#den in the pinstripe suit
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Well, since you asked... I'd like to know how are you?? Also... some fluffy sexy time Tangerine x reader after reader had a partcularly bad day? Only if you want!
Hiya! Sorry for the delay but I am doing so so well! I truly appreciate everyone's feedback and interactions with my fics. It just feels so nice logging in every day and seeing that people simply are reading my stories. I also am so happy you reached out with this request. I hope I created something you like 🤗
Tangerine x Reader
warnings: 18+ (minors dni) & oral m receiving
“T?”
Your arms are pulling off your coat before the front door could swing fully closed. A pause to check out your features in the hallway mirror, while you hung your snow-spattered coat onto the hook. Your frowning lips form into a pout.
Dark under eyes contrast with your pale skin. The texture of your hands feels dry from the frigid weather, and your bones are achy from overexertion. Also, your hair could do for a brushing. You look exhausted. It doesn’t help that for the past two days you’ve been called in to work on your arranged time off. But how could you say no? Your boss needed the extra help. It also means more money coming in. And you’re a people pleaser. Those are all valid reasons as to why you’ve come home looking like absolute shit today.
“I’m in the den!”
With his name just on the tip of your tongue; Tangerine is calling back from deeper within the apartment. You run your fingers through your hair to subdue some flyaways before following the sound of his voice.
Tangerine glances over the book he’s holding to greet you with a warm smile. It feels as if your body sags heavier with a wave of relief washing through you. He brings you so much comfort without saying a word. Being in his presence is enough to relax a racing mind or post-work funk.
He’s sat in his softest pair of black sweatpants and a simple white T-shirt. Tangerine is known to be a classy man with a great fashion sense. Hell, he dresses up in three-piece pinstripe suits just for his hits with Lemon. Yet you would argue he always has looked his best in his pajamas, or naked. Because it means he’s home with you. With no looming threats, except for the faux argument over who has to wash the dishes after dinner. These are the moments of silence he gets to enjoy when the second he walks out of the building for work the tensions rise. You love that for him. You’re always the happiest knowing he gets times like these for himself, or when he wants to share them with you.
He leans in to close the space between you both to place a couple pecks to your lips. After, you throw yourself onto the couch cushions next to him. Your body squirms to lay on your side with your cheek propped on his lap.
“Tough day then, hm?”
Your groan into his sweatpants is enough of a confirmation for his question. His body rumbles with a chuckle at your antics and you feel a hand squeeze your shoulder.
“Tell me about it, baby. Maybe venting will help?”
“God, no. They’re all insufferable. I don’t want to spoil my mood even more.”
His hand trails up your neck and into your hair. He’s carding his fingers through as he probably goes back to reading his novel. You close your eyes and hum softly in appreciation of this soothing method. His hand smooths over your head. Running his fingers through your hair and squeezing a small fistful to try to be comforting. Which in turn, makes you instinctively whine a bit. He clearly gets entertained by that and repeats the pattern.
“Instead of me talking about my coworkers. I feel like I have a better idea with what I can do to occupy my mouth.”
You move your head slightly to get out of the path of your creeping hand; Gliding past his knee, over this thigh, only to rest to cup his bulge. You mimic his actions by giving him a soft squeeze. The sound of Tangerine abruptly closing his book almost muffled his weak moan. A smile spread across your face while propping yourself up on your elbows to look at him.
“Shouldn’t I be the one helping you relax?”
“This will," you reassure him.
It’s too late for all that back and forth now when his cock is betraying him by standing tall in his sweats. You could almost nestle your face into the tight fabric around his crotch, but you want to make him feel good not torture him with slow foreplay.
You push down his pants and boxers; bunching them up around his thighs. Moving them away from the target just enough for it to have the ability to spring free. You lick your lips before moving ever so slightly to repeat the action on his raging red tip. Little licks - once, twice, three times before you bob your head down teasingly. Moving back up to focus your ministrations on his head again.
Tangerine lulls his head back to the feeling of the sticky heat from your mouth tightly suckling on his swollen tip. Then, without warning, you're taking the entirety of him into your wet mouth. He lets out a grunting shout of pleasure.
It's hot, and he's perfectly happy to let you know how much he appreciates this with his hearty groans. His hand which was resting in your hair tightens into a fist. Not as gentle as before but not demanding either. Right now, he was using his grip to urge you down without pushing you too far past your limits. You found his touch soothing; grounding even. And although the act you're performing is sinful, there is a hint of tranquility in this whole situation.
Your act is bringing him comfort. Warmth spreads in your belly as you're reminded you're currently sharing some of those fleeting, precious moments with him. It's a bit cheesy to be thinking all this sappy shit with his cock in your mouth but it's a physical confirmation he's safe out of harm's way at home with you.
#ah ah ah I’m gonna stop there. I’m edging you guys#asks#request#tangerine smut#tangerine fic#tangerine and reader#tangerine x reader#gender neutral fic#aaron taylor johnson smut#aaron taylor johnson#bullet train 2022#bullet train
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Chapter Fourteen: Mr. Pinstripe Suit Pt. 1
It had been a long journey to Central ever since the homunculus, Pride, went on the ongoing blood bath, leaving Dante wide open for a confrontation. Hohenheim had to dodge the government enforced curfews and avoid being arrested on this journey to deal with his nightmare ex wife whose little vanity empire was crumbling like old cheese. There was a sense of responsibility needing to be upheld ever since Hohenheim abandoned the broken household and left the nightmare woman to her own selfish devices. Many things were floating in Hohenheim’s mind as he hastily booked a room at a small hotel to stay while a plan was being formed. After gaining a key to the room, Hohenheim went up, entered his room, and flopped into bed with many things running through his old mind. The regrets were many from how many lives were ruined because of some shiny rock made of souls to how his current sons were basically now being used as pawn pieces, but the one thing Hohenheim regretted most was the creation of the alchemical abomination that was supposed to be his eldest son. In Hohenheim’s mind, that misshapen mass of writhing flesh that pleaded and cried out to him when Envy first came to be wasn’t the son he once knew. The thing that called itself ‘Envy’ was likely eagerly awaiting for Hohenheim to do whatever awful thing the monster had in mind, that was a certainty.
Hohenheim laid in his rock-stiff mattress that smelled of cheap whiskey and cigars, debating the best way to dispatch Dante quickly and how to deal with Envy should that thing pop out of the woodworks. It was truly going to become a burdensome ordeal, but it was for the greater good for all involved. With a heavy sigh, Hohenheim hoisted himself off of the bed of torture and started walking towards the door. If Hohenheim was going to likely die, he was going to have a good time first before dealing with the den of wretched creatures and their rotting queen of sorts. A picture show would be a lovely thing to go to first was the first thing on Hohenheim’s mind before spotting a poster for the Botanical Garden pinned to the bulletin board. Seeing plant life from various parts of the world did sound appealing as well, the two options being weighed in Hohenheim’s mind a bit on which would be the best bet. After the battle of the two options, the botanical garden won as the heavyweight champion in the mental mindscape. With his mind made up, Hohenheim leisurely made his way to the gardens, intending to enjoy what could potentially be his final moments. The perfumed air traveled through Hohenheim’s senses as he entered the gardens, relaxing a bit after the stressful journey. A faint smile like the one William once wore was forming on Hohenheim’s face slowly as he went into a bit of a peaceful mindset before it would be shattered like a rock thrown through a stained glass window.
Even if Hohenheim had denied that creature of being his son, he could still recognize that abhorrent thing even in disguise right away as any parent would. What horrified the nearly half millennium old man was the fact this man made monster was hovering around some young woman and there was nothing Hohenheim could do about it. The garden was full of people, there was no way to engage his monster in combat without creating collateral damage in the process. This was the meat shield Envy had made and Hohenheim was not happy with this scenario. Carefully, Hohenheim started to monitor and follow Envy from the distance to see if he could get the little alchemical abomination alone without potentially harming human lives in the process. Hohenheim raised an eyebrow as he watched the odd pair stop in front of the appropriately named corpse flower to view, Envy keeping very closeby to the young woman. There was no possible way for Envy to acknowledge that he was there, but there it was, a perfect shield and no possibility of launching an attack. Hohenheim slowly started having this dawning realization that horrified the aged old man. This was exactly how Dante behaved when he was with her and it made Hohenheim ill to his very stomach as that memory crashed in.
“What is that monstrous mockery of my dead son up to now..” was the only thing that played in Hohenheim’s mind as he continued to follow his monster.
=======================================================================
Dolly was having a good time, not realizing that Envy was basically doing a lot to keep her shadow hidden during the trip as the sight of the lilac caught Dolly’s full attention. Lilacs were something Dolly had always wanted for a long time, but never got since the greenhouse wouldn’t be enough for the bush to survive in the harsh climate. The welcoming spicy floral undertone of the lilac bushes made Dolly smile widely as she checked them out up close. Various tones of purples, blues, pinks, and reds danced in Dolly’s line of vision as she went to the bench to sit down for a little bit. Envy followed along, glad they didn’t have to act as a blocker for the sunlight as they looked at the bush that produced flowers in grape-like clusters. There was a look on Freddy’s face as he knew this topic may come up again as to why it wouldn’t be possible to get a Lilac bush up north. As much as Freddy would love to get a lilac bush since they’re a wonderful bush to own, it just simply wasn’t possible in that little greenhouse. Freddy went to sit down next to Dolly to relax as well, glad that Dolly’s glamor hadn’t hiccuped yet out in public. This was the longest stretch of time of knowing Dolly that her glamor had remained stable and didn’t have to pull her away from the prying eyes of the public. Envy gave Freddy a bit of a confused look at the expression of relief on his bearded face as they went to sit next to Freddy, much to the alchemist’s displeasure.
“What now, Barnaby?” Freddy asked, deciding to keep Envy in character with that library nerd disguise.
“Oh Face Fur you shouldn’t be so coy, I just want to know what’s up with that face.” Envy sneered in the library nerd voice just to annoy Freddy further.
“Is it a crime to have a face now?” Freddy asked in a smart ass fashion with an expression to match.
“Don’t be cute with me, Face Fur.” Envy growled a bit as they elbowed Freddy sharply in the ribs.
“Alright, alright BARNABY. If you’re so persistent to know, it's because this is the longest Dolly hasn't had an incident out in public like this.” Freddy admitted, Envy giving a puzzled look before remembering that conversation in the beach hearse.
“Oh right, Dolly mentioned that before, I still need to see that.” Envy slowly started to grin at the possible horror image that a glamor hiccup would bring.
“I like the fact you two are close to being civil at this moment, but I'm like right here and can hear you both.” Dolly carefully looked over, not amused about the wishes to see her glamor to hiccup for entertainment.
“What? It’d be awesome and horrifying, that’s a winning combination for me.” Envy gave a bit of a sly smirk as they enjoyed this little moment.
“The only thing horrifying would be having her exposed to the general public dumbass.” Freddy snappishly retorted as he looked away from Envy, an eyebrow raised for a moment after noticing some weird middle aged man was watching them.
“The hell are you looking at, Face Fur?” Envy scrunch their nose up in disgust at being spoken to like that.
“Oh that tiger striped beard Dorian ‘kindly’ gave me has been attracting DILFs. Caught one checking me out just now.” Freddy casually hummed as Hohenheim quickly ducked down after being spotted by Freddy.
“...Congratulations Face Fur, you have now caught me off guard with that remark alone.” Envy blinked a bit out of shock before trying to spot this fabled dilf themself to see if that was actually true.
“Freddy, we're in public.” Dolly whisper-yelled at Freddy hoping to whatever forces out there that no one else heard that.
“What? I can’t help it that I’m attractive to the local DILF population, especially with the tiger stripe beard.” Freddy smirked as he stroked the beard of fabled attraction.
“Eh, he lied, I don’t see anyone.” Envy said as they went back to relaxing, Freddy giving an annoyed look.
“But he was right there! He had glasses, a pony tail, and a nicer shaved beard than mine, I swear I didn’t make up the guy on the spot.” Freddy started to look around for Hohenheim with a determined expression on his bearded face.
“Face Fur, this man you mentioned, did he have golden hair and eyes by any chance?” Envy’s tone shifted a bit as they started to look around with Freddy.
“Yeah, how’d you know?” Freddy looked surprised with the question Envy asked as the homunculus slowly got up from their seat.
“....I’m going to have to excuse myself for a moment, Dolly stay right there with the Face Fur.” Envy left abruptly, not giving Dolly much time to respond to the instruction.
“I wonder what got into them…” Freddy said in a perplexed manner over Envy bailing like that.
“I don’t know either, but Envy didn’t look or sound too happy about this..” Dolly gave a bit of a worried look like something bad was about to go down.
“If you don’t mind me barging in on this conversation, I would like to add my cens in about being called a ‘DILF’.” Said a voice right behind Dolly and Freddy who both slowly turned around.
#The Wayfarer#Fan Fiction#Fullmetal Alchemist#FMA 03#Writing#FMA Fan Fiction#Envy the Jealous#Envy#Hohenheim of Light#Van Hohenheim#OCs#Homunculus#Homunculi
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Pspspsps tell me about Beyond the Grave 👁👁
okay soooo this is from ages ago but tumblr is fucky and so i literally only just saw this rip my most humble apologies xx
SO beyond the grave is my one campaign that has the most work done on it so far
the party begins as high level famous accomplished adventurers. they hear word of a nearby village plagued by a dragon
they go to the village, ask around and find out it's a wyrmling. they're lead into the woods to where the wyrmling has its den.
eventually they stumble upon/find the ruins of an old temple. surrounding the ruins are an assortment of bones and the evidence that something big has been living here
the party wait and eventually this red wyrmling arrives
the party attack as they see fit and badly wound the dragon. before it dies, the wyrmling lets out an earsplitting roar and the trees shake with its answer
from the skies descends a massive ancient red dragon
here the DM can choose to let the party fight it and lose terribly or "it opens its mouth, breathes a tornado of fire at you". either way, the party dies. painfully.
then the party wakes up in a cave filled with the shrieks of the damned and tortured and the smell of sulfur and brimstone
they're in hell. and they're level 1.
from there, the party must fight their way through the 9 rings of hell to the very top, climbing the giant panopticon that stretches from the very bottom all the way up. along the way, they gain items and levels until they're even better than they were before they died.
it turns out that dragon that killed them was the infamous THEMBERCHAUD!!! who was supposed to have been dead after being killed by a set of adventurers years ago.
themberchaud had indeed gone to hell, only to find a bunch of his many many cultists already there with a map of hell and a plan to get him out.
when the party reaches the very top, they find that a random devil that had given them directions a few circles ago is actually satan! and is waiting for them in his pinstripe suit and his lavish modern office
the receptionist sends them right on in - "Mr S has been waiting for you!" - and satan offers them a job: they go and kill themberchaud (again) and Mr S will let them leave. (technically no one is allowed to leave hell ever but also technically, if hell had had better security, they wouldn't have died in the first place) he probably also gives them awesome devilish magic items
the campaign works as a one-off, a beginning of a longer-running campaign, or as the next challenge of an established campaign! it still needs a lot of work, especially because it's essentially a dungeon crawl and combat is difficult to plan. BUT! it's very fun to kill your characters right off the bat and then drop them to level 1 to add insult to injury. I started playing it with my family and my brother still hasn't forgiven me :)
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VIGILANTE/S. I
part one // 2.0k words // superpowered!au // series masterlist
summary; in which you consider yourself somewhat of a vigilante.
warnings; mentions of blood and death, depiction of some violence
notes; this is shorter than its supposed to be but the second half I hated so have this in the meantime :(( also this isnt related to my superpowered!au timestamps <3
Perched atop the building opposite the bar, you had a perfect view of its entrance and the laneway beside it. It wasn’t that late, but you always made sure to stop by it on your way home. Even at midnight, well-known Supers were stumbling out the door, drunk already and on their way either home or to meetings. On their arms were Shields, combat supers with abilities that would win in any fight if you were stupid enough to challenge them. Only some of them had bruises or blood on their faces, courtesy of the barfights that always broke out at The Den.
