you both fit into it. He’s got footage of the two of them pulled up on his computer and you have to restrain yourself from bristling at the way Marcus looks at Lisbon. This is still your job, and a dangerous one at that, and you can’t afford to be distracted all the time by your love life—or, lack thereof.

As if the morning wasn’t already crazy enough, you soon find yourselves en route to the house Jane and Lisbon have been in, your handgun in tow as Marcus drives the both of you there.

“So, why are they sending two art theft officers after a murderer?” you ask Marcus, causing him to snicker with a shrug as he makes a turn.

“I stopped asking questions,” he confesses, looking over at you with amusement. “But as far as I know, we’re just supposed to detain the thief from last night.”

You scrunch up your nose. “The one who hit on Fischer?” Marcus nods, and you make a noise of disgust. “Perfect.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t let him do anything to you, Sunny,” Marcus assures you sweetly—just as he always does. He’s so kind to a fault and it never fails to make you smile, though you know the danger of that. You know how people like to take advantage of it. You know that you’re watching it happen before your very eyes with Lisbon, even if she’s not conscious of how she’s doing it. “The rest of the team’s going after the leader.”

“They can have whatever action they want. I just want our art and our thieves.”

Marcus hums in agreement, but you watch his eyes widen as he pulls up to the house. “Shit, they’re already here,” Marcus mutters, gesturing to the white van that’s parked just beside the house.

Adrenaline rushes through you as you tighten your hold on your gun. You and Marcus share a look as you reach for your door handle. “I don’t like this, Pike.”

Marcus grimaces as he looks at the house. “I’m sure it’s fine.” He’s worried more than usual—and you know why. He knows who’s in that house and so do you. You wonder if he’d be just as worried if you were the one who was in there.

The car full of the rest of the homicide team pulls up next to you, and both you and Marcus step out of the car once they do. You look to each other before following them inside, both your hands bracing themselves on your gun as you enter. One of the thieves is already there holding Lisbon at gunpoint, but she quickly gets the upper hand on him by reaching for her own gun, and he turns around to realize he’s been compromised.

“Where’s the other guy?” you whisper to Marcus, still holding tight to your gun with both hands. “The one we talked about earlier.”

He gestures with his head towards the tall, spiraling staircase. “My guess is upstairs. We’ll probably be the ones to greet and trap him down here.”

You nod, getting a better grip on your weapon as you wait behind one of the pristine white walls with the others to keep yourself hidden from view. Marcus’ focus in the moment seems to be entirely on the task at hand, which means yours is, too. Your heart races in your chest as you wait for the sound of footsteps on the stairs, your arm nearly brushing against Marcus’ as you lean against the wall.

When the sound comes, you’re quick to jump out with Marcus, aiming your weapons and managing to keep your adrenaline-fueled trembling to a minimum. You and Marcus share yet another look as the thief seems to give in, offering up the bag he’s carrying and letting himself be cuffed. You tuck your gun into your pants as the threats seem to dwindle, looking to Marcus to see him also looking at you.

“Now what?” you ask him, raising an eyebrow.

“I think they’ve got it from here,” Marcus tells you. “We just have to rendezvous back at headquarters and interrogate these guys.” He gestures to the two men who are already cuffed.

“Are we supposed to transport them?”

Marcus twists his lips. “I hope not. I don’t want them in the back of my car.”

You chuckle and shake your head at the craziness of it all. The art theft department’s never been one to be sporadic on the scene of a sting, so running around with the homicide department who’s more complicated in their work makes things much different than you’re used to.

Eventually, everyone ends up back at headquarters, and after a round of interrogations and a feast of pizza, everyone begins to settle in the break room. You’re beside Marcus and you can’t help noticing—as usual—that he keeps looking over in Lisbon’s direction, who’s sitting at a table by herself. You’re trying to absorb yourself in this piece of pizza to block it out, but as soon as he speaks, you realize it’s unavoidable.

“I think I’m gonna go talk to her,” Marcus whispers to you, and you look over at him as you swallow a bite of pizza to see his dark eyes glittering nervously at you.

No, you want to exclaim to him, don’t break your heart again! Can’t you tell she’s in love with someone else? Can’t you realize I’m standing right here? Instead, you give him a reassuring nod. “Go for it, Pike!” you whisper-shout, surprised with how well you’re able to fake your enthusiasm as you take another bite of pizza. “Now’s a better time than ever.”

Marcus exhales deeply, nodding as he looks back in her direction. “You’re right. I can do this.”

You pat his shoulder with your hand that’s not supporting your paper plate. “You can do this.” Even if I can’t.

Marcus starts to walk off in that direction, but he stops himself, turning back to you to place a hand upon your shoulder. “Thank you, Sunny,” he murmurs genuinely. “No matter what happens.”

You smile wide at him, hoping he doesn’t hear the crackling of your heart as it begins to fall apart in your chest. “You’re welcome, Marcus—no matter what happens. I’ll always be here.”

