Thursday: Changes

[templefugate.livejournal.com]

Hi, everyone! I’m templefugate, your host for the week. As a reminder, for January, we will be trying a new posting schedule. Sundays are for Lonely Prompts and sharing the fills that you completed during the week, Tuesdays and Thursdays are for new themes and prompts, and Saturdays will remain a Free for All.

With that being said, today's theme is changes. Prompts can have anything to do with change of any sort.

Just a few rules:
No more than five prompts in a row.
No more than three prompts in the same fandom.
Use the character's full names and the fandom's full name
No spoilers in prompts for a month after airing, or use the spoiler cut option found here.
If your fill contains spoilers, warn and leave plenty of space, or use the above-mentioned spoiler cut.

Prompts should be formatted as follows: [Use the character's full names and fandom's full name]
Fandom, Character +/ Character, Prompt

Some examples to get the ball rolling...
+ The X-Files, Dana Scully, realizing how different her life is after her father died
+ DC, any sidekick(s), training their successor
+ Spy x Family, Anya Forger & Yuri Briar, struggling with the fact that he's starting to like her

We are now using AO3 to bookmark filled prompts. If you fill a prompt and post it to AO3 please add it to the Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2024 collection. See further notes on this new option here.

Not feeling any of today’s prompts? You can use LJ’s advanced search options to limit keyword results to only comments in this community.

While the use of LJ's advanced search options is available, bookmarking the links of prompts you like might work better for searching in the future.

If you are viewing this post on our Dreamwidth site, please know that fills posted here will not show up as comments on our LiveJournal site but you are still more than welcome to participate.

If you have a Dreamwidth account and would feel more comfortable participating there, please feel free to do so…and spread the word! comment_fic


tag=changes

Comments

Fill: Astro, Shadowhunter AU, Dongmin + Minhyuk

[nagi_schwarz]

Dongmin felt a whisper down his spine when someone crossed his wards.

He reached out with his magic, tracing the magical signal, and recognized the seal of the person who’d been granted access to his wards. Anyone who had one of those seals could enter Dongmin’s apartment building. But they’d only get as far as the door.

Dongmin didn’t hand those seals out to just anyone, though. For petty mundanes and downworlders, he had a storefront where he did business. Someone with a seal was more important, or demanded more discretion.

So Dongmin rose from his armchair, where he’d been rereading the Narrative of Zosimus in the original Greek, and smoothed down his shirt. He reached up absently and ran a hand over his antlers, feeling the soft velvet of them. In June they grew rapidly, and he could no longer wear a hat to cover them when he went out, so he stayed in — or went out to places where a man wearing deer antlers for fun wouldn’t be looked at twice.

Not that Dongmin wore antlers for fun. They marked him as a warlock, and downworlders and Nephilim alike sneered at him, called him half-breed. But they still paid for his services, and they paid handsomely.
Dongmin was at the front door right as someone knocked.

A knock meant a Nephilim, luddites that they were. A downworlder or a mundane would have known to use the doorbell, with its camera intercom.

Dongmin summoned a politely neutral expression and opened the door.

And stared, at a pretty Shadowhunter boy dressed in an alluring combination of leather and lace. Tattoos curled at his throat and his wrists.

“You’re not Park Jinwooo,” Dongmin said.

Park Jinwoo was a skilled hunter and leader, up-and-coming at the Seoul Institute. The Council expected great things of him. He’d been trusted with one of Dongmin’s seals to request magic for especially tricky hunts.

“I’m Park Minhyuk.” He bowed, deep and respectful, then straightened up. “I’m one of Park Jinwoo’s teammates.”

Dongmin let a smile curl his lips. “Ah, yes, Moon Bin’s parabatai. Won’t you come in? How is lovely Binnie? And the very pretty Sua.” He stepped back and gestured for Minhyuk to enter, which Minhyuk did, casting a wary glance about him.

Dongmin’s threshold wards shimmered briefly. Of course Minhyuk was armed, but he wasn’t possessed of ill intent toward Dongmin — yet.

“So, what can I do for the Seoul Institute?”

“I need poison,” Minhyuk said.

Dongmin raised his eyebrows. “Come again?”

“The kind of poison that can render vampire subjugates unconscious at a specific time interval after consumption,” Minhyuk said.

He was unsmiling, utterly serious. His voice was deeper than Dongmin had expected, a little husky, but then Bin’s voice had been higher and sweeter than Dongmin had expected. Where Bin was tall and broad, Minhyuk was slender and lean — but for his large, strong hands.

“You need a sleeping draft?” Dongmin echoed.

Minhyuk nodded. “Yes, High Warlock.”

“You call it a poison?”

