bakerstreet | The Masquerade Meme

The Masquerade Meme

The { MASQUERADE } Meme

Masquerade
Paper faces on parade
Masquerade

It's a splendid night for a party!

You received an invitation to a masquerade party and after wondering who exactly throws these things anymore outside of people in Italy and the strange people in that Vanilla Sky movie, you've decided to attend! Decked out in your best (or maybe not so best - it may have been last minute, after all), you descend on the party and prepare to make it a night to remember.

Is it your friend's annual Halloween party with a twist? Perhaps you're an international spy, trying to find out the best way to steal the Crown Jewels. Maybe this is part of Spirit Week at your high school and you really wish that your classmates would be more creative next time.

Elaborate Venetian, playful animals, dazzling supernatural creatures - the night is young. Have fun.

:::

This is not a RNG meme. Your characters' role and situation is entirely up to you. "But how do you play?" you might ask. It's as simple as 1, 2, 3!

1.) Post with your character. In the subject line, type of your character's name and canon. If you'd like, in the comment section, you can describe what mask/costume your character is wearing.
2.) Tag around! This is a party after all, and your character can't find any of their usual crew behind their masks (or maybe they can and need to tease them mercilessly for their choice of costume).
3.) Profit!

First person to drop the chandelier buys drinks for everyone!

stolen from

dammithardison here

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“Forever the optimist,” Natasha replied. In all honestly she didn’t like it either. It felt like a puzzle with a missing piece, like they weren’t being given the whole story, and even if she hadn’t been wary before, Clint’s proclamation would be enough to set her on edge. His instincts were rarely wrong.

“I’ll take it,” she said, removing the wedding band from the pouch and placing it onto her finger. She hated jobs that required it; it only reminded her of a time she had worn one for real. “Get some sleep.”

Rising from her chair, she found a pair of satin pajama bottoms and a matching camisole in her luggage. Slipping underwear and the pants on until the robe, she dropped it to the floor and pulled the top on over her head. Pulling out her guns, she set about loading them, just in case.

"Hey, tough job, but somebody's got to do it." He replied, giving a rolling shrug before unfolding from his chair, stretching and collecting a pair of sweats and a tee out of his own luggage, trudging off to take a quick shower of his own.

He sprawled over onto the bed with a: "Three, three and a half, wake me up." Provided he wasn't already awake on his own, that was. He did drop off almost instantly, the same as he usually did, it was a skill that had taken a while to learn, to ingrain like any of his others.

Natasha had been impressed when she had found that whoever had packed her luggage had been thoughtful enough to pack a book for her as well. Then she had looked at the cover and decided she was no longer grateful and someone was having a nice chuckle somewhere. Trashy romance novels weren’t really her style, but for lack of anything better to do while Clint slept, she settled back in the chair and started to read, her gun hidden under a half folded newspaper on the table beside her.

It was the classic tale of a young woman set to marry a rich man who she didn’t love who got kidnapped on the eve of her wedding. Of course her and her handsome captor fought and argued, but the attraction was evident and coupled with the fact that her fiancé wasn’t too keen on paying her ransom, of course she eventually fell for the man who had taken her and treated her roughly for over two hundred pages. Not really caring to find out how it turned out, not that she couldn’t make an accurate guess at it, Natasha had set the book aside and settled on staring at the wall for a while as she let her mind wander, then at Clint. He was more laid back than many of their coworkers, but she still liked to see him completely relaxed. More than that, she enjoyed the knowledge that he trusted her enough to watch his back that he could sleep with her being his only protection. He was the only one she could do the same with herself.

After a little over three hours she got to her feet and padded silently across the floor to the side of the bed. Smirking a bit to herself, she bent over and blew softly into his ear.

She was probably the only person who got to see him totally relaxed, if it had been anyone else he would still have had a ready tension along his spine. He still would have slept, of course, just not as deeply nor as well.

He was alerted by her movement, though even subconsciously he seemed to know that it wasn't a defensive one, but he was at least partially aware before her gentle-ish alarm, and he smiled crookedly, shaking his head and stretching, "Cute." He rolled over onto his side before levering himself upright, "Any updates?"

He didn't figure anything had happened, or she would have woken him up sooner, but it didn't hurt to ask.

Natasha grinned back at him before stepping onto the bed on her knees and crawling across to the other side. “I took them all out an hour ago. You slept through the whole thing. Thank me now or later,” she deadpanned, stretching out on the bed. Slipping under the comforter, she tucked a hand under the pillow and looked at Clint. “Nothing. I think if anything is going to happen it’ll be during the fire alarm while there is already a commotion going on. It would be the best time to strike.”

The bed was warm and comfortable, but she wasn’t tired. With a possible threat still looming in only a few short hours Natasha doubted she would get any real sleep. She could sleep when this was all over with.

He scoffed, shaking his head and running a hand through his hair as he levered himself to his feet, "And you didn't save me any? You're just trying to make sure I'm as bored as possible for my watch. I know how you are." Aside from the tease there was an odd sort of affection in the tone. Because she was a friend, and she'd know the tease for what it was - a response to her own.

