a moment ( or ten ) too long is spent reading the news of the day on his laptop when the smell of fish stock starting to burn fills the kitchen. a few swear words slip out as the clock and the consistency of the broth confirm what the smell implied—it’s too thick to be used. dylan is just in the process of pouring it out as he hears another set of feet travel to the room—jack or atlas, by the pace of it—but dylan doesn’t stop running water into the pot. “ i got SIDETRACKED and forgot to watch the temperature–… ” it’s less news and more an acknowledgement of the other’s presence until he has finished the preliminary rinsing and he can turn around to face—jack.
one thing’s for damn sure, he’s not starting that process again. he’ll experiment when the safe house is less populated and he more focused on the task at hand. “ i’m gonna make nicoise—you want me to make enough for two? ” salad, he’s pretty sure, he can manage to make right now.
He barely suppresses the sigh that wanted to escape as he looks at the trapdoor, as though it’d suddenly work from how hard he stared at it. Jack can’t completely hide his frustration as his fingers impatiently tap against his thigh and he has to force his gaze away from the trapdoor and Dylan.
“I got the wiring right. I followed your instructions to the letter, Dylan, it’s just being– Look, I’ll check it. Okay?”
the brand of impatience, of frustration, that jack is showing is familiar — and it, in reality, has nothing to do with the goddamn door… which means it’s nothing dylan has the time or the abilities to ease right now. all he can hope is that the show these tricks are meant for isn’t too far away and that once the two-to-four horsemen are doing a show again, it’s going to release the tension bubbling just beneath each of their surfaces.
a jump down, fingers already working on opening the device. “ yeah, CHECK IT. did you test it on your own at any point after calibrating it? ”
Despite being largely an indoors-y person, Dylan has and always will prefer almost any weather to rain. It’s convenient now that he’s an outlaw who needs to blend into crowds whenever he goes outside because rain means oversized clothes and people trying desperately to keep their head down and focus on getting where they want to be rather than glancing at passerbys… but he doesn’t like standing in it. He’s more used to sun, finds snow more aesthetically pleasing, and can even find beauty in full-blown storms for as long as no one is getting hurt, but just plain rain — or wind and rain — is just an inconvenience.
Good thing they’re currently living in bloody England, right?
“ no, there’s definitely something WRONG here. i’m standing here, and you can still see me, so i haven’t vanished in thin air. ” a small jump on top of the contraption to prove his point: the trapdoor isn’t just stuck — it’s just not going to open. “ you sure you got the wiring right? ”
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.
