#The bit about the marigold I mentioned is just the surface btw it’s so much 💅deeper💅

[caterpillarinacave]

I love Charlotte and Henry and they're super underrated. And I would VERY MUCH like to hear the headcanons whirring about in your brain.

Oh well buckle up cause literally all I think about is head cannons. Like, you know how cells replace themselves every few years? Mine have replaced themselves with head cannons. *Sorry it took me a hot moment to answer this ask, I was busy howling into my pillow whenever I tried to articulate thoughts.*

First of all, they’re very cuddly. They basically sleep on top of each other (Charlotte hasn’t needed a pillow in decades). Henry cant sleep well without Charlotte in his arms and Charlotte can’t sleep well anywhere other than Henry’s arms so it works out. Plus, they both do that thing where they jerk awake like the world is ending and scare the shit out of each other, so sleeping in a hug that basically pins them both down saves some energy at 2am. Henry’s perpetually cold and sleeps under like, four blankets, so Charlotte just wears summer nightgowns all year and wraps herself around Henry like a koala.

Naturally there’s an angsty side to the incessant cuddling because that’s just the way I role.

Charlotte sleeps with her head on Henry’s chest so she can always feel him breathing because, by the angel, she remembers when he wasn’t. She sleeps with a hand on his pulse point because she wakes up in the middle of the night and she’s still half asleep they might as well be on the floor in that mountain and she might as well still be desperately swearing she didn’t imagine his heartbeat.

While on the topic of soul crushing feelings of guilt, y’all remember from Clockwork Angel that Henry was the one who told Mortmain what a Pyxis was? And he wanted Charlotte to tell the clave that and she wouldn’t because “they already treat him so badly”? Because I do. And so does Henry.

(I’ve got a whole WIP that I love very dearly about this head cannon and this chess game hehe) There’s one random old tutor who goes to the London institute once a month-ish, basically to hand out a few weeks of homework to any shadow hunters who don’t have their own tutors. Most shadow hunters who live in a more rural area show up a few times a year so the clave knows they’re alive and at least somewhat literate. Charlotte attends them every month since, you know, she lives there, but Henry lives somewhere around Yorkshire so he shows up every few months. The professor is kind of a dick ngl. He doesn’t help Charlotte with any school why would a woman need to be so well educated? “Go on find a husband and stop worrying you’re pretty little head” sort of shit. Henry drives him insane because he’s a) some random kid who’s smarter than him and b) didn’t use any of the professors materials to get that smart. Professor Douche is constantly trying to get him to be wrong about something, or at least flustered about something and he doesnt ever do either of those things, and even more aggravating he refuses to get upset. (He honestly just assumed the professor wasn’t that smart.)

Charlotte’s a really good student of course, but she’s having a shit time with some mathematics and the professor absolutely refuses to help her with it. Eventually she asks Henry if he wouldn’t mind helping her with it, which he’s happy to do (once he figures out that’s what shes actually asking lol.)

Charlotte is incredibly distracted the entire time by Henry’s freckles (and eyes. And hands. And the way his hair curls on the nape of his neck. And the spots of gold and green in his hazel eyes that flashed as bright as the sun when the light catches them. And-), but they get through it in an hour or two which leaves them alone in a deserted wing of the institute. They end up playing a game chess. Charlottes a decent player and thought since Henry had never showed any interest in chess it would be a probably be an evenly matched game. She didn’t know what hit her. He beat her in like, eight minutes, eighty percent of which were spent on the last two moves by Charlotte who, upon realizing she was fucked, spent five minutes staring at the board trying to figure out when he even started beating her. She was sitting there having a whole crisis, (she’d been distracted by a man who probably doesn’t like her, and certainly doesn’t think much of her now after a pathetic loss like that and now she’ll have to sit hear and wallow in failure-) just preparing for him to start that whole smug gloating thing men do when they win and Henry you know. Didn’t. He just put the pieces away and thanked her for the game, in that very genuine way, with the gloomy London evening light casting a depressing shadow across the room, a shadow that he stood out against all gentle, kind, bright and brimming with a sort of barely contained passion. If Charlotte had ever doubted that shadow hunters had come from straight angels then sitting there, looking at a boy stained in soot, who she loved more than anything else to walk the earth, she would never doubt it again.

(It wasn’t until after Henry won and noticed Charlotte hadn’t said anything in a while that he remember people don’t like losing. Honestly he was playing just to be around her and he would have thrown the game if he could conceptualize how to do that on the fly. They spent like five minutes in autistic silence waiting for the other to stand up and declare newfound hatred.)

