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cakeinthevoid · 2 years ago

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if you're willing to share, id love to hear about your OC flange gusset cowboy extraordinaire (i actually just acquired a few cowboy OCs myself recently)

Oh you have opened the floodgates, but I don't even know where to start... I hope my rambling below will make sense haha...

Flange Gusset, Cowboy Extraordinaire!

...and the closest thing West Hinge has to an engineer.

Flange became an 'official' cowboy as a teenager, about 15 years old, but growing up on the ranch in the budding city of West Hinge, he's been training all his life for it. Genuinely, he's one of the most cowyboy cowboys who ever cowboyed. West Hinge knows his name—often as Gus, or, nowadays, Mr. Gusset, which he always tries to wave off. Everyone knows that he's a dependable lad. He works hard and is always there to help—and he's your guy if you every need a cheap repair or a little thingamajig to make life a little easier.

Family:

His mom is Mexican, so he had plenty of Vaquero stories from her side of the family. While she's proud of the man her Flan Cake (her sweet nickname for Flange <3) became, she will always worry about his safety as a cowboy. She knows the life is hard. Flange sees his mother as the kindest and most generous person in the world, and aspires to be like her.

His dad was an american farmer who didn't raise no quitter!!! He taught him the importance of true courage and loyalty. Flange worked the fields and did repairs around town with his dad growing up, which is where a lot of his most practical skills came from. Flange feels like he could never replace his dad as head of the house. He misses his dad.

He's the oldest sibling, so he knew he needed to get a job asap to help provide for his family. "Inventor" wasn't exactly a career path he could dedicate himself to, so he took up ranching and cattle herding—he took to it like a duck to water! (There's a reason he's one of if not THE top cowboy in the town at his early 20s).

Cowboy Life:

Flange started working for ranch owner Mr. Lewis at 15, doing your typical beginner cowpoke chores. His skills and talents weren't going unnoticed though, and he was quickly rising the ranks, joining the older cowboys on round ups and cattle drives. The other cowboys on the payroll are some of his closest friends.

Cowboying around gives him enough quiet nights during travel and time off to pursue his not-so-secret passion: inventing. He’s come up with plenty of doodads to improve the lives in West Hinge—in addition to doing repairs n stuff. He treasures his simple yet purposeful life, but privately wishes to do good on a greater scale, to invent something truly marvelous… but right now, he has a job to do.

So he does what he can. He’s no doctor, but he tries to help in other ways. He respects the trades and rolls his eyes at big business. Down right pisses him off when those mega-ranches try to scam or buy out the hardworking little guys.

He adheres to his own cowboy code, which is everything in the unwritten Code of the West and more. He scowls at those who taint the cowboy name, but he won't go picking fights unless the situation is truly dire. He also truly don’t mind most outlaws, unless they’re one of the ransacking and killing types. He would much rather everyone get along and sing by the fire, but he isn't naive.

He's run into enough outlaws and wicked cowboys to know better.

Fun facts!

Flange's #1 horse is a beige and white spotted cutting horse named Chico! He's the cowboy who can ride him best, and thus does the cattle cutting. He's prevented his fair share of stampedes, to say the least.

Flange is scary good at poker. The man never gambles, and seems to hardly know what is going on, but he's never had a bad loss.

Flange can play the harmonica, banjo, and guitar. He's real shit at piano though.

Flange is scared of being well and truly alone. He's also irked by wasps.

~ ~ ~

Oh man this was fun. Yes I got a little carried away and there is still so much I could go on about (realizing I barely spoke on his engineering endeavors) but AAA thank you for this ask <33 I hope you enjoyed

AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

#stalecabbage your ask singlehandedly made me deep dive into cowboy and western frontier history #real talk I had almost ZILCH #NADA—RIEN #for my boy flange gusset cowboy extraordinaire #he was quite literally just a concept in my head that I didn't really get the time/inspo to develop further #and now im like... it's my BOY!!!!#so thank u <3 #may our cowboys ride into the sunset together #asks in the void #im gonna try drawing him i think. try to hammer down the Looks #flange gusset cowboy extraordinaire #cowboy lore

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abyssyby · 1 month ago

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what are your opinions on syslus getting jealous? like i usually don't consider him as someone who would get jealous, but i do eat those fics up and wonder in what circumstances he might actually experience jealousy (as in romantic ofc)

wanted to know your opinions because i love your characterization of him the most (you could write something with that too if you're comfortable, id be very grateful)