Normally, you’d only watch for a couple minutes for any easy trouble but tonight, it came a lot faster than expected. A group of four boys only a few years older than yourself walked out, their laughs carrying in the empty city air. This part of town was always abandoned at night, and it was mostly because of places like The Den, bars and casinos that became riddled with notorious supers and criminals.
Yelling and pushing each other along the sidewalk, you watched carefully as they walked past an alleyway, a man in a sleeping bag leaning against the building catching one’s eye.
“Hey!” He called out to the rest of the group, who had continued walking. “Look who it is!” They turned around and tried to make out the man in the darkness, before turning back around and walking to the intersection on the main road, searching for a taxi.
Meanwhile, the one left behind began to softly kick the man in the sleeping bag, muttering. You stood up and carefully slid down a drain pipe of the building, keeping a close eye on the drunk boy. It didn’t surprise you when it quickly turned violent, and you rolled your eyes, Seriously?
You dashed across the street and stopped a couple metres from him, “Hey!”
Your voice caught his attention immediately, and he stopped kicking the groaning man in favour of turning on you. A lazy smile made its way onto his face as he looked you up and down, “I think you’re in the wrong part of the city, babe.”
Babe? Okay, so you’re definitely an asshole. He raised a hand slightly, palm up, and wiggled his fingers slowly, crackling white energy winding its way around his hand and wrist. Lightning. No way.
You stood casually, before turning your hands over so that your palms were facing the sky, and you could feel it. The power rushing through you was almost addictive, and you wiggled your fingers in the same way he did. Within a second, the same coils of lightning were wrapping around your hands. “I think I’m in the right place.” You cocked your head to the side, “But thank you for your concern.”
The look on his face was priceless. This was always your favourite part – seeing someone who thought they were special realise they’re not the only ones with their abilities. In truth, as far as you knew, it wasn’t possible for any two people to share an ability. That’s what made your mimicry so special – as long as you were in range of that person, you could have their abilities, too. Beat them at their own game.
There was no reason for you to harm this drunk fool, so you nodded in the direction of his friends, “Go.” He stood, frozen in shock. You rolled your eyes and focused on the lightning in your hands, swirling it into a crackling ball, and raising it threateningly. This time you tried to be as stern as possible, “Go.”
He nodded and ran from you – in the wrong direction, but you didn’t care about that – and you bent down to see if the victim was okay. The man was already asleep before you could ask him any questions, and you wanted to stay but the sound of gunshots coming from The Den startled you into action, scrambling up a nearby fire escape. You were happy to deal with bullies and petty crimes, but gun fights, notorious criminals and gangs were not your scene. Especially when they happened to be supers, too.
You preferred to act as a sort of friendly neighbourhood spider-man, without the cool webshooters. When you were at a safe distance from the bar, you began to make your way home, only turning around when you heard muffled voices and shouts of pain.
You watched with wide eyes as the senator was dragged from The Den into a nearby black van. Everything came to you at once: the bag over his head tightened by some sort of cable, the blood on his pressed pinstripe suit, the numberplate of the van, the trio of men in matching black outfits keeping watch from the bar’s entrance, the overwhelming feeling of power you felt from them. Heat vision, bulletproof durability and light manipulation. You could feel each power. You could feel it from the top of the four-storey building. They’re more powerful than anyone you’ve ever met.
But then you felt a sudden addition – a shape shifter.
There were only three people on the street.
Fear crept across your back as you slowly turned around, analysing the rooftop for any company. There was no one there, but you could feel the familiar feeling of power running through your veins, and the trio of kidnappers had already retreated into the underground bar.
But then you saw it – the tiny bit of motion from the rooftop opposite. The one you’d been watching from earlier in the night. Whomever it was, they were not used to watching from there; retreating down the stairs slowly before walking down the street in the opposite direction to which the black van drove.
“Yeah, we were right,” Mark spoke lowly as he descended the stairs of the rusty fire escape. “They took the senator.” He had the odd feeling of being watched, but he let it go.
“Knew it,” Donghyuck responded, his voice loud and breathy from the proximity of his mouth to the microphone.
“Donghyuck, how many times do I have to tell you? Don’t speak directly into your mic,” Johnny’s voice was firm. “Get back to the house.” Mark knew that order was for him.
The ‘house’ was actually a huge warehouse located two blocks away. Though it looked abandoned, the warehouse was fully fit out on the inside as a proper training space, headquarters and dorm for the team. Mark still didn’t know how Jaehyun had paid for it all, but at this point he wasn’t going to ask. Questions weren’t exactly well-received by the team’s leader.
He walked the distance in total silence, keeping an ear out for any odd sounds or footsteps. There was nothing. Not even the sound of cars driving by – everyone knew better than to be in this part of the city this late at night – nor the sound of rain. No voices.
When he got to the entrance, he opened the squeaky gate and slipped through the small crack. He was greeted by Donghyuck, who waited in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe casually, “What’s up?” There were no working lights on the outside of the building - all the 10 year old bulbs had blown long ago – but the moonlight provided enough light for Mark to make out the look on Donghyuck’s face, and know Donghyuck was up to something.
“Let me in,” Mark’s voice was deeper, more aggressive than usual, more like a growl.
“Not until we deal with it,” Donghyuck’s voice was too eager for Mark’s liking, and there was a certain sparkle in his eye that made Mark weary.
“Deal with what?”
“This little spy,” Doyoung’s voice came from behind him, and Mark turned around to see Doyoung dragging a dark figure towards the entrance by the elbow. “Bring back a souvenir, did you?” His eyes narrowed at Mark before he pushed the stumbling figure through the gate.
“You’re taking her inside?” Even Donghyuck seemed surprised by this, and hurried to move out of the way so Doyoung could step into the warehouse.
“I’ve put a block on her mind – she won’t remember me or how she got here.” When Mark looked at the figure’s face again, he noticed the glazed over look in their eyes, and the stillness of their face, a token expression of a person who had had their mind messed with. He couldn’t help thinking, If it weren’t for Doyoung’s compulsion, you’d probably be quite pretty.
Once they got past the false entrance, a small room with dilapidated walls and holes in the ceiling, they were in the main part of the warehouse, where the rest of the team had been awaiting their arrival. Jeno and Jaemin were practicing in the large combat ring in the centre of the warehouse, and Mark could see Jaemin zipping around Jeno, dodging his punches. His superspeed gave him the advantage, but Jeno managed to land a punch, his super strength nearly knocking Jaemin out of the ring entirely. He barely gave the newcomers a second glance, until he realised Doyoung was holding onto a captive – a witness, probably, a suspect, hopefully – and held his hand out to Jaemin to help him up, the bruise on the latter’s face making him scowl. He accepted his friend’s hand, anyway.
“You’re getting better,” Jeno said, though his tone said otherwise. Jaemin probably was getting better; that was just way Jeno spoke.
“There’s a reason I’m the getaway driver and not a fighter,” Jaemin responded, dusting his pants off, before grabbing a fistful of Jeno’s shirt and hitting him square on the cheek. The whole thing happened in half a second, and Jaemin stepped back before Jeno could grab his hand and crush it as easily as he would a fly.
Jeno sent him an approving nod and they exited the ring together to greet Donghyuck.
Mark noticed Chenle and Renjun were nowhere to be found, probably off in their rooms somewhere, but Jaehyun was in his office – the walls surrounding the large space were currently clear glass, though he had the ability to make them opaque if he wished for some privacy. Johnny was in there, too, arguing with the leader.
Doyoung ignored the team as he brought Mark’s stowaway into Jaehyun’s office. Johnny immediately turned around when Doyoung interrupted their conversation, a frown on his face, but Doyoung said something Mark couldn’t make out and the walls turned black before he could see Jaehyun’s response.
“What’s with the girl?” Jaemin asked, unwrapping the bandages from his hands. He was looking at Mark now.
“She followed me from The Den. Doyoung thinks she could work for a Denner.”
“You don’t think so,” Jeno stated. It wasn’t a question – he knew this for a fact.
“No.” Mark sighed. “I don’t think so.”
“Maybe she was following you home cause she wanted to fuck,” Jaemin let out a half-hearted laugh.
Donghyuck snorts, “Yeah, that’s likely.”
There’s a split second before Jeno reacts. With a swift hit to the back of the neck, there’s a horrible squelching noise as the vertebrae in Donghyuck’s neck are crushed, his body falling limp to the floor. He’s dead within moments.
Jaemin doesn’t even look surprised. Mark can’t find it in him to be surprised, either. Jeno’s aggression was the reason he was so deadly. All his arrests were due to the same reason: someone picking a fight with the one person they shouldn’t have.
“Oops?” He offers, and it’s the closest thing to a joke you’ll ever get from Jeno.
#nct#nct au#nct angst#nct fluff#nct dream au#nct dream angst#nct dream fluff#superpower au#nct superpower au#nct mark#nct jaehyun#nct johnny#nct doyoung#nct donghyuck#nct jaemin#nct jeno#mark#Jaehyun angst#doyoung angst#mark angst#donghyuck angst
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jumping jacks
A/N: Hi! This is my first Peaky Blinders fic! If anything is OOC, I do apologize. I had a panic attack, so I made Michael have one. I started myself off with Michael, Polly and an OC since I don’t feel too confident in my ability to characterize any of the Shelbys yet.
Warnings: Details anxiety/panic attack and brief mention of sexual abuse and blood.
Word Count: 1.7k
The last time Michael’s teeth chattered so hard it was the middle of the summer a little more than two years prior to the moment he stood in. His little brother had fallen from the tree behind the church their mother shepherded them to every other Sunday when she had finished the baking early. Michael--he was still Henry then, was wearing his week’s cleanest clothes and his little brother tried his hardest to keep his pants clean as Michael chased him down the cobblestone road to the awaiting hymns and creaky wooden pews. They always sat in the back, whispering quietly to each other as their mother continued the well rehearsed dance of sit, stand, kneel and bowing her head in the second pew from the front. The moment he fell from that tree and didn’t spring up the way he usually did after a tumble down the creaky wooden stairs at home, Michael’s heart seized in his chest for a moment before the harsh thundering of his heart kicked up rapidly.
Now he sat on the steps in his pinstripe suit as his mother confessed the things weighing her down inside the dark confessional, his teeth chattering and hands trembling as he waited.
He could still hear the choking of Father Hughes if his breath quieted for too long. The shallow breaths could convince him that the same stench of copper and frankincense was filling his nostrils as it had that night, closing his eyes brought back the weight on his knees on that stone floor, the grip on his knife and dampening cassock between his fingers suddenly reappeared.
He could not stop reliving the murder he deserved to commit.
He had cornered him the same way Hughes had all those times.
He had cornered him the same way he knew the bastard had cornered other little ones, countless others, under the guise of confession or a one-on-one sermon or monitoring their penance to make sure it was done properly.
No matter how much he convinced himself he deserved it, Michael couldn’t shake the weight from his chest.
“Michael!”
He could have thought it was Polly if he had mistaken the excitement for urgency in the small voice that had called to him. It was accompanied not by the clicking of heels, but by the thudding of small shoes stolen handed down from an older brother figure or stolen from a smaller make believe niece that had told him his cousin Edith was making her way toward him. He looked up, the small girl’s cheeks rosy and spread with a wide smile as she raced toward him.
“Michael!” She repeated, almost a cheer as she neared him.
He tried his best to pull himself together, standing up and stubbing out his disappearing cigarette under his foot to give his hands an excuse to dig in his pockets, searching for his case and lighter. His chest rose slowly as he tried to stop his shaking, his body fighting against the tweed of his waistcoat and the weight of his coat pressed against his chest.
“Hello, Edith.” He forced a smile for the sake of the little girl, the neighborhood rascal Polly had spoken fondly of throwing herself against his legs and wrapping her small arms firmly around them.
“John said you were-” She panted loudly, her flair for the dramatics making Michael want to smile. “John said you were sad.”
“He did?” Michael spoke through his clenched teeth, afraid the rattling would startle the child. He looked down at her, raising his eyebrows as she pressed her chin into his stomach. “Why’d he said that, Edie girl?”
She narrowed her eyes, the corners of her lips turning upwards as she looked up at him. She looked at people too closely for Michael’s liking. She was nothing like his little brother had been-oblivious to others the way a child should be, only picking up on the big things that involved them.
Not their little Edith.
Edith had managed to pick up on Tommy’s scrutinizing observation and John’s big mouth, two things he was sure Polly would have beaten out of them if she knew the little girl would soak them up like a sponge.
“He said you were thinking a lot. The way he says I do when Tommy uses a tone or when Polly uses a tone when she catches me.”
“Doing something they’ve told you not to?” He felt himself smirk, taking a deep inhale of smoke. She nodded, pressing her cheek against the fabric of his suit and he dropped a shaky hand to busy itself trying to pull the visible knots out of her thick and curly hair, his blood thudding dully in his ears.
He was sure it was braided this morning, he remembered John squeezing her between the desk and his chair as she whined and writhed and attempted to escape the man’s makeshift braiding workshop. He tried to conjure up the image again, a squirming child in the overly masculine betting den ten minutes after open because she moved too slowly, much to Tommy’s annoyance.
“John makes me do jumping jacks when I get sad.”
It was so muffled by her smushed cheek and his rattling breaths he almost couldn’t make it out.
“Say again?” He leaned back a bit to try to look at her face.
“When I get upset and my breathing goes all-” She panted heavily, moving her shoulders up and down for a moment as she did. “John makes me do jumping jacks. He tried to make Arthur do them but Arthur told him to fuck off-” her lips clamed shut at the slip of her tongue, and she looked up at Michael with wide brown eyes.
“That’s just between us.” Michael felt himself wink, the little girl nodded and tugged gently on the wool of her sweater sleeves, bringing them over her cold hands. “Do them!”
Michael blinked his eyes in surprise.
“Come on, then!” Edith pried herself away from him, the lack of heat seemingly not bothering her in the chill of Birmingham’s winter. “He says twenty at a time.”
“Oh, and you can count to twenty now?” If it was teasing or trying to find a way out of a circuit of exercise on the street, Michael couldn’t tell.
“I can count to a hundred!” She puffed out her chest proudly. “I can count better than Finn.”
“So can little Katie.” Michael made the girl giggle at the mention of John’s youngest as he obliged, standing upright and tossing his cigarette to the ground. He moved his jaw a bit, his hand coming up to attempt to rub some tension away.
“Ready?” Edith bounced excitedly on her toes, nearly tipping over before Michael steadied her.
At his nod, she jumped and flung her arms up, her fingertips brushing together as she clumsily spread her legs out and snapped back together. Michael copied her movement, his a bit more agile than the ten year old’s. They repeated their action as Michael tried to ignore the quizzical looks of the passersby, Edith giggling happily as they bounced and she counted along proudly.
“Nine-”
“Where’s your coat, Edith?”
The small girl stopped abruptly, looking past Michael and up the church stairs. Polly walked down the stairs behind them, heels clicking on the damp grey stone as she pulled her scarf from around her neck. “You’ll catch a deadly cold out in this.”
Michael’s breath left him in puffs, his heart thundering in his chest but beginning to return to normal.
“I didn’t need one.”Edith panted, looking up at Polly as she fixed her scarf over the girl’s neck and shoulders the best she could. “I was running and I knew I’d get warm from it so I didn’t-”
“So John didn’t stop you, that’s it?” Polly pursed her lips as Edith looked to Michael for help. His mother turned on him and Michael tore his gaze from the soft brown eyes of the girl. “You could have wrapped her up in yours. I was only a moment.”
Michael cleared his throat. “We were warming up, anyways.” He slipped his hand into his pocket for a cigarette, cupping his hand around the end to light it. “Doing jumping jacks to keep her from running down the Lane. I figured everyone could do with a moment’s peace from Edith’s mayhem.”