In true British fashion the a modern tea bag would kill them both.

When they were both 13 or 14 Charlotte mentioned she was dreading winter because it’s so bleak and dark (and her mom had died a few winters before, though she didn’t drop that in casual conversation). Anyways, come winter Henry brought her a marigold preserved in something like resin. She kept it in her jewelry box for years and after they got married she found out he had literally dozens of them. Whenever he came across a particularly bright flower he preserved it and set it aside. He was never quite brave enough to give them to her pre-TID, but he now leaves them for her when she’s particularly sad or stressed. She keeps them all in a drawer- they fit together like little tiles, and still look as fresh as they would had they just been plucked from the ground.

Somewhat surprisingly Henry doesn’t really lose stuff, with the singular exception being his own medical equipment. He’s lost the leg braces he wears every single day of his life before. Charlotte’s not usually speechless but she wasn’t sure what to say to that one.

Henry gave Charlotte a watch with a hands and numbers that can glow the same way a modern day one would. It’s absolutely beautiful, durable and accurate, even if Henry set himself on fire at least four times making it. (They can say with confidence that that watch is fireproof)

—-

Honestly, I could go on and on, then on some more, but technically I’m supposed to be writing a paper on gut micro biomes that’s due tomorrow, so I figured I’d cut myself of. In conclusion, I love them dearly, they love each-other dearly, they deserve the world, all I can think about is them, and the world can pry them out of my cold dead hands.

#My rough drafts are a goldmine #I’ve got basically a full novel of Henry and Charlotte in the form of random chapters scattered around a google doc #The second to last one might have come about because Ive always had an affinity for losing medical equipment #Yes it’s normally attached to my body no I don’t know where it went #I love so much #the thoughts are suffocating #My brain replays “they believed right then that Shadowhunters came from angels” constantly #It’s one of the lines I made up and lives rent free in my head #I direct everyone to Qui Voltum Tolt Vultum Perdit on my AO3 which will eventually be full of henry and Charlotte #That fic is a very articulate example of some of my thoughts #The bit about the marigold I mentioned is just the surface btw it’s so much 💅deeper💅 #I didn’t even mention the snow scene on here (scene I made up. And only I know about) #Or the scars. Dhegvgfg the scar thing #One of my own WIPs that makes me cry because I need someone to love me that way #Also left out the pajama thing the baked good thing the boat thing the “teaching original London institute gang to swim” thing #The newspaper thing floor thing the triplets thing the Yorkshire thing the bathtub thing the tiny little children #The smell of air before a storm thing the lemon thing the piano thing the music thing ugh I could go on and on #Tid #thanks for the ask! #fairwell #…anyone got any good articles on the gut microbiome

[roaringheat]

I wanna hear more about your OC if you dont mind???

oFC i dont mind holy shit yes

Putting it under a read more cause i got really invested and typed too much. Also, a warning: this is pretty dark and involves a lot of violence.