“A substance that harms is a poison; a substance that heals is a medicine.” Minhyuk sounded like he was reciting out of a textbook.

Dongmin drifted toward his bookcase, the one stocked with Ancient Egyptian texts, and pressed against two spots on the third shelf, causing the entire bookcase to swing open and reveal a cupboard full of glittering potions vials. “One substance in the right dose is a medicine and the wrong dose a poison — depending on your point of view, of course. Even life-giving water at the wrong dose is lethal to a human.”
Minhyuk went utterly still, blinking, processing. Then he nodded. “I’ll remember that.”

“The Academy is so uptight these days,” Dongmin said. He studied the rows of bottles and vials and considered which one would be the best for the task. He reached for a cut glass bottle of gleaming amber liquid.

“A sleeping draft that is tasteless when dissolved in water or another drink would be preferable,” Minhyuk added.

Dongmin veered toward a bottle of mingled sapphire and jade. “I didn’t realize the Vampire Courts were being unruly again.” He picked up the bottle and unstoppered it, sniffed its contents, and then carried it over to his workbench to decant a smaller amount into a vial. “How many humans do you need to knock out?”

“The total number is unknown, but at least three, most likely double that,” Minhyuk said.

Dongmin filled a small vial and stoppered it with a cork and a dash of magic. Then he flicked his wrist, and the larger bottle whisked itself back into the cupboard, and the bookshelves resumed their previous position. “Well, just a drop in about eight ounces of water will do the trick. Pay me and then you can be on your way, one well-compensated merchant, one satisfied customer.”

“Thank you,” Minhyuk said, and then paused. “What do you want in payment?”

Dongmin smiled and leaned in to meet Minhyuk’s gaze, letting his eyes flare magical blue. “You probably should have asked that before you accepted that vial, shouldn’t you?”

“I have money,” Minhyuk began. He paused. “I have some mundane cash.”

“Council coin not good enough for little old me?”

The tips of Minhyuk’s ears turned faintly pink, but his expression remained blank.

“Ah,” Dongmin said. “This isn’t for a Council-sanctioned hunt is it? Then I think our relationship status has changed from merchant and customer to co-conspirators, hasn’t it?”

“High Warlock,” Minhyuk began, but Dongmin pressed a finger to his lips, hushing him.

“You’ll have to pay me not only for the potion but for my silence.”

Minhyuk swallowed hard.

Dongmin straightened up. Then he said, “I want you to dance for me.”

Minhyuk blinked. “Right — right now?”

“I can only assume you stole your team captain’s seal and came to get this potion from me on the downlow because there’s an emergency, so no, not right now. But after your mission is finished, come here, and dance for me.” Dongmin smiled.

Minhyuk blinked. “I don’t — I don’t know how to dance like mundanes dance. Like in clubs or — or music videos.”

Judging by the flush creeping up his throat, Minhyuk was thinking Dongmin wanted something salacious, like a lap dance or pole dance or strip-tease.

“I know. I’ve heard that you dance beautifully, and that you’re trained in the classical Shadowhunter arts as well as traditional Korean dance. I want you to dance for me,” Dongmin said.

At that, Minhyuk nodded tightly. “Yes, High Warlock. Do you have a preference…?”

Dongmin smiled. “Surprise me, co-conspirator. And impress me.”

Minhyuk nodded again and bowed, clutching the vial to his chest the way some women clutched their pearls, but then he spun on his heel and strode for the door, all confidence.

Dongmin fluttered his fingers, and the door opened, which made Minhyuk startle and recoil before he glanced over his shoulder at Dongmin and bobbed his head in thanks, and then he was gone.

The door closed behind him, and Dongmin sank against his work bench, considering. It had been a long time since he’d seen a truly gifted dancer, and by all reports, young Park Minhyuk was one of the best dancers in a whole generation of Shadowhunters, his younger brother Jeonggeun still a student at the Academy but showing some of the same promise as his brother.

It had been an even longer time since Dongmin had thought of one of his creations as medicine, but then he’d long been disabused of the notion that he could one day become a doctor. After all, the people who’d lived in the village on the edge of the woods where he’d been raised would never have wanted healing from a monster.

Dongmin smoothed a hand over the velvet of his antlers once more, and then he resumed his seat and picked up his book. He’d see Minhyuk again. Till then, he hoped his part in the conspiracy was ended.

Re: Fill: Astro, Shadowhunter AU, Dongmin + Minhyuk

[brumeier]

This is so moody and cool! Dongmin seems super badass here, and I love that his choice of payment is to see Minhyuk dance. Thank you so much, friend!

Re: Fill: Astro, Shadowhunter AU, Dongmin + Minhyuk

[nagi_schwarz]

You’re so welcome! I do enjoy me some badass Dongmin.