Michael could see the little girl’s mouth open to declare that Michael’s told you a lie, Polly! The same way she had whenever Finn got away with a white lie on a whim, but she looked up at Polly with a grin that could clear Brimingham smog if she intended it to.
“My counting’s gotten good, Polly!” She clapped her small hands together, scrunching her nose up as Polly hummed. “Counted all the way up to a hundred without stopping.”
“Did you?” Polly humored the child, looking up to Michael with a soft hint of a smile.
Michael tilted his head to the side. “Close enough to it.”
Edith shivered against Polly, her teeth beginning to click together in the cold.
“Oh-see? Come on, Edith. Before the chill gets in there.” Polly softly tapped a finger to the left of Edith’s chest, grabbing a small hand in her own.
“Are we going to the Garrison, Polly?” She looked up at Polly then briefly down the road. “To see Arthur and them?”
“You’re going home, with me, for supper, Edith.” Polly gently tugged her hand as they started down the road at Polly’s pace.
“Wait!” Edith wrenched her hand from Polly’s practically throwing herself into Michael’s arms for a final goodbye.
“I’ll see you soon, Edith.” Michael lifted her up in a tight hug, taking a deep breath the same time she did, her weight against his front comforting and warm.
“Tomorrow.” She insisted, leaning back to press her clammy hands to his face. “We’ll play footy, with Finn.”
“Tomorrow.”Michael promised in the same tone he made business deals, no idea if he could fulfill it. “Footy. With Finn.”
“And biscuits.” She attempted to whisper, her small voice carrying.
“If-”
“If Polly lets us.” Michael interrupted his mother, raising his eyebrows at young girl in his arms before setting her down.
“Bye, Michael!” Edith skipped her way to Polly, her hand finding the older woman’s again.
Michael’s shoulders rose as he took a deep breath, taking in the smoke of the factories behind him and the dampness the morning’s snow had brought upon the cobblestone surrounding him. For a moment, there was no copper scent, no gurgling and no iron grip on holy clothes.
Just Birmingham, for the moment.
Just home.
#peaky blinders#polly gray#michael gray#polly shelby#michael shelby#peaky blinders fic#angst#fluff#edith#written by me
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Archangel Chapter 9: Mergers and Acquisitions
Format: Prose / Fiction, multi-entry
Part in Series: 1 of 9 (The Story So Far | The Beginning)
Word Count: c. 4,000
Summary: Now a contractor for the Marlow Partners Northeast Regional headquarters, Specialist Krueger recognizes the emergence of a disturbing trend in the field.
Warning(s): blood, violence, drug use
He released his hands from around her neck when she finally stopped struggling as he stood up to look down at her and study her chest, looking for stillness to indicate she wasn’t breathing anymore. When satisfied he ran his fingers first through the pockets of her hoodie, then her pants to find what he was after—a tiny bag half-filled with a chalky substance resembling powdered drywall.
He emptied the contents of the bag into a bent spoon and held a butane torch to its bottom, applying the heat in five-second intervals so as to only melt his prize down and not burn it, then placed a cotton ball into the puddle of fluid that had accumulated in the spoon. He applied his syringe to the cotton ball to draw the liquid out, inspected it, and stuck the needle into his arm to depress the plunger and lose his senses.
~~
He hadn’t felt the suppressor can when Milo Krueger, clad in a dark turtleneck sweater and tactical pants, arrived later and pressed the muzzle of his .45 ACP Colt Government against the back of his head, and didn’t protest when he thumbed back the hammer, tilted the handgun a little and squeezed the trigger. With his other gloved hand he caught the spent brass mid-flight and hung onto it a while to cool before placing it into his coat pocket and holstering his weapon. He turned his attention to the other body in the room and sat down on the bed next to it to study the poor girl’s pale face and lifeless expression, fearing the worst.
He un-gloved one of his hands to rest the backs of his fingers on her forehead, and pulled it back when he felt just how much cooler her skin was than his; confirming he was far too late to do anything to save her.
“Verdammt,” he exhaled, sitting at the foot of the bed she laid upon. He reached into his inside coat pocket to find his phone and dial her number. “It’s me,” Krueger said soon after she answered. “I found her.”
In his mind’s eye, he could see Elizabeth Khai straighten up in her chair at the news. “Can you get her out?” she asked.
“Not going to happen,” he continued, looking back down at her.
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Shit…” Khai sighed on the other end of the line. “I’ll talk to Isaac and let him know what happened,” she conceded. “Come back to the branch, he’ll want to hear it from you.”
“Understood.” Krueger shut the phone and returned it to his coat pocket before standing up again. He looked down at the girl one last time and offered her a silent apology before turning for the exit.
On his way out he took another glance at the man he just executed, and spotted track marks and bruises running up the length of his left arm. Directly below his fingertips was a syringe half-full of a cloudy solution.
He’d seen that same substance in half-depleted syringes enough times over the last few months to recognize the emerging trend and deduce the circumstances behind the homicide. He would address this when he returned to the branch.
~~~~
Krueger stepped through the glass doors of the office and made his way to the conference room, where he knew Khai and Hayden would be that afternoon.
“Hi, Mr. Krueger,” Danielle said from behind her desk. “They’re just wrapping up another meeting, you can head right in.”
He offered her a nod. “Danke,” he added. He made his way through the hallway and stepped through the double doors, then quietly sat himself down by the foot of a long table in the center of the room as Khai and Isaac Hayden conferred with another person at the other end. Hayden and the other person he didn’t recognize were standing as they talked while Khai sat.
“With respect, Mr. Hayden,” the other man presented his case, “my guys aren’t super comfortable with the idea of being monitored twenty-four-seven. They’ve always found their own pace; that’s when they do their best work.”
“And what kind of work is it they’re doing, Mr. Leo?” Hayden enquired. “I haven't seen a report from your group in months now, have I?” He wore a dark gray pinstriped suit and white shirt with a rosewood red tie and pocket square. “Can I trust that you can maintain control over your operation from a distance?”
“Of course you can,” Leo snapped. “My guys are rock solid, I got no problem letting them do their thing. But they can’t perform the way they have been if your people are watching them all the time, that’s all I’m saying.”
“It’s not supervision,” Hayden lectured, “it’s reassurance. We all know how it is you've made your fortune; nobody here is in the dark on what goes on at the street level. But I remain unconvinced that you’re willing to leave your past behind… and your judgement on the matter is no longer considered sound.”
Leo recoiled, visibly offended by what Hayden said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means your two weeks’ notice has been filed and processed. It will take me some time to find a suitable replacement for you, and you may continue your work as usual during the interim. But the next time you and I speak, it will be about the process of transition.” He gestured the exit, dismissing him. “You can let yourself out, Mr. Leo.”
Leo briefly clenched his fists, then loosened them as he turned away from Khai and Hayden and headed past Krueger toward the door.
When Leo was gone, Krueger stood up and approached the other two people in the room.
“Miss Khai made me aware of what happened this morning in the Rockaways,” Hayden said as he turned to address Krueger. “I’ve sent my condolences to the mother and father, and made burial arrangements.”
Krueger nodded. “There was another syringe there,” he said. “Narcotics.”
“Dragon Tears,” Khai confirmed, standing to match the other men in the room with her and freeing one hand from her note pad to adjust her glasses. She wore a navy blue skirt suit with black tights and round-toe pumps, her hair down past her shoulders. “The new deluxe heroin that’s dominated the headlines all over the East Coast as of late.”
“Is this us?”
Khai hesitated a little. “Not directly,” she said. “We levy steep fees to allow the stuff into the Tri-state, but none of our people distribute. Mr. Hayden is adamant about that.”
“You may not agree with our handling of the material, Mr. Krueger,” Hayden explained, “but understand—it is simply too profitable an opportunity to pass… and our, regulation, doubles as quality control for both the vendors and their clientele.”
Krueger nodded, keeping his disapproval to himself. “I see…” He gestured the exit, referring to Leo. “And your last conversation?”
“Tyson Leo was a small-time dealer,” Khai elaborated. “Until he got connected with a supplier of the Dragon Tears and expanded his network to encompass all of southeastern Long Island. That’s when he showed up on my radar. At first, Mr. Hayden and I let him keep the drugs in exchange for forty percent of what he makes from them. But now that we’ve folded him in formally, we ordered him to walk away from the drugs.”
“Mr. Leo is a capable leader,” Hayden added, “respected among his peers, but he's restricted by his myopic aspirations. I had hoped he could rise above the chaff and prove himself superior to his associates; I was wrong. The goal of becoming a narcotics kingpin was too deeply rooted in his actions for him to change his ways…” Hayden gathered his coat and slipped it on over his suit. “But there may yet be a way forward,” he mused. “You’ll head to Patchogue tonight, Mr. Krueger. Observe his den from a distance and report what you see.”
Again, Krueger kept his objections to himself. “Understood.”
“You and I will speak soon. Good day to you both.” Hayden exited the conference room, leaving Khai and Krueger alone with each other.
Khai placed her pen and pad on the table top after Hayden had left the room. “I guess that means we’ll need a rain check for our dinner plans.”
“So scheint es,” Krueger noted. He offered her a sorrowful smirk. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“I know you will,” Khai said. She shot him a wink before turning to head toward her desk. “I’ll have CJ meet you in the armory downtown,” she continued as she took her seat. “He talked about updating our inventory and replacing a few things, so I let him order a small shipment to field test. I would very much appreciate your help with that.”
“Do you think I’ll run into much trouble on a recon assignment?”
“Nothing you can’t handle,” she noted with a mischievous smirk, lacing her fingers together and resting her forearms on the desk top.
“Of course,” he said. “I’ll see what Young Mr. Silvio has for me.” Krueger took his leave, allowing Khai to finalize the funeral arrangements for the girl.
~~~~
Krueger inspected and approved of the reconnaissance equipment when he made it to the armory later that afternoon. “Miss Khai said you’re updating the inventory here?” he said.
“Yep,” CJ replied. “Figure if this place is one of my responsibilities, I’d better make sure it’s up and running without a hitch.”
“Agreed,” he noted, leaning against a workstation and crossing his arms, “but having your associates learn a set of completely new and unfamiliar tools at this point is far from advantageous.”
“Well, that’s why you’re here,” he jested. “To teach us your ways, impart your knowledge. Besides, this is a new branch, Krueger. A new branch needs a new armory. Speaking of which…” CJ Silvio reached up and pulled one of the new arrivals from the wall—a polymer framed handgun resembling a cross between a Glock 17 and a HK P30. “Steyr M,” he said, handing it to Krueger to inspect. “Nine millimeter. The sights are supposed to be better than the competition, and they’re cheaper than Five-sevens.”
Krueger familiarized himself with the feel and weight of the weapon. He held the weapon in a weaver stance and looked down the sights, making sense of the unfamiliar picture composed of a trapezoidal rear notch and triangular front blade. “Suppressor?”
“You bet.” He handed Krueger a suppressor and a pair of fifteen-round magazines. “Let me know how it goes, yeah?”
Krueger attached the can to the end of the handgun and looked down the sights again, dry-firing to get a sense of the trigger weight. “Ja.” He accepted both magazines, sliding one into the handgun and engaging the safety. He placed the other in one of the pockets of his pants before heading for the exit.
~~~~
Krueger observed a one-story house on Carman Street through his binoculars from behind his windshield, the directional microphone resting on the car roof pointed toward the house. Even at this hour the crowds were gathered in force a few blocks north on Main Street, hopping from bar to bar as they satisfied their fleshly desires. He found a measure of solace in the fact that he still had a few short years to go before his daughter Victoria would spend any amount of time or money in this town—and if she did, it would be on Main Street, not at some drug den.
He watched and listened for hours, the microphone’s earbud in one ear and his communicator in the other. “Leo hasn’t come out of the house since he got there,” he said into the receiver. “He’s in with four other men his age.”
“His lieutenants,” Hayden surmised. “Have they had other visitors?”
“Food delivery… and UPS.” Krueger watched the door and partially obscured windows for any sign of activity that would confirm or deny Hayden’s suspicions; whatever shadows he could see through them weren’t giving him any clues. He watched in silence until a person wearing a hooded sweatshirt came into view and walked up to the door. “Hold on,” Krueger noted. “I might have something…”
The person in the hoodie—Krueger couldn’t tell from this distance whether it was a man or woman—knocked on the door four times. Then the door was cracked open a tiny bit, and the hooded figure tried to discreetly hand the person on the other side of the door a crumpled fistful of dollar bills before the door shut. Krueger saw right through it; this person was buying something.
The door opened again and the hooded person accepted a bag of powder from the one behind it. The hooded person took the bag and stepped away from the house, stuffing it in his or her pants pocket as he or she did, then headed down the street toward wherever he or she would spend the night.
“You were right to suspect Mr. Leo,” Krueger commented. “Someone just bought drugs from the house.”
Krueger heard Hayden sigh on the other end. “Then I believe it’s time to shut him down… Scuttle the operation,” he ordered.
“And Leo?”
“Crew expendable.”
Krueger only had a moment’s pause before reaching up through the moon roof to retrieve the directional microphone and put the binoculars away. “Understood.” He deactivated his communicator and shut the engine off, then reached into his coat for his handgun to disengage the safety and chamber the first round. He exited the car and strode down half the block to the house.
When he arrived, he knocked on the door four times at the observed frequency, then drew his weapon and held its muzzle against the door. As soon as the knob twisted and the door opened a little, held by a chain lock, Krueger pressed his weight against the door to hold it open while he fired twice through the door into the person standing behind it. He kicked the door free, knocking the wounded person to the floor before raising his gun and finishing him with two more shots.
Krueger turned his attention toward one other person scrambling for cover behind a doorway, raised his weapon, and put him down with a single well-placed shot. He proceeded deeper into the house, peering around the corner into the kitchen area and dropping the two people there with accurate shots placed between Ziploc bags of off-white powder and triple beam balance scales resting on the table.
He listened for more movement around him, and hearing none, proceeded deeper into the house. He went room to room hunting Leo, and found him curled up on a mattress on the floor, passed out with a depleted syringe in his hand. Krueger raised his gun one-handed, hesitating for a moment before lining up the sights and squeezing the trigger to execute him.
“Weak,” he commented, lowering the weapon.
Krueger returned his gun to the holster and placed his hands in his coat pockets as he walked back down the hallway to the front door, careful not to place his step in the growing puddles of blood on the floor as he headed out the house and back down Carman Street to his car. He entered the vehicle and sat down behind the wheel, starting the engine and fishing his phone out of his inside pocket to report to Hayden as he drove off.
~~~~
Krueger keyed open his front door and stepped into his home in Rego Park when he arrived an hour later. He hung his coat and weapon holster on the rack in the corner next to Khai’s and sat down on the adjacent bench to remove his boots as Khai addressed him from his kitchenette, the evening news on in the background.
“How was Patchogue?” she said from behind her laptop screen.
“Messy,” he replied as he stepped out of his boots and lifted his turtleneck sweater off himself, revealing a black A-shirt which his lean athletic frame filled perfectly. “Had to close business… I tested Silvio’s new arrival,” he added as he walked up to her. “It worked very well.”
“Well,” she noted, standing to greet him in an oversized sweater and a pair of leggings, “he’s grown a lot since Williamsburg. I’d expect no less.” She properly greeted him by wrapping one arm around his neck and planting a string of long kisses on his mouth as she ran her other hand through his hair. These days he had allowed his military fade haircut to grow a little, and it took on a messier look which she liked.
Krueger returned her affections in kind, holding her close by her waist as he kissed her.
When they broke contact, Khai noticed an expression she hadn’t seen in his eyes in a long time—doubt. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Leo,” he said after a brief pause.
“That bad, huh?”
“Hayden was right to suspect him. He was dealing; I called it in, and he had me wipe them out. And I did without a second thought.”
“It can’t be the first time you cleaned up a heroin den.”