Marcus smiles at that, giving your shoulder a pat before he keeps walking off towards Lisbon. You look at the scene with longing, the pieces of your broken heart sinking into your stomach like rocks as you watch it all happen. Of course, he’d taken your last few words in the context of a friend, even though you’d meant so much more. How could he know that? Marcus may be damn good at his job, but he can also be so clueless—and you just hope it won’t lead him to getting his heart broken once again.

You’re not creepy enough to listen in to their conversation, but it must be going well, because you see them laugh together a few times and soon, they’re making a move to get up and leave. Marcus lets her go first, and before he leaves, he turns to look at you and give you an excited thumbs up. You return it, hoping that your own smile is still convincing as he leaves with her. You finish off your pizza with a vicious tug of a piece of crust, throwing the plate into the trash can with a little more vigor than you should.

As soon as you leave the break room, you see Jane held up with Marcus and Lisbon, who seem to be having a rather awkward exchange before Marcus and Lisbon continue towards the elevator. You can see the way Jane takes a deep breath, his shoulders sagging ever so slightly in the same way yours probably did upon watching Marcus leave. Then, his eyes meet yours, and you can see the same thing you feel reflected in him.

You don’t know what possesses you, but you make your way over to him, raising an eyebrow. “Looks like you could use some coffee,” you tell him, swinging your car keys in your fingers as you speak. He raises his brow back at you. “There’s a twenty-four hour café down the street if you want some.”

Jane hums in interest, and you try to read him for something more—but you can’t. You figure he must be the most terrifying person to be interrogated by. When he speaks, his voice is as calculated as ever. “Interesting. I could’ve sworn you didn’t like me.”

You resist the urge to roll your eyes as you tighten your hold on your keys. “I’m not asking you on a date, Jane. I’m just trying to be nice.”

Jane narrows his eyes at you and you don’t like the feeling of being read so easily. Whatever mind game he’s trying to play, you won’t give in. “Hmm. Alright. I’ll meet you there. What’s it called?”

You give him the name, and he nods to confirm it as you head to your car. Before you take off, you pull out your phone, chewing on your lower lip nervously as you write out a text to Andy.

me: andy... i think i’m about to do something very, very bad… 🥴

You send it and lock your phone again, heading to the street and thankfully getting a spot on the street just in front of the café, thanks to the later hours of the night. You see that you’ve gotten a response already when you pick your phone back up.

andy💞: ma’am! what are you doing? whatever it is, stop it and call me. right now.

You sigh as you look up and see Jane pulling in right in front of you.

me: too late. i’ll call you later.

You pocket your phone and get out of your car, leading the way for you and Jane inside as you order—paying for Jane’s coffee as you’d said before—and sitting down at a table far away from the windows, just in case someone from work happened to walk or drive by. There’s only a few other people in the café, causing you to keep your voice lower than usual as you speak.

“So, I, uh—,” you attempt to begin.

“You’re in love with Pike.” Jane’s words are short, sweet, and to-the-point, causing you to choke on air as you sputter for something to say. Jane simply chuckles and takes a sip of his drink before continuing. “I know. I ‘read minds.’ Remember?”

“Okay. Whatever.” You take a quick sip of your coffee to try to prove that you’re not as flourished as you actually are. “You’re in love with Lisbon.” Jane shrugs, and you scoff as you lean forward on your elbows. “Oh, please. Don’t try to deny it. I mean, can’t you tell that she feels the same way?”

Jane shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“‘It doesn’t matter?’” You huff as you lean back in your chair, crossing your arms aggressively. “So, it doesn’t matter that you know you both have requited feelings for each other, and you’re not doing anything about it? You’re letting her go off with some guy she doesn’t even have true feelings for?”

“She does have feelings for him.” Jane takes a thoughtful sip of his drink, and the way he’s staying so calm right now is infuriating to you. “Even if she loves me. It’s possible to be torn between two men, you know.”

“Yeah, but tonight is their first date. If you just told her your feelings now, she’d stop this altogether.”

Jane remains silent for a moment, sipping and tapping his finger against his cardboard cup. You have to try yet again not to roll your eyes as you sit there, waiting for him to say something. When he speaks, he leans forward on the table, looking at you with a raised brow. “It seems to me that you’re only doing this to have Pike for yourself.”

“No. I’m doing this because, by you staying silent on all of this, you’re setting an innocent man up for failure and heartbreak when she realizes further down the road that you’re the one she wants.”

“You mean, the same heartbreak you’re feeling right now?”

You lean forward as you’d done before, failing to hide your frustration as you widen your eyes at him. “This isn’t about me. This is about you hurting someone else just because you won’t open your damn mouth.”

Jane smiles—yes, the bastard smiles—at your words. “Really? Because it seems like both of us would be at fault here, should that be the case.” You raise an eyebrow, but before you can question him further, he goes on. “I’m not the only one holding back secrets, Agent. Why don’t you tell Pike how you feel?”

You finally give in to the act of rolling your eyes as you draw a sip from your drink. “Because, Jane, I told you. This isn’t about me. Me telling him about my feelings won’t do anything because he doesn’t feel the same way. He’ll still stay with Lisbon and get his heart broken.”

Jane narrows his eyes at you. “Are you so sure he doesn’t feel the same way?”