ʕ ꈍᴥꈍʔ: hi anon! dw, i eat those jealousy fics up too— love it when he gets all huffy n puffy over someone else getting your attention ngl.

i personally think, given his draconic qualities of wanting and needing to hoard, claim and possess, sylus is inclined to be one to get jealous. not simply because he’s petty and he doesn’t like others looking at or touching what is his (though i see him disliking that very much too)—but because he will always have the wounds of isolation in his heart. Though he portrays himself to be incredibly secure and collected, he still hoards each ill-gotten memory of abandonment and rejection like etchings in his bones.

and now that he has you— who chose to be with him, to belong with him, to bind your soul to him so that he would never live or die alone—he bears the incredible weight of being unworthy of the one who loves him.

so to me, his jealousy is rooted in this: this belief that no one has wanted him before you, and so why now? the pain of not being all you need, because you should be able to lean on him, rely on him on anything your heart desires. the trauma of being seen as a monster; when will you snap out of it and find someone easier to love?

and though he tries to keep himself in check, communicate as much of the things that shake his heart and wound his loyalty, sometimes in can get a little much for him too

sylus x reader | angst, comfort, fluff, jealous!sylus, clingy!sylus, exploring a few deeper wounds of his jealousy!

“You like him—your partner.” he points out one evening as he walks beside you beneath the canopy of falling golden leaves. dried foliage crunch beneath your feet as you stroll down the paved path between the rows of overarching trees.

He’d come to pick you up at the association, one hand occupied with a canvas holder with two tall cups of boba tea.

He waited on a bench across the street, mindful of how people perceive him. Considering how you’ve stressed about your colleagues seeing him out in the open and fraternizing with you.

So he wears his cap to hide his hair and his sunglasses despite the sunset to hide his eyes, changed his leather coat into a long, brown velvet one. He waits until you notice his presence, instead of ambushing you into their territory, as you so colorfully put.

There, as he waited, he saw you emerge from the double doors speaking lightly to another man he recognized as the one you are paired off with often. One you’d mentioned was your hunting partner— assigned, designated, and in someways, chosen.

You slurp at the straw, boba congealed into a mutated blob restricting any airflow into your mouth. “Hm?”

He knows you’re listening, he resumes his musings. Needs to keep speaking, fueled by the bubbling bile in the base of his throat he absolutely despises feeling. “You seem comfortable.”

The tone is unmistakable— it wasn’t accusing or a jab, but a mindful observation drenched in a distant dismalness. Giving your lungs a rest at trying to inhale your drink, you look up at him. His eyes are far off, the smoothness between his brows are crumpled, so minuscule only you could have caught it. And his soul, intertwined with yours, flickers like a candle disrupted by a breeze.

“We’re friends,” you tell him, preferring his warm hand now to the cup, lending an icy one to his searing touch. His shoulders melt, fingers close in on yours like he’d been dangling from the edge of a cliff, now relieved to have found leverage.

You continue. “He’s very kind.”

“I’m glad to hear that, sweetie.” he says, although it comes out monotonous. Words from a script he simply read on cue. Your brows furrow, and you feel that flicker again.

You dig your heels into the dirt and tug him to a stop with you. With a sigh, he parallels you and meets your gaze.

“Sylus—,”

“Your day is the most important of all the reports I listen to, your gossip, your rants, your rambles.” he knows he might be talking too much now, that it might be overdoing his sorrow, but…

When he saw you exiting with your partner, laughing hysterically at just a single word from him. So simple, so basic. Likely taken out of context, an inside joke or a tail end to the rest of an unheard story.

But when he heard such a laugh for the first time from you and he was far from the cause of it. When he saw how much you actually talked with your hands and your face more than your words, how you spoke and spoke and spoke to your partner in those few moments more than you ever did to him.

He felt it in his chest—muscle tearing open fiber by fiber. In his lungs that fill with smoke. And in his mind, the beast, snarling at him to take you away.

And to what? back to him who could never make you do the same? to him who grates on your nerves? to him who is so difficult to remember, however more to love?

His face is a mixture of anguish and disappointment, a storm raging behind his carmine eyes that focus on your face. Eyes that search yours for any confirmation, any indication that you want to go—leave. Because you should prefer ease, you should prefer comfort and security.

While he can give you all of that, he can give you anything you wish for and all it takes is for you to say it out loud— it will always come with a cost.

His life is danger. His being is monstrous. His love is scorching.

