Hope your day is going well!
I had a few questions for you about Human!CainAM AU (adore all of the vignettes you've made for them and I couldn't resist rereading them and your troubleshooting AU). If these questions have been asked before, my apologies!
How would you describe them, appearance-wise? In the fic, you've said that Caine is relatively unblemished and well-groomed with curly hair and heterochromia (plus an ultra-short king) and AM is scarred up and bruised while being much older and more physically fit with a little love weight added on top (plus also a short king). Is there any other detail you envision for them, or is it all up to reader interpretation?
Is AM ex-military/CIA/FBI? I know in the fics you said he used to be a government official, but wasn't sure what kind, exactly. By extension, is his chronic pain from an injury, or something autoimmune?
Is Caine part of a traveling circus, or does he stay in the city, like Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas?
Much love and enjoy your day!!!
Hope your day is going well too, Anon :) I really appreciate the rereads, and I'm so happy that you like the human fics. ❤️ Many of them (that aren't requests, of course) are actually incredibly personal to me, and I'm very selective on which I share, Big Fish being one of the more sensitive ones. I'm always very grateful when people give them a shot.
How would you describe them, appearance-wise? Is there any other detail you envision for them, or is it all up to reader interpretation?
• I tend to leave smaller details up to interpretation within my AUs. What you mentioned above is correct! But as a small note, not all of my human CaineAm stories take place in the same period of time, so some descriptions of them may differ slightly between stories. Some fics take place when Caine and Am are married (usually tagged Husbands Caine and Am), some when they're dating, and in the case of Big Fish, before they even become partners at all.
What changes when they're older: Am gets more graying hair and a little more weight on him when they're married. Caine grows facial hair and gets some more muscle from work. Otherwise it's just typical aging things.
How they look while dating/when they met:
Am looks like Harlan Ellison, as mentioned here! (Has some photos attached for your convenience.) I like to think that he dresses slightly dated since he hates shopping for new clothes if the old ones still fit (and constantly talks about how they don't make things to last anymore). He also has somewhat poor eyesight and wears black glasses around the house. Otherwise, he tends to wear contacts and sometimes shades. He has visible age in his face and tired eyes. Some of it is due to his grumpy nature, and some of it is because he doesn't sleep well.
Caine has actually had his appearance silently changed in some of my AUs, so he may be described a little differently in Wake (my first human fic) than in the newer ones—I'll have to go back and check later on how much I detailed his appearance. This is what I envision currently:
• Caine doesn't look much like his parents. *In my AU, he is Scratch's biological son and was adopted by Kinger when Scratch passed away from his tumor. (They of course use their regular names. Using circus ones here for clarity). Caine has standout curly/wavy red hair and is indeed very short compared to the rest of his family. I imagine his hair as the same bright red as the show uses, using the anime-esque logic of "colorful hair is natural," but it being brown and dyed red to look flashy would make sense as well. And he of course has heterochromia like in the show.
• He is white and burns very easily. Sometimes I think of him with freckles, but I wouldn't say that's in my "canon" or anything. He has no facial hair as of meeting and first dating AM, but grows it later. He keeps himself very well groomed and is considered to be fairly attractive.
(*As an aside, my Abel, Caine's younger brother, is mixed and is Kinger/Queenie's biological son.)
Is AM ex-military/CIA/FBI? I know in the fics you said he used to be a government official, but wasn't sure what kind, exactly. By extension, is his chronic pain from an injury, or something autoimmune?
• In my mind Am has an unspecified autoimmune condition that causes him joint and muscle pain. His scars, however, are unrelated and are from his experience in the military. I was thinking that he was an officer for a while and left. Combat arms of some sort maybe? Field Artillery?
I can't say I've fully thought out every detail on Am's backstory; I don't have full specifics on what all he did and how exactly he did it. Only that he was military and then worked with Ted for a while after. I want the sole focus of my human series to be him getting better and finding comfort in someone he never expected to befriend. ❤️
Is Caine part of a traveling circus, or does he stay in the city, like Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas?
• Caine's circus is stationary, but he would love to go "on tour" one day. ❤️