You think back on the embarrassingly obvious friendzoning from earlier today. “Yes. I am.”

Jane shrugs. “I don’t know. He looked at you an awful lot today.”

You hate the flicker of hope his words give you, knowing he’s just looking for excuses to get you to stop putting him in such a tight spot. “That’s not the point.” You take a deep breath and recenter yourself, both your hands slipping around your cup as you look at him. “Listen, I’m not asking you to confess your long-time feelings to Lisbon right now. I guess I’m just…” you trail off, trying to think of how to say it.

“Proposing that we scheme together until one of us confesses?” Jane finishes for you, and surprisingly, it’s rather close to what you’re thinking.

“Sure. Put it that way.” You reach into your pocket for your phone as you sigh lightly. “I’ll need your phone number just so we can talk about this.”

Jane chuckles with obvious amusement. “Buying me coffee and asking for my number? And I thought you said this wasn’t a date.”

“It’s not.” Your response is quick and curt, void of all amusement—though Jane’s eyes still twinkle with that emotion. You hand him a blank contact. “For business purposes only.”

“For business… purposes… only.” Jane repeats the words as he types out his information in your phone, smiling almost smugly as he hands it back to you. He then rises from his chair and extends a hand towards you. “Pleasure doing business with you, Agent.”

You accept his hand in a shake as you grimace slightly. “This is highly confidential, Jane. I mean it.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t let Pike know you’re inserting yourself into his love life.” Jane nods before he leaves the café, and you sigh as you sit back down and open Andy’s contact, instantly calling her as you prop your phone up with your hand.

“Bitch!” Andy greets you with an incredulous exclamation. “What the hell are you up to? Where are you?”

“Hello to you too, Andy,” you scoff, looking around to make sure no one heard your best friend speak like a sailor. “I’m at the café down the street from work.”

Andy raises an eyebrow at you. “Alone?”

“Now I am, yeah.” You’re too ashamed to admit who you’d been with before.

Her dark eyes narrow at you. “Girl… who were you with?”

You look down at your cup for the moment, which suddenly seems very interesting as you squeak out your answer. “Remember the guy who Lisbon’s in love with? Well, I—.”

“You did not.” Andy leans closer to her camera as she looks at you with disbelief. “Please tell me you’re not scheming with that guy.”

“Listen, we’re not…” you trail off, sighing as you remember exactly what you both shook on. “Okay, maybe we are. Maybe.”

“Ma’am!” Andy groans and falls back in her seat. “What the hell are you doing? What happened to seeing what happened and letting Marcus be happy?”

“He’s taking her on a date tonight!” you try to defend yourself. “I just—I can’t watch this happen in front of my eyes, Andy! He’s gonna get hurt again!”

“And he’s gonna get hurt even more when he finds out you’re meddling in his love life!”

You groan with frustration as you realize she’s right. You slap a hand to your forehead and drag it down your face. “Look, we’re not gonna do anything crazy. I’m just trying to convince Jane to confess his feelings to Lisbon so we can avoid Marcus’ heartbreak in the first place.”

Andy tuts and shakes her head. “I don’t think this is a good idea, girl.”

You feel a pit in your stomach, but there’s nothing you can do about it now. “I know. But… I just, I can’t sit by idly and let him get hurt again, Andy. I have to at least try to help him.”

Andy sighs and raises an eyebrow at you. “I understand, Miss Thing. You have a big heart and right now it’s bleeding for Marcus.” You nod to agree with that. “But, girl, he cannot find out you’re doing this.”

“I know.” You can’t imagine what it would be like if Marcus realized you were doing something like this. Any potential to have a friendship with him in the future would be gone—and a relationship would be completely out of the question. “We’re keeping it confidential.”

“You better.” Andy still releases another breath, one of her hands toying with her jet black hair as she stares at you. “Be careful. I’m serious. You’re dealing with a lot of people’s hearts, here.”

“I will,” you assure her, smiling bittersweetly as you give her a nod. “I promise.”

“Alright. Keep me updated, girl.”

“As always.”

Andy smiles at that. “Love ya’.”

“Love you too, Andy. Bye.”

With that, you hang up, heaving out a sigh as you hold your head in your hands. You know you’re going in way too deep, now, but it’s too late to turn back. All you can hope for is that you can save both your and Marcus’ hearts in the process and not ruin something you haven’t even gotten to start yet.