“Far from it, but it was never… an associate.” He stopped himself from saying one of his own.
Khai nodded, understanding exactly where his objection came from. She reached back up and rested her hand on his cheek “It never feels right when it’s somebody we work with,” she said, “and Isaac wouldn’t have given you the order if there were any other way.” Her hand rested on his chest now, feeling the pulse of his beating heart. “You did the right thing, Milo. I promise.”
“Suppose I’ll have to trust your judgement there,” he added resting his hand on top of hers.
“I’ve been right so far, haven’t I?” she jested, reclaiming her seat.
“Well, there was that one thing with Osiris,” he added, matching her tone. He went to the kitchen to fix himself a plate of the food she’d prepared.
“It worked out in the end, didn’t it?”
“Sure it did,” he chuckled. He placed himself down across the table from her as he ate, turning his attention to the news behind her. “Vas ist das?” he queried.
“Hm?” Khai followed his gaze to the television behind her. “Oh, they’re following a story about PMC operators in a few cities across the country.”
“A private military company here in the States?”
“Yep. Castle Security Solutions,” she said, turning her laptop around for him to see. “They’ve grown like a weed since U.S. Armed Forces starting pulling out of combat zones across the world. In the early days they’ve replaced the troops in those areas of the world where there was still work available, but recently they started providing additional support for law enforcement. You know, ‘handling the more dangerous parts so the guys and girls in blue can protect and serve.’ So it goes.”
“Do you believe any of that?”
Khai shrugged. “As a citizen, I can’t dispute the results they’ve achieved in the cities they’ve been deployed—Detroit, Memphis, Albuquerque…”
“But as controller of the Branch?” Krueger suggested, placing a forkful of beef and broccoli in his mouth.
“A private militarized police force, with no obligation to anything but the bottom line… that can sink us. Such a presence wouldn’t be caught up in the same bureaucratic obstacles as the regular police that allow organizations like the Marlow Partners to operate just outside of what’s legal. Criminal justice staples like warrants and probable cause will be thrown out for ideals like unfounded suspicion, hearsay, and personal grudges.” She shuddered as she considered the implications of what she just said. “I like to think it’ll never happen in New York but still,” she continued, reclaiming Krueger’s heterochromatic eyes. “I can’t shake the feeling that we’re just one bad deal away from signing our own death warrants… We’ll have to be extra careful, going forward.”
~~~~
A man in dark slacks and a white shirt pulled his SUV as close to the crime scene as he could get, then stopped the engine and stepped out of the vehicle. He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his topcoat as he ducked below the police tape and approached the house on Carman Street, illuminated by the flashing red and blue lights of first responders.
Some uniformed officers took eyewitness statements as crime scene investigators took photos of the scene. The man in the coat wove between them as he made his way to the kicked-in door and peered inside, noting the body with four bullet wounds laid out in the foyer, already marked and noted by the investigators.
“Hey,” one of the officers got his attention. “Can I help you somehow?” His uniform sported a Sergeant’s stripes.
“Hey there,” the newcomer responded in a rich, gravelly baritone. “This your crime scene, Sergeant..?”
“Allers,” the officer said. “And yeah, it’s mine. Who did you say you were?”
“Peter Cross,” he said. “United States Government.” He quickly flashed Allers an ID and badge. “You know what this place was?”
“I heard rumors,” Allers said. “Some kind of heroin nest.”
“Looks like more than that to me.”
“And you know this based on your expertise?” Allers questioned. “I’m sorry, you said you were U.S. Government, right? Which agency, FBI? DEA?”
“Not really,” Cross said, shaking his head. “When the DEA shits the bed, I’m the guy they call to change the sheets.” He thumbed over his shoulder in the direction of the house. “Now I’ve seen enough of these dens to know a thing or two about them, so if you like,” he suggested as he took a few steps toward Allers, “I think it would be mutually beneficial for me to stick around for a little bit. Share some insight…” He grinned wryly at the other man.
Allers shrugged. “If you think we missed something, you’re welcome to take a second look Agent Cross.”
“Cool…” He gestured the open door. “Why don’t you show me inside, Sergeant Allers?”
“Follow me.” Allers led Cross to the kitchen area, where the drugs and money was being documented, collected, and marked as evidence. “At first we thought this was a typical gangland hit for the product and the money,” he explained, “but they usually don’t leave the goods behind in raids like that… doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
Cross looked around the room, noting the bodies beside them. He recalled the other one by the door as he played the events in his head as he deduced they played. He gestured the bags of contraband. “Is that what I think it is?”
“The super heroin? Looks like it, but we’ll have to wait for the lab results to be sure.”
“Uh-huh…” Cross leaned against the countertop as he rested his hands on his hips. He looked over to where the kitchen emptied into the central hallway leading to rooms he hadn’t seen yet. “How many bodies?”
“Five, the four you’ve seen plus one more in the master bedroom.”
“You ID any of them?”
“Yeah, we have IDs on all of them,” Allers noted. “These four are nobodies but the one in the master bedroom got our attention: Tyson Leo.”
“Leo..! Son of a bitch…” Cross snapped his fingers as he put the picture together. “Well you’re right about one thing, Sergeant—this was a hit. The work of a professional. Somebody here was out to make a point, not a profit… Share this with the rest of the Suffolk PD,” he suggested, standing up straight again. “This isn’t the first drug den I’ve been to in the last few weeks and I’m betting it won’t be the last.” He headed for the door. “And if I were a betting boy, this drug crisis is going to get a lot bloodier before it goes away.”
“And this is the year they cut our budget,” Allers scoffed, crossing his arms. “Figures.”
“Damn shame,” Cross added. “It would sure be nice if somebody were still around to do fill the gaps in that budget, no?”
(Masterlist | Chapter 10)
#fiction#original work#original content#original fiction#prose#short story#creative writing#drama#thriller#crime story
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Hey mom? Who are the 5 Mafia!Beej leaders and their bases? they sound really cool!
hoo boy i am so glad you asked i actually made an outline for each of these suave motherfuckers
Italian Don: Scarafaggio, or Gio
Fronts: Private museum owner. Deals in black market art and artifacts.
Speaks: Italian
Appearance:
-Hair slicked back, always one little errant strand lying across his forehead. Black at the roots, green at the tips.
-Wears impeccably tailored suits, pinstriped in black and white. Occasionally they’ll be a red scarf in his breast pocket or a red tie.
-All five have a pinky ring with a beetle etched into it.
-Gold tooth
-Wears a lot of jewelry; expensive watch, lots of rings, etc.
-Owns a lot of leather driving gloves, even though he never drives himself anywhere.
-Usually carries a cane, prefers dark wood with silver or glass heads.
Personality:
-Rather hot-headed, shortest fuse of the three
-Goes absolutely feral on people who disrespect his s/o or his business partners.
-Doesn’t really do displays of affection, has a hard time expressing emotions.
-His love language is gifts, he’ll absolutely shower his s/o in presents.
-Has a taste for luxury and decadence.
Attributes/Skills:
-Best at first aid/patching up and bandaging wounds. Has sewn his own gashes before. Lots of scars underneath the clothing, though none on his face. Yet.
-Sings beautifully, has this rich baritone croon. Loves to sing a duet with his s/o
-Drinks scotch, brandy, cognac. Always the top shelf stuff.
-Smokes Cuban cigars.
-Actually a decent cook, but never does it unless s/o is doing it with him.
-Can do the Jitterbug and the Charleston. Refuses to unless his s/o is his partner. Slow dances are just swaying with your hand in his and his palm pressing to your back.
-Quite a good artist, hides his talent.
Russian Don: “Zhuk.”
Front: Luxury resort owner, general investor. Deals in illegal firearms.
Speaks: Russian
Appearance:
-Tall. Very tall. Barrel-chested, broad-shouldered. Built like a brick house.
-Longer hair, about down to the back of his neck. Not long enough to pull into a ponytail, but long enough to play with. Like Scara’s, his hair is black at the roots, but there aren’t much roots showing through. Most of his hair is green.
-Wears almost all black all the time, very monochromatic. Black turtlenecks under Armani suit jackets. Very sleek.
-Has tiny rectangular reading glasses. His eyesight is fine, it’s all just part of the appearance. Makes him look intelligent.
-Tiny streaks of silver at his temples that don’t change with his mood ring hair.
-Aside from the pinky ring, he sometimes wears a gold chain. Has a nondescript but very expensive watch around his wrist.
Personality:
-The most even-tempered and calm of the three. Exudes an air of dignity and refinement.
-Slow to anger, though when angered is absolutely the most fearsome.
-Does not tolerate self degradation.
-Definitely has the most top energy of the three.
-Despite his size, he's incredibly gentle with his s/o, both in touch and in tone.
-Protective. Has a tendency to hover if he's worried.
-Is not shy about showing affection or telling s/o exactly how he feels
-Authoritative. Expects to be obeyed.
-Showers his lover in praise, in a mix of English and Russian. The only trouble is, the praise and the dirty talk are spoken in the same gentle tone, so his s/o doesnt know which it is until he lapses back into English.
Attributes/Skills:
-Drinks vodka almost exclusively. Kind of a snob about his liquor.
-Smokes hand-rolled cigarettes out of a little chased-silver case he keeps tucked in his coat pocket
-Plays the piano. Can also play the harp, but he’s not as good at it.
-Has a soft spot for animals, dogs in particular.
-Is the most partial to baths of the three, most likely has his own persona sauna and bathhouse
-Can ballroom dance; despite his size, he's quite graceful.
-Has a scar across his left eyebrow.
-Very much into the predator/prey play, though he doesnt have much a tolerance for games or teasing. If he's hunting you, you'd better come up with a strategy or it will be short.
Irish Mafia Don: “Ciarog,” or Cia
Front: Pub owner. Runs an illegal bare knuckle boxing ring
Speaks: Gaelic
Appearance:
-Long hair, little bit past his shoulders, all green
-Freckles across his cheeks, all down his arms
-Heavily tattooed, especially on the hands and arms.
-Shortest of the five, though he’s only an inch or so smaller than Gio
-Wears earth tones, greys and greens mostly. Button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up, green vest, grey wool pants, and a flat newsboy cap
-Wears a rosary around his neck. Like Zhuk’s glasses, it’s just for show.
-Has thick calluses on his knuckles, as well as lots of scars on his hands. They’re hardly noticeable with all the tattoos, but close inspection reveals them.
-Wears more rings than Gio, though his are of slightly worse quality. They’re not for show, they’re meant to deal damage to whoever he has to pummel.
Personality:
-Laid back, very flirty. Almost doesn’t seem like a mob boss at first, always cracking jokes.
-Loves games of any kind, especially riddles and guessing games.
-Quick to anger, but quick to calm as well.
-Likes being outside more than the other two, has an appreciation for nature
-Definitely a switch.
-When he gets excited or angry, he'll speak in a mix of English and Gaelic. The more emotion he shows, the more Gaelic slips out.
Attributes/Skills:
-Can play the violin/fiddle. Knows just about every drinking song there is. Loves performing in his pub with his s/o
-Has an extensive knife collection.
-Doesn't have the steps of any particular dance, but can whirl you around a room so fast your head will spin.
-Whiskey and scotch are his preferred drinks.
-At any given moment has at least three weapons hidden on his person.
-Most lenient of the three
-Can use fae magic, even though he's not exactly on friendly terms with them.
-Collects enchanted trinkets. Between his knives and his trinkets he's a bit of a pack rat
Cajun Crime Lord: “Scarabee,” or Bee
Front: Riverboat casino runner. Distributes moonshine and runs illegal gambling dens
Speaks: French Creole
Appearance:
-Same height as Gio
-Hair colored like Cia’s, all green, but cut shorter than the rest and styled into a bit of a pomp.
-Wears a suit of gold paisley, has a necklace of various species of teeth (some animal, some human) around his neck, along with silk gloves on his hands
-Carries a cane, but unlike Gio’s his is connected to his magic and glows to match his hair.
-He’s got a bit of a crazy eye, when he grins, he can look a little unhinged. The heterochromia doesn’t help that, with one green iris and one purple
-His teeth are inexplicably a little bit sharper than the other’s.
Personality:
-Playful, teasing, not shy at all
-Biggest top after Zhuk
-Has the biggest bloodlust, likes to get his hands dirty
-The angrier he gets, the bigger he grins, and it’s a little terrifying.
-Also expects to be obeyed; he and Zhuk get into a lot of pissing contests over this.
-Definitely the type to throw elaborate, crazy parties in his manor or on his riverboat.
-His accent gets super thick when he’s excited or angry, so much so it’s hard to tell the difference between English and Creole.
Attributes/Skills:
-Actually a really good cook, loves sharing recipes with his s/o
-Skilled in voodoo and witchcraft, has shadow powers
-Has pet gators that live in the swamp out back of his property. Please don’t ask what he feeds them.
-Drinks pretty much anything, but is partial to moonshine
-Smokes Virginia Slims
-Definitely gets high on a regular basis
-Terrific swing dancer.
Spanish Crime Lord: “Escarabajo,” or Bajo
Front: Owns a string of private nightclubs. Operates a drug running ring, cocaine and marijuana
Speaks: Spanish
Appearance:
-His dress is very monochromatic, sticking mostly to black and white. Sometimes you can catch a flash of red.
-Open-throated shirts and tight pants. Very Zorro-esque.
-Wears a silver medallion around his neck with the Virgin Mary on it. Like Zhuk’s glasses or Cia’s rosary, it’s all for show.
-Silver teeth. Some back teeth, but most noticeably, his top canines.
-Slicked back hair, like Gio’s is mostly black with green just at the tips, but closer in length to Zhuk’s. Has the thickest hair of the five.
-Black leather gloves. Unlike Gio and Bee, who are always wearing theirs, he’s seen without them just as much as with them.
Personality:
-The most flirtatious. You thought Cia was bad? Bajo is on thirst hours 25/8.
-It takes a lot to make him angry, though he’s quick to cool down. Most level aside from Zhuk.
-Tells a lot of jokes. His are only a little bit better than Cia’s.
-Likes leaving little gifts and trinkets for his s/o. More often than not, you’ll wake up to find a single rose on your pillow.
-Most charitable of the lot. They have orphanages and boarding schools set up in each of their home countries, and it was his idea to start them.
-Oddly wise. The best to go to for life advice (if you want to avoid one of Zhuk’s lectures, that is).
Attributes/Skills:
-Plays the guitar. He and Cia often duet.
-Amateur sharpshooter. He won’t be winning any contests, but he’s by far and away the best shot of the five.
-Has a green thumb. Loves to grow things; flowers, fruits, vegetables, herbs, you name it. Has land dedicated to his plants on each of their shared estates, as well as his own small farm back home.
-An absolute god at the tango.
-A switch for sure, but is probably the most eager bottom of the five.
-Praise kink? Praise kink.
(tagging @yankyo @realmonsterboyhours @beetlejuicebeadoll @sapphic-florals @dilfyjuice @wolfie-doggo and the other members of my discord just in case i’ve forgotten something or if they would like to add anything.)
#beetlejuice#beetlejuice the musical#mafia!beej#the conglomerate#this is what happens#this is what happens when you throw thirsty monsterfuckers in the same discord#we go fucking rabid
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#278: Atum Syncretism Synchronizing with Santos Bonacci and Eddie Bravo from Sam Tripoli on Vimeo.
Thank you for tuning in for another episode of Tin Foil Hat with Sam Tripoli. This episode we welcome back TFH OG, Eddie Bravo, and the Universal Truth Scholar, Santos Bonacci, to discuss how it's all Atum Syncretism Synchronizing and how we live one of the 7 Realms! Thank you so much for your support.
