#lev mallory

1) eliot/ollivan. the og ‘wouldn’t it be funny’ rarepair. in an imaginary universe with witherward book 3 where they inevitably would’ve met (ollivan self-exiling to france and eliot daydreaming about visiting paris/mentioning how easy it is to dimension hop back to the witherward using portals in other countries is Not a coincidence) i would be so fucking insufferable about them. i am already insufferable about them. them having sex would make everyone’s lives worse including their own and i cannot help but root for it

2) ollivan/virgil/lev. far more problematic than ollivan/virgil (which will also appear on this list) for the sole reason of dragging lev into it. exists purely in my mind as a one off threesome that temporarily ruins ollivan’s friendship with them both and makes everything worse overall, much to lev’s disappointment. also virgil being the centre of a love triangle is just a really funny concept to me so

3) eliot/cassia. let’s just set aside the fact that cassia is a comphet lesbian for a moment. or maybe don’t! so many fun flavours for this one. hooking up all along while she’s with gedeon….right person wrong time….unrequited crush on eliot’s end that just leads to resentment….just walk with me for a moment. eliot/cassia is like the stem cell of witherward ships it can be anything you want it to be 💜

4) hester/alana. PROBLEMATIC AGE GAP YURI now cheer. ok yeah i guess alana could’ve had ollivan and cassia young and maybe the gap isn’t that big but still. i think they have messy hate sex and also i think hester is a stone top. came to me in a dream. technically they were in a room together that one time at fisk’s ball so it’s possible!!!

5) ollivan/virgil. really important to me that everyone knows this was canon TO ME given ollivan’s weird fucking resentment over virgil “abandoning” him to get a boyfriend but we’ll work with the letter of the law here. in my head this is a deliberate foil to the canon onesided jasper/ollivan with ollivan being in unrequited love with boybestie virgil. and also i think they fooled around a bit before virgil started seeing lev but neither of them deeped it that much. honestly this ship is like the foundation that enabled all my other non-canon insanity so we have a lot to thank it for

6) eliot/fowler. hatesex + the inherent eroticism of fucking your father’s murderer. makes so much sense it’s almost boring. next

7) ilsa/cassia. a bit weird since ilsa is famously the sister of cassia’s ex but that’s kind of a recurrent problem with the femslash ships in this series so i just ignore it. cassia canonically has a huge friendcrush on ilsa it isn’t hard to take it from there. see eliot/fowler on ‘makes so much sense it’s almost boring.’ next!

8) sybella/lev/virgil. another ship that exists because i think it’d be funny to psychologically torture ollivan (lev and virgil finally open their relationship but to his EX and not him). but also there’s a vision here…ollivan did promise society secretary to lev and virgil and presumably they got the position when sybella got promoted to president after ollivan left. and they do search camden together as a group of 3 in wayward. i think virgil is honestly just lev-sexual but if he’s tolerating any third it’s sybella tbh they have complementary personalities. and also it’s funny

9) sybella/cassia: another ‘let’s give ollivan psychic damage’ ship, this time with his ex gf and his baby sister. but also there’s roots here…sybella and cassia genuinely do have a lot in common and sybella advocates for cassia a lot in wayward. and also i think cassia needs someone firm to shock her into her gay awakening. did i mention it’d kill ollivan

Lev, meanwhile, is clearly delighted by the prospect of getting to discuss a love life that isn’t his own; Sybella is too married to work–her law degree, that is, not her shifts at the shop–for her to bother dating, and Ollivan’s own romantic prospects are strictly limited to one night stands, a holdover from his past life as one of Delphine’s suppliers. He’s kicked most of the criminal acts, but the mindset is still a work in process. “So are you looking to start dating again?” he asks Cassia, who responds to this far more warmly than she would if Ollivan asked her the same question.

Which is to say that instead of biting Lev’s head off, she just twists awkwardly in her seat and bites her lip. This is why Ollivan was so surprised about the boyfriend thing a few moments before: there is a reason why Cassia has never dated before, and it’s not because she isn’t pretty or because she has some secret terrible personality flaw. Ollivan might have lost most of his capacity for shame and humility years ago, but at her core Cassia is terribly, terminally shy, and anxious to boot. She puts on a brave enough face that it can be hard to tell from just looking at her, but Ollivan knows better. He’s not sure if being sent away to an all-girls boarding school for most of her life made it any worse, or if she was just always meant to be this way, but it’s who she is. A few years ago, when all of his friends from school wouldn’t shut up about how beautiful his little sister was, the knowledge that Cassia was probably never going to willingly go on a date with anybody had felt like a blessing to Ollivan. Now he can’t help but feel a little sorry for her. University has helped her come out of her shell a little, clearly, but not that much. “Um,” Cassia says now. “Maybe. I don’t know.” Even that non-answer is sort of bold, for her.

Lev lights up. “Well,” he says, in that voice he has that makes you want to listen to everything he has to say, “when you decide, let me know. I know someone who would be perfect for you.” “Really?” Cassia asks, sounding unsure. Lev nods enthusiastically. “Seriously,” he says. “I’m great at setting people up. Ask anyone. I mean,” he amends, “not your brother, you know how he is, and not Sybella, she’s too busy bashing her head in with a law book to let me set her up, but ask anyone else.” “We don’t know anyone else you know,” Ollivan points out. “You would if you came to any of the parties I invited you to,” Lev says guilelessly. “Promise me you’ll think about it, Cassia?”

Cassia, helpless to resist Lev’s charm, nods. “Yeah, alright,” she says, “I’ll let you know.”

did a little redo of my old wayward barbie memes, this time including lev, virgil and sybella :)