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Welcome to Charming, the year is now 1895. It’s time to join us and immerse yourself in scandal and drama interlaced with magic both light and dark.

Where will you fall?

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Did you know? Jewelry of jet was the haute jewelry of the Victorian era. — Fallin
What she got was the opposite of what she wanted, also known as the subtitle to her marriage.
all dolled up with you


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don't you find it moving how we're still alone together?
#1
26th January, 1894 — Gallivan House, Bartonburg
Veronica and his sister were both far too invested in the names on Cee’s dance card for Theo to have needed to detail his excuses for leaving, but he’d had the Cannons’ upcoming game ready in his back pocket just in case. It was late at night, though still early to have left the party, so he had taken his time wandering home, back through the midnight-still Bartonburg streets. Theo wasn’t actually planning on going over any work tonight; to be honest, he was probably just going to go to bed.

The house was quiet when he let himself in, the windows dark downstairs. He trudged up the stairs – carefully; Selene had been in bed before they’d left – and to his room. Once he’d kicked off his shoes and started loosening his shirt collar and cuffs, Theo went to his window to draw the curtains, but paused at the sight of something outside.

Hogsmeade was home to plenty of ghosts, so an odd streak of silvery-translucent-grey drifting past wasn’t altogether strange. But they didn’t usually look so familiar, and didn’t tend to be – people who weren’t dead. There was an unpleasant twist in his gut as he watched, unsettled, uncomprehending; abruptly he pushed up the window sash and leant out, forearms on the windowsill, as if the sudden rush of air to his face would dissipate the illusion. But no: there it still was, there he was, floating nearer. What the hell? In spite of his better judgement, maybe, Theo called his name.
Cassius Lestrange



#2
This couldn't be what death felt like.

Cash's chest hadn't felt this light in ages. His brain was calm, and his hands were steady — (although they were also incorporeal at the moment, so maybe that was why.) It felt like flying. Some of the other excalibur's members who had partaken were going to see their wives — or their mistresses — to test the erotic elements of the drug. Cash let people believe he was doing the same — (he visited Adrienne's bed once a week, and not on Fridays, and did not abandon this schedule) — but instead floated out the High Street entrance and up.

He wanted to test how much this was like flying. How high could he go, and could he dive?

He drifted through Hogsmeade, letting himself be carried as if he was letting the wind take him on his broomstick. The house elves had been very specific that they had to be back in an hour, but Cash still had fifty minutes, and he certainly didn't want to spend them in the wrestling room of Excalibur's.

He realized the house was a little too familiar right before he saw Theo leaning in the window. Cash floated closer, trying to make sure it was him — and then Theo called his name. Cash came a few feet closer. "I'm not dead," he offered, helpfully.


The following 1 user Likes Cassius Lestrange's post:
   Adrienne Lestrange



MJ made this!
#3
Theo had hoped he was wrong, that it was a trick of the moonlight; but it was him, it was Cash’s face and Cash’s voice, still him somehow. Given everything, Cash dying was something he had contemplated before, a little too often, a little too seriously. Even the faintest possibility had sent fear crawling under his skin – though at the same time he was sure, instinctively, that Cash would not want to come back as a ghost if he died. (Sometimes it felt like he barely wanted to be here in the first place.)

Regardless. He was an eerie sight, floating there and looking so serene – but it was hard to tear his gaze away. I’m not dead, he’d said, casual.

No? “Then you’re an idiot,” Theo said roughly, grinding his teeth to try and combat his own unease. If Cash wasn’t dead, then... this had to be that drug, didn’t it? Spiritus something: he’d heard whispers of it. A couple of his players, talking about trying it at a party he hadn’t bothered to attend. “What are you doing?” he asked warily. (What wasn’t exactly what he meant – he meant, moreso, why the fuck?)


The following 3 users Like Theodore Gallivan's post:
   Adrienne Lestrange, Cassius Lestrange, Daffodil Grimstone

#4
Cash should have suspected that Theo would hate spiritus sancti. (It seemed like something that was much more in Ford's wheelhouse.) He floated even closer, and rested his translucent hands on the edge of Theo's window.

"It was a party at the club," he explained. He doubted that this would satisfy Theo, but it was what Cash said first anyways — he followed it up with a crooked grin. "And then they told us to wander for an hour. Came down from High Street."

He was having a hard time caring about Theo's anger, right now — a side effect of the lightness in his chest from the spiritus sancti. Cash was sure he could talk him around.





MJ made this!
#5
The crooked grin felt out of place – it annoyed him, maybe because he was unhappy about this and Cash didn’t seem bothered in the least. Maybe because they didn’t get to grin at each other like that anymore.