After making sure that the door was still locked, and there was nothing in easy line of sight through the peephole, he sprawled himself into the chair, "Get some rest." He knew better than to tell her to sleep, suspecting that the best she would get was a light doze, but it was better than nothing when they still had a few hours to kill.

Natasha’s eyes followed his every movement, a playful glint obvious in their green depths. “Or maybe I wanted to get them out of the way so I could have you all to myself for the next few hours,” she replied. She’d let him take that however he liked.

“I am resting,” she said as he finally settled into the chair. “But I believe you owe me a story.” She wondered if he would remember after all the events and actions that had made up their mission.  

There was another crooked smile at the first, "You know, you don't have to take out a cadre of ninjas just to get me to yourself, you could just ask, like a normal person."

He groaned, however, at the following statement, "Should have known you wouldn't forget about that." He sighed, shaking his head and settling back in the chair, "Okay, so, uh, once upon a time, back before I got snapped up by SHIELD, I was doing some special-ops training in Alaska, up in the mountains." He gave a rolling shrug, making himself more comfortable, "It was a long-haul kind of a mission, survivalist training."

He was getting to the part about the wolves, it was just going to take him a minute.

“I’ll remember that for next time,” Natasha replied, settling down into the bed. Not that she was what anyone would consider a ‘normal person’, not by a long shot. Taking out the enemy just to spend time with the person she trusted and enjoyed most in the world seemed normal enough to her, even if it had all started as a joke.

“You know I have a memory like a steel trap,” she said. Shifting her pillow slightly, she made sure she could watch him closely while still remaining comfortable. While he told his story she listened with rapt attention. She always liked the rare times when he told her stories of his past, like he was offering a bit of himself, proving that he trusted her as well.

Maybe taking out a cadre of ninjas was normal for them. Clint would agree that it was, or was close enough to normal for them.

He was apparently at ease, relaxed back in the chair, though he did have one arm resting on the table top to where he could get at her newspaper-concealed gun if he needed to, but even that position was a natural one for him, "Somewhere along the way, I caught the attention of a pack of wolves." He shrugged, cocking his head in a 'what can you do?' movement, "They followed me for... miles. Far enough and long enough that whenever I thought I'd lost them, there they were again."

Clint had the ability to look perfectly natural and relaxed in pretty much any situation. Even when she knew he was uncomfortable he rarely gave the outward impression of such, which was always a good attribute in a spy.

“Do wolves normally do that?” Natasha asked. Though if he was alone and perhaps injured, he would certainly appear to be an easy enough meal, despite his size.

He shook his head, "No, they don't, it's fucking weird behavior for wolves, especially a pack of them. A loner might, especially if they're rabid, they start doing all sorts of weird things when they're rabid, same as any animal, but a pack like that?" He shook his head again, "Definitely not normal, not about a human, anyway."

He shook his head, a narrow little flicker of a smile sliding into place and away again, "One of my contacts said maybe they thought I was something else. Never did get him to clarify that."

Although her expression remained mainly impassive, there was a light in her eyes that indicated that he had her full attention and that she was definitely interested in the story. The mystery was intriguing, animals acting so out of character for a single man.

“Were you injured? Perhaps they thought you were an easy kill,” she said, though the idea of them thinking he was ‘something’ else had her mind rolling over the possibilities.

Grabbing the pillow from the other side of the bed, she hugged it to her chest as she waited for him to continue. If he wasn’t going to use it she might as well get comfortable.

He shook his head again, "No, perfect health." A pause then, "Well, not injured. Survivalist training dispatches always make participants a little unstable." He shrugged, "I thought maybe they were rabid, but I watched them take down a deer, working together, they don't usually cooperate if they're rabid."

His brow furrowed, shifting his shoulders a little, trying to get comfortable, "Finally had to kill them. Hated to, but it was me or them."

It was really a distressing story, but more for the mysteries than the events themselves. If his trainers had made Clint unstable, what was it to them to make the wolves the same, to induce strange behaviour just to see if he could handle it, and if he couldn’t? Oh well, there were always others.

The very thought of it sent a cold chill down Natasha’s spine and she closed her eyes. She was no stranger to being used, being programmed, being pitted against harsh odds, and even others like her, to prove she was the best. To say they were not fond memories was a gross understatement.

“You did what you had to do. It’s what we always do,” she said, slowly opening her eyes to meet his again.

He just nodded, looking away to the window after a moment, "Yeah. But there you have it, the mystery of why I'm afraid of wolves." A one-shouldered shrug, "Not like I have nightmares about it, or anything."
Except on very rare occasions when he was well and truly exhausted, the memory of the wolves surfaced, as did others, the things he usually kept buried and locked away even from himself.

There was a small smile when he turned back to her again, having packed it all away once more, "Get some rest, we'll be moving again way too soon."

[ooc: Just a heads-up, I'm leaving for a week of vacation this Sunday the 11th, don't know what the internet situation will be like, but I'll be returning tags when I get home if nothing else!]