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Welcome To Grail Academy - Chapter Twenty-one: Something Soon
Calicem was a diverse city, but a heavily segregated one as well. The rich pushed most of the working-class citizens out of their homes and neighborhoods years ago, planning to renovate the abandoned buildings left behind but never actually starting any projects. The communities that still fought against the gentrification were all grouped together in one sector of the city, and it was in one of these neighborhoods that a famous diner stood, like a beacon in the darkness: Peach’s Diner. This is where Yorick sat, huddled in a booth with his hands around a tall glass containing a vanilla milkshake and a curly straw. As he slurped on his drink in silence, Rettah plucked the cherry on top and popped it into her mouth, interrupting the anecdote she was sharing.
“-And he never even called me back! Can you believe that?” She chewed on the tooth-rottingly sweet red bubble.
“No way, he didn’t want to talk to a girl who sawed the legs off all of his furniture? That’s crazy!” Queenie responded with sarcasm, but they both knew it was a joke, and the girls laughed.
“It’s still not as bad as Scarlet’s last boyfriend, ha!” Queenie jostled Scarlet sitting next to her, making the chunk of cake on his fork plop onto his plate with a splatter of icing. He used the back of his sleeve to wipe some frosting off his face, mumbling a quiet, “Yeah, he was a total weirdo.”
Queenie slid a napkin towards the center of the table, showing all the notes and lines scribbled on it in pen. “Okay, our guy is waiting at the club next door. This should be a normal trade, but the buyer is a little….paranoid.” Yorick leaned forward to look at the napkin, eyes scanning over the plan. He asked Queenie, “What exactly do we get in return for these trades?”, and she shrugged her shoulders underneath the poofy letterman jacket decorating her torso.
“Depends,” she started, “Information, coordinates and defenses on our enemies, recipes or ingredients for Boost products, new recruits, whatever Sable values as important. This one is for blueprints of a few buildings she wants to use as outposts.”
Yorick nodded and spooned the last bit of whipped cream out from the bottom of the glass with his fingers, popping it into his mouth. Queenie and Scarlet stood up, the leader of their team slapping a few Lien on the table while their teammates left the diner to scope out their checkpoints for the meeting. “I got this one, you guys go ahead and scout.”
Bernard closed the door to the bathroom behind him. He turned the faucet to the shower on and let the water run until it heated up, meanwhile setting his scroll on the edge of the sink. His teammates had yet to return to the dorm room after their exams, so he took this bit of alone time to clean himself up. He pressed the play button on his scroll’s screen, and jumped into the shower while music played from its speakers. He didn’t consider himself to be a good singer, but that didn’t stop him from crooning out the words to his favorite song as he washed his hair. This was the one time he allowed himself to be vocal and dynamic, when nobody else was around. His out-of-tune rendition of an old rock n’ roll song paused just before the chorus, because the ringing of a call on his scroll stopped the music. The warm water from the shower faucet dripped down his chest, following the trails of various scars and old wounds before they were trapped by a soft towel. He answered the call while he dried his hair.
“Hello?”
“¿Como va tu entrenamiento, Bernie?” The voice on the other line made him shiver. He knew who it was, but that wasn’t his mother. Bernard looked at the lesions and blemishes across his chest the foggy mirror, draping the towel over his shoulder.
“....Qué deseas.”
“¿No puedo revisar a mi estudiante estrella?”
“Qué es lo que realmente quieres.”
“....Los planes han cambiado. Necesitamos que termines tu entrenamiento y vuelvas a casa. Hay trabajo que hacer.”
Bernard was quiet. Not out of choice, but because he didn’t know how to respond. The voice on the other line filled the lack of noise for him, though.
“Sería una pena si tuviéramos que poner a tu hermana en el sistema. Usted tomó ella lugar para mantenerla fuera de peligro. Hazlo por ella.”
“Tres meses.”
“Demasiado largo. No empujes tu suerte. Un mes.” The person hung up, and the chorus of the song played again. It didn’t have the same impact on him that it did before, ringing through the now hollow emptiness he felt in his chest.
The factory homebase of the Hedge Witches was much larger than most would expect. Yes, there was the actual factory portion where shipments were made, and the courtyard connecting the greenhouse to the main building, the field behind it, and the array of repurposed storage rooms used as offices, but there was much left to explore. The black haired boy who sat in on meetings held by the organization’s leaders, arms crossed and sitting on a crate when he was supposed to be taking notes, cautiously moved down a long stairwell. His only source of light came from candles mounted on the walls, which flickered rhythmically as he walked past each one, like a dance of warning to turn back. He wasn’t afraid. The stairs opened into a narrow hallway in the basement, a level of the headquarters few people had ever actually seen. This area looked older than the building on top of it, and it reminded him of ancient catacombs more than a dusty cellar. As he made his way through the crypt, the boy took time to acknowledge how the brick walls and wooden floors were now covered in dirt and mud, packed on in layers like an animal den. The end of the hallway opened up into another oddly shaped room, a mud-shaped cave that ended at a near wall, and an extremely high ceiling. At one point, it was a smokestack that puffed fumes from the taffy factory. But now, the floor of it was covered in silk pillows and cushions. The boy looked up to the tall, open center of the pillar that shone a foggy grey sky through a mess of black webs and nets wrapped around its walls. “You needed me?” He shouted up, listening as his voice bounced off the walls of the structure in echoes.
The black netting shifted and changed shape, and slowly, Sable lowered herself onto the pillows by her hair like a ribbon-dancing acrobat. Her locks stayed where they were, except for the few that held her head and waist like a harness. “Yes.” The sway in her walk gave her body the shape of melting wax, her movements resembling the dancing flickers of the candle flames at the entrance as she stepped over the lush cushioned bedding on the floor.
“I need you to run an errand for me. Yorick’s semblance training is moving at a….less than reasonable pace. We have to speed up the process.” She handed Hari a tattered comic book. The ink on the cover was faded, but the title, Blue Inferno vs Doctor Bloodlust, was still readable. He took it, running his hand over the figures of a masked vigilante fighting a man in a lab coat, both of them clad in futuristic armor and shooting lasers at one another. The art style of the book has not aged well, the blue spandex on the story’s hero looked to be riding up a bit too high in some rather unappealing places. “How long do you think a trip to Atlas will take?”
“Two days, if I leave right now.”
“Good. Find Azura, follow her to their home. Take anything that you think will spark memories for him.”
“Anything?”
“Anything.”
Hari rolled up the comic and tucked it under his arm, and Sable’s hair spread to make an opening in the tower’s ceiling. He crouched down, pulled at the neckline of his tank top, and looked up through the hole into the sky. “Oh!” Sable remembered, advising him, “Bring a coat, I hear it’s cold in Atlas this time of year.”
Hari rolled his eyes, “I’ll be fine, mom.”
“I know you will, but I get worried!” She hugged him and planted a big wet kiss on his cheek, which he immediately wiped off in embarrassment and disgust.
“Goodbye, sweetie! Stay safe! I love you!” She clasped her hands over her chest, giving Hari a patient look while she waited for him to repeat the phrase. He groaned loudly and turned his back to her, groaning “....I love you too, mom,” before he sprung out of the crouch and disappeared out the mouth of the smokestack in a swirl of black hair and feathers.
Yorick’s hands were getting sweaty again. It was a strange sensation when it was paired with the frigid cold from his milkshake glass. The drink was long finished, he wasn’t even holding the cup. But the club he followed Rettah into after Scarlet and Queenie scouted it out put him off. It wasn’t exactly his scene. Rowdy biker bars full of criminals and drunks weren’t his preferred spot. The raucous laughing and shouting pounded at his ear drums, and the constant shattering of bottles and metal music on the jukebox in the corner didn’t help. He would have killed for a smoke right about now, to calm his nerves. A gang of bikers hunched over a pool table, one of them with a thick beard reminiscing about the good old days. Like some kind of miracle sent by an angel, the miscreant flicked half a cigarette butt onto the floor at Yorick’s feet, apparently finished. Avoiding eye contact with the group of men, he sneakily picked up the butt from the floor before someone stepped on it and snuffed it out. He took a couple of puffs and followed Rettah the rest of the way to a booth at the back of the bar, where their friends waited. Their path was blocked by a crowd of people waiting in line for the bathroom, so the girl grabbed Yorick’s wrist and pulled him through the sea of ruffians. On the other side of the line, Queenie leaned forward over the table of their booth and negotiated with a lanky man in a burgundy pinstripe suit. Scarlet scooched further into the booth to make room for the other two to sit down, and Rettah skipped over giddily with Yorick trailing behind.
“You have been very generous to me, and I appreciate that.” The man combed a strand of hair neatly back into place on his head of grey hair, eyeing Queenie. “But I want something in return for these goods. Understand?”
“Whatever you need. Money, Boost, supplies, we can provide it.” Queenie rapped her knuckles against the wooden table.
“Protection.” The man shifted in his seat, the gold pins on his lapel reflecting the light hanging over them. “I want a guaranteed alliance with the Hedge Witches. The way I see it, you need someone on the inside, and I need someone to keep me safe if you want this job done correctly.”
Scarlet tugged on the sleeve of Queenie’s jacket, whispering something into her ear. She nodded, and held her hand out to the man. He took it and shook, then glanced over his shoulder to make sure nobody was watching them. Under the table, he handed an orange envelope to Scarlet, who folded the package and hid it between his knees. “Pleasure doing business with you, Mister Reed.”
Reed picked up his hat from one of the coat hooks on the sides of the booth, placing it on his head and leaving the bar without another word. The four of them made sure he was out the door before they pulled the envelope out. Scarlet wedged his nail under the fold on the paper, ripping the top open and pouring its contents onto the table. “What is it,” Rettah asked. Queenie turned the papers over, and showed them the detailed blueprints of Grail Academy’s clocktower.
#rwby#rwby oc#team ebny#ebny#grail academy#grail#welcome to grail academy#fanfic#fanfiction#rwby fanfic#rwby fanfiction#rwby oc fanfic#rwby oc fanfiction#oc fanfic#oc fanfiction#oc#writing#punk#drug tw#violence tw#drugs#violence#esmerelda#bernard#nico#yorick
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People Will Talk: Part 1
Summary: Atticus Gold and relative newcomer Belle French have developed a relationship no one in Storybrooke approves of, and people make their opinion known in small-minded, small-town fashion: he’s too old for her, and the pretty young librarian needs to find friends her own age. When Gold ends the relationship to protect Belle’s reputation, the town turns on him again. To make matters worse, his friends and family are mad at him, too. But as we all know, love wins in the end.
Rating / Word Count: T / 2700
A/N: This is the Marie’s Three-Year Writing Anniversary Rumor/Assumed Fake Dating/Family AU that no one asked for. There’s a Snowing rescue, Alice Jones, Wish!Hook Killian Jones, Curious Archer, even a little Nealfire because this is my AU and I can if I want to. It’s my thank you gift for your support and friendship for these three years. Hope you enjoy!
A/N 2: Written for the May @a-monthly-rumbelling prompt: Fake dating/arranged marriage AU Thanks to @maplesyrupao3 for your beta awesomeness!
ON AO3
“Is that egg?”
“Miss French!” Gold jumped, dropping the sponge he was using to scrub his front door. Soapy, slimy water dribbled down the front of his charcoal pinstripe suit.
Belle bit her lip and frowned. She’d been Belle just last night when they were cuddling on the sofa in his den. She had even kissed him before she went home, a brief brush of his deliciously rough cheek with her lips, hovering as close to his mouth as she dared to come.
“I’m sorry!” She touched his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
“No matter.” He shrugged and dabbed at the wet spots on his chest with his pocket square, as though having his house egged and washing the door in his finest apparel was an everyday occurrence.
Belle recognized the cut and sheen of his three-piece ensemble. Brioni, and tailored to fit him like a glove. When he’d been alive, her father had an entire walk-in closet filled with dozens like it and Italian hand-stitched shoes so shiny she could see her reflection in the gleaming leather.
“Here, let me.” She plucked the pocket square from Gold’s fingers and began patting it down the front of his suit, frowning at the orange-yellow streaks of egg yolk, half-cooked in the sizzling 90-degree heat. It was on the tip of her tongue to offer to buy him a new one, but a proud, self-made man like Gold would never accept or understand the gesture.
She drifted closer, swallowing a noise of delight as she ran the silk over the lean muscles of his chest. In the stifling summer heat, his alluring scent of tobacco, vanilla, and warm male skin wafted toward her. He stiffened when she reached his ribs, his posture rigid, his eyes looking straight ahead. When she snaked a trail downward toward his stomach, he closed his fingers around her wrist, stopping her from continuing. Sweat beaded on the stubble above his lips, and she had the crazy urge to rise on her tiptoes to lick it away. His thumb pressed into her wrist, and she wondered if he could feel the hammering of her pulse.
Breathless, Belle lifted her chin to meet his gaze; his honey brown irises wide and troubled. Like a spring, he released her and jerked away as though he’d been burned.
She stepped back and crossed her arms over her chest, confused by his sudden withdrawal. “This is crazy,” she said, looking at the stained house. “We’re nowhere near Halloween. It’s not even October.” Outraged at the idea of someone egging Gold’s house, she gestured into the late July sunshine with a frown.
“Pranks know no season in Storybrooke,” he muttered with another shrug.
She sighed. She’d moved halfway across the world from Melbourne to Storybrooke about eight months ago and was still learning all the quirks of life in small-town America. Lord knew her parents tried to shield her from the worst of it, but her family’s high-profile shipping empire had made them the target of ridicule and speculation all her life. When Papa had been alive, the Australian tabloid paparazzi followed him everywhere. With her father’s death came the end of their interest in the life of Belle French. But here in a small town, everyone was famous, and news traveled around faster than lightning bugs in the wood.
Belle wiped her sweaty hands on her skirt and painted on a brave smile. The least she could do was help Gold clean up the mess. “Do you have another sponge?”
He gave her a passing glance, then went back to scrubbing the door. The sticky viscous substance had dried on the leaded glass pane in the oppressive heat, making the consistency as tacky as dried glue.
When her stomach rumbled, she pulled out her mobile phone. “If you’re not going to accept my help, I’m calling for takeout. Does Thai sound good, or would you prefer pizza? I wouldn’t say no to a garlic butter crust.”
There was a long moment of silence and he continued to rub at a stubborn spot beside the door knocker. “You needn’t have troubled yourself by stopping by,” he said at last.
Her empty stomach did an uncomfortable flip at his brusqueness. “But it’s Thursday,” she said with a teasing smile, trying to push past his formal tone. “And even if it wasn’t, it would be weird for me not to stop, especially when I see you outside. You’re on my way home. Now come on, I’m hungry.”
Belle owned a rambling Victorian only two blocks away from Gold’s, and the walk between her home and the library meant she passed his house twice a day, five to six days a week. The day they met he was standing on the porch cursing at knotted strands of Christmas lights. The decorations were a surprise for his son Neal. He lived in New York City and had made the last-minute decision to spend his the holidays at home instead of in Boston with friends. She’d stopped and offered to help Gold untangle the strings, and they’d struck up a conversation about Charles Dickens.
“You’re better with books than with people, Belle,” her father would say, patting her on the head with a laugh. Like the dutiful daughter she was, she took the advice to heart and learned to talk to people about books.
Unfortunately, no matter what she said today, Gold was doing an excellent job of impersonating a mime.
An uncomfortable cord of silence stretched taut between them. Belle’s hands started to tremble and sweat dripped down her back. Disappointed, she eased her phone back into her handbag. They always met up for carryout dinner on Thursday evenings, sometimes at her house, but mostly at his. Once in a while, they ventured out, but the best times were when they curled up on the couch barefoot for food and conversation. It was so simple and normal; a stark contrast to the silent, chef-prepared meals at the long dining room table she’d grown up with where you had to hike a mile down the table to pass the green beans.
The company was the best part. Gold was witty, charming, and handsome and always had a funny anecdote to share about a tenant or a pawnshop customer. Given the choice, she would have spent every evening for the rest of her life talking and laughing with him.
But he hadn’t invited her.
