bakerstreet | Gothic Romance Meme

Gothic Romance Meme

Gothic Romance Meme

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…

The story goes like this: There is a house. It may be haunted. The house has a resident, or two, who has some secrets. They may be charming, or brooding, often both. Someone may have been murdered. A newcomer arrives, either as bride, governess, or journalist, and they begin to unravel all the secrets and lies lurking within the house ~~of Usher~~.

Locations may be in any country, in any era, but there must be a gloomy and opulent old mansion, and some sort of dark and terrible secret to be uncovered (or just ghosts. ghosts are always an option.)

The Newcomer
1. The new bride or groom. Your new spouse is charming and attractive, but do you really know all their secrets?
2. Tutor or governess to the estate children. They seem like such innocent children.
3. Companion—perhaps as a chaperone, perhaps merely as company, but you’ve been hired to come to some remote old house to keep an unknown stranger company. Probably just reading to them, or listening to them chatter on whenever travel is required.
4. Hired hand. You’ve been hired up from the local village—or perhaps the city—as a footman or a maid. Just an ordinary job. Nice house, though.
5. Distant relation. Thanks to your circumstances, you’re reduced to accepting hospitality from some remote relations of yours. They may never turn up to family gatherings, and you’ve never heard much about them, but they’re probably just reclusive.
6. Journalist. You’ve heard some interesting rumours about this old mansion in the middle of nowhere.
7. The neighbour. You know that things are not quite right in that old house on the hill. Perhaps you feel it’s your duty to interfere. Perhaps you’re just curious. Perhaps you are childhood friends with the house’s resident.

The Resident
1. Past transgressions. Perhaps a mad wife in the attic? Someone buried in the cellar?
2. The unquiet dead. Look, you just live here. You’re not responsible for the ghosts. Even if they do all seem to be related to you.
3. The monster. You are the thing in the house to be feared. Actual monsters or monster AUs totally an option here! Vampires, werewolves, beasts and horrors all possible. Perhaps put an ordinary face on when you receive your new guest.
4. Wildcard. Choose your own deep dark secret: maybe your character naturally comes with one.

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[In books before, he’s read the phrase “with bated breath”- Shakespeare in fact, a random minor bit of knowledge he’s surprised he knows. However, he feels like he’s never truly understood it until this moment.]

[Merone is his pride, he has to admit. There are no doubt bugs- he knows because he’s patiently been working through every single inch of the theoretical base- but it’s on a larger scale than anything he’s ever attempted to experiment with in the past. By this point… God, he doesn’t know how long he’s been working on it, but it’s been his passion that’s carried him through otherwise dull and wasteful nights in a job he doesn’t truly care for.]

[This is the first time he’s ever shown it to someone, let alone another engineer, and with Spanner’s level…]

[He can feel his heart threatening to burst from his chest with eager anticipation.]

[The reaction is still one that’s a little hard for him to figure out completely, although he’s hopeful, and Shoichi leans forward to start explaining eagerly.]

Like I mentioned, I have a lot of spare time when I’m doing investigations like this, so Merone has been what I’ve sunk it all into. It’s sort of got bigger from its original form beause of that… I’m still working on some things, since it’s far from being polished up in my opinion, but the main issues have generally been that of connectivity. Although it requires a substantial amount of it, powering the base wouldn’t be the biggest problem, and I’ve been going through different power sources and trying unconventional ideas, but I’m not concerned about it. I mean, I can’t be to start with, since this isn’t something I’ve ever planned to actually make, but….

That’s not the point. Mainly, for a base with functional plumbing and things like that, it can be a bit tricky getting it all to cooperate and make sure it’s not leaking or causing structural damage. I thought connection between the separate blocks would be more difficult, but I actually have ideas on how to best utilize wireless connections.

[Wait, is he talking too much? Shoichi shakes his head a bit.]

There are notes in one of the other files, about everything I’m still working on, or additional details.

...it's amazing. Something on this scale... [Spanner sounds distracted, scrolling through the diagrams, the notes, eyes flickering over all of it and taking it in.] I want to try building it, just to see how it'd work in practice...maybe a scaled-down version, just to test the ideas. Building it to scale...it'd take an unbelievable amount of funding...

[He's absolutely considering the idea seriously. His eyes are gleaming with excitement and interest.]

[Those words are a punch straight to his chest in all the best ways, and Shoichi jolts forward hard enough to make his glasses slip down his nose.]

You mean it!?