Neither of them were the most open people, but Natasha had to admit that she enjoyed these quiet moments when they actually opened up and shared bits of themselves with each other. Clint was the only one who knew any thing of her past that couldn’t be read in a file, the only one she had willingly shared anything with, and she always appreciated that he was willing to offer the same, even if she wasn’t the only one. She had never asked.

“I would say that’s a valid reason,” she said, watching as he locked his memories away again and put on another mask. They wore so many it was often difficult to know what was real and what wasn’t.

“You know you’re welcome to join me,” she replied, tossing the pillow back in place on the other side of the bed. “I doubt I will be getting any sleep as it is.”

((Thanks for the heads up! Hope you have an awesome vacation!))

"Never said it was an irrational fear." He replied with a shrug, "Just a fear." There was an actual smile then, not as rare as people thought they were. Just because his first language was sarcasm, people thought that he was never genuine.

It was something he played into as often as not, really, "But if we're both comfortable, who's going to stay alert?" Not that he was planning on slacking off with their remaining time, if anything he was going to get a little more wary the closer it got to the evacuation time, and that would just be compounded by nothing happening. It always set off internal warnings when things went smoothly, because in his experience that wasn't something that happened naturally.

[I intend to! It's my first vacation without an 'adult', so to speak.]

Natasha smiled back, also not as rare as people thought. So many saw her as cold, they didn’t get her dry sense of humour. She was not as serious as others presumed she was.

“You can’t be both comfortable and alert, Barton?” she replied, raising her eyebrows at him. “I thought you were better than that.” It was a friendly jibe, of course, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a bit of truth to the start of it, at least. Natasha could certainly be both, and when she didn’t have him watching her back she was more like to sleep with a gun under her pillow than not.

Stretching her arms over her head, she arched her back and groaned slightly before settling back down, just teasing him now with her comfort compared to his.

((That’s awesome!))

"Oh now you're just rubbing it in." He groused, though he was still smiling as he said it, shaking his head and finally pushing up out of the chair.

After all: they didn't have much longer anyway, and it wasn't as if he was going to fall asleep again anytime soon. He debated, just for a moment, flopping across her instead of onto the empty side of the bed, but ultimately decided against it, it was a tactic that could wait for another time.

(We were all super-mature about everything. Totally. Even when we were having chocolate milk for breakfast)

Natasha grinned smugly at her victory and rolled onto her side to face Clint as he laid down on the other side of the bed.

“Now isn’t that better?” she teased, tucking her hands up under her pillow. “It’ll only be another hour or so before we should pack up and get ready.”

Already she was anticipating whatever they would be facing when the time came. There was a chance it would be nothing, that they would make a clean break and get back to base with barely a scratch, but she wasn’t counting on it. With there luck, a less favourable outcome was more likely.

((ha! brilliant. I can’t say much considering my supper lastnight consisted of popcorn, wine and icecream))

"What do you think the chances are we're going to get out of this clean? I'm figuring about five-to-one against." Mostly because the situation was still unclear, and more than just unclear, it was verging on totally opaque, they didn't have any details aside from where they were supposed to be and when, not what was going to happen next, and no idea whether they were going to have backup, or even contact.

Suffice to say: He didn't like it. He never did like it if he didn't know the plan, or even just his part of the plan. What they had now wasn't even that, it was the first step in a plan, and maybe not even that.

(hahah! Nothing wrong with that! I'm going to have a totally mature dinner of cocoa and mac & cheese tonight, because I'm a grownup and I can.)

“Six to one. I’m an optimist,” Natasha deadpanned. Some nights the worse the odds the better she liked them, and while she was glad the mission had gone well and she was enjoying her quiet time with Clint, she was also looking forward to the chance to kick a little more ass.

She could tell that Clint wasn’t in the same frame of mind, though, and reached over to lay her hand on his arm. “Whatever it is, it won’t be anything we can’t handle.” Together they were nigh unstoppable.

((mmm, sounds like a mature and sophisticated meal to me))

He nodded, "They wouldn't throw us at anything we couldn't take down. Just hope we get an actual vacation after this. Hell, this is, what are we up to now? Quadruple duty?" Which was to say that he'd been running hard for too long, and while he trusted SHIELD not to get them killed, he was already starting to feel run down.

Of course, if they did get any actual downtime, he'd be complaining about being bored within the first 24 hours, which was probably part of why they only rarely got any. SHIELD didn't like it when Clint got bored, because it made him inventive.

(Totally is! And black cherry soda in a wineglass makes it automatically super-fancy)

Bringing her hand back to her pillow, Natasha let her eyes close for a moment and relaxed. “Mmm, a week somewhere tropical is sounding very nice right about now.”

She enjoyed her job, the action and the adrenaline rush, but even the Black Widow needed a break every once in a while. She knew Fury would never push them past their limits to the point that they were being endangered, but sometimes she wondered if he overestimated them. They were his top team, but they needed rest just like everyone else if they wanted to stay that way.

“Hot sand, good surf, nobody that knows us for miles...” With her eyes still closed she smiled at the mental image. “I know you think you would get bored, but I promise I would find ways to keep you entertained.”

((Ha! nice. and here I don’t even have real wine glasses for my wine))

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