“Gold.” She touched his shoulder again. “Talk to me. Do you have any idea who did this, or why?”
He tossed the sponge onto the porch next to the bucket, his shoulders slumped. “I’ve told you before, Miss French, I’m not well liked.”
Determined to banish the dark clouds gathering over them, she forced a smile. “The name’s Belle, remember? And I like you just fine.”
“All right. I’m not well liked, Belle. People don’t want to see us together. It’s a shock to the senses, or so I’ve been told.”
Her mouth opened in surprise. “Atticus, what—”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. If we’re walking down the street side-by-side or having a bite to eat? Nasty stares? Concerned whispers? It’s always the same story: Gold the cradle robber, taking advantage of sweet, innocent Miss French.”
Belle balked. “I’m twenty-eight, not in nappies.”
“You know what I mean.” His small, ironic smile made her heart hurt.
Belle chewed her lip, thinking back over the past few months of their friendship. The truth was, no, she didn’t. She didn’t have the first clue what he meant. Being with Gold was like reading one of her favorite books: when they were together, she was too captivated by the man at her side to notice anything or anyone else. The way his hair glinted in the sunshine, the way his dimples bracketed his hard-won smiles, and how sweat beaded on his upper lip when he was warm and agitated.
“Jefferson’s aunt came into the shop to compliment me on my beautiful daughter.” He sighed. “Last week when we were at Granny’s and I took the liberty of ordering your cocktail while you were in the restroom, Ashley Boyd asked me if you were old enough for a drink.”
“Who cares what they think?” she retorted, hands on hips.
An ugly laugh spilled from his mouth. “You’ll care a lot when you’re denied library funding by the town council, or people cross the street to walk on the opposite side so they don’t have to walk past you. Maybe they’ll throw eggs at your bedroom window on account of your reckless decision to spend time with the town pariah.”
“Bullshit.”
His jaw dropped in surprise. Good; she'd gotten his attention.
She wanted to boast that she could buy and sell twenty libraries one hundred times over without making a dent in her bank account. But she couldn’t say that, any more than she could admit she wrote anonymous donation checks to the library once a month, or confess she acquired new children’s and art history selections last week because she was bored. People believed she was eeking by on a meager associate librarian’s salary when in reality she accepted the paycheck to keep up appearances and be polite. Her position at the library was about sharing her passion for reading, not making money.
Money she had plenty of, but what of friendship and love? Those came at a premium she couldn’t pay for.
“I mean it. I call bullshit.” Her fingers dug into her hips. “Why are you pushing me away?”
“More like hurrying nature to take its course.” He waved her concerns away with a hand. “Look at me. I’m nineteen years older than you. My hair is graying, my wrinkles are multiplying, and my leg aches worse today than it did yesterday.”
“I am looking at you. And I like both what I see, and the man I know. Very much.”
He shook his head as though he hadn’t heard her. “You don’t have to trouble yourself, sw...Belle.” He gestured at the door. “Over this or me.”
The compassionate words were at odds with his cold, hard tone, as though he was chipping ice off a block. His face, usually so open to her, had hardened into an impenetrable mask. Many times she’d seen him look at others with the same cool appraisal, but she never figured on being on the receiving end of his bitter stare.
At a loss, she shivered in spite of the sweltering evening heat and wrapped her arms around herself. Gold was her friend, her best friend in town, really. She didn’t want to lose their relationship over the say-so of some silly busybodies.
“What about your other friends?” he asked, still scrubbing away at the stupid door.
Belle chewed her lower lip, considering. There was Ruby, and Mulan, and Ariel. Mary Margaret and David Nolan were kind. She liked them all, but her connection with Gold was special. At least she thought so.
Still, he continued to scrub, all his attention on the now spotless mahogany door. The sponge scraped against the door in a maddening rhythm that matched the sick pound of her heart. She grabbed his wrist, wrestling the sponge away from him. “You’re my best friend.”
“You should stop coming here.” He swallowed. Forcing himself to send Belle away was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Even more difficult than facing his ex-wife’s midnight departure from his and their son’s life almost twenty-five years ago. “Before people get any more wrong ideas.”
Belle squeezed the sponge, wringing it out between her small white fingers. “You don’t want to be around me?”
“No! Yes. I mean no!” Frustrated, he ground his back teeth. She wasn’t understanding. The problem was him, not her. It was always him, couldn’t she see? “That’s the furthest thing from the truth. You shouldn’t want this. Not with me.”
Quips from Jefferson’s sweet maiden aunt and snide remarks from the likes of Ashley Boyd weren’t the worst of it. More than one well-meaning town denizen had taken him aside at great risk to their rental agreements to explain how disgusting and improper a relationship between two people so far apart in age was. How it would be better for everyone if he left the young librarian to herself and allowed her to make some real friends. Phrases like “old enough to be her father” and “sugar daddy” peppered the one-sided conversations. In each case, he’d told them to mind their own bloody business, pretending to be unaffected, but the interactions left him feeling shaken and sick.
Yesterday when he came to collect rent, the Widow Lucas had stared him square in the eye and handed him a stack of bills. “You’re closer to my age than you are to hers, Gold. And making a fool of yourself. As long as she’s associated with you, she’ll never have a chance with anyone else.”
Never have a chance.
Gold was furious, but even his legendary temper couldn’t rival the pain of knowing Granny was right. They all were. They were playing upon his trust issues, exploiting his greatest fear: Belle was humoring him until someone younger and more attractive captured her time and attention. And he was falling for it.
“Surely you’re tired of playing games with an old man,” he said, bitterness leaking into the words.
He watched the blood drain from her face, nausea rolling through his gut. He grappled for the cane he’d leaned against the porch railing to steady himself.
“People talk.” She jerked her chin, whispering the words through barely parted lips. “Let them say what they want. I don’t care.”
“I see. You think this is only about you.” Ruthlessly, he hammered another nail in the coffin of their relationship. Dizzy, he looked down at the porch, watching an army of ants carry a crumb towards a crack. Anything was preferable to acknowledging the tremble of her jaw, those striking blue eyes brimming with tears and wreathed with dark circles of pain.
“Why...” she seemed to curl up on herself as she spoke, her voice becoming small as well as her body, and his heart shriveled even further. “What about...what about what we want? You can’t help who you like spending time with, can you?”
God above, he was a bastard. A sick, sadistic part of him was actually enjoying her reaction. She really did care about him, and he didn’t deserve to spend another moment in her company. Not as her friend or as anything else he might desire.
“I’m too old for you, Belle.” He winced the moment the trite excuse left his lips. He thought of their trip to the beach last week, and how she’d coaxed him to take his shirt off for the first time in ten years. How he hadn't even minded the way her warm gaze roamed over his skinny white chest. “The last several months have been...pleasant...but it’s time to move on.”
“I thought we were friends.” Her voice was raw, and she twisted the sponge.
He shook his head, aghast that she still believed the problem to be on her end. “No, sweetheart. It’s me, not you. I’m sure there are some younger people who would be better suited...” he made a helpless gesture.
“I can’t believe this.” She was pulverizing the sponge now, choking it, probably imagining it was his neck.
He pushed on, driving her further away. “Talking about me is one thing; I’m used to it. Talking about you because of me...well, that’s another matter entirely. It’s no longer only one person’s reputation at stake. I can’t bear it, Belle. Us not seeing each other anymore...it’s the only way I can protect your reputation.”
He turned around and faced the door again. There was a long, tense silence, and he could feel the sad weight of her stare.
“Protect yourself, you mean, don’t you?” she retorted, her voice choked with tears.
He heard the splash of the sponge in the bucket and he hung his head in shame. He’d gotten what he wanted, though. She was leaving.
The only sound he could remember for the rest of the evening was the clatter of her heels down the steps and out of his life.
###
#rumbelle#rumbelle fic#a monthly rumbelling#mr. gold x belle french#rumor fic#mr. gold#belle french#rumbelle angst#people will talk#mqc writes#maries 3-year fic-a-versary
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REINER ANDRE TÖRNER, - ‘Über den Gegensinn der Kleidung”
>>Conservatism is the new Counter Culture. Populism is the new Punk.<<
Each outfit in Törner’s BA collection ‚Über den Gegensinn der Kleidung‘(German for ‚On the antithesis of clothes‘) represents an antithesis to its wearer. Therefore he worked with various references in context to conservatism, romanticism, web and meme culture, which in combination he calls ‘artificially intelligent clothes’. The garments try to distract and obscure the wearer as if they had a will on their own.
Always trying to find and re-find his niche interests, he referred to old idioms and tales like ‘Clothes make the man’ or ‘the emperor’s new clothes’, which portray clothing as objects to be utilizable for bending or maintaining ones social and normative status. Compared to human’s fear of artificial intelligence an fear of the machine, the object has always remained utility. But in his collection the garments have found their volition and use the power of symbolism mankind has laid upon them against it!
In this collection the flowers pictured on the garments decide to leave, instead, they return to the meadow and the pinstripe suit stops supporting banker’s corruption. These objects try to consume and replace the human as an entity.
Enjoying the process of practicing theoretical interests in word and text, which Törner calls ‘uncreative writing’ – he sets an interdisciplinary bridge between fields to rethink and question new ways how to evolve in times of ‘everything has been done already’. Therefore he wanted the objects which are physically closest to us to become the “foreign”, the AI, and willingly function in a mismatching manner, to contrast his boredom of the usual and commercial way collections are constructed.
The structure to each outfit’s antithesis is that garments slowly take over and expose the human step by step, becoming a wearer themselves: garments wear garments and fragments of the human, at the end the primal carrier of the objects disappears.
Not only his personal favorite songs at the end of this collection’s work process (‘Can’t help falling in Love’ by Elvis Presley, ‘Waka Waka’ by Shakira, Beethoven’s Choral for the 9th symphony and Kraftwerk’s ‘Expo2000 Orbital’) reflect Törner’s constant thrive for antithesis – also his choices for work experiences, interning at JW Anderson, H&M, and Maison Margiela, display his diverse interest in the relevance and interdependence of creativity and commerce.
>>And I think profanity is worth as much as intellectual virtue. If I identify as anything, then guess I’d say as a person who isn’t a big fan of unjustified political correctness: If you can’t say “Fuck”, then you can’t say “Fuck the government.” and I value my freedom of speech very highly. So this also counts for what I’m doing even though it gets me into trouble sometimes, but there’s nothing better than a good argument.<<
all design: reiner andre törner
photography: robbie wilhelm
models: kristine krebs, julius girrbach
#fashion & _______#fashion &#fashionanad#fasion and#fashion an catastrophe#catastrophe#fashion#andre törner#reiner andre törner#törner#fashion design#udk#universität der künste berlin#berlin#shakira waka waka#reinerandretorner
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BE YOUR HUSBAND’S BEST FRIEND
December 4, 1948
“Be Your Husband’s Best Friend” (aka “Be a Pal to Your Husband”) is episode #21 of the radio series MY FAVORITE HUSBAND broadcast on December 4, 1948.
Synopsis ~ Liz buys a book that says that the way to get along with your husband is to share all of his interests. With that in mind, she joins him in a poker game and tags along on a camping trip.
Note: This episode was aired before the characters names were changed from Cugat to Cooper. It was also before Jell-O came aboard to sponsor the show and before the regular cast featured Bea Benadaret and Gale Gordon as the Atterburys.
The script was also re-written as a 1950 episode of “My Favorite Husband” also titled “Be a Pal” and broadcast June 18, 1950. This was to account for the change in the characters surnames from Cugat to Cooper.
This program was also the basis for the “I Love Lucy” episode "Be a Pal" (ILL S1;E2) filmed on September 21, 1951 and first aired on October 22, 1951. The main difference is the radio versions do not include the famous Carmen Miranda lipsynch scene.
This radio version also contains story elements in its second half that were later incorporated into “The Camping Trip” (ILL S2;E29).
“My Favorite Husband” was based on the novels Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, the Record of a Happy Marriage (1940) and Outside Eden (1945) by Isabel Scott Rorick, which had previously been adapted into the film Are Husbands Necessary? (1942). “My Favorite Husband” was first broadcast as a one-time special on July 5, 1948. Lucille Ball and Lee Bowman played the characters of Liz and George Cugat, and a positive response to this broadcast convinced CBS to launch “My Favorite Husband” as a series. Bowman was not available Richard Denning was cast as George. On January 7, 1949, confusion with bandleader Xavier Cugat prompted a name change to Cooper. On this same episode Jell-O became its sponsor. A total of 124 episodes of the program aired from July 23, 1948 through March 31, 1951. After about ten episodes had been written, writers Fox and Davenport departed and three new writers took over – Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Pugh, and head writer/producer Jess Oppenheimer. In March 1949 Gale Gordon took over the existing role of George’s boss, Rudolph Atterbury, and Bea Benaderet was added as his wife, Iris. CBS brought “My Favorite Husband” to television in 1953, starring Joan Caulfield and Barry Nelson as Liz and George Cooper. The television version ran two-and-a-half seasons, from September 1953 through December 1955, running concurrently with “I Love Lucy.” It was produced live at CBS Television City for most of its run, until switching to film for a truncated third season filmed (ironically) at Desilu and recasting Liz Cooper with Vanessa Brown.
MAIN CAST
Lucille Ball (Liz Cugat) was born on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York. She began her screen career in 1933 and was known in Hollywood as ‘Queen of the B’s’ due to her many appearances in ‘B’ movies. “My Favorite Husband” eventually led to the creation of “I Love Lucy,” a television situation comedy in which she co-starred with her real-life husband, Latin bandleader Desi Arnaz. The program was phenomenally successful, allowing the couple to purchase what was once RKO Studios, re-naming it Desilu. When the show ended in 1960 (in an hour-long format known as “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”) so did Lucy and Desi’s marriage. In 1962, hoping to keep Desilu financially solvent, Lucy returned to the sitcom format with “The Lucy Show,” which lasted six seasons. She followed that with a similar sitcom “Here’s Lucy” co-starring with her real-life children, Lucie and Desi Jr., as well as Gale Gordon, who had joined the cast of “The Lucy Show” during season two. Before her death in 1989, Lucy made one more attempt at a sitcom with “Life With Lucy,” also with Gordon.
Richard Denning (George Cugat) was born Louis Albert Heindrich Denninger Jr., in Poughkeepsie, New York. When he was 18 months old, his family moved to Los Angeles. Plans called for him to take over his father’s garment manufacturing business, but he developed an interest in acting. Denning enlisted in the US Navy during World War II. He is best known for his roles in various science fiction and horror films of the 1950s. Although he teamed with Lucille Ball on radio in “My Favorite Husband,” the two never acted together on screen. While “I Love Lucy” was on the air, he was seen on another CBS TV series, “Mr. & Mrs. North.” From 1968 to 1980 he played the Governor on “Hawaii 5-0″, his final role. He died in 1998 at age 84.
Ruth Perrott (Katie, the Maid) was also later seen on “I Love Lucy.” She first played Mrs. Pomerantz, a member of the surprise investigating committee for the Society Matrons League in “Pioneer Women” (ILL S1;E25), as one of the member of the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League in “Lucy and Ethel Buy the Same Dress” (ILL S3;E3), and also played a nurse when “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” (ILL S2;E16). She died in 1996 at the age of 96.
In this episode we learn the names of all seven of Katie’s ex-husbands: Clarence, Peter, Harold, Oscar, Engelbert, and Yancy.
Bob LeMond (Announcer) also served as the announcer for the pilot episode of “I Love Lucy”. When the long-lost pilot was finally discovered in 1990, a few moments of the opening narration were damaged and lost, so LeMond – fifty years later – recreated the narration for the CBS special and subsequent DVD release.