[Spanner looks up at Shoichi, actually seeming surprised by Shoichi's shock and excitement. To him, it seems like the most natural thing in the world to want to do this, so Shoichi's acting like he didn't expect this reaction from Spanner is the weird thing.

~~Spanner, he's known you for less than an hour, he doesn't appreciate the depth of your mechanical fetish yet.~~]

Yeah. How could anyone look at blueprints like this and not want to try to make them work in practice? [He grabs a piece of paper nearby, flipping it to a blank side and pulling a pen out of his pocket, sketching a box and making quick notes on each side.] Assuming 100 feet to a side for the full scale model, and 1000 square feet to each room - you'd have to go big, to allow for the rooms to be able to fulfill any function, to say nothing for leaving room for plumbing, wiring, the mechanisms for movement, probably tracks - we could try building on a 1:1000 scale for a proof of concept. Anything bigger and we couldn't really build the only thing without size constraints, to say nothing of the material cost. And the challenge of making it work with everything being small and kind of cramped would almost be greater than getting it to work large scale, so if we could do that, it'd almost guarantee the full scale version is possible.

[Shoichi is pretty sure he could listen a dozen reasons, actually, but he doesn't actually care about listing them all in the moment. All he hears is his heartbeat in his ears, louder than drums, and he's scrambling to settle besides Spanner, watching him make notes.]

Right, right. Some of the details that only come with fully sized projects would be passed over, but that's something we can take into consideration-

[Wait, wait. He hastily shakes his head to try and get himself out of the excitement.]

Spanner, what about the projects you're working on now?

[Spanner gives Shoichi a questioning look.] What about them? We can do this in our free time. Plus, once we get some of my current work out the door, we can take on fewer jobs than usual so we'll have more time for this.

[He's already talking about the both of them as a working unit.]

With that level of work, how much free time are we going to have…?

[But- well. He guesses this is it. Out of nowhere, with him not expecting it, he’s making a sudden career change into something he loves. Taking a breath, he recenters himself. He’s excited, but walk before they run. One foot in front of the other.]

Anyway, first things first. We should focus on me leaving this place realistically, and then meet up in town later. That can be the jumping point for my story on why I decide to come here: so traumatized by the local haunted house that I quit my job and end up accepting a work offer at your shop. Or something like that.

I don't know. But then again, I usually do the same stuff in my free time as I do when I'm working, so I guess I don't really make a whole lot of distinction. [Spanner shrugs.

He considers Shoichi's story, then nods.] Something like that'll work pretty well. Or maybe you can put it around that you're doing an article about the house, but you can make it obvious - and we can subtly circulate the rumor - that the house scared you too badly for you to go back, so you're only pretending to work on it. And then after awhile you get 'fired' for making no progress. [Spanner makes air quotes with gloved hands.] But by the time that happens, you'll have made yourself at home in town, so you'll have a good excuse to just stay on. People will gossip, but there's nothing like giving them a good fake story to chew on to keep them away from the truth. Plus it'll be quiet, slow-burning gossip, so no one will be paying you as much attention as they would if it was sudden and dramatic.

Yeah…. That can definitely work.

[It makes him smile a little bit, too. He’s been writing shitty paranormal news stories for a while now; it’s a little funny to think that he’ll suddenly be part of one like this.]

I’ll put away my computer and things then, and see you in town?

[Spanner nods.] There's this cafe I go to every now and then; they've got good food. I'll give you the address. If you wait there, I'll meet you there and we can put on an act of meeting each other, and I can offer to have you stay with me. If you mention you're good with machines, it'll explain why I can give you a better deal on lodgings than anyplace in town; you can help me around the shop.

[Spanner's...surprisingly good with constructing a web of believable lies. But then, considering he's been living undercover for awhile, perpetuating a Scooby-Doo level haunted house facade, maybe it's not all that strange for him to have (or have developed) skill in deception.]

And you came up with all of that in only a few minutes.

[Still, he’s smiling as he starts to take back his computer, making sure to put back everything properly so that it doesn’t get damaged while he waits for Spanner to write down the address.]

Anyway, it sounds good. Do you plan on taking a day to clear some things up in here, or should I just get there sometime today?

[As it always goes, so goes it here; the hardest part of writing down the address is for Spanner to lay hands on pen and paper. It's not like he usually has to write things down, doing most of his work on his laptop, and what he does write down generally gets written down in his lab, not here. It takes him a minute or two, but finally he locates a post-it and a pen and writes it down, handing it over to Shoichi.]

You can't run a successful fake haunted house if you aren't good at lying. And improvising. [He smiles around his lollipop.