previous part ⟸ masterlist ⟹ next part

bittersweet tag list: @agentpike @roxypeanut @poenariuniverse @mrsparknuts @sheerfreesia007 @thisisthe-way @lamnothome @dirty-dancefl00r5 @ryleyrooroo @ezrasarm@flowercrownsandmetallicarms @seasonschange-butpeopledont @din-damn-djarin

permanent tag list: @mikahidalgo @bestintheparsec @stilllivindue2spite @givemethatgold @xbrujita @mandalorianspace @blushingwueen @sevvysaurus @myakai13 @thisis-theway @beskars @rachelloveseveryone @theindiealto @hiscyarika @wickedfrsgrl @synystersilenceinblacknwhite @bookwafflefangirl @charliepeaceout @cable-kenobi @ezraslittleblondestreak @hdlynn @your-pixels-are-showing @b0n-chann @javier-djarin @nettyklecan @mistermiraclee @ahopelessromanticwritersworld @smellssharpies @catfishingmorales @badassbaker @wille-zarr @kaetastic @saltywintersoldat @agentpike @mrsparknuts @readsalot73 @yespolkadotkitty @mandhoelorian @lilangeldevil006 @cyaredindjarin @roxypeanut @phoenixhalliwell @hail-doodles @randomness501 @this-cat-is-dea @hopplessdreamer @paintballkid711 @captain-skytrash @whataenginerd @katlikeme @petertingless @propertyofdindjarin @theocatkov @bisexual-space-slut @cyaredindjarin @arkofblake @cryptkeepersoul @motleymoose

marcus pike tag list: @opheliaelysia

#welp #y'all guessed it!#let's see what happens now!#marcus pike #marcus pike x reader #bittersweet fic #the mentalist #dindjarindiaries

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technobladetimestamps · 3 years

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Nov 16 Stream Timestamps

Timestamps from Technoblade’s “THE REVOLUTION (dream SMP)”

