Between Bubbles

by darkrogue1

Small stories between the boxes and bubbles of Blake and Mortimer. Begins slowly with the Mystery of the Great Pyramid and follows wikipedia's chronological order. Slash, although Professor Mortimer is a bit slow. M because of chapter 9. Otherwise T. Translation of Entre les bulles. Beta-read and edited by Blackpenny.

1. I Serve Science and It's My Joy

Professor Philip Mortimer is a scientist, a researcher. Despite the deductions he makes during his adventures, he prefers to adhere rigorously to the scientific method; none of the inventions to his credit were created by chance.

Of course, sometimes his mind makes a supposition and offers an assumption with seemingly no connection whatsoever to what he has observed previously. Sometimes he has good intuitions and he listen to them. It's part of what makes him a good researcher. However, as long as they have not been proven, these conjectures are only hypotheses and as a scientist, he waits to prove them before deeming them as true and accurate.

"Francis likes to suffer," whispers his instinct one day. It's at the precise moment when he really would like to strangle his friend for making him believe he was dead and, for an instant, in the eyes of the captain, he reads a permission to do so, almost an invitation. Yet he does not and gives the captain a warm hug instead. Still, after sharing so many adventures with his friend this revelation surprises him and he archives it for future consideration. They have other worries at the moment.

Philip Mortimer is a hedonist. He enjoys life and the pleasures it brings him. He is strong in the face of pain and knows to endure it when he must, but he certainly does not appreciate it. The war has changed him; in his nightmares, the fears of his youth are have mostly given way to the memories of death and torture under the cruel laughter of Colonel Olrik.

Philip Mortimer does not like pain, neither receiving nor inflicting it, even if his quick temper sometimes incites him to retaliate against injustice. Once things calm down after their Egyptian adventure, he wonders about this new trait he has noticed in his old friend Blake. He remembers the years spent alongside the captain, his somewhat extreme reactions to any pain, his delighted air when he comes to after being suffocated or strangled. So it's true, it cannot be otherwise: Francis Blake likes being made to suffer.

To think that in twenty years, he had not noticed. For Philip Mortimer, this casts a shadow of his own making on their old friendship. What else might he have missed? He resolves to pay more attention to his comrade in the future.