GUEST CAST
Hans Conried (Professor Philpot Millmoss) first co-starred with Lucille Ball in The Big Street (1942). He then appeared on “I Love Lucy” as used furniture man Dan Jenkins in “Redecorating” (ILL S2;E8) and later that same season as Percy Livermore in “Lucy Hires an English Tutor” (ILL S2;E13) – both in 1952. The following year he began an association with Disney by voicing Captain Hook in Peter Pan. On “The Lucy Show” he played Professor Gitterman in “Lucy’s Barbershop Quartet” (TLS S1;E19) and in “Lucy Plays Cleopatra” (TLS S2;E1). He was probably best known as Uncle Tonoose on “Make Room for Daddy” starring Danny Thomas, which was filmed on the Desilu lot. He joined Thomas on a season 6 episode of “Here’s Lucy” in 1973. He died in 1982 at age 64.
Conried will recreate this role in 1950, when the script is rewritten for the Coopers as “Be A Pal.” The only difference is that his first name is Philip, not Philpot. On television, the author remains off screen throughout.
Joseph Kearns (Joe, Poker Player) appeared on “I Love Lucy” as the psychiatrist in “The Kleptomaniac” (ILL S1;E27) and later played the theatre manager in “Lucy’s Night in Town” (ILL S6;E22). His most famous role was as Mr. Wilson on TV’s “Dennis the Menace” (1959). When he passed away during the show’s final season, Lucy regular Gale Gordon took over for him, playing his brother.
In future iterations of this script, this character’s dialogue is assumed by Mr. Atterbury (Gale Gordon) and on TV by Fred Mertz (William Frawley).
John Hiestand (Cory Cartwright) served as the announcer for the radio show “Let George Do It” from 1946 to 1950. In 1955 he did an episode of “Our Miss Brooks” opposite Gale Gordon. Cory was a regular character who was eventually written out of the series when the Atterbury’s (Gale Gordon and Bea Bendaret) were introduced.
Jean Vander Pyl (Marge) is best known as the voice of Wilma Flintstone for the Hanna-Barbera cartoon “The Flintstones.” Coincidentally, Wilma’s best friend was voiced by Bea Benadaret, who will later play Iris Atterbury, Liz’s best friend on “My Favorite Husband.” On radio she was heard on such programs as “The Halls of Ivy” (1950–52) and on “Father Knows Best” before it moved to TV. She died in 1999 at age 79.
THE EPISODE
ANNOUNCER: “Let’s look in on the Cugats and see what they’re doing. Oh, but hold your hats. Liz and George are having an argument about their plans for their evening. Liz wants to go to a symphony concert and George wants to have a poker game! (As a fight announcer) And in this corner wearing a pink satin housecoat and weighing 120 pounds, ‘Battling Liz Cugat.’ And in this corner wearing a grey pinstripe suit and weighing 170 pounds is her husband ‘Gorgeous George’. Well, the first round ended in a draw and here comes the second round!”
‘Gorgeous George’ was the stage name of professional wrestler George Raymond Wagner (1915–63), so named because of his long, blonde hair. He was mentioned on “I Love Lucy” in “Pioneer Women” (ILL S1;E25) and “Ricky’s Movie Offer” (ILL S4;E6).
Liz and George lament that they argue so much since getting married. George wonders why men have to wear formal clothes to a concert.
LIZ: “Because when they fall asleep the stiff shirt keeps them from falling over.”
In “Lucy the Music Lover” (TLS S1;E8) it was Lucy Carmichael, not her tuxedo-clad date, that fell asleep during a classical music concert. At least she didn’t drop her opera glasses!
Liz turns on the waterworks, but George still refuses to go to the concert.
GEORGE: “And I hope Leopold falls flat on his Stokowski!”
Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) was one of the leading conductors of the early and mid-20th century, he is best known for his long association with the Philadelphia Orchestra and his appearance in Disney’s Fantasia (1940) with that orchestra.
Liz tells Katie the Maid she will be going to a woman’s club luncheon to hear a talk about marriage. Katie tells her that she has been married six times: Peter, Harold, Oscar, Engelbert, and Yancy, which she remembers because it spells out ‘P.H.O.E.Y’. She’s intentionally left off her first husband Clarence because it wouldn’t spell ‘phoey’!
At their club luncheon, Liz and Marge (Jean Vander Pyl) listen to a guest speaker talk about “How To Be Happy, Though Married”. Professor Philpot Millmoss (Hans Conried) suggests the ladies be a pal to their husbands. Liz wonders why it has to be the woman who gives in - but Millmoss tells her to consult his new book on sale at the door for seventy nine cents.
Note: In the 1950 revision, Marge was replaced with Iris (Bea Benadaret), but the author was still played by Hans Conried. In the television version, the author remains off screen and Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance) takes the Marge / Iris lines.
Liz resolves to employ the “Be A Pal Treatment” with George and sits beside him to read the evening newspaper. Liz pretends to be interested in the sports section.
LIZ (reading): “Williams Bags Crown By TKO in eighth.″
Liz pronounces TKO phonetically as ‘Tuh-Ko” although George corrects her. The exchange was repeated verbatim between Lucy and Ricky in “The Camping Trip.”
LIZ (reading): “Midget Racing! They oughta be ashamed making those little men run around the track.”
George sarcastically calls Liz Ted Husing, and then Red Barbar.
Ted Husing (1901-62) was one of CBS Radio’s most popular sportscasters. By 1950 his salary was an astronomical million dollars! Red Barber (1908-92) was a play-by-play announcer for major league baseball, then announcing for the Brooklyn Dodgers and holding down his own CBS TV sports show “Red Barber’s Club House.”
LIZ (reading): “They’re racing little girls! It says so right here,‘Yesterday at Tanforan a race was won by a three year-old maiden!’ She certainly was carrying a lot of money for a little girl. She had $2,000 in her purse.”
The line is virtually identical on television, except that Tanforan (a horse racetrack outside San Francisco) was changed to the more familiar Churchill Downs.
George / Ricky then refers to Liz / Lucy as Grantland Rice (1880–1954), a sportswriter known for his elegant prose, although the reference was removed for TV syndication when Rice died in 1954. It was restored for the DVD release. Clueless Liz / Lucy think he is a food!
Liz is determined to join in the poker game that evening, despite not knowing anything about the card game. Lucy also tried this tactic in the television version of “Be A Pal”. The other poker players are Joe (Joseph Kearns) and Cory Cartwright (John Hiestand), George’s bachelor friend.
In the 1950 radio re-write, Joe was voiced by Hans Conried (doubling with Millmoss) and Gale Gordon as Mr. Atterbury, a role previously played in earlier episodes by Hans Conried. On television, the poker players were Fred Mertz (William Frawley), Hank (Richard Reeves, left) and Charlie (Tony Michaels, right).
LIZ CUGAT / LIZ COOPER / LUCY RICARDO (looking over her cards): “There’s her sister! What do you have?”
JOE / MR. ATTERBURY / FRED: “I shouldn’t talk, but tell your two Andrews Sisters not to wait up for LaVerne!”
The Andrews Sisters were a close-harmony singing group most popular during World War II. In 1969 Lucy played LaVerne Andrews on an episode of “Here’s Lucy” that guest-starred Patty Andrews as herself. Lucie Arnaz took the role of the third Andrews sister, Maxene.
A few days later, George confides in Cory that Liz has been driving him crazy by sticking to his side like glue, trying to be interested in everything that he is. George decides to go away on a camping trip to get away from her for a while. Cory suggests that George take Liz with him and make the trip so rigorous that she will regret trying to ‘be a pal’.
At the end of Act One, there is a public service announcement about NATO - the newly-formed North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Katie warns Liz about her husband’s plan, having overheard George and Cory talking. Liz spills the beans to Cory and blackmails him to turn the tables on George at the campsite.
Liz and George engage in a fishing contest, just like Lucy and Ricky in “The Camping Trip”. When Liz pretends to know all about fishing, George calls her sarcastically dubs her Izaak Walton.
Izaak Walton (1594-1683) was an English writer known for The Compleat Angler (1653), a famous prose and poetry celebration of fishing. His name was mentioned by Mr. Mooney before ‘fishing’ for Viv’s glasses in “The Loophole in the Lease” (TLS S2;E12) in 1963.
Once George is out of sight, Cory arrives with some store-bought fish to fool George.
LIZ: “Throw them to me, Cory. That way I can tell George I caught 'em.”
George and Liz decide to bet on who can hike back to the campsite fastest. Luckily, Liz has Cory waiting in a car to assure that she wins!
Back at camp, Liz is patiently waiting for George, who trudges in weary and parched. Liz confesses that she got back so early she had time to wash her hair so there is no water.
Next morning Liz and Cory conspire to make George think she’s an expert duck hunter and sharp-shooter! Liz takes aim at the tree, and on cue Cory tosses a duck at her feet.
GEORGE: “I don’t get it. Liz. First you catch a Lake Trout in a stream, now you shoot a duck marked Birds Eye Frozen Foods!”
In the early 1900s, Clarence Frank Birdseye II of Montclair, New Jersey, received patents for the development of improved methods to freeze fish for commercial production. In 1922, he formed a company, Birdseye Seafood, Inc., Birdseye created a new company, General Seafood Corporation, to promote this method. In 1929, Birdseye sold his company and patents for $22 million to General Foods Corporation which founded the Birds Eye Frozen Food Company. Although primarily marketing frozen vegetables, they have occasionally sold other foods as well.
A target practice ensues where a discretely hidden away Cory clangs an anvil every time Liz shoots at a distant horseshoe. A suspicious George gets wise to Cory and Liz’s scheme and trains his rifle on on the tree. A frightened Cory comes down but all ends happily.
LIZ (to George): “Let’s not be pals or companions. Let’s not be even be friends anymore. Let’s just go back to being man and wife.”
In the bedtime tag, Liz tries to wake a sleeping George. She sees a note pinned to his chest that says:
DEAR PAL. YES, I AM ASLEEP. I TOOK A SLEEPING PILL TO MAKE SURE OF IT. GOOD NIGHT.
LIZ: “Aww...isn’t he cute? Goodnight, George.”
#My Favorite Husband#Be A Pal#The Camping Trip#I Love Lucy#Richard Denning#Lucille Ball#Hans Conried#Jean Vander Pyl#Birdseye#Duck Hunting#Izaak Walton#NATO#Clarence Birdseye#Birds Eye Frozen Foods#Grantland Rice#The Andrews Sisters#Red Barber#Ted Husing#Tanforan#Leopold Stokowski#Radio#1948#John Hiestand#Gorgeous George#Ruth Perrott#Bob LeMond#CBS Radio#Desi Arnaz#Joseph Kearns#Richard Reeves
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The Jack o’ the Lantern Affair (MFU fic), part 3/5
Title: The Jack o’ the Lantern Affair
Rating: PG13 (for action/danger)
Chapter summary: As Napoleon and Illya try to get the better of Stingy Jack, a new and dangerous player enters the game.
Notes: This version of the fic (cross-posted to AO3) is slash-implied; if you prefer reading gen, there is a gen version on ff.net, but I can’t link to it with tumblr’s linking restrictions.
Act III: The Devil and Napoleon Solo
It was soon apparent, as they drove to Brooklyn, that the numerous alley cats of the city were doing their job to repel the invading spirits from nearby areas, in spite of not being pure Egyptian Maus.
That still didn’t alleviate Illya’s concerns as they arrived at the old Adelo House in Brooklyn; it was a house that dated back to the 1700s and had long said to have been haunted. In retrospect, it seemed like the perfect place for Jack to set up his base of operations, and, sure enough, as they approached, they saw a greater concentration of ghosts, as well as more skeletons, goblins, and what looked like twisted zombie-like creatures that leered at them with empty eyes.
Illya answered his communicator as it went off.
“Kuryakin here…”
“Mr. Kuryakin?” Waverly said. “We’ve spoken to Victor’s cousin.”
“What did he say?”
“Apparently, in order to defeat Jack, you must extinguish his lantern,” Waverly instructed. “No one has ever succeeded in accomplishing this—to achieve it would be the equivalent of successfully outwitting the trickster.”
“In other words, we’d win his challenge,” Napoleon said. “So it’s as simple as that?”
“It will hardly be so simple in practice,” Marton scoffed over the channel. “One does not outwit a legendary trickster so easily.”
“Nevertheless, it’s up to the both of you,” Waverly said. “Good luck, Gentlemen.”
“Thank you, Sir,” Illya sighed.
Napoleon now pulled the car over as they approached the Adelo House; as they watched, it appeared that the creatures were coming forth from the old well in front of the house. Napoleon let out a sigh.
“I should have known…” he muttered.
“Should have known what?”
“The Witch of the Well,” Napoleon said. “It’s a silly game I used to play at school with the other kids during recess. You get one kid to play the witch, and the other kids have to get a treasure from the well without being caught by the witch—whoever got caught first was ‘dragged down the well’ and became the next witch.”
“…Where did you children learn something like that?” Illya asked.
“…Actually, I learned it from the older kids, and we taught it to the younger kids,” Napoleon said. “I guess, in a way, it’s kind of like these old legends, passed down from person to person. Except now they’re true—and there’s something really horrible in the well to get past.” He sighed, steeling himself. “Look, if you want to stay in the car with Baba Yaga--”
“I told you, I’m going with you,” Illya said. “But I don’t trust that old well rope; we should use the grappling hook to get down there.”
Napoleon nodded and got the grappling hook from the trunk; the two of them made sure the coast was clear before they darted to the well. Napoleon chanced a glance inside, and he winced.
“Ugh, there’s water down there…”
“Very likely stagnant—hopefully not too deep,” Illya said. He paused, glancing at Napoleon. “I can go down first and see how deep it is.”
“No, no; I’ll go first…”
“Napoleon,” Illya said, gently. “My fears of these unexplained things are more irrational than your fear of drowning. I will go first.”
Napoleon protested, but Illya insisted, and so Napoleon had to concede to let him go first. Baba Yaga perched on Napoleon’s shoulders as Illya climbed down. There was a light splash as he touched the water, and after a quiet noise of disgust, he looked up.
“It’s not deep at all!” he said. “Only about two feet, I’d say—and there’s a reason for that.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s a tunnel of some sort that goes into the hill where the house is standing on,” Illya said. “That must be where the book is.”
Napoleon climbed down now, Baba Yaga still perched on his shoulders, for the cat despised water as much as he did.
They headed down the tunnel, moving as quietly as possible; they could see the dim outlines of the zombies staring at them, but the creatures weren’t daring to come closer as Baba Yaga hissed at them.
“We’ve got to hope that Jack is also going to be repelled by Baba Yaga,” Napoleon whispered. “That might be our only chance to get that book and the lantern…” He trailed off as he heard Jack muttering under his breath.
“He’s up ahead,” Illya whispered, as the path, now drying as they walked further into the hill, sloped upwards.
“Baba Yaga and I will distract him,” Napoleon whispered back. “You go for the stuff.”
Illya nodded, and Napoleon gently held the cat in his hands. Creeping forward, they saw Jack holding the book in one hand and his lantern in the other.
“Hold it right there!” Napoleon said, charging forward.
Jack looked to him with a leer, but the look quickly changed to one of alarm as Baba Yaga screech at him; his shock at seeing the cat allowed Illya to dart forward and grab the book from his transparent hand.
Jack let out a yell of frustration and now seized Illya’s sweater collar; Illya’s face went pale, but Napoleon and Baba Yaga both saw red. The both of them yelled in fury, and Baba Yaga slipped out of Napoleon’s grasp and leaped up at Jack with a screech. Jack released Illya, and as he scrambled backwards, also dropped his turnip lantern.
Illya, now recovering from his near miss, saw it fall.
“Napoleon! Grab the lantern!”
Both Jack and Napoleon reached for it; Baba Yaga ensured that Napoleon won. Napoleon hurled it into the water that was down the path that led to the well. His moment of triumph was short-lived, however, as he saw the coal in the lantern still burning under the water.
Illya’s face fell.
“Nyet, it should have worked!” he exclaimed. “We did as Marton’s cousin instructed…”
He was cut off by Jack’s fit of the giggles.