And the explanation itself had made him scoff, entirely unconvinced – told us, like Cash wasn’t responsible for his own actions even at fucking parties at the club, like it wasn’t reckless and dangerous, like he could nonchalantly wash his hands of his whole life.

Theo had meant to point this out, but his gaze had paused on Cash’s hands at the window, pearly white and unnaturally still. “I don’t know why you’re doing that,” he said flatly, jerking his head towards where they were resting, an oddly-normal placement under an abnormal effect. “Your hands. Don’t they go right through?” There was supposed to be some appeal for people in that, was there – disembodied drifting through walls and the world?


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   Cassius Lestrange

#6
Theo's tone was flat, his motions severe — he was unhappy. Cash wished that he could send some of the buoyancy in his chest over to Theo.

"I don't like the way my arms look when I do it," Cash admitted, with a smile. He was trying to charm Theo. He didn't think it was working — this whole conversation, he'd been just been making Theo more annoyed with him. To try and make up for it, he pushed his hand through the wall of the house and waved it around. "See? Ridiculous," Cash said. He swatted his arm to the side one more time, for emphasis — it floated through Theo's leg.


The following 1 user Likes Cassius Lestrange's post:
   Theodore Gallivan



MJ made this!
#7
That was a stupid fucking reason, Theo thought with a frown; didn’t he know he already looked ridiculous like this, playing at being a ghost? Just drifting around town, coasting and freewheeling and diving without a snitch in sight (and without the wind able to ruffle his hair the way it should). And he was – too cheerful. Too glib. And all but impervious to him.

He had opened his mouth to say something like yes, you’re ridiculous; I don’t like this, in case you haven’t noticed; or just can you not – but Cash’s arm colliding with his leg cut him short. He had braced for a shock of ice as it passed through, not that: so he found himself stumbling a pace backwards, all too aware of the rush of blood through his body and a sudden rising warmth to his face.

“What did you do?” Theo said stiffly, because... had he really become so starved of touch in the past year that the slightest, most incidental brush of contact was enough to fire up his imagination like that? In answer, his face was still hot: all his annoyance had betrayed him by becoming breathless embarrassment. “You’re not – cold.”


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   Fortitude Greengrass

#8
If Cash was breathing right now, he would have lost it — but even then, he felt a familiar erotic blood rush. The other men had alluded to the side effects of Spiritus Sancti in terms of sex, but still — Cash froze, partially through Theo's windowsill, translucent mouth open in shock. He was still consistently having sex, weekly and routine with Adrienne — but it never felt like this.

Theo looked embarrassed, and the tone of his voice wasn't alleviating Cash's desire to touch him again. Cash swallowed. He had a feeling that if he was embodied, he would have been blushing.

"I'm not a real ghost," he said, feeling very Ravenclaw as he corrected Theo. "I'm not supposed to be cold."


The following 1 user Likes Cassius Lestrange's post:
   Adrienne Lestrange



MJ made this!
#9
Once he had overcome his own embarrassment enough to look at him again, he saw Cash’s expression, seemingly caught in something too.

“So it’s the drug?” Theo said, stubbornly playing stupid about this, like he just didn’t get it. Because he – he swallowed. Obviously not a real ghost: because Cash was still alive and real ghosts couldn’t touch things like that, real ghosts couldn’t feel things, anything.

“You felt it too?” The sensation had dimmed enough now for Theo to feel self-possessed in himself again; but still he reached forwards again, deliberately, to touch the translucent boundary of Cash’s shoulder. Just – experimentally, he told himself, not to chase another ripple of that feeling. Just to see if it worked both ways.

And if it was just the drug, it was – fine. It couldn’t be helped, didn’t mean anything, didn’t matter. Cash wasn’t even really here.

He didn’t know why he was looking for loopholes.


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   Cassius Lestrange, Rosalie Hunniford

#10
Theo brushed his shoulder, and Cash shuddered. He'd known that there were erotic effects — that was why so many of the men he'd taken the drug with were visiting their mistresses or wives — but he hadn't expected it to feel like this. It was as if Theo was reaching into him, through him — but it felt good.

"Yes," Cash said, meeting Theo's gaze. "I feel it too."





MJ made this!
#11
Oh. It hadn’t lessened the second time: a shiver of pleasure flooded through him just the same. He swallowed again, and dredged up the words unwillingly. “You probably shouldn’t be here.” There was the wife to consider, and the vow, and the promises Theo had made to himself since he had learned about both; and the obvious logic that every moment he was here, even only in spirit, was unhelpful to everyone.

There was that. All that, versus the fact that what every fibre of his being actually wanted was for Cash to touch him again.

So he didn’t make any more protests, just – wordless, but without turning away, without breaking their gaze – backed up a few more paces into his bedroom and returned to undoing the buttons at the collar of his shirt as he had been before looking out the window. (To make himself do something, anything, to stop from reaching out again.)