Link to my youtube comment with all of the timestamps x

Timestamps with hyperlinks below

02:13 “This is a surprise tool which will help us later” / thumbnail isn’t foreshadowing / video thumbnails have to be big / stream thumbnails can be detailed 05:17 “The traitor is actually Jschlatt” / firework crafting 09:50 “The ratio is impeccable” 13:23 “Dream’s in the game! My audience retention rate” / vc with Tubbo & Quackity / traitor Jschlatt theory / “Are you high?” “A little” 14:47 “You’re a bit of a wildcard” “I am the most consistent character on the entire server” / “What’s this about getting into power” / “We’ll burn this bridge when we get to it” 15:54 “You really are such an English major” / “You’re an idiom” / malaphor / “I’m actually speaking twice as much English as you guys” 18:07 “I think Thunder is overcompensating in the chat” / “Where can you see me” “In my heart” (Karl & Quackity) / Karl not leaving vc 20:33 vc with Niki / “Did Tubbo just leave me? I spaced out for 2 seconds” / “You can’t call everyone the traitor” “I can & will” 22:45 “You know it’s an event when Skeppy’s here” / “You know it’s a big deal when Georgenotfound wakes up” / “Everyone leaves me” 23:31 explaining the traitor thing to Niki / “Maybe I’m a sleeper agent” / had to kill Tubbo 25:03 nothing happened with that creeper / Fundy interrogating Niki / “Why did I train her for MCC” 25:54 “Even YOU’RE leaving me” / sad music / “I’m sitting here with 203k viewers & it’s not enough for any of these streamers to bear talking to me for more than 60 seconds” / Skeppy joins vc to immediately leave 28:50 Karl has a gift for Techno / Karl is just here for the animatic 32:21 “At least the chat won’t leave me” / pays for his music 35:01 “I’m going to destroy the government so bad” / “I hate all of the farming updates on skyblock” 37:45 joining a vc / “I just got stood up in like 4...conversations in rapid succession” / “My new years resolution was to make friends & it’s november & I’ve made zero headway” / Eret switches sides 41:53 Ender chest setup / worried about hotbar management / potions > shields 43:13 vc with allies / “Karl you are literally the biggest third wheel I have ever seen” 45:03 angering the dogs / trident combo 47:13 “D!ck with one ball” (Tubbo) 50:25 “Let’s hope Wil overslept like [George]” 53:09 recruiting Eret / “If you fight on our side we’ll make you the King of Burger King” / “He’ll be an executive citizen” / “I’m surrounded by idiots” 54:58 putting Schlatt on the allies list / “Schlatt is an alcoholic high on protein power” (Fundy) 56:47 can’t trust Eret / “I hate it when you’re right” (Tubbo) / Wilbur joins vc 59:50 having a moment with Hubert / “Not even the mobs like me” / sad music / “I just gained 8k subscribers the sadness is gone” / cow pit exp farm 1:02:57 vc with Niki / “I’m going to join the other vc AHHHHH” 1:05:02 “Once everyone meets up...I have something prepared” / “Technoblade when are you not ready?” “When I joined the server” 1:09:38 “Who do you take me for? Of course I’ve read the Art of War. It’s written by Mozart” / battle planning 1:12:18 “This is the betrayal...happening very slowly” 1:13:35 Pan1 / “This revolution is so doomed” 1:15:29 Dream attack / Quackity dies 1:18:07 “Agree Retweet” / “Violence is the only universal language” / “i have a supply” / “Why do you talk in upwards inflections constantly?” 1:19:57 Techno not getting to talk / “He took it all by force didn’t he” / “Fear into Ear” 1:23:50 Techno telling everyone he has a stash twice / distributing blue / mushroom the fox 1:26:49 Tommy talking over Techno again / “Stop going off on your tangents” “We have food at home” 1:29:30 vault reveal / Tubbo stealing emeralds / secret chest 1:32:40 “Shut up bro you are green as shit” (Tommy) / “Everyone give me back my stuff you don’t deserve it” 1:34:41 no netherite swords / “Who’s the traitor” “Promise we won’t be mad” 1:36:31 battle / Technoblade trident maneuvering / giving rocket launchers to Tubbo & Tommy 1:40:27 killing Karl / Dream bringing out the end crystals / fighting invis Dream / purpled switches sides 1:43:57 Dream wants to talk / 309k / group photos 1:46:08 vc with Dream / “But only if my enemy insists” / in the van with Schlatt / “What are you doing in my drug van? It better not be drugs” / Tommy preparing to shoot Schlatt 1:54:42 “We won” / “We killed an old man with heart problems! It only took 20 of us!” / President Innit / subscribe to Technoblade sign 1:55:57 Dream & Techno talk in chat / Tommy speech / “It was meant to be” / “I don’t think anyone is bowing to Tommyinnit” / “Karl don’t be weird” / Skeppy has a disc 1:59:06 Techno being apprehensive on mute / Tommy makes Wilbur President / “I’ll be the president” “I’m gonna veto that” / “Techno...you’ve taught me that government is not the way to go” / Wilbur makes Tubbo president 2:03:20 “I’m not sure I like where this is going x2” / “I’m not sure this is a good ending” / “Team chaos” “Perhaps” 2:06:20 Techno shoots Tubbo / Philza joins / “You think Schlatt was the cause of your problems? No. It was government” / speech gets interrupted / “The government ends here, I’ll kill it myself!” 2:09:23 Phil kills Wilbur / techno yelling for silence / “Tommy you just did a coup...& instilled yourself as president” 2:12:11 “If you want to be a hero THAN DIE LIKE ONE” / wither spawning / killing his former allies 2:15:09 post fight talks / “There will be no new government today. It will be over my dead body” / “Techno was not the traitor” 2:18:50 “I need to increase the crater that is L’Manberg so that no country can rise in its place” / “Mom says it’s my turn on the flame bow” 2:23:51 “What I’m doing right now is small scale. This is the work of an individual. This is nothing compared to the cruelty governments all around the world [inflict]...systematically” / “Llamas are the primary victims of war” / “I just wanna be apart of the explosion” (George) 2:27:06 Techno joins vc / connor joins the server / “I hope you’re proud of yourself Techno” “I kinda am” / Jack Manifold (Thunder) being broke / netherite armor 2:32:30 “Beach episode” / Techno accidentally joins the L’Manberg vc 2:35:16 the base is compromised / “There’s no way Technoblade would put a clock there if it didn’t mean anything” / got robbed 2:37:37 “If you’re going to ask me how I got all these emerald & arrows that’s a story for another day” / explaining the bedrock / “I can give everyone stuff & it’ll be such a flex” 2:40:24 Greek mythology 2:41:45 The Golden Apple / “They didn’t use discord back then they used skype, so can’t invite Eris” / “Zeus the god of feminism” 2:46:02 Eret recruiting Techno to kill George / joining vc / “Let’s stop him before he gets land” / Awesamdude proposing a fight 2:49:08 “No one can kill me I’m invincible” (logs out) / Dream literally names the turtle potions Sam thinks he hasn’t heard of / “I’m at soup” / “It’s not smack talk he just has that many items” 2:53:06 “Stab him Dream, I’ll shout encouraging words” / Techno fighting Bad & Ant 2:56:23 Dream wins / “I think there was this Dream guy attacking you with some sort of weapon” 3:00:11 turtle potions / Dream hyping up Techno about fighting BBH / Badlands negotiating with George 3:04:34 vc with Philza 3:07:00 spider farm afk’ing / lagging Quackity’s computer 3:09:06 smp earth / Phil only logged on to back Techno up 3:10:32 killing George / “I’m gonna drop his armor off don’t jump me” / not fighting Dream 3:13:00 vc with Karl & Phil / Karl definitely not starting a government / “Chat that was the boring part, don’t leave” / 320k / “Why do we keep scheduling these on Monday?” 3:16:18 “I don’t even want to think about how famous Tommy will be in the future” / “I get a tad bitter” / covid is good for youtubers but obviously bad / “I’m so good at socially distancing” 3:19:51 “Aren’t you tired of being nice Philza? Don’t you just wanna go crazy” / “You should be wary of the old in a profession where people die young” / vc with Eret 3:21:47 “What if you built a slightly larger throne next to it?” / “How are they paranoid of a mole but the guy with a track record of being a traitor gets no questions asked” 3:25:47 “I’m gonna place a block at the bottom & kill you instantly” / reverse mlg / emerald rich even with Tubbo’s theft 3:27:57 “I’ll allow it” / upstairs chests robbed / Eret disconnects with the book 3:32:04 armor sabotage bc he thought it’d be 1v5 / crystals are mutually assured destruction / Wilbur afraid of tnt getting blown up early 3:34:11 the diary was actually Eret’s / “He’s gonna tell everyone who I have a crush on. Nooo” / reading the 100 page book / “Can I not win here?” “No” 3:40:14 “This stream has released more serotonin in my brain than the last 6 months combined” / revolution was overcrowded / could improve the crater 2:43:09 “Awkward ten minute period where I’m just sitting there watching them set up a new government but I can’t kill them yet” / Carl is missing 3:44:34 “The one time Technoblade is gonna roleplay & they talk over him” / “CARL” / “As long as Sapnap isn’t the one that took him there’ll still be hope” 3:46:10 “Once you start using end crystals it’s the only pvp that matters & end crystal pvp is so lame” / Webtoons 3:49:10 “What’s going to happen to you & WIlbur now?” “I don’t know, I think I’m chill with Wilbur” / “The only thing that changed is my voice. Zero personal growth” / lines from the first speech that got interrupted / “King George is trending booo” 3:52:00 1 million twitter followers / “O god it’s been four hours...I am not built for this” / did a 13 hour stream once / sub growth goals 3:56:30 “What the heck is Phil watching”

