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XOXO ❅ VALENTINE'S EVENT
One major problem with being the group that's responsible for solving all kinds of problems in the myth world is other myths can kind of be dicks about it. That's why, on Valentine's Day, Cupid shows up, quickly offloads his kid (the toddler Baby Cupid), and runs off to take care of spreading love on his holiday, with barely a how'd you do. He doesn't even say thank you.
To be fair, you can't fault him too much for only trusting the Guardians to babysit his kid in these dangerous and uncertain times, especially when children at risk against the fearlings.
Still, that means there's a giggling toddler, about 2-years-old in appearance, but maybe with the mental age of a 4 or 5 (he is definitely old enough to understand he's being naughty and deserving of a time out) flitting around the Pole causing all kinds of Valentine's related problems. Fortunately, the toddler has learned that he's not quite old enough to know the right times to help people fall in love (Adult Cupid just helps things along when they're already falling, or when they need help falling back in love, of course).
Instead, Baby C is doing what his father taught him to do and causing all kinds of tricks to try to get people to admit feelings that already exist or manufacturing ways for them to become closer to each other.
HONESTY ARROWS ♥ Baby Cupid isn't shooting magic arrows that cause anyone to develop feelings for each other but he sure is trying to make sure people talk about whatever feelings they have. Anyone hit will be compelled to blurt out various truths about themselves, their personal history, and their feelings to whoever is around them and will have difficulty stopping or drawing themselves away. In fact, if someone walks away they'll feel compelled to find someone else to confess to. The effect wears off anywhere between 5 minutes to a half hour.
TATTLETALE ROSES ♥ Vines of roses are now growing all over the Workshop. For those who are in love, they take the form of the face of the person they're in love with. The more they try to hide it or deny it from someone they're talking to, the more of them bloom with the person's face.
THORNY VINES OF CLOSENESS ♥ The rose vines have their own annoying purpose: bonding! For people that clearly need to become friends, fall in love, or fall deeper in love, thorny vines will wrap around both people, forcing them into a little cage together. The thorns fortunately won't poke them - they seem to be maneuvered in a way to just make sure there are no gaps to escape through. The vines are magically reinforced and can't be opened with any physical or magical means. After that, one of two things will happen:
1) A card will fall from the ceiling of the cage saying: Tell each other how you really feel about each other!!! This will happen if the cage thinks they need to affirm the status of their relationship, whether they need to admit they're in love, admit they've been bitten by the friend bug if they're reluctant to, or really need to talk about how much they mean to each other as friends. Only then will they be let out of the feelings shame corner.
2) If the two don't know each other, or both people could afford to get to know each other better multiple cards will drop from the ceiling with icebreaker questions, as if they're a bunch of new hires at an orientation.
How many will they have to answer before they're released? Who knows! But they have to answer them honestly or the cage won't open.
CANDY LONELY HEARTS ♥ People who are on the lonelier side and in need of support might find a candy heart on a random surface. The messages on them are on the platonic side (Like "You rock!" or "Shine on!") They'll feel compelled to eat them (even if they're on the floor). When they do, a glowing red thread will appear and tie itself around their finger. Briefly, in the air, the glowing string will form into letters that tell the person what they need to do to be release, whether it's telling someone they're lonely, asking for some kind of support, or admitting a vulnerability.
Then it'll whip out and grab someone else nearby, wrapping around their finger as well. Sometimes, two people might eat a candy at the same time and each have a string appear and they'll tie in the middle.
The strings are unbreakable, and they won't be set free until whoever ate a candy talks about their loneliness or vulnerable feelings - regardless of whether or not the other person is an eager listener.
❅ Starters: You can make up your own wildcard effects, feel free! If you do, please consider posting it to the Wildcard comment below so others might be able to pick up the same effect as well if they like them.
❅ Multiple effects: Feel free to have characters slammed by as many of Baby C's traps in the same thread as you want. No reason someone can't have the worst luck and trip three Cupid traps at once or several of them in a row.
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"No. I don't reckon so. I don't know if I even really get hangovers anymore." He wakes up feeling exhausted and stiff and with a headache that eases up but never goes away as the day goes by and he clears out his lungs of all the sediment from lying down; for the last year or so, he's been timing smoking a cigarette first thing in the morning so he doesn't nearly puke up his first swig of coffee. "I mean, I don't feel like I ain't hungover neither."
He isn't really in touch with the information his body sends him. That line of communication is fuzzy and distorted by substances, by stress, by the nagging sensation that he doesn't have ownership of it, by the idea that he's fighting against his body instead of partnering with it to stay Bunny's husband in the long haul.
"I don't feel great most of the time. All the time, probably. I don't bring it up because I don't reckon either of us benefit from that." He doesn't expect this conversation to make either of them feel better. He isn't sure why they're having it, except that shutting it down would just turn this into an argument.
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"Well I wish that weren't the case," he murmurs, finally, letting Dan paint all the wish you'd get sober into his words that Dan is willing to consider. "How bad would you have to feel, before you let me in on it? How bad before I know I've got to get you to a doctor?"
