firestorm717 | Callan is Such a Slashfest (Reply)

Thanks to Raffles, I discovered the beauty of Anthony Valentine and fell down the rabbit hole of old British TV shows. One such show I've been watching is Callan, a gritty Cold War spy drama from the 60's, starring Edward Woodward as the eponymous character, David Callan, and Anthony as Toby Meres, a baby-faced agent with a sadistic streak and an eye for pretty boy trainees.

Here he is playing with his pistol:

And here he is smiling as he interrogates an enemy spy... by using said spy as target practice:

Callan and Meres both work for the Section, a top secret British organization that carries out shady missions - kidnapping, extortion, outright murder - in the name of Her Majesty's government. While Callan is morally tormented by his job, often butting heads with Hunter (their boss) over ethics and justice, Meres takes great pleasure in it and sees no reason why Callan should be the top man when Callan himself wants to quit the Section. After all, Meres is a veteran agent who's done his share of guarding marks

and subduing persons of interest.

(I chose these last two gifs solely for the Toby/Guns ship, hehe). However, Hunter still considers Callan to be the Section's best operative, so Meres is often relegated to support duty. It's a major source of friction between the two, especially since one of Meres’s duties is to ensure Callan's moral sense doesn't get in the way of a job, no matter how despicable. For example, here he is testing out a sniper rifle

(God, the way he strokes it is SO dirty) that Hunter orders him to use on a target should Callan fail in an assassination attempt. Needless to say, Meres is very eager to show off his long, hard gun *cough*

Despite their initial antagonism, Callan and Meres slowly grow to respect each other, first as rivals, then as teammates, then finally, dare I say... friends? Meres’s respect for Callan is obvious from the start. In the very first episode, he tells a contact that Callan is a "Damn good operative", to which the contact replies, "You like him", prompting Meres to backpedal and claim, "I detest him. He's still good." This pattern repeats itself in season 2, when a new Hunter (the boss of the Section changes, but he's always called Hunter) again observes that Meres likes Callan after Meres goes out of his way to defend Callan's expertise in the face of Hunter's skepticism. What's more, it soon becomes clear that Meres manipulated Callan and Hunter into a meeting so that Callan would be forced to rejoin the Section, presumably because Meres was bored without his ~~lover~~ rival. The slash just writes itself from there. I'll make a separate post dedicated to Callan/Meres once I finish watching the series, but suffice it to say, these two go from actively sabotaging each other to sharing clothes, sipping tea, and co-parenting a beautiful white cat together. Seriously, so married.

I'll just leave you with one more gif. Meres has a habit of breaking into his colleague's apartment when he needs something from Callan, and he can't resist the opportunity to pull a prank. I liken it to a boy pulling on the pigtails of a girl he fancies. Anyway, in this scene, Meres scares Callan with his biggest gun ~~besides the one in his pants~~.