At the mention of waiting a day, Spanner tilts his head.] I was figuring we could do it right now, unless you need some time yourself...? [This seems to be just occurring to him. For all his lazy demeanor, Spanner clearly doesn't let the moss grow under his feet.]

That actually works perfectly for me.

[It feels like action, like doing something instead of waiting impatiently, and he has to admit that he likes it. When he’s not asleep, after all, that’s what he likes doing the best. It’s why he always has something he’s working on when he’s done stakeouts in these old abandoned places before, or else he’d lose his mind. Accepting the sticky note, he grins.]

See you in a couple of hours then?

I'll see you there. [Spanner grins at him.] We can stop by wherever you're staying on the way back, get whatever things you might have left there.

[And just like that, everything changes for him.]

[It’s easier than Shoichi would have ever thought for him to play the long game of putting off his assignment to his editor and interviewing people instead of (publicly) going back to the house as if he’s scared. Stunning, honestly, how it doesn’t feel hard at all for him to fake a nervous laugh in front of the sympathetic clerk at the grocery before he goes back to the repair shop and makes his way through the tunnels to Spanner’s workshop. Still, when the email finally comes telling him of his termination, it’s a relief in more ways than one.]

[Everyone in the tiny little town interprets it as him just being glad on having an excuse to never investigate the house again. Well. They’re not entirely wrong.]

[Because it’s true- he doesn’t have to investigate the house anymore. That’s because he’s a part of its inner workings now, making sure it’s maintained and kept clean, that the Moscas are perfectly operational, and pumping out whatever Spanner needs working on to get the finances for this place. Sometimes he wakes up and he still can’t believe it. How did he go from doing a crappy job he never really cared for to this absolute dream?]

[It doesn’t really hit him until one day while he’s manning their cover shop and a guy comes in not for repairs on anything but an interview, and he remembers that he’d actually had a fairly decent reputation in the paranormal community. Thorough and reliable, and all that. He feeds him the same consistent careful lie he’s fed everyone else, and is completely unsurprised when that doesn’t deter the visitor to town at all. He’s especially unsurprised when he’s in the monitor room with Spanner watching as that exact same person walks through the door of their little haunted house smokescreen.]

[Only two things are surprising: ]

[The first is that Spanner lets him have the honors, his first spook with the system he’s gotten used to over the days he’s been with him, and the two of them have the time of their lives with Spanner giving him tips from behind him. When the guy finally goes tripping out the front door in the middle of the night, screeching from all the scares that Shoichi knew would get him, Shoichi completely loses it until his lungs are sore from how hard he’s laughed.]

[The second is how hard his heart slams into his ribcage when he looks up, wiping tears from his eyes, and sees how close Spanner is with that slight smile playing on his lips.]

[Shoichi tries to tells himself, as the days pass with work and the nights pass with more work but also him laying in bed staring at the ceiling, that he’s a professional. Spanner offered him this chance after seeing his ideas- he doesn’t want to ruin all of that by getting a crush on his boss-slash-coworker.]

[But dammit… if it isn’t hard. Shoichi knows he’s been quietly burning for a while, just as much as he knows he’s been trying to play it off as just being excited for someone to be interested in his ideas. And that’s…. Part of the appeal, he knows. It feels so good to talk with Spanner, lobbying ideas back and forth, being on the same page as they work on the Moscas, and putting together their little proof of concept Merone Base. He’s- brilliant. Amazing. Shoichi hasn’t been able to talk this indepth about tech in years outside of forums, and those rarely got him what he really wanted.]

[If it was just that, Shoichi is sure that he could burn away his little crush, and that’d be the end of it. But… Then Spanner will actually laugh, or talk with Mini Mosca, or he’ll look at something with that radiant focused look in his eyes all heat and interest, and Shoichi will think, every time, Look at me like that.]

[Which is embarrassing, frankly. And, again, unprofessional! So he just thanks his lucky stars that he gets to work his dream job with such an amazing person, and does his best to hold up his end of the workshop. That’s what he’s doing now, mouth scrunched up as his fingers fly across the keyboard of his laptop as he tries to get the audio programming for this particular version just right-]

[Something hits the back of his head, and Shoichi blinks before looking around. A couple of pieces of popcorn are littering his shoulders and the ground around him, and he belatedly realizes that there’s probably more caught in his messy hair. Mini Mosca is nearby, the clear culprit, and Shoichi finally glances at the clock. A while ago, he got Mini Mosca to agree to alert him after a certain amount of time had passed without them eating- it’s for the best. He knows how him and Spanner get when they’re seriously into a project. Without this kind of alarm, neither of them would eat anything for hours. Possibly days.]

