Holly/Mikhail 💒 (reasons for a platonic marriage?)
5 Wedding Headcanons || @halcyonterror
1. It’s after Night Vale and Desert Bluffs have combined into one city, and the City Council changes the rules about who gets access to people if they end up in the hospital. Matvei is gone, and Mikhail and Tomas...
The city is dangerous enough that they both think it’s the best option that if anything happens, they have someone they can count on.
2. It’s a small wedding. There’s Carlos and the other scientists on his team, and because there’s Carlos, there’s also Cecil. Helios is there to both their delight, Mikhail’s parents less so. It’s like neither of them ever thought of when they considered a wedding, but the cake is good.
3. Mikhail wears the fanciest lab coat he has, because it still has lapels, and the actual jacket he had to use ended up getting turned bright orange due to a lab experiment gone wrong. Holly isn’t in white, and there’s a mishap with the music so instead of the traditional wedding march being played as she heads down the aisle it’s the Imperial March. None of them lose their rings though.
4. Their first dance is not nearly as awkward as Mikhail expects it to be. He manages to avoid stepping on Holly’s feet, and the lab coat actually makes for a fun amount of swish. They spend a decent amount of the reception dancing, and avoiding small-talk with the guests, especially Mikhail’s parents, who are just ‘ever so glad that he decided to settle down with such a nice girl instead of the man he was seeing’. They keep asking about children, and Mikhail doesn’t know how many more times he can explain that it’s a platonic thing.
5. They hyphenate their last name, because it’s expected that they change it, but neither of them are particularly keen to get rid of their name. The first time Mikhail has to sign it on paperwork, he has to double check his license to see which way it goes on legal papers.
And an extra 6th one: Mikhail doesn’t wear his ring on his hands. He works with too many things that could end with it damaged. He wears it on a chain around his neck, because that keep it out of the way, and he can tuck it under his shirt.
Some signs spotted around Night Vale and Desert Bluffs.
No one is entirely certain where the ski trail or the lake... pond... thing rich with foliage came from, but science, and the Secret Police are currently investigating.
Mikhail+Holly Dealing with idiots bc it is canon that Matvei and Tomas are idiots
Three sentence AU fic || @halcyonterror
Once upon a time, Mikhail would have laughed at the idea that his closest friend was a baker who was dating his double, of course, that was before he’d met Matvei. Now, he’s certain that Holly is the only half sensible person in his life most days (after accounting for her taste, but... he wasn’t exactly able to throw too many stones). Mikhail lifted a hand in greeting, with a tired smile as he stepped into the cafe.
if they had a kid - Matvei/Holly, Helios/Holly, Mikhail/Tomas, Matvei/Tomas
Send in two characters || @halcyonterror
There’s enough kids, and each of their bios is long enough that i’m just gonna put them all under a read more.
Matvei/Holly
Name: Evangeline Sofia Anastasia Halley
Gender: female
General Appearance: Evangeline looks so, so much like her mother. The same colouring, the same shape of the eyes. The height that certainly isn’t tall, but isn’t short either. But Evangeline is sharp in a way that Holly isn’t. Nails, and wrist movements, and clothing with perfectly tailored corners and creases.
Personality: Evangeline is sharp, and cruel, and exactly what Strex wants. She’s a lawyer who can spin the facts until the defendant is lost in a web if truth, and she takes after her father. She’s kind, if odd until your purpose to her is fulfilled, and then she’s calm and cruel, and more than happy to send you off to the re-educators.
Special Talents: Evangeline isn’t actually anything other than human, so she has no interesting supernatural powers, and working for Strex means there’s very little downtime, but she has an uncanny ability to replicate origami by de-contructing the steps inside her head.
Who they like better: Matvei
Who they take after more: Matvei
Personal Head canon: Evangeline takes better to the fall of Strex than her father. She still struggles, but she is nothing if not capable, and more than ready to come out on top. For the first while, it’s mostly just pretending, and trying to deal with withdrawal from the Strex medication, and the variety of conditioning that had been her whole life.
