danny’s fairly sure that the time is quick approaching where he really ought to focus on what he’s supposed to be doing, on getting out of the ropes — but then again dylan seemed to have this natural ability to destroy his usually reliable self restraint, so instead he cocks his head to the side and considers, because he’s not even sure dylan knows how much he’s given him to reply to right there. “ hey, i’m just as surprised as you… although the opposite is certainly an idea. ” pushing the images proffered by the idea of tying dylan up aside is harder than it has any right to be, but he manages, tilting his head back slightly and smirking. “ so you’ve thought about it. ”
there’s little he can do to mask the small shake in his breath in response to the new closeness and the quieting of dylan’s voice, even as he follows the given instruction, hooking his finger around the rope and tugging tentatively. the intimacy of the moment is unexpected, but not unwelcome, he finds, there’s comfort in dylan’s closeness that he’d never admit aloud. he swallows once, trying yet again to redirect his own attention. “ like that, right? ”
there’s little hoping danny can’t feel the small intake of breath that results when the imagery of danny tying him down to a bedframe properly hits him, drawing itself in his mind with a few details more than what is absolutely necessary. danny leans back, and dylan has to force patience within himself to not follow his first instinct and press a kiss to the newly exposed area, if for nothing else then to watch the smirk waver for a moment. “ yeah, i HAVE, ” he admits, almost adding ‘ i’ve thought about a lot of things ’ before electing to wait to see if even this idea works out first.
“ yeah, like that. you should feel which way to pull — one way, it goes tighter, one way, it doesn’t. take it slow. ” he completely decides to disregard the fact that with the direction the conversation is going, it would be in both of theirs’ best interests to get danny out of the ropes and with his hands free as soon as possible. danny is not panicking anymore, so there’s a decent chance he could get the knot untied, given that they don’t rush it… a condition that seems to be harder and harder to fulfill eah passing second.
it feels, for a moment, like all the air has been ripped from danny’s lungs. the facade of cool surety splinters harshly as dylan’s words wash over him, unbearably loud in spite of their actual volume. between the look on dylan’s face and the tone of his voice and the way guilt settles deep in his own bones, danny has never hated himself as much as he has in this moment. he shouldn’t have let this happen, shouldn’t have allowed anyone to gain leverage over him, shouldn’t have even gotten this attached in the first place. every ounce of him just wants to stop, to pick up the phone and call merritt and tell him they have to call the whole thing off, they have to find another way, he wants to give in to the only good man who’s ever believed in him and explain ——
instead though, he swallows hard and draws himself up, pulling for the indifferent arrogance that has never worked on dylan, because the alternative to doing so is unacceptable. he’s done this to himself, and he’s not the only one who will pay if he doesn’t follow through. the way his chest tightens like he’s about to cave in on himself and he has to swallow past traitorous emotion that threatens to close his throat is irrelevant now.
“ i — ” for the first time in years, danny doesn’t know what he means to say, i don’t want this. i have to. instead, he shakes his head just slightly, body tensing as if he’s already preparing to run. “ i’m sorry dylan. ”
how did they keep ending up here? with dylan, holding shattered pieces of himself because he’s put his trust in a conman he’d decided to care for enough to choose blind faith over sense? he rejects danny’s apology as soon as it hits his ears — no, no, no, if you’re not sorry enough to not do this, you’re not sorry enough — but it’s enough to shake him, force him to take a step back, look away and cover the side of his face to prevent danny from seeing how close his expression is to meeting its breaking point. a deep breath, a promise to himself that he can let this out as soon as he’s out of here if he can just pretend like he’s still one complete man in front of daniel. he opens his eyes, slowly, carefully, and lowers his hand with the same caution before turning to almost face danny, eyes locked even if his body is still turned halfway to protect itself.
“ WHY? ” dylan shouldn’t ask this: the amount of answers he can get for it that have the potential to make him hate himself are close to infinite, but some part of him that can’t let go of the love he feels for danny clings on to the hope that there’s something, anything the youngest atlas could say that would make him understand, make this all alright. ( or at least, make watching him go easier. ) “ what’re you getting out of this? what was worth throwing this away? ” there’s a pause and dylan tries to cover his meaning with a hand gesture around danny’s flat, but the meaning is already hanging in the air: what was worth throwing me away?
“ are you telling me you’re not, because — ” whatever the ‘ because ’ is intended to be dies on danny’s tongue as frustration and uncertainty take eminence in his mind, despite the fact that there’s a part of him that very much wants to follow that conversation topic to its end. there’s little that manages to stand in the flash flood of anxiety though, as fingers start to slip on the rope and previous attempts to teach himself to escape that left him compromised for extended periods of time lurch to the forefront of his mind.
he doesn’t hear dylan move, doesn’t even realize he has moved until a hand closes over his and he stills, tension melting out of him almost immediately. later, he’ll find the reassurance that courses through him with the confirmation that dylan’s not going to leave him to his own devices for figuring it out alarming, but for the moment he focuses on listening to instruction and trying not to read too far into the double meanings that his brain kind of wants to run away with, because being tied up has never been a thing of his before and that’s a development worth consideration and possibly overanalyzation but —
“ uh… yeah, i can. ”
there has to come a point, eventually, when danny stops surprising him, but it often felt like every time dylan thought he knew everything, something jumped around a corner. sometimes big, life-changing things, sometimes something smaller: like the fact that the one person dylan had presumed in his brief pondering on the topic to never be able to give up control even in the bedroom was into ropes. danny might’ve not said ‘yes’ directly but he might as well have — dylan will probably never know if danny’s words were intended to be snark or an attempt to explain himself, but it hardly matters. “ no, i AM. ” it feels pointless to try to deny it now — especially considering what exactly daniel has wrapped around his wrists. “ i just thought you’d want me in the chair and not the other way around. ”
this hardly feels like the time or place for this conversation, but it’s happening now, and every passing second dylan feels less and less inclined to push the mental images away from his mind. for now, he still has to, because danny is still struggling — his fingers guide danny’s to take a hold of one side of the knot, guiding him to take a hold of it properly. “ i need you to pull this one, down and left. ” he moves closer, enough so he can lower his voice ( he’ll later justify it with the intimacy seemed to calm danny down, but in reality, this is only happening because he wants it to ). “ i’m gonna be right here. ”
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.