Ah- hey, Spanner! [Setting his laptop to the side, he starts to get up to his feet.] I’m going to get us something to eat- do you want something in particular?

[Spanner looks up in surprise when Shoichi speaks, jerked out of his own mechanical reverie. He's been working on some of King Mosca's wiring while Shoichi was doing his programming. It's become habit for them to separate work into 'stuff they can work on together' and 'stuff that only needs one person', and so whenever Shoichi or Spanner want to work on an individual project instead of one of their shared ones, the other has separate work of their own they can do. And if Merone Base can be considered Shoichi's personal project, then King Mosca is Spanner's.

Shoichi's gladly been helping him with it, but at the same time Spanner doesn't want to make him do too much work on something that's not going to make them any direct profit. King Mosca is for no one's use except for Spanner's, and by extension Shoichi's - it's meant to serve as their last and most formidable line of defense, if it's ever to be used for anything at all. Which means neither it nor any of the specialized cutting-edge developments going into it are going on the market. And one could try to argue that Shoichi being defended by it would mean that Shoichi's payment for the work lies in the result, but Spanner isn't kidding himself about that. Any benefit Shoichi draws from the protection of King Mosca would be as the result of danger Shoichi is only in because he's thrown in his lot with Spanner. He didn't need the protection of something like King Mosca before. So while Spanner will gladly share the work on King Mosca when Shoichi offers or voluntarily involves himself - which is often enough - he likes to do his own work on it when Shoichi is doing other work Spanner can't assist with, and prefers not to ask Shoichi for help on it unless he absolutely needs it.

Back to the matter at hand, though...he glances at the clock, then allows his mind to finally pay attention to all the signals his body's been sending him over the past - six hours, apparently. He needs to use the bathroom, one of his legs is definitely asleep from the knee down, and yes, he's starving.

Sometimes Spanner wishes he were as mechanical as his interests. Managing a body is an endless series of distractions from what he really wants to be doing.

He sighs and sets his tools down, pushing himself up onto his good leg and supporting the rest of his weight on the work table as he tries to work feeling back into his other leg.] I'll come with you. We should probably both get out of the shop, anyway. [He sounds resigned as he says this, because he certainly doesn't want to leave his work, but Shoichi will understand how he feels if anyone could. Besides, Shoichi knows Spanner by now. Spanner isn't too complex a case study.]

How's the programming coming? [He glances over at Shoichi.]

[It’s hard to tell what’s more strangely endearing to him: the way Spanner has to get feeling back into his leg again, or the weary resignation to his voice as he’s dragged away from his passion. No one loves his work more than Spanner, in Shoichi’s opinion, and all the little things about it never fail to make his heart flutter.]

[At least he doesn’t have to worry too hard about his own legs. Sure, they ache like hell, but he can still feel them and walk on them as he comes over just in case Spanner falls. Habit has him shifting without thinking when he works, having managed to do it in a way that has his fingers never really leaving the keyboard or whatever else he might be doing. He blames being a journalist having to check on various video feeds on whatever haunted location he was investigating.]

Pretty good. I’m positive that this will help with the control connection for Merone for a quicker response time, so just putting it to the test is what’s left.

Wish I was doing something interesting. [Spanner's slight smile around the ubiquitous lollipop stick is faintly rueful.] Attaching wires might be important work, but it's not exactly intellectually taxing. [Of course, that apparently didn't stop Spanner from getting so engrossed in it that his leg fell asleep...but anything mechanical in nature, even the most boring busywork, can get Spanner to zone out.] We can run a Merone stress test when we get back, maybe. I could use something more interesting to do.

[His leg's mostly woken up by now, albeit in that agonizing pins and needles stage, and he tests it carefully before letting go of the table.] Was there anything you felt like eating today? [Spanner's own food tastes are pretty...predictable, so he feels the courteous thing to do is always ask Shoichi first. Certainly Shoichi doesn't need to be told where Spanner wants to eat at this point.

Besides, Spanner likes making Shoichi happy. He's become quietly but distinctly addicted to the way the redhead smiles, and the fact that their working together has led to a lot of smiling from Shoichi is one of his greatest non-mechanical accomplishments on record.

...although, does it count as non-mechanical if Spanner accomplished it by inviting Shoichi to work on mechanical things with him? He's not sure.]