Face Claim: Kacey Rohl
Helios/Holly
Name: Alaric Jeremiah Leix
Gender: male
General Appearance: Alaric takes after Helios in terms of appearance, though some of the divine edge is missing. He still looks like he’s a thousand miles away most days, but his eyes while odd, are more because of the seemingly empty way he can state than any actual feeling that they’re seeing into your soul. His hair is blonde, though no where near as white as Helios’, and the same sharp features are his father’s also. Some of his finer features though, are his mother’s; the curve of his lips, the shape of his hands, the pure fact of mortality.
Personality: Alaric is distant from the world like so many prophets are. Partially, it’s to try and avoid attachments when you see how wrong it all goes, and partially, it’s because people don’t like the strange child who sees too much, and knows too much, and seems to have a stare lost somewhere in space. Alaric is quiet, and hauntingly aware of the world around him. He helps Holly run the bakery, the repetitive motions of kneading bread and the precise measurements is both familiar and comforting.
Special Talents: Alaric is, for all he is still very much mortal, he is still half God. he can’t live forever, though he doesn’t tend to get sick as often, and perhaps the thing that causes him more issue is the gift of prophecy. Alaric can see a person’s future of he touches them, and occasionally, he’ll stare into space, seeing things that are yet to be. He wears gloves to cut down on the personal things he sees.
Who they like better: Holly
Who they take after more: both, but mostly Helios
Personal Head canon: If Helios runs hot, Alaric runs cold, but in the sort of way that rises goosebumps on your skin, and makes people think of lightning and running your hands over fleece blankets in the dry summer heat and watching the shocks fly. He seems unstable in the world, like he’ll just vanish into the mist one day. On days like those, he tucks himself away in a corner of the bakery kitchen, and kneads and makes until he feels grounded and human again.
Face Claim: Gerhard Freidl
Matvei/Tomas
Name: Melchor Vladilen Halley
Gender: male
General Appearance: Melchor takes more after Tomas in terms of appearance. He’s far less angular than Matvei is, but his features are narrower than Tomas’. His colouring is largely Tomas’, though his hair is dyed an ashen grey colour most of the time, and his eyes, while not quite Matvei’s, are closer to his than Tomas’. He’s an awkward collection of gangly limbs, though since joining track and getting into the pole vault and high jump, he seems far more secure in his own body.
Personality: Melchor is a bit of a flirt, and while smart, he doesn’t much want to enter science as a career. He writes poems, and music, and when he’s not working through chords on his guitar, he can usually be found running endless laps in the school field. Melchor is an idealist, and a romantic at heart, and tries to live his life like he’s the star in one of those summer teen movies.
Special Talents: People look at Melchor and they see a star track athlete, and a musician that writes love songs, so it always surprises people when he says something related to a complex math or science like it’s nothing. He might not want to do it as a career, but he pays attention, and he’s really quite good at chemistry.
Who they like better: Tomas
Who they take after more: Tomas
Personal Head canon: Melchor doesn’t have many memories of Matvei, and the few he does are from when he was still young enough for Matvei to fall asleep on the couch in the lab, to the sound of Matvei singing lullabies. Some of them were ones from when he was young, and others were ones put out by Strex, praising the Smiling God. Mostly, he knows that Matvei was a scientist, and that Melchor shares his last name, but Tomas doesn’t like to talk about him much.
Face Claim: David Carrera
Mikhail/Tomas
Name: Valeri Raphael Corvin Bell
Gender: male
General Appearance: Valeri takes after both his parents in his appearance. His colouring is like Tomas, though his hands, and the more angular features belong to Mikhail. He’s tall; taller than Mikhail, and he’s been wearing glasses since he was a child, even if not all the time.
