hesitantly, he raises his head — his eyes slowly come up from the floor, and it’s completely obvious now how long he’s been crying: his tears have ended once, and he’s continued to grieve until he could cry again. the same cycle, on repeat until he’d finally tired himself out to numbness. for the past… hour, hours ( how long has it been since he walked out? how long has it been since danny joined him?) he’s done nothing but tried to carve out this sadness, cling on to danny’s uniform shirt — grateful that the slytherin was here with him despite surely earning himself more detention every minute — and try to shut his brain up from telling him how lonely he’d just become, how irrelevant, how he’d just become one of those orphans who get pushed around because they don’t matter to anyone. and at some point, he realises, he must’ve started to say some of it out loud.
“ do you MEAN that? ” dylan’s tired, and the monotone it causes makes it sound colder than he means it — it’s just his eyes that are telling of the vulnerability that prompts the question. “ because right now, you don’t get to just say that to me if you’re just saying it. ”
it’s only then that he pays enough attention to the notes to recognise the song — head turns to danny with a moment of fright, as if he’s been caught doing something private… and then it softens as dylan realises it actually doesn’t matter when the hell danny had noticed how often he has the cheesiest of 90′s tunes stuck in his head, or that maroon 5′s earlier stuff only really manages to sneak into their background music at home when dylan is around. “ it’s ONE of them. and you’re a sentimental idiot for playing it to me. ” it’s probably specifically how clicheé the song choice is that makes him laugh just as much as he feels flattered. “ my favourite song is actually BELIEVE by cher, but i get why you’d pick this one. ”
danny’s steps on creaking snow warn dylan of his coming, buying him the time to take a breath before the words cut the air, before he feels danny against his back and the younger’s arms around him. he closes the lid on the pack of cigarettes he’s been toying with in the chilly london air. the plastic that had covered it just a minute ago is still in his pocket, golden strip rebelliously hanging outside, visible against the black coat to anyone who’d notice that sort of thing. “ i know. i QUIT ten years ago. ” he’s not yet put the box away, fingers pulling the top open and closes again and again in thought. “ i wasn’t gonna light one. ” it’s true, even if danny has little reason to believe so — dylan wishes he’d had disclosed this earlier so it wouldn’t come as a surprise now, but he knows he never would’ve brought it up: danny would only worry about something dylan’s put long past him.
“ i never DO. i always swear i will when i storm out, but it’s the walk that actually does the trick for me. ” this time, it’d taken a minute longer than normal, but just like every other time, by the time dylan had opened the pack and stared at the rows of cancer sticks for a good minute, he’d calmed enough to no longer have the impulse of breaking a good eleven and a half year’s streak. he turns his head as much as he can towards the other without breaking the hold ( it’s rarer for them to be this way around, he realises, but he could get used to it ). “ look, i’m sorry i got so heated up about it all, i was mad at the arcana and you picked a bad day to pick a fight with me. ”
he could say more but he doesn’t want to — not now, anyway, when he’s pretty sure danny doesn’t want to continue the conversation either and the moment’s too perfect to be ruined with talking. instead, he chucks the full pack of cigarettes to the snow, bringing his hands over danny’s, and allows his head to rest on danny’s. “ i love you. ”
i. 😶😶😶 #detailslater ii. truth be told, james daniel atlas without a straightening iron is among the most adorable people in the world. iii. pre-show nerves iv. this could be horsemen motto at this point. v. in hindsight, i should’ve seen where this was going. @showman.atlas, everyone. vi. spending valentine’s day working… #thanksforthephotobomb @jackthewilder
Hello, my name is Aurora, I’m 21 years old and Finnish. EET time zone, naturally not a native speaker — if my replies make no sense, please let me know, it’s either because of me being tired or fucking up grammar. Please tag choking, somnophilia, eating disorders, suicide and bluespace, including screenshots of the dash: essentially, if the sides of the picture are the same colour as the dash, tag it.