So like the oc i was talking about his name is Morgan! He’s in the group of ocs where the story starts in the 1920s. Morgan is kinda well known at least in his town. He’s a radio show host and since radio was big back then he was doing pretty well. He keeps himself looking neat and formal as much as possible to keep a good image. Anyway, he’s married to a guy named Barrett. Barrett is actually like…one of 2 characters who this particular story is based around instead of Morgan but Morgan is still very important. Thisll be from Morgan’s pov so I won’t get into all of Barrett’s stuff too much in this ask cause this would turn into a damn essay but like lmk if you wanna hear that too. but yea so Barrett is into photography and Morgan gets him the first ever version of the polaroid as a gift. So Barrett goes out into the woods to take pics and fucking goes missing. Morgan is obviously distraught. Barrett shows up at their shared house a whole year later with this person named Muriel. I won’t get into her too much rn either. Morgan is just overwhelmed with happiness and emotion for the first few days he doesnt realize that Barrett has come back different. Against Muriel’s advice, Barrett tells Morgan right away all the shit he went through including the whole being infested by a supernatural plant and getting all these intimidating abilities and some other fucked shit. Morgan is understandably shocked and the next couple days he gets more and more scared. He starts noticing all the ways Barrett has been acting different and he’s convinced that Muriel and this plant thing have basically killed Barrett and took his body and are now trying to trick him. He gets more and more freaked and starts getting jumpy and having trouble keeping his radio show host persona in public. He grows a bit cold towards Barrett but keeps up the weak facade with him in fear that he’ll be killed by whatever is in Barrett. Barrett is confused and a bit hurt but figures Morgan is just dealing with the shock of him coming back. Morgan then hires a hitman to kill Barrett out of extreme stress and paranoia and not being able to kill him himself cause even though he’s convinced that Barrett is gone, thats still his husbands body ya know. Barrett isnt like “possessed” like Morgan thinks btw lmao i probably should have mentioned that earlier. The hitman finds Barrett’s and Morgan’s mutual friend Virginia and threatens her to give them info on Barrett since Barrett also told her everything too. Muriel just so happens to be with Virginia at that time but like out of sight so she hears all of this before attacking the hitman to get them away. She also has some inhuman stuff about her so that spooks that the hitman off. Muriel tells Barrett and he’s kinda in disbelief. He goes to Morgan’s office in their house in hopes of finding him and when he sees he’s not there, he snoops around and ends up finding letters that basically confirms that Morgan has turned on him without his knowledge. So like he is very immediately set off by finding out the love of his life is basically doing shady shit behind his back and betraying him. So the next week or so, Barrett stays out of sight and just watches him. But like Barrett is also very stressed about the situation and the watching him thing turns more into intentionally scaring Morgan out of anger by growing the plant that hes infested with in places he knows Morgan will see. He thinks itll scare him into leaving and never seeing him again but when Morgan starts seeing those flowers and immediately knows he’s being pretty much stalked, he does kinda the opposite and his already high paranoia turns into desperation to the extreme. At this point, he’s losing it. His office is a wreck, his usually neat appearance is now choatic, he’s slept very little the past couple days, and he keeps going into these paranoid ramblings on his radio show. He convinces that same hitman to go after Barrett again and the hitman is actually able to find Barrett by using the vines and flowers that he had grown in various places to scare Morgan. The hitman gets him while Barrett’s looking for Morgan and stabs him several times making him collapse. The hitman reports back to Morgan saying thats Barrett’s dead but Morgan is so desperate that he makes the hitman go back and bring back a piece of his body for proof. The hitman goes back but doesn’t find Barrett and is just like “oh fuck” and decided that this supernatural shit is out of his range and fuckin ditches. So Barrett is still alive cause one the several things he gained from that flower plant thing was being harder to kill. Morgan starts getting nervous with how much time has passed and is like frantically looking for something to calm himself. Then he glances up at the door way and sees tons of that damn plant that Barrett can grow from himself and control just like moving across the floor and walls of the hallway outside and into Morgan’s office and he just like watches in terror until Barrett walks in looking almost as unhinged as Morgan but in a different way. I have this whole scene planned out almost word for word as a dramatic fight scene where theyre going back and forth the whole time but ill spare you the dialogue and just summarize it. but basically Morgan is so convinced that the “real” Barrett is dead and that this monster took his place and so he just goes into a frenzy and attempts to shoot him with this gun he had gotten. but like obvs Barrett just fuckin yanks it away with the branches he controls and grabs Morgan with them. He approaches him thinking that Morgan is now pretty vulnerable but as he’s talking Morgan frees an arm and stabs him in the neck which he uses as an opening and lunges forward. This whole fight takes place and it ends with them both in pretty rough shape and Barrett on top of Morgan attempting to strangle him but the adrenaline from the anger is wearing off and it just kinda processes for him that he’s killing his husband. Morgan has given up for the most part right around this time and there’s more dialogue but Barrett ends up going through with choking and killing Morgan. Barrett is in incredibly rough shape and after getting himself together, he goes off to find Muriel and they both ditch town that same night. The police just find the crime scene the next day with like every surface covered in branches of pink marigolds and Morgan left dead on the ground and it never gets solved and Barrett is pretty tormented by it, even 80 years later

#acro rambles #sorry this is late i ended up staying out longer than i thought #can u tell ive invested a lot of time into figuring all this out #i hope this is legible lmao #also i tried to keep this as morgan centric as possible since thats the oc you wanted to know about #but that means theres a lot i left out which makes this look a bit all over the place #for example one of those points i left out is wtf happened to Barrett and why is he like that #also srry if this looks unnecessarily edgy i promise i have a decent mixture of good and bad #like i have a lot more than this #i just really love dark stories #also old timey murder mysteries are the shit #also ty anon for showing interest!! #and if anyone read that whole thing pls know id die for you #ocs #ask #anon