Your cold boba-tea frozen hand is a balm to the world in his mind that alights itself in flames as you cradle his face. His hand comes up to hold yours, press it closer to his skin. He shuts his eyes, breathes in the scent of your wrist— pulse and perfume. “Do you wish more from me?”

“Oh, Sylus.” you frown, quick to pull him down and plant a cold kiss on his cheek. A grumble escapes his throat as he leans into you, fully lets his head fall onto your shoulder. Closer, closer, closer. “No.”

“I want to claim all your laughter. Have my ears be the only one that hears it.” his words rumble in his chest, rough and aching—like it hurts him to admit.

His voice is reminiscent of a tremble of thunder, rattling stained windows of a cathedral; such power in a whisper.

“I want to be all you need. All you want.” he grounds out into your ear. Your knees buckle at the weight of his confession. He holds you to him by your waist, positioning you in a firm cage of his arms.

Outside, you are a picture of two bundled up lovers sharing an innocent embrace, caressed by the autumnal breeze. Seeking warmth in each other.

But beyond appearances, you are a raft Sylus is desperately clinging to as he is cast out to an angry sea. Inside, he fights the battle between making sure you are his and being a reasonable, rational partner.

He nuzzles his nose into your neck, uses your scent to keep himself from causing a scene or saying something that might scare you off more. He only wants to do right by you, only wants to be what you deserve.

And he’s stronger than this petty jealousy that courses through his veins at the sight of you giving someone else a smile he wants to have too— like the morning sun he wants to usher into the darkness. He wants it, like a deprived child, he wants it to be mine, mine, mine.

“What did he say to you?” he asks plainly, resolve slipping from his fingers at the memory of your laughter. Growls it. Cringes as he says it, but his head is too filled with smoke that he can’t find his filter.

Your throat dries. His voice is entirely different now, a caving of the earth, lightning striking a tree open in a forest. For a moment, fear grips your heart, but it dissipates just as quickly as it comes when you see his eyes.

Red rubies, a diamond slit of obsidian right in their centers. His brows knit painfully together, like he’s warring with something. Holding it back and keeping it from attacking you.

“Nothing.” you say, and immediately you know it’s the wrong answer.

He looks away. Not because he dislikes your answer, although he very much does, but because of the way you say it.

Whispered, careful, guarded.

Proving his fears to be true. How can he ask you to love a monster? He isn’t easy, he’s far from it, he can be meticulous and cold and absent—all of which you don’t deserve. It’s not a choice he’d make for you, so why would you choose him?

“Nothing I can remember now, Sylus.” your voice cuts through his thoughts like bullet in cold air. He finds you catching his gaze, begging him to look back at you. Your fingers catch his chin, like he does to you so many times, and guide him back home. “Not now that I’m with you.”

His heart swells thrice its size at your reassurance. At how your careful fingers remove his hat and brush away the matted down hair by his ears. How you kiss his cheeks, his nose, his mouth—uncaring of who might see or catch you. Uncaring of getting caught. So willing to show the world he is yours.

How you see right through him. That despite his humiliating show of possession, you pinpoint its exact origins.

“Tell me what you’re afraid of.” you’re so calm and he is filled with gratitude. You lead him to a nearby bench and he practically curls himself around you as you sit. His arm wounds around your shoulders, slips his knee beneath your thigh so your one leg dangles off of his, and his nose is buried back into the junction between your jaw and your throat.

“I want you to be happy.” he says, hesitant. His mouth moves, opens like he needs to say more— but no other words follow.

“I am happy.” you nudge him gently. “My boyfriend picked me up from work today, and he looked handsome in his new coat. And he gave me boba tea.”

He snorts, fingers splaying out on yours as you begin to play with the ring on his middle. He’s keenly aware of the wind that blows your hair in your face, his other hand comes up to shield your eyes and hold some bundles back behind your ear. Painfully honest, he whispers, “I’ve never heard you laugh like that.”

You lean your cheek onto the top of his head. You feel his lungs draw breath, even and slow, but know his heart is racing. He seems to fixate on the ring you spin on his finger, brushing his thumb over the nail of yours as if to encourage you to keep doing it.

Leaning deeper into his frustrations, you ask, “Does it sound different?”

He snuffs, a dragon puffing smoke out his nostrils. “It was radiant.” he says, breaking your heart even more.

You pause, scooting that little bit closer to him as the dimming sky turns the air into a nipping chill. You huddle close and lend him your undivided attention.

“I hate that it was for someone else.” he confesses quietly.

