bakerstreet | THE FALSE PRETENSES MEME

THE FALSE PRETENSES MEME

THE FALSE PRETENSES MEME
a shipping meme

It's only a natural response to want to be shown love and affection, no matter how hard your exterior is. If not in those words - if you truly are that cold - perhaps what you seek is adoration or worship. Regardless of how you slice it, there's something invigorating to the ego in being the object of someone's ardor. And that's what you are now, to put it mildly; the way they look at you, you'd think you hung the moon and stars. In fact, their love for you has lead to a relationship with them. Congratulations! It's all going so well.

Except that it's all based on a lie.

You're not the person they think you are...maybe even literally. They could think you're someone else completely, as such, or it could be more abstract. They don't know what you've really done, do they? The crimes you've committed, the blood on your hands - what if blood they cherished? It's doubtful if they knew what you truly were, they'd look at you with such tenderness. That's not something you can deal with. You've grown used to them and don't want to let them go. Not now.

You love them. They've wormed their way into your heart, and you just can't lose them. You just...can't. Despite what your intentions were at the beginning (you were being purposefully cruel, you were playing along, you didn't want to hurt them, you wanted to give them what they wanted), you've bought into your own hype. Whatever you have to do to keep this ruse up, you'll do.

But, of course, what's done in the dark will be brought to the light. Soon, those eyes that look towards you will be filled with pain and doubt; you can't keep your little secret forever, and it will only gut your lover in the end.

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[Did I ever tell you about the time I was a mutant terrorist? Hell, did I tell you I was a mutant? Any level and amount of subterfuge is welcome here! Obviously post-canon is the easiest way to swing this, but a complete AU will be welcome as well.]

Edited 2014-11-14 19:15 (UTC)

[Molly's track record with men speaks for itself, and it says "Shitty Taste". But finally she's found a bloke (albeit an American one) she's happy with. And he's not a sociopath or a surrogate for somebody she once pined for. Life is good. Blissfully so.

So she'll be utterly wrecked when it all comes crashing down around her ears. But right now her biggest worry is getting away from all the politics, especially with the mutant debates.]

I can't take watching the news anymore. Everybody's too...angry.

[Blending into the human world was his only option left when he received the cure in place of the death penalty, and skipping right out of the US was really his only option left if he wanted to make a life as anything other than a branded terrorist. It's ironic to him (if that's what ironic actually means) that he ended up in the Professor's home country, but everything's been going alright for a few years - construction isn't glamorous work, but it pays well for someone who only cleared sixth grade in non-mutant schooling and never graduated from a single thing, and he's got a decent place and...

... well, now a girlfriend. She's quiet, unassuming, often all the way to self-deprecating, but she's very respectable. Not what he would've chosen, but once a perfect front, and now endearing in ways he wouldn't have expected. Somehow, all of that quiet, unassuming nature makes her just as quiet moments of strength more remarkable than watching a woman break someone's neck with her bare feet.

There are these moments, though. Moments when she nervously speaks of the angry climate and he still has to bite back a laugh at the irony (that's definitely irony) of it. He was once at the heart of that struggle, one of the people she would've feared more than any other.]

Mutants've been in this fight for a damn long time. [He glances sidelong at her.] It's worse in the States, trust me. No escaping it.

[Ha ha. He's hilarious.]

I can't even imagine how heated it is over there...[She shook her head sadly, turning off the telly with the remote. Molly sighed and leaned on his shoulder.]

S'pose you're right, though. No escaping it. Every week there's another handful of Jane and John Does coming into the morgue from a rally gone wrong. I guess it's...finally starting to feel real for me. How terrible is that?

How did you put up with everything back home?

( natasha wasn't accustomed to becoming attached.

in her line of work, it was as good as signing your own death warrant. you could respect your colleagues - hell, you could consider them friends; but once you let them in your head, you've been compromised. bad enough that she had those familiar "attached" urges towards clint barton and the other avengers.. she didn't need them towards some mutant that she'd only been assigned to for recon.

in spite of herself, however? she liked the guy. there was a wild part of her that identified with his rebellion, even if she thought his thinking was short sighted and neglected the bigger picture. she'd never been given a chance for an act of subversiveness of that size; she'd like to think if given a chance, she'd make the same choice as he had (only smarter, of course).

it was becoming increasingly clear, however, that his motives towards her were less than pure. and not in a biblical sense; sex was what it was, and there was no shame attached to that (especially when the sex with him was what it was, god, she could never be sorry for it). but she was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that if this was a game they were playing --

it was questionable who was playing who. )

Where were you last night? ( the question is idle, off the cuff, as she lounges on the couch in his apartment, flipping through a magazine. seems like a reasonable question. ) I tried calling, but no one answered. You weren't at the bar, either.

[He slides into the room with careless ease, apparently unruffled by the question, and hands her a drink as he settles in beside her with a whiskey for himself. Lying has become a lifestyle since the rebellion she thinks of in such rosy images, the brutal head trauma that nearly killed him and instead left him with no side to fight on and no choice but to play at having been cured. Keeping his mutation under wraps was torture, and didn't always work, but he's under the impression that he's done it perfectly. Certainly not given anyone any reason to think he can still use it.

And now the Cure is wearing off anyway. So slowly that others appear to have the sense to take his approach, keep it hidden until the mutations are strong enough to be useful, but steadily. And who else should have come to him about it but Magneto, with Mystique back on his side and ready to take true revenge.

John's truth? He's waffling. There's no urgent threat to them right now, and he's got a somewhat comfortable life - and besides all of that, Magneto proved short-sighted, dangerously arrogant and ultimately useless in the time John was with him. He's pretty sure there are better options if he wants to get back into the war, now much older and certainly sadder but wiser. That does mean checking every option, though, so those fragments of the Brotherhood can't just go ignored.]

Fell asleep. [He flashes Natalie, just another gorgeous and very promising perk of his current life that he'd rather not give up, an easy, slightly sheepish smile.] Turned off my phone for a nap and ended up out for the whole night. Sorry, babe, but it was a hell of a shift.

( she doesn't believe him for a moment - and she has evidence to the contrary - but instead of confronting him (yet), she just flips a page of her magazine and makes a non-committal noise low in her throat. he'd been meeting with some dangerous people; but she was worried that pushing him now would drive him into the arms of some seriously bad bedfellows.. so she'd let it be. there was only so much of the situation she could control.

that said, the lying irked her. it shouldn't, but it did. lying was part of the game; she hadn't thought to reach a point with him where it bothered her or made her feel as though what they had was fake.

because what they had was fake. 'natalie' was a (mostly) artificial creation. the fact that more and more of natasha was slipping in was just a sign of becoming compromised. )

You don't ever get tired of working there, do you? ( she shuts the magazine and sips her drink, eyeing him with a wary gaze. like the typical 'untrusting, unsure girlfriend'. except minus the girlfriend. ) You know you could probably work somewhere else with better hours.

[ooc: i have an idea! bear with me on this. how about if sharon and hunter are both infiltrating HYDRA for different reasons, sent by completely different people, with no communication? so they hook up undercover, for authenticity or some other sneaky motives. now they might be starting to care about each other genuinely, and suspect each other of being good people, but neither of them are able to be sure about the other's loyalties. how's that?]

[ ooc: That sounds wonderful. Would you like to start or shall I? I'd be fine with them starting at any point in the faux-but-not-quite relationship! ]