selectivity
I am open to ocs and crossovers. This blog is mutuals only: threads, plotting and im are only for people who I have followed back. However, non-mutuals can send me asks and memes and reply to opens. I do tend to form mains and practice exclusivity, especially shipping exclusivity: the list can be found here. Note that I fully admit to being a lazy ass about checking my followers: I am currently using an extension that hides my follower count, so it is up to my own memory to remember to check the list: thus, it can take up to anything from a week to a month to check out a blog — more, if it’s a muse from something I haven’t seen yet.
pre-established relationships
If you have a non-romantic relationship idea (friends, colleagues, even family) between our muses, chances are I’ll be up for that, but do please run it through me first. This is twice as important for Horsemen ocs. The Horsemen and the dynamic between them form a large part of Dylan’s life, so I am more hesitant than most about writing with them because I need to understand why Dylan would have chosen them. I hope you can understand this.
shipping
Shipping-wise, Dylan is free game, but only if it happens with chemistry. This is even more highlighted by the fact that I play Dylan as demisexual, meaning that he doesn’t feel sexual attraction to anyone until he has a strong relationship with them, platonic or romantic.
Statistics
FULL NAME: Dylan Caspian Shrike
ALIAS: Dylan Rhodes (active from 1990 to 2015)
AGE: 44
BIRTH DATE: December 21, 1971
GENDER: Cis male
ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Panromantic
SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Demisexual
RELIGION: Atheist
SPOKEN LANGUAGES: English (native), Mandarin, Cantonese, French, Italian, some Greek
CURRENT HOUSING: Apartment connecting to The Eye’s headquarters in London
OCCUPATION: The “fifth” Horseman, leader of The Eye’s western base. Worked as a mole in the FBI until being exposed publicly at the end of 2015
relationships
PARENTS: Lionel Shrike (deceased in March 6, 1984), Henriette Shrike (deceased in October 20, 1988)
SIBLINGS: None
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: Currently, none
CHILDREN: Unable to have
physical traits
EYE COLOUR: Brown
HAIR COLOUR: Dark brown, greying
HEIGHT: 5'7½
BODY TYPE: Short, square, somewhere between builtfat and chubbyfat.
personality
INTELLIGENCE: Book-smarts: studied engineering in college, degree in Criminology, mathematical brain. Strategist by nature.
DISPOSITION: Intelligent and calculating. Extroverted, but prefers a small social circle. Needs to feel in control, tends to take a leadership position very easily, as well as responsibility over others. Strong moral compass and need to see justice served.
Biography
Dylan Caspian Shrike was the first and only child born to Henriette Wilson, a former actress, and Lionel Shrike, a famous magician and a member of The Eye. The family lived in an apartment New York they owned, greatly relying on Lionel’s profession to supply for them. Partly to this, Lionel was largely absent at home, always performing, practicing, or travelling to China to buy equipment for his tricks. Dylan always knew his father first as a magician, and only then as a father.
This not-ideal but functioning life came to a stop when Thaddeus Bradley revealed how all of Lionel’s magic tricks were done in the pilot of his show, leaving the family unsure how Lionel’s career would handle such a blow. In an attempt to regain spotlight, Lionel insisted on doing a trick Thaddeus had called impossible: to break out from being handcuffed in a safe in the middle of a river. Dylan watched his father go down in the safe but the metal the safe was made of warped, making the escape impossible and causing Lionel to drown. Because his body nor the safe was ever found, his life insurance claim was denied, and the family was left without a penny.
Dylan always blamed the death of his father above all on Thaddeus Bradley, and after his mother had to give him up for adoption at the age of 12, Dylan started to plan for revenge. He spent most of his teenage years in a group home and two foster families, copying his father’s tricks and practicing some of his own, never specialising in anything in particular, finding himself more interested in the behind-the-scenes work that went into the larger tricks.
He started to study engineering in college, but The Eye gave him another task: take a new identity — that of Dylan Rhodes — and move to study Criminology in order to become a mole in the FBI. This alias gave him a possibility to start working on his plan to bring those responsible for his father’s death and the hardships that followed: a group of magicians that would bring the art back to a global spotlight whilst using their abilities to deceive for a greater cause. Gathering resources, perfecting his plan, and making it possible to do without known help from The Eye — as is required from applicants — was a long process, but he finally got it to motion in February 2013.