You brush his cheek. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t make me happy, sylus.”

His eyes squeeze shut as you ask, “You’ve made me laugh plenty of times, my love, help me understand why this shook you so much?”

You’re lost. After everything you’ve been through, all you’ve shared, you can’t help but feel the sting of distrust as he worries for your loyalty. And rarely is he like this, aside from the times he acts on his jealousy— pulling you close, making sure whoever tries his or her hand at claiming you knows who they would be up against by a press of his lips to your temple or a caress of his hardened fingers to the soft curve of your jaw.

But the way he is now—genuinely upset, wary and at the verge of a quiet surrender he struggles not to make a show of—makes you mourn something that looms in the distance. What if he thinks you’ve but put a mask on before him? or does he not believe that who you are with him is the barest form of you there is? You believe firmly he does not think so little of you that you would prefer someone else over him, but…

He swallows, adam’s apple bobbing to push his anxiety down. You’re relieved to see him so open to share, at least. Look forward to him bringing you some clarity. But you don’t expect clarity to come in the form of jagged shards of broken glass.

“In the worst of my nightmares, there is one thing that truly petrifies me.” slowly, he takes your fingers in his and brings them up to his lips to cool them with his breath. thawing the freeze, keeping you comfortable. “And that’s when you look at me, turn and walk away.”

You hold your breath, because you’re sure that the next one you let out will usher with it the tears that burn behind your eyes.

“When you see—truly see—the fiend I was. the monster I am.” he mutters, a muscle in his jaw feathering at how tightly he’s clenching his teeth. “How shameless and greedy I am—how proud I am to be.

“And you, my dove. Beautiful, brilliant sun. Why burn to ashes when you can burn in light?”

It’s silent.

Whether it was the cold or the tension, you don’t have time to figure it out before you’re trembling. Ribs rattling, muscles tensing. It is your turn to use him as a raft as you drown in his devotion. For now, you see—that as much as he loves you, he thinks he is poisoning you. Knowing that, his fears then lie there: that his poison has begun to spread and will be the cause of his loss of you.

“Stupid.” you choke, squeezing your arms around his shoulders, pressing your tear-streaked face into his neck. Then, you laugh, grim and wet and raw—a laugh you yourself had never heard before. “Idiot dragon.”

He wraps you in his coat and rubs circles on your lower back. The park has cleared, a single streetlamp illuminates the pair of you. There is no sound but the rustle of leaves and the thrumming of your hearts.

“I burn where I want to.” you grit—not angrily, just through the uncontrollable rattling of your jaw. “I burn with you.”

He stares. To say he was taken aback by your words would be an understatement. He is dizzy, knocked back and shattered into a wall. He could crumple at your feet, he could kiss you until you both see stars.

“We were talking about some dumb lunch thing where another hunter took the last empanada right before his eyes and before he could cuss her out, it turned out to be the captain and I thought it was funny because it happened to me last week and now it’s all so trivial and it’s not even funny—“ you ramble, words stuttered and stumbling out of your mouth like a waterfall. explaining yourself, doing everything you think will soothe the earthquakes in his mind.

As you speak, Sylus watches you with the softest of looks. wiping stray tears away with light fingers, brushing more of your hair back from your eyes, placing his palms over your cold cheeks, your frozen ears—you barely notice, too engrossed in telling him everything. Anything, really, to show him that he will always be ground zero. He will always be the only one ever to witness you as your purest self.

and you doing so means worlds to him.

“And this afternoon, Tara was supposed to—don’t, don’t kiss me! I have snot!” you shriek as he leans to press his warm lips to your freezing face. he chuckles as you scream, drawing you closer, closer, closer. Saying I don’t care with his actions as he kisses you anyway. Slow, warm and consuming. I love you.

And so easily, he forgets why he ever doubted you, feared you’d love him any less than what you already show him. When you so simply complete his day with your voice, when you so effortlessly choose to love him then and now. He places his heart back in your hands, unconscious how he’d clutched it tight in his, and feels the weightless joy you wash over him once more.

He tucks your squeals into the chest of treasures in his mind, along with the atrocious laugh you gifted him as you called him stupid. Never mind the one you gave your hunting partner now, his is much better.

Your light is his to hold, keep and hoard for eternity—and you, yourself, offered it to him as you burn.

✧˚ ⋆｡ more sylus thoughts ✧˚ ⋆｡

thank you so much for sending in this ask & for reading! (˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶) .ᐟ.ᐟ

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