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"I don't need a doctor, honey. I promise. I just feel worn down and I don't want to get lectured by one." He sighs and goes back to brushing cinders from Bunny's ruff, then tries to lighten the mood, knowing he hasn't answered Bunny's question. "You'll see me see one eventually anyway, since you promised to love me even when I'm decrepit and wrinkly."
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He pets Bunny's cheek and takes a deep breath. "I just want to hold off having to have these conversations as long as possible. I ain't looking forward to becoming just someone you worry about or who's a liability, and that'll happen eventually, and I just...don't want to start that so early."
He knows Bunny thinks it's better than the alternative, but it doesn't feel that way to Dan. He doesn't want to think about it. He worries if they start digging into it there will be some shift in their relationship and they'll start that new stage he's so scared of right now.
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"Yeah, well, I don't want to start it either."
Bunny snuggles Dan up and sighs.
"I am going to love you no matter how long you live," he adds, a little sulky at Dan's deflection to you promised to love me even when I'm decrepit and wrinkly. He knows Dan's not implying he'd ever renege on that promise. He just doesn't like to think about Dan's inevitable march towards the grave any more than Dan does, but Dan having health problems now just makes him think about the things that could be done to keep that grave farther away. Things Dan won't consider doing. "And longer."
That would be sweet if it weren't his own little barb about how much longer he's got to live with grieving Dan than Dan has to live with doing the hard work to stay alive.
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"I know. I'm trying to give you longer to keep loving me in." But the actions he's taking feel like a lot to him and look like not very much on the surface. Dan feels like scaling back his drinking and drug use, even if he doesn't quit, is a grand gesture, and so does going to the dentist and not taking the riskiest missions he can sign up for. He doesn't want to ask Bunny to be grateful or satisfied with that, but he doesn't think he has more to offer.
"Will it ease your mind if I go get a physical?"
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That was long enough ago that it could have counted as a previous year's physical, but Dan got out of that hospital as soon as he could.
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That was the first and only time Dan's been to a hospital as a patient. He didn't like it. He hopes to not have to repeat it for a long time.
"No, not really. Just getting those antibiotics from the urgent care for my walking pneumonia last year." Dan remembers at the time marveling at how modern medicine took his yearly illness from a monthlong ordeal to a few days of mild unpleasantness - and now that he looks back at it, realizes he completely forgot that lesson learned. "I like feeling self-sufficient, though. You know how that is, you got that streak too. All of this just makes me feel dependent and not in control of things."
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He makes his point with another snuggle. He hasn't been alone since he became a Guardian, and being independent was never a matter of preference. Not the way Dan embraced it, after he faced his own bleak aloneness.
It was a necessity, and it's a necessity that Dan doesn't have access too, with mortality still clinging to him like an unbreakable shell.
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Dan can't quite get past thinking that Bunny would be no happier in Dan's position, were the roles reversed - but to Dan, feeling a sense of dependence on others is inherently more threatening than it feels to others. He figures Bunny would hate feeling as vulnerable and helpless as Dan feels right now; he also doesn't think Bunny would feel that keen sense of danger Dan feels.
"I'm not supposed to be alive right now, you know. I wasn't supposed to make it this long." He was supposed to be dead by twenty-four at the latest. Usually he feels like he did die before then, and is just some sort of ghost play-acting at living, but he doesn't know how to articulate that in a way that won't stress Bunny out. "I didn't never plan ahead for this."
He settles into being held, absently stroking Bunny's chest. "How did you adjust to it, the idea of living forever?"
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He suppresses the smile because he knows he and Dan just can't ever feel about it the same way.
"It didn't take much adjusting," he admits. "I don't actually know if my people could die of old age. None of them got the chance." He pauses before adding, "and if I weren't immortal, I'd want to be. I love it here."
You know that. He doesn't add, but is sure Dan hears between the lines. I don't get how you don't get it is also there, but they don't need to have that conversation. He hopes.
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"I love that you feel that way." He really does. Dan can't and doesn't, but they don't need to have that conversation, and they've gotten so much better at recognizing that, that any inching Dan does towards Bunny's perspective is like the slow, natural, gravitational, tectonic slide of a glacier, not something that can be forced and sped up with words and conversations, not something that can be teased out with reason and argument. "I feel like I'm stuck in the adjustment period. It don't feel real."
It doesn't feel real to not just think of the future as something that won't happen. He sighs and snuggles up on Bunny. "Planning ahead ain't my strength. You're better at it."
Since Bunny's asked for more communication from Dan about his aches and pains, he pulls Bunny's paw over to a place of tension on his shoulder and places the paw where Bunny can squeeze out a knot.
"I have gossip for you, by the way."
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Dan might not have enough time for it to stick. But it's better to hope there is than fall into despair over how little time they really have.
He kneads Dan's shoulder and raises his eyebrows, eager for some tea. "Oh? Well don't keep it to yourself."
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He groans a little as Bunny works some of the stiffness out of him. "Well, you met that new kid, Boimler? Some sort of space military guy? Well, he seems real sweet and all, but I just had to bite my tongue through him trying to convince me the Earth is round."