#technoblade #technoblade timestamps #THE REVOLUTION (dream SMP)#dream smp

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ginger-snaps014 · 3 years

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Because I am trying to actually post my art again. Also I need to stop watching dc shows since this is getting out of hand.

Enjoy my random OC I created after rewatching young Justice and Titans. In whatever multiverse she lives in, Greyson is still robin but older (think junior/senior in high school pre-fallout with Batman). And most members of the team are young justice versions. She is a scholarship student at Gotham Academy and is roommates with the daughter of a former ambassador’s to bealya who does not like talking about her mum (spoiler not Queen Bee).

Personality: sarcastic with trust issues galore; she tend to lean into anger and humor as a defense. Despite her parentage (presumably because she never knew her parents), she has a strong moral code despite being able to quickly befriend villains. She likes to call out the hero’s when they are being self righteous picks (especially if she is saving their butts or saving an innocent). Prickly, but overall good.

Episode one: Diamonds are not a Girls Best Friend.

Opening- one year ago

You meet Gwen in school being harassed for her scholarship status and bored as hell. Use this scene to establish personality. Next meet her bubbly roommate who starts talking about being jealous of the Wayne Scholarship dinner that will be held at the Manor, clothing etc. makes Gwen borrow a nice dress because otherwise Gwen would go in casual black jeans (which is all wrong for a cocktail event per the roommate).

Next major scene is in the limo with the other scholarship kids (only 1-3 per grade). Easter egg with atriums. Alfred and Greyson greet the kids at the door, and Greyson leads the group in a tour of the manor. During the tour near the entryway, they pass a large jewel that perfectly matches Gwen’s eyes and seems to slightly glow. Close up of Gwens schooled face looking like she saw a ghost. She asking dick about the gem as if disinterested and asking why it was in the Manor. Dick explaining someone had stole it last year from local gallery, and that Batman had just recently recovered it and handed it over to the gallery’s owner. Who in turn asked Bruce, an old friend, to secure it while the gallery’s security is being upgraded. Next scene is a vaguely uncomfortable dinner scene where Bruce has to leave within 5 minutes of being introduced to the group. He tells Dick to stay. While leaving Gwen realizes she left her phone at the table and leaves the limo to retrieve. She stares again at the jewel and tells herself “it is a coincidence.” She grabs her phone. The limo has already left. Dick finds her at the door and seems annoyed (and like he is in a rush). They call a cab and wait awkwardly in the entryway. Suddenly the windows burst. Smoke bombs and knockout gas are thrown in side. Blurry men in full tactical gear bust in as Gwen collapses. When she wakes up she tried up in a chair next to dick (also tied up and seemingly unconscious though a few panels will show his eyes partially open). Gwen struggles only to hear a familiar laugh. “Isn’t life funny, last we were all together,” motions to himself and and the stone (still in its glass case though the other masked men are trying to break in), “I killed you”. She looks up with disgust. “Missed you too sweetie”. The man lifts up his mask to reveal a teenage boy. And Gwen spits at him. Fun dialog show that they at least dated and she had something to do with the original theft. They finally get the stone and start to leave. “Oh right. lose ends” he aims a gun at her and it clicks. The barrel was empty. Laughing to himself the leader then tells one of the other men to get her up. Smiling. She is coming with us. One of the masked men speak. He sounds older and more mature. “That is an unnecessary risk. Leave her or kill her.” The leader throws a tantrum yelling that he hired the men. “Just shut up and do what you are fucking told”. Gwen has her hands tried behind her back and is forced up the stairs to the roof. She looks over her shoulder at Dick who looks asleep and cooperates.

