500 words of Leander (D1M 73)
dreamed about Leander from Alec's year right before my alarm and scrawled it down when i got up idk what my brain was on but HERE
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He peels off his Reaping suit and hands it over without a word.
“I love District 1,” one of them chirps. “So tractable. Do you remember that girl last year, I think Nine? Bit poor Lavella when she tried to take that ratty dress. Eight stitches!”
The chatter starts immediately, and Leander remembers to set his expression to ‘polite interest’ before zoning out. His prep team have soft hands and delicate fingers, at least, as they lift his limbs and circle like twinkly vultures — though Leander doesn’t even want to know the penalty for snapping one of their birdlike wrists if they decided they wanted to hurt him.
They don’t. They twitter and praise his clear skin and lovely long lashes, “but there’s darkness too, do you see it,” says one of them, “the eyes, that bone structure”; “oh yes, intensity, we should play up the brows —” and Leander does his best not to listen.
And then the bath, ludicrously oversized, so that Leander can sit in the middle and his whole prep team can fit around the sides. Even in One, his early memories a haze like the sunset through gauzy curtain windows, Leander never had a bathtub, too much waste, and Academy showers were hasty scrub-downs with one eye watching every doorway.
He sinks into the heated water and knots in muscles he didn’t know he had unwind. His team each pick a limb or expanse of skin and scrub him down with cheerful precision. It’s the most physical contact without the intent to cause him pain since — well. Since he can remember. Leander clenches his eyes shut and forces his breaths out through his nose.
“Lean back, ducky, time to wash your hair,” they tell him, and then there’s a wash of warm water and cinnamon-scented soap and brisk-yet-gentle fingers working their way across his scalp and he can’t help it, it’s not his fault. Leander splashes water across his cheeks and no one notices.
Between the bath and the heated wrap to open up his pores before the full-body wax and the waxing itself (little bursts of pain at regular intervals, almost as relaxing as the bath) Leander doesn’t remember falling asleep. Only that at some point the team prod him awake, blinking in confusion, to wait for his stylist with a robe and a hair ruffle.
“Well, this one is just darling,” Leander hears before the doors hiss closed.
“That was humiliating,” his district partner mutters as they stand by their chariot that evening, waiting for their handlers. “I never want to do that again.”
Leander’s brain snags unpleasantly on the word never, always a dangerous concept on this side of the Arena, but she’s glancing at him, eyes dark with mutiny, that familiar stab of they’re not looking, quick, we only have a second, and in the shadow of the chariot they’re not here as adversaries or show ponies, they’re two kids who spent the day getting pawed at by grown adults in silence, just like they were trained to do, with five seconds to complain.
He thinks of the relaxing bath and the patient hair washing and falling asleep on the table and his face flames with shame. “Same,” Leander spits. “Fucking creeps.”
She grins at him, sharp with shared camaraderie, and a knife twists in his chest.
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Started an Honour Mode run with a deep gnome druid named Leander, and only having the one save made me so anxious that I had to switch back to sth more relaxing (kicking the Netherbrains ass) in another save. Didn't even make it off the nautiloid :')
Yeah, I don't think honor mode is for me tbh
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thought about leander some. i think he'd be really friendly but in a. like. "oh this guy has some issues" way? if that makes sense? like you can tell he's trying to be genuine but he comes across as so detached it ends up being kinda creepy instead.
also his freckles r actually holes :o3 here is a visual
sometimes if you look very closely at his face you can see something writhing just under the skin. say hi!
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touchstarved mc concept, The Hound (Shem, he/they) + bonus Kuras
the only thing id change about kuras’ design is to make his nose more pronounced cause thats a good shape right dere
Also, pairings for Shemmy (sorry to use my own redesigns for this they were the first on my camera roll)
Sidenote, am i the only one who thinks any mc in a visual novel where they dont have character art should have they/them pronouns, specifically cause they dont have clear vibes to go off of? faceless = nonbinary to me
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