“Oh, you shan’t beat me so easily! ‘Tisn’t an ordinary lantern—shan’t be doused by ordinary means!”
Baba Yaga screeched again, and Jack sobered up.
“Shoo the beast, and I’ll give you both a hint,” he sneered.
“She stays,” Napoleon said, darkly. “She’s our only defense against your little army of zombies and ghosts out there, and, more than that, she’s our cat, and she is the daughter of Bastet, one of the Old Gods.”
Baba Yaga hissed for emphasis, approaching closer, sending Jack floating against the wall of the cavern.
“With her here, we can wait this out as long as you can,” Napoleon said. “As soon as Illya finds a way to send you back or put that lantern out--”
He was cut off as the ground started to shake, a crack appearing in the cavern floor. Baba Yaga suddenly screeched in fright and ran to Napoleon’s arms as a large, black dog with glowing eyes emerged from the fissure.
Illya also clung to Napoleon’s arm, staring at the creature with a horrified expression. Jack, as well, looked unsettled by the appearance of the dog; he swooped over their heads, grabbed his lantern from the water, and phased through the wall of the cavern. The zombies in the tunnel were now trying to escape as the dog growled.
“What is that thing?” Illya whispered. “How did Jack summon it without the book?”
“I don’t think he did; did you see the way he ran out of here?” Napoleon whispered back.
“You’re right, Mr. Solo; Jack didn’t summon him,” a new voice said, and a man in a three-piece pinstriped suit materialized beside the dog. “Baba Yaga, daughter of Bastet? Meet Malevolent, son of Cerberus!”
“Illya, run!” Napoleon said, grabbing his partner’s hand while holding onto the frightened Baba Yaga with the other. They ran down the passageway, hearing the dog’s booming barks behind them.
Napoleon made sure Illya and Baba Yaga had made it out of the well first, and he followed; the two of them made it to the car. It was daylight by this time, and while the ghosts and zombies had hidden, the goblins were still out and about, causing trouble.
“Napoleon… that fellow looked familiar…” Illya murmured, once he had caught his breath and comforted the still upset cat.
“That’s because he was there last Halloween at Gettysburg—the man on the ghost train who introduced himself as Zero…” Napoleon said. He hadn’t said anything about it to Illya since he knew Illya wouldn’t have wanted to discuss it, but he had met Zero at a specific place in Gettysburg called Devil’s Den—a calling card, for he had suddenly realized at that moment that he had been conversing with the Prince of Darkness all that time.
Illya exhaled.
“Well, forget him and his son of Cerberus,” he said. “We need to find a way to douse Jack’s lantern before this time tomorrow.”
Napoleon exhaled.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “I’ll tell you what—you go back to headquarters and take Baba Yaga with you. Go over that book, and I’ll go to the library and do some research there.”
Illya arched an eyebrow.
“I do not want to leave you alone,” he said, flatly.
“Look, I’ll be fine—the ghosts aren’t out during the day, and these goblins can be tranquilized…” He demonstrated on the nearest goblin. “I really don’t want Baba Yaga to be out here when that dog might come back. Let’s both do our research, and we’ll meet up after lunch or something.”
Illya did not look satisfied with this explanation.
“Why can I not bring this book to the library while we research together?”
Napoleon gave Illya a long look and then kissed him.
“I have a suspicion about something, and it’s something that I need to do on my own.”
“Is it to do with that man and the dog?” Illya asked, quietly. “Did something happen in Gettysburg that I am not aware of?”
“Yes,” Napoleon admitted. “And if it is what I think it is, then I need some time alone to figure out a few things—namely, how to stop him. But someone also needs to figure out how to stop Jack, too.”
“I still think I should be with you,” Illya said. “Napoleon, if there is something going on with you, I need to be a part of it.”
“Illya--”
“I am your partner,” Illya said. “In every sense of the word. You trust me for everything else in the world; why can you not trust me with this?”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Napoleon said. “If Zero is who I think he is, I don’t want him anywhere near you.”
“…You think he is the Devil.”
“…How--?”
“Because of the legend of Stingy Jack, and how that coal that lights his lantern was given to him by the Devil,” Illya said. “I realized it after the man showed up after Jack’s taunt—and how Jack wasn’t at all pleased to see him.”
“…I didn’t think you believed in the Devil,” Napoleon said.
“A lot of things have happened in the last twelve hours that I did not believe in,” Illya said, bitterly. “Why should this be any different?”
“Touché. So, will you go now?”
“And leave you to deal with him alone? I think not!” Illya said. Baba Yaga meowed. “You are coming with me to headquarters, and then we will do our research together, and, if need be, face this Mr. Zero together.”
Napoleon was momentarily overcome, and, wordlessly, dragged Illya, cat and all, into a hug. Illya hugged him back, but the moment was ruined as Zero himself spoke up, materializing in the backseat of the car.
“Mr. Solo may have resigned himself to having you along, but I would much rather our business be discussed in private,” Zero scoffed.
He snapped his fingers, and both he and Napoleon vanished into thin air. Illya momentarily stared, horrified, at the empty air his arms were now holding.
“Napoleon!?” he yelled, as Baba Yaga howled in misery. “Napoleon!?”
***************************
Napoleon found himself a moment later in the middle of a Manhattan alleyway, trying to catch his breath. Trying to get his exact bearings, he looked around, and gave a horrified yelp as he saw what looked like a mirror image of himself wearing Zero’s pinstriped suit.
“Oh, come now, Mr. Solo,” the double chuckled in an echo of his voice. “There’s a dark side in you, too. You just need to embrace it.”
“No,” Napoleon hissed. “Leave me alone! What do you want from me!?”
Zero now reached for Napoleon’s chin, forcing him to look at him—still a mirror image of him.
“What do I want? You, of course! It isn’t as bad as you think, you know…” Zero snapped his fingers, and Napoleon was forced to watch as Zero set a few flames alight in his free hand. “You could have this power—and more, you know.”
“I don’t want it!” Napoleon shot back, pulling away. “I have everything I could want in my life; I don’t need anything else, and I don’t need you! I don’t want anything to do with you!”
“You have everything you want?” Zero asked, as Napoleon began to walk away. “But, surely you know that Jack is capable of taking that all away from you.”
Napoleon paused.
“Just what do you mean by that?”
Zero chuckled, and it sent cold shivers down Napoleon’s spine to hear his own voice sounding like that.
“Jack has it in for you, too,” he reminded him. “And he isn’t going to be satisfied with just releasing all these ghosts and ghouls; oh no… Your little family is going to be his main target. You attract a lot of attention from our sort, you know, Mr. Solo. You have a rare purity in your heart, and whichever one of us can claim it will have a prize worth boasting over. Jack bested me before; I need to have the last laugh over him, and to do that, I need you.”
“You can’t have me, Jack can’t have me, and any of ‘your sort’ can’t have me!” Napoleon shot back to the smug mirror image. “Illya has me.”
“He couldn’t even keep me from separating you!” Zero scoffed. “And he won’t be able to be of much help against Jack, either. You need me, Mr. Solo. You know that a mere mortal such as yourself can’t extinguish Jack’s lantern—not when I was the one who gave him that coal! I can’t claim Jack’s soul, but there’s nothing stopping me from sending him and his little summoned army back through that portal. Your world will be safe, just as Waverly ordered.”
“…And in exchange?” Napoleon asked.
Zero snapped his fingers, producing a contract.
“I get your soul.”
“…I thought as much,” Napoleon said, looking into the mirror image’s eyes. “No deal. I’ll figure this out with Illya’s help.”
Zero looked affronted, and even more so as Napoleon now walked out of the alley and onto the street.
“Are you so arrogant to think that way? You have no power with which to defeat Jack or extinguish the coal I gave him!” Zero bellowed, walking after him. “Or do you simply no longer care about what happens to this world?”
“I’ll always care,” Napoleon said. “That’s why I know not to take any of your offers; you’ll only make it worse.”
“What will you do when Jack goes after your beloved Russian!? What will you do then!?”
“Save him,” Napoleon threw over this shoulder.
“And who will save you!?” Zero countered.
“Illya will. See, we have this system all worked out!”
“You put too much faith in each other and refuse to see the reality of your situation!” Zero called. “You need me!”
Napoleon gritted his teeth, picked up his pace, and ran; Zero still pursued him, the echo of his own voice taunting him.
“You need me! You need me!”
There was a church at the end of the street. Desperate to clear Zero’s voice from his head, Napoleon ran inside, exhaling with relief at the blissful silence inside. He met the baffled vicar’s gaze and apologized for the intrusion, but the vicar sensed his distress and let him be. After a moment, he seized his communicator and called Illya, who let out a cry of relief.
“Are you alright!? Are you alright!?”
“I’m fine, Illya; I got away from Zero. I’m at a church on Barclay; he can’t get to me here. I’ll come back to headquarters once I catch my breath.”
“No; you stay there where you will be safe,” Illya insisted. “I will join you there.”
“Okay, good idea,” Napoleon said. “We can do our research here…” He trailed off as he saw a stoup of Holy Water on the altar. “…Holy Water… That’s it!”
“What’s it?” Illya asked, baffled.
“I think I have a way to stop Jack that doesn’t involve me signing anything of Zero’s,” Napoleon said. “Holy Water should douse that coal, shouldn’t it?”
“Napoleon, you stay there in that church and do not set foot outside until I get there,” Illya said, after a moment’s pause.
“What are you going to do?” Napoleon asked.
“Cover our bases. I’ll leave the channel open and keep talking to you until I arrive.”
“Alright, Tovarisch,” Napoleon said, confidently. “I know we can do this.”
He would show Zero, he silently vowed. There was nothing he and Illya couldn’t do together.
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The Quentin Tarantino Star Trek Movie is Just What the Franchise Needs
https://ift.tt/2XXKVUm
In perhaps the funniest episode of Star Trek: The Original Series (sorry “Trouble With Tribbles”!) Captain Kirk boldly strides on a pool table, decked out in a blue pinstripe suit, and says, in a tortured faux Al Capone-accent, “the Federation is taking over the whole ball of wax.” He’s talking about the planet Sigma Iotia II, better known to Trekkies as “the mobster planet.” “A Piece of the Action” imagines a planet entirely run by ‘20s and ‘30s style mobsters, and now, it seems this slightly obscure Trek concept is about to make a big comeback. According to Deadline, the long discussed Quentin Tarantino Star Trek movie: “is based on an episode of the classic Star Trek series that takes place largely earthbound in a ‘30s gangster setting.”
So, Tarantino’s Trek sounds like a remake/reboot of “A Piece of the Action.” If this happens (which unfortunately doesn’t sound terribly likely at the moment), this is great news. Done properly, this could be the most creative and nostalgia-filled move for the Trek franchise in a long time.
How did the mobster planet from “A Piece of the Action” become the mobster planet? The backstory is explained by Kirk in the opening moments of the episode. A Federation ship stopped by the planet a century prior and exposed the “highly imitative” culture to all sorts of values from the outside world. Randomly, somebody from this ship (the USS Horizon) left behind a history book called Chicago Mobs of the Twenties. A century later, this culture took this book almost as their Bible, reverently called it “the Book.”
Anyone who is a fan of Tarantino knows he’s pretty good with navigating counterfactual versions of history. He did it in Inglourious Basterds, and more recently, in Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood. So, there’s no reason to think Tarantino couldn’t hit up a slightly twisted version of Trek history, too. A Tarantino reboot of “A Piece of the Action” in a new Trek movie could easily take a similar approach. He wouldn’t even have to get into the canon weeds that much. Either the movie revolves around the same planet, Sigma Iotia II, or it simply reuses the concept but in a new context.
There’s precedent for setting a Star Trek movie mostly on a single planet (or in an “earthbound” setting). In fact, it worked fantastically in 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which, for at least part of the movie, dealt with people with 23rd-century values trying to disguise themselves in the 20th century. A Tarantino reboot of “A Piece of the Action,” could combine the humor of the original premise, but give it a little more danger. The gangsters in the episode are a little bit of a joke, but what if they were more hardcore?
In some ways, Tarantino taking on this concept would be like a feature-length version of Picard on the holodeck in First Contact. Even though Picard is firing holographic bullets in that scene, there’s more tension at that moment than perhaps any other in the movie. Mixing the high-tech future of Trek with the aesthetic of a hardboiled crime story almost always works. Whether its “A Piece of the Action,” or any of the Picard Dixon Hill stories (and to a lesser extent, Julian Bashir’s secret agent episodes of Deep Space Nine) putting Star Trek characters in anachronistic settings is compelling because it puts the so-called “utopia” of Trek’s future to the test.
In “A Piece of the Action,” Kirk has to basically act exactly like a crime boss in order to get the Iotians to accept a peaceful solution. Gene Roddenberry famously discouraged conflict and violence among Starfleet members and those affiliated with the Federation, but the mobsters on Sigma Iotia II are immune to that rule simply because their genesis predates the enlightened rules of the Federation. Basically, Kirk becoming a crime-boss (but for good) is a loophole both in-universe, and also metafictionally, because it allows Kirk to act against Starfleet rules in order to uphold them in the long run. If you want a Trek movie with a bunch of conflicts that also doesn’t “violate” one of the old-school approaches to writing Trek, “A Piece of the Action” sits pretty perfectly on the fence. And some of that is because the episode tackles basic questions like: “do Federation utopia needs, justify space mobsters means?”
Best of all, if we got a big-screen version of this, it could be one of the most philosophical Trek movies in years. The story of “A Piece of the Action,” is much more layered and interesting than just “space mobsters.” The existence of this mobster culture is a direct result of dogma and information being twisted over time. But, it’s also the fault of the Federation in the first place and a huge argument for why the Prime Directive exists later. Kirk (and Picard and Sisko and Janeway) all struggled with the non-interference directive, but the Iotians in “A Piece of the Action,” are the poster-children for why the Prime Directive is so important.
If we got a whole movie about this, then you’ve potentially got a movie where people are arguing about the Prime Directive the whole time. And it doesn’t get any more legit Star Trek than that. This leads to the inevitable question: Which timeline does this work best in?
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How Star Trek Beyond Redefined the Prime Timeline
By Ryan Britt
If this were a direct sequel to Star Trek Beyond, then we’d be dealing with the Kelvin Universe crew meeting the Iotians. Canonically, this would mean Sigma Iotia II would be mostly the same as it was in TOS. And that’s because the original backstory of the USS Horizon from the original episode would remain unchanged. That said, because the politics of the galaxy at large are very different in the Kelvin Timeline, you could also have a version of the mobster planet where the Federation isn’t the only government that has interfered. For example, what if the Klingons of the Kelvin timeline infiltrated themselves into this culture? Could Sigma Iotia II suddenly have some strategic value?
If that was the case, you could combine the premises of “A Piece of the Action” with “A Private Little War,” and the Enterprise crew could be battling the Klingons through the context of the mobster planet. Again, this would work really well with the Kelvin crew, but it could also work in the Prime Timeline, too. It feels unlikely that Patrick Stewart would cross back over to play Picard in a feature film, but then again, what if he had to become Dixon Hill in order to infiltrate the mobster planet? Of all the famous Starfleet captains, Picard is actually more qualified to infiltrate it than someone like Kirk (or Janeway). And who wouldn’t want to see Patrick Stewart spouting gloriously profane Tarantino dialogue?
Then again, the mobster inhabitants of Sigma Iotia II exist in all timelines outside of the context of the Enterprise. At the end of “A Piece of the Action,” Kirk jokes that the Iotians might use Federation tech to “demand a piece of our action!” So, with that in mind, the return of the space mobsters works in nearly all Trek contexts. Whichever Starfleet crew has to deal with the wrath of the mobsters might not matter as much as we think. The point is, the space gangsters themselves are interesting on their own; meaning whichever crew boldly goes to deals with them is simply a bonus.
The post The Quentin Tarantino Star Trek Movie is Just What the Franchise Needs appeared first on Den of Geek.
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