Next Panel in the background his chair is empty. Gwen is on the roof watching a helicopter come closer. Suddenly one of the men is pulled backwards into the dark. Traditional Batman style fight with henchmen. Only the leader remains. He pulls Gwen to him and holds a knife to her throat. “Come any closer, you fucker, and I kill her!” Gwen smiles. “I’d like to see to see you try.” Suddenly she stomps on leader’s foot, and spins away unscathed. Notably, in the struggle the knife slashed Gwen but there was no blood, only blue sparks. She stands before the leader, her dress cut across the middle (clearly showing her skin … with no cuts). Leader pulls out a gun and Robin’s voice emerges from the shadows telling his to drop the gun… and likely making a joke. The leader starts firing at the shadows. We heard robin curse as if hit. Gwen jumps in and says his fight is with her. She walks slowly towards him and he fires repeatedly. The bullets bounce off with a flash of blue light. Her eyes are glowing. “You!!” He screams “It chose you!!” Gwen clocks him across the face and the leader collapses to the ground. She turns over her shoulder to ask the boy in the shadows if he is ok. He comes out. Intrigued. His leg is bleeding but he promises it was only a graze. She looks down at her dress. “Well this sucks.” Jokes about dry cleaners and coverups. Gwen mentions the Wayne ward passed out inside. And sees her cab coming towards the house. Thanks robin and jumps off the roof. We see her land and walk towards the cab.

Next scene is her getting a package early in the morning with a new dress the perfectly matches her roommates and her phone. And a joking note from robin. She see dick in a nearby classroom and asks how he is doing. He says fine but is clearly in pain. She can see some blood seeping through his pant’s leg where robin had been grazed. She says nothing. And the las scene just says “now. “ Showing robin and Gwen soaring on a roof.

Sad Origin or Juliet should have just Stayed Home: (Notably all covered in one issue as background info to avoid romanticizing pain and trauma) first thing to notice in the first panel. Gwen has brown eyes instead of the normal eerie blue). She thinks she is an orphan being raised by a loving aunt, only to have her home blown up by faulty gas lines (spoilers was not the gas lines). She ends up in the Narrows living in a group home with a hot boy (he is the leader that tried to steal the gem in the earlier episode). She is alone, without a safety net and traumatized. He starts dating her. And is a manipulative and emotionally abusive asshole. He tells her the mob has his missing birth father and will kill him if he does not get a certain stone (that just happens to be on display as of that morning in her dead AU ants gallery). The gem had been brought over by an anonymous buyer who what deemed in breach of the purchase agreement and lot rights to the gem. The aunt’s co-owner/ girlfriend had reviewed the jewel and set it up as displayed in the old 15th century painting, weird writing and all. While stealing the gem, Gwen cuts her hand as her boyfriend fucks around and reads the weird script. This accidentally starts an old ritual. After a clean get away, the boyfriend kisses her and pushes off a roof to her death. She accidentally grabs the gem while grabbing for something to safe her life. She wakes up two days later on the street where her body had landed after the fall, with blood stains in her clothing from nonexistent injuries. She feels strange and disconnected from her past as if looking at her entire history through water. She assumes it is shocks and sneaks back into the group home. She uses her aunts oversized jacket hide the blood. Her roommate try’s to get Gwen to fess up where she has been thinking it was a romantic runway. Gwen turns to go to the restroom and roommate says she likes the new contact lenses. Gwen looks up and realizes that her brown eyes have turned an unnatural blue. last panel "what the hell"

Bullet point of storyline notes:

The Halloween special issue. “Never Trust a Cat.” Gwen has her noticing Dicks Gymnastics and being forced by her roommate to go to a Halloween party. She dresses up as a cat. Roommate is kidnapped by guys in tactical gear and has something injected into her. Gwen runs after and with Dick’s help saves the roommate. Only to realize she has been injected with some neurotoxin that slowly makes her susceptible to suggestion that the JL has recently learned about. Obviously created by the light. He says the antidote is in the bat cave and he will take care of the roommate. “If you think I’m leaving her side, Dick Greyson, you are dumber than you look.” Dick tries to deflect. Gwen says fine. He awkwardly holds the roommate while racing through the street on his bike. He looks over his shoulder at Gwen who has not moved. A blue flash is in the sky. He goes through the waterfall. And administers the cure. Suddenly from behind “so this is what the bat cave looks like…. I’ll be honest. I did no expect the giant penny.”Gwen is floating in cloud of blue light that dissipates as she lands.

Batman started avoiding Gwen after only a few sessions

In the same episodes she learns her mother is alive and abandoned her for a life of crime, she learns that her aunt faked her death and left. Apparently, the aunt killed some guy that had been hitting her. He was part of the mob. “It’s not safe for you” crap.

Finds out mum is alive after seeing a picture of cat woman on the bat computer. Turns out Batman had only even given her the maybe scholarship after learning he could be her dad. He grew distant when he learned who was the dad. Oh the abandon meant issues and trust issues I mentioned above.

Turns out robin knew about her parents and had been lying to her for over year. He is also the only person to know her secret so she feel especially betrayed. Needless to say the budding relationship is crushed after their first kiss. She is pissed.

Mum is cat woman. Who had an unwanted pregnancy and gave birth under a fake name. She faked her death in a car accident. And never appeared to look back.

Gwens auburn hair is from her dads side of the family. That’s right cat woman and lex hate fucked after a successful mission. Lex doesn’t know about Gwen.