Personality: Valeri is driven to excel, and does so, though it comes with nights spent hunched over his desk, tired eyes trying to read textbooks from the light offered by his table lamp, with hands and wrists that have cramped from coping over names, and dates, and scientific discoveries first onto paper, on then onto his screen. He’s charming, and suave, though not nearly as much of a flirt at Tomas was.
Special Talents: Valeri is incredibly talented at research and essay-writing. He can type down information in a methodical and mildly interesting way, but when it comes to having original ideas he struggles, though he’s good at taking an idea and making it his own. He really loves Alternate History Week, and it ties in nicely with his love for science, and history.
Who they like better: Mikhail
Who they take after more: Tomas
Personal Head canon: When Valeri is older, he ends up petitioning the City Council to let him become a librarian, and to try and modernize the library system. It’s... not a winning fight, but it’s also a task he’s determined to succeed at. He’s been working with Tamika Flynn to see a change in the way Night Vale views books.
Falling into the world unseen by mortal eyes had been an accident more than anything, a matter of science turned into a matter of faith, and then Mikhail was lost on the wrong side of the veil separating the mortal world from that of the supernatural. Originally, he’d wanted to find a way home, out of this world that obeyed neither the laws of man nor of physics, but then he’d met Tomas (human, he would have guessed, but he... spoke like one of the fae, and seemed so at ease amongst them, Mikhail wasn’t sure), and suddenly, home seemed unimportant. Even had he wanted to return, he doubted he’d be able to, and even more, doubted he’d be able to re-adjust- besides, no one would ever be able to meet the magic of Tomas.
There would always be accidental, and unethical experiments, and sometimes those ended in the sorts of people that brought down oppressive regimes, and restored a sense of justice to the world. They... weren’t that, at least, Matvei wasn’t, and had Mikhail ever been, the chance for it was gone. Mikhail stood in front of one of the men in neat black suits, a clipboard with his and Matvei’s most recent finding held in one hand, the other clutched tightly in Matvei’s, beside him, his... (partner? double? twin?) Matvei was speaking. “Yes, and if your scientists were half as talented as us, you wouldn’t need us, but you do.”
Three cheers to Mikhail for finally being allowed to make a fic debut! He’s in Traffic Lights and a Transmitter Radio, and now exists outside my head. I should probably do something with Matvei eventually.
Are you still doing these? ♩? If so, Mikhail and Tomas?
@halcyonterror || Musical headcanons
Devil’s Backbone - The Civil Wars
I'll shoulder the load, and I'll swallow the shame
Give me the burden, give me the blame
How many, how many Hail Marys is it gonna take?
Don't care if he's guilty, don't care if he's not
He's good and he's bad and he's all that I've got
Oh Lord, Oh Lord, I'm begging you please
Don't take that sinner from me
Everything goes wrong.
StrexCorp comes to Night Vale, and Mikhail spends weeks in the company picnic, and nothing Cecil said on the news helped at all to stop it. The city didn’t rise up, and it all went so, so wrong.
Mikhail wants to hate Desert Bluffs for it, but he meets Tomas (or maybe he’d known Tomas before? They’d been in and out of the same conferences, always arguing about various finer points for years, and then there was... well, time was weird enough in the first place), and he can’t. it would be easier if he could hate them without flaw or falter, like Cecil did.
Mikhail offers him lab space, and working beside each other day-in, and day-out, they create a routine. And between one day and the next, Mikhail realizes he’s fallen in love with the other scientist, and that? That scares him.
The other scientists in the city never say anything outright judgemental, but it’s clear that they question what he’d thinking, and why he’s done it, because ultimately, Tomas was still Strex at one point, still Desert Bluffs. But the thing is, it’s nice. It’s nice to work beside someone, and have someone actually around, and alive in the otherwise still quiet of his lab, and his apartment, mostly empty save for a coffee pot.
He had never been a religious man to begin with, and he can’t bring himself to want to ask forgiveness from some all knowing God, or the judging eyes of his own community for the person he ends up with.