Anyway, they weren’t doing anything, and Cash knew well enough where he stood. And there was no reason to think Cash had come here deliberately or anything – Theo had called out to him. So it was just as likely he would drift home or back to the club now, and just leave Theo to dwell on that swelling loneliness and this untimely reminder of how much he missed him... probably whilst working off the unfortunate physical effects of the arousal now brimming in his veins.


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   Adrienne Lestrange, Cassius Lestrange

#12
Theo told him to leave, but as he backed away, their gazes remained locked — and Theo started unbuttoning his shirt. Cash swallowed. If he had been embodied, his mouth would have been going dry. Was he really so starved for touch, from someone that he wanted to touch, that this moment had reduced him to wordless observation?

He floated a few feet forwards, through the wall. He stood — (or hovered, he supposed) — a foot from Theo, knowing that he should leave, and knowing that they were done. But there was that slip of skin where Theo had unbuttoned his shirt, and Cash knew he was not the only one who felt the chemistry when they touched.

He reached out and placed his fingertips against Theo's chest. Arousal thrummed. "Tell me to stop," Cash said, almost a dare, "And I will."


The following 1 user Likes Cassius Lestrange's post:
   Theodore Gallivan



MJ made this!
#13
Maybe later he would be able to pretend that this wasn’t what he wanted. But – watching Cash close the distance between them, like Theo hadn’t created it purely to see if he would – he couldn’t disguise it in the moment.

Now Cash was too close, and touching him again with the same deliberate intention.

Theo could feel his heartbeat racing fiercely enough for the both of them. “Don’t,” he said, and until that moment he had still been half-convinced he was better than this. His voice cracked, and he pitched forwards with a rising sense of desperation. “Don’t stop.”

He stepped nearer, wanting more: wanting to sink deeper into Cash’s touch and have the sensation escalate. With one hand, he was still working on wresting off his shirt, more because he was too hot under the collar and tight in his trousers already than because they needed any more stimulation than the barest ghosting touch alone – but Theo was too hungry for the overwhelming rush of it to slow down. So at the same time he reached out to drag his other hand from the base of Cash’s neck down over his body, insubstantial illusion though it was.

And even if this was a bad idea, entirely fucked up, even if it was the worst idea in the world – it was a relief to think that maybe Cash still wanted him too.

(So much for his principles, which had evidently flown out of the window. Probably at about the moment Cash had floated in.)


The following 3 users Like Theodore Gallivan's post:
   Adrienne Lestrange, Cassius Lestrange, Fortitude Greengrass

#14
This was a full-body experience, but Cash almost wished he could actually touch Theo — he wished that he could press against him and make Theo see how much Cash needed him. Instead, he gasped at Theo's touch and pressed his ghostly lips to Theo's neck, kissing down into the gaps of skin that Theo had revealed.

"Want to make you feel good," he muttered into Theo's skin — Cash was not entirely sure that he could finish like this, (although it felt like he likely would), and would have to seek satisfaction in Theo's satisfaction.





MJ made this!
#15
“You are,” Theo murmured, fully surrendered to it now, and swaying slightly where he stood. “You do.” It did feel good – it always had, regardless of the drug’s effect. So it was almost unfair of Cash to be here, because he hadn’t felt this way in a long time; because Cash had knowingly left him wide open to heartache in the wake of whatever they had been. Or maybe Theo only had himself to blame for dwelling on it for so long. For still clinging stubbornly to something that was over.

He wished his anger had lasted. He couldn’t find the will to be angry anymore – and this felt too good to be guilty about. (He was still making excuses to himself as he reached for his wand to lock the bedroom door and cast a charm to swiftly soundproof it; as he shrugged off his shirt and all sense and any last shred of self-control with it.)

Only frustrated now by the inability to actually hold onto him, Theo sank back onto his bed to have something solid under him. He leant back and undid his trousers to touch himself instead, to drag himself through this physically. It helped, but didn’t have the same dizzying effect as the metaphysical, so – since he couldn’t grasp at his clothes and pull him closer – he tried to articulate it. “Cash – I need you.”

Needed to be touching him again, but the truth was more than that, worse: not only like this, but always, in ways he couldn’t have.



#16
Cash wished he was here really, physically — not incorporeal. He floated over Theo's bed and straddled him, knees sinking into the top of the mattress. Watching Theo touch himself was driving him mad, and Cash kept looking down at it — he kept moving his hips back and forth against Theo's, desperate for friction that he could not attain.

He leaned over Theo, pressing his translucent body over the other man. Cash licked his way down Theo's neck and over his collarbone. "Wish I could taste you," he muttered — but even without the real physicality he thought that he might finish.





MJ made this!

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