When Gwen learns who her father is and that Batman and robin have known since testing her DNA (without her consent) a few weeks after meeting her. She is pissed. So she gets drunk underage. Kidnapped by none other than her ex. He had hired Icicle Jr. to guard her. She just wants to avoid the bats at all costs and know she is off the grid. So she spends the next few hours joking with Jr and bonding.robin breaks in. As other henchmen are being beat up, Gwen asks jr if he wants to make a deal. Give me a place off the grid to crash and I will get you out of here. Screams. Jr shrugs and says the money wasn’t that good anyway. Gwen blasts the ceiling creating a hole and grabs jr to fly out. They crash at one of his hideouts and get take out. At some point a group of his friends (probably Easter eggs) come to try to get Jr to come partying. A little bit later. Gwen is at a club in central city with a bunch of villains and having the time of her life. She is flirting with one of the guys that came to Jr’s. And jr is dancing with his own man (is apparently gay in this universe go with it). Gwen is joking and being extremely vague about her “co-workers”. Suddenly green arrow and Artemis crash the party. Artemis says to put down the shot glass. Gwen stays she is just drinking and to chill (she is dealing with some shit and may not be perfectly sober). Artemis fires an arrow that breaks the glass. Small fight and Jr drags Gwen out. They arrive at the apartment laughing. A panel showing days of the week and then hanging out (video games, baseball, etc. just friend shit). Later the same friends at before some over with Jrs new man. They are all hanging out when the others start talking shop. Namely Batman has been captured and will be killed on live tv. They are laughing at how the hero’s won’t find him despite him being just a few bloating away. Gwen excuses herself. And leaves a note to jr thanking and apologizing to jr. she saves Batman. Fight scene. And tells him to never contact her again. It’s snowing when she leaves.

One of the Episodes right after robins betrayal. “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble”. Bus of kids with Gwen on it gets highjacked. Before highjacked, see a football player ruin gwens chem book. The kidnappers make their demands and decide to wait it out at there boss’s place…. Which also happens to host an illegal fighting league. The men joke that they will make someone fight. If you win the whole ransom amount we will let you go. Gwen volunteers. The men laugh. A football player volunteers and gather his friends money to place the bet. He gets knocked out in record time. The b Gwen worked on her school projects volunteers her money up so long as it gwen in the ring. The rules are simple. Step out of the ring, you lose. Get knocked out, you lose. Die, you lose. Gwen first fight is against a larger guy who comes swinging. She dodges and trips him. He lands out of the ring. She wins without throwing a punch. She sees lex in the box. She wins several rounds of increased difficulty. This includes a two on one and blockbuster. Gwen next fight is against bizaro.When he is flying she asks if that counts after stepping out of the ring. No, you have to touch the ground. Gwen does not want people to see her powers. Instead she tumble and flip jumps off the ring tops to reach the lowing rafters. She proceeds to fight and dodge bizaro before jumping on mercy greaves shoulders and asking Lexi if he could spare what he had hidden in his ring. Curious and intrigued he gives her the sliver of kryptonite, which she slide under Bizaro’s skin when she tackles his form. He collapsed in the ring. Comedic scene of her dragging her out of the ring slowly since he is so heavy but technically still awake. She removes the kryptonite as soon as his hand touches the ground outside the ring. It’s the final fight. Makes a joke how she has definitely repaid the ransoms after this this. At this point the kidnappers are impressed and joking with her. She jokes about chem book. They promise to give her 300 bucks for a new one if she beats the next guy. A cage comes down on the ring. A guy smaller than most she has fought is tried up with a hood covering his face. Kids wonder what monster could be worse than Bizaro. The announcer starts going on about this interloper trying to shut the fights down. It’s robin duh. Gwen turns to the kidnappers. “I’m supposed to fight robin. Fun” robin is half to see Gwen and tells her they just need to fake the fight for bit since KG and his other new teammate are there. Gwen says not a problem and punch the lying sidekick across the face and into the bars. She makes a cryptic joke how this will be over In a flash. Just give her five minutes. Cue fight. Robin is good at dodging. But gwen is coming for him. Crowd comments that she seems way more into this fight. Robin ends up tied up and hanging from the top of the cage like a Christmas turkey with one shoulder dislocated (but nothing permanent). He struggles and Gwen asks if he was looking for these. And pulls out his batarangs. Chaos occurs as the young hero’s make their move. An arrow is fired but Gwen blocks it with a batarang saying she still has 20 seconds on the clock. She waits as she counts down then jumps out of the ring as KF comes up. “What they hell” Gwen smirks. “We both know he deserved worse. After I didn’t cause any permanent damage.” She starts walking away. “By the way, don’t worry about taking me home with other hostages. I will find my own ride.” See her ride off on a bike. Artemis walks over to KF “isn’t that Robin’s bike”. “Yep”. Next scene Gwen in bat cave returning the bike when Alfred walks in. “I did not expect to see you here again for a while.” “I needed to return something after all. I’m not a thief.” Alfred looks at the bike and notices some stu wires. He raises an eyebrow. “You found the trackers” Gwen smiles “so will robin. I left them in some interesting places”. Alfred asks if she needs a ride home. She says she fine and has a few errands to run. A chem book to buy” “ miss Kyle, I believe most book stores will be closed at this hour.”

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