Just don’t get distracted by the more interesting things when we should be making sure we don’t fall behind on our ‘real’ job.

[But there’s a smile on his face as he says it. Real or because it’s their passion projects, they’re always on top of it. Even the dull bits, like attaching wires. He knows now that it’d take tying up Spanner’s hands to keep him from working on something, and even that wouldn’t be a guarantee. If anyone could be stubborn enough to keep working even with tied hands, then it’s his partner.]

[Er- business partner, of course. Even if he can’t say that the other kind of partner would be nice. Or more than nice, in a way that makes his heart beat a little faster.]

[Lingering until Spanner has made it over without any disaster, Shoichi glances up idly as he tries to think of what he might be craving, if anything. Spanner really is predictable… Anything Japanese, and he’s all for it. Well, that’s fine with him, honestly. He likes sharing his culture with someone so interested in all of it, and it works to his advantage too. For too long, he’s had to eat quick-fix foreign food, anything that he could get to go or heat up simply so that he wouldn’t have to worry too much about cooking when he had a deadline to beat. But with Spanner, well… He’s made a little more effort, lately, to try and get better at cooking when they’ve had the chance. It tastes like home, and, with Spanner always nearby with a look of enjoyment in his eyes, it feels like it, too.]

Well, if you don’t feel like going out to eat… I think I’ve gotten better at making beef bowls. [As they approach the elevator, he perks up.] Oh, and I think the green tea shochu should be finished by now, I think. We can have that later tonight, if you want.

[Even if Spanner hasn’t asked about the large green mason jar in the fridge, he’s probably at least seen it, along with the large note on it that says DO NOT OPEN.]

If you want a break, I'm happy to go out, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't like it when you cook for us. [Spanner grins at Shoichi.] Making candy is one thing, but I could probably build a robot that could cook more easily than I could cook myself.

[It's more than just the fact that Shoichi happens to be Japanese, and thus cooks Spanner's favorite kind of food naturally when he makes food for them. It's more than just the fact that when they eat in, they can get back to work that much faster because they're right next to the workshop. Those things definitely factor into Spanner's preferences, and originally maybe those were the big deciding factors...but it's more than that, now. It's even more than the small, warm feeling Spanner used to get at the feeling of home-cooked meals, and how they actually did make their place(s) feel like a home and not just big workshops.

Spanner's not quite sure how to word the feeling he gets these days; 'flattered' might be closest, but it doesn't seem quite right. But whatever it is, it makes his heart beat a little faster and a little harder, thinking that Shoichi is cooking for them. Just for Spanner and himself. That it's something between no one else but the two of them.

A lot of things these days are between no one but the two of them, and it seems to make those things feel more special.]

How about we have the shochu if the stress test goes well? We can use it to celebrate.

Hey- [He points to Spanner, grinning.] I wasn’t great at it either, but I’ve actually been practicing, and I know how to not get lost in thought thinking about the latest upgrade to the Moscas.

[Still… It’s been well worth the effort. And he doesn’t mean just because it makes him a little more self sufficient, with good food on hand. Maybe it has something to do with the slight pleased blush that even his teasing can’t hide as he glances away at the opening of the elevator doors.]

[So sue him.]

Anyway, that sounds like a plan. The weather outside is- [A pause as he considers it, stepping out.] ...It’s probably nice, right?

[That’s the thing with working in a workshop all the time. The outside world? Occasionally a mystery.]

That only happened two times. [Spanner doesn't quite pout, but he looks a bit put out.] And Mini Mosca put out the fire. It was completely under control. And you're the one who said I should probably not try to cook.

[At the question about the weather, despite the fact that they're only an elevator's ride away from being able to visually check for themselves, Spanner pulls out his phone and opens the weather app as he steps onto the elevator.] Hm...says it's cloudy, but with low humidity.

[Shoichi idly points his finger at him.]

I said you shouldn't cook without help.

[Which, he thinks, Spanner might need a little of when it comes to cooking.]

Which is why I'd make a robot. [Spanner says this in a very 'I've won the argument' tone.]

Did you want me to help with anything, or should I just try not to be in the way? [Mini Mosca wheels up to them as they step off the elevator.] Mini Mosca can help, too.

[Another snort of a laugh tumbles out of Shoichi.] One of these days, you're going to find a problem where you can't use "I'd make a robot" as an answer.

[One day. As the door opens, he nods a little.]

With me and Mini Mosca, we might even be able to keep you from drifting off too much.

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Gothic Romance Meme

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/drops timeskip responsibility into your lap and rUNS

r u d e

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