#trokia

The name’s ✨Vah✨

Have some canon art of Fal on his aerial silks lol.

//Happy Christmas Eve!!  Hope you all are having a lovely holiday!  Please enjoy the 11th day of Christmas story: “Decorations” by KV!

“Hey Fal, can you still do that thing you did last year to help me put the lights up?” Gabe asked, strings of lights looped around his arms.  

Falcon looked up with a snort and a grin.  “What kind of question is that?  Of course I can.”  He stood up from where he had been kneeling to start a fire with Seth, dusting his knees off.  "Watch this,” he said, stretching his arms above his head, then striking a dramatic pose, “and be amazed.”  He crouched by Gabe, intertwining his fingers together into a step for his friend.  As Gabe stepped onto his hands, he straightened up and smoothly lifted his friend until his hands were chest-level and Gabe’s red hair brushed the ceiling.  Gabe, balancing nonchalantly on one foot, began to tape the string of lights along the junction of the ceiling and wall.

“Are you impressed?” Falcon asked, craning his neck to see around Gabe’s sweatpant-clad leg.

Three hummed noncommittally.  “So either you’re strong or Gabe is really light.”

Annika Kelly turned a corner, holding a tray of cookies, and startled violently as she looked up.  “Goodness,” she gasped, holding a hand over her heart, “Be careful boys!  Gabriel, do not fall!”

“I won’t,” he replied, tapping the top of Falcon’s head to have him move to the side.  

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Kelly!” Falcon said cheerfully, “I’ll catch him if he falls.”

“While I don’t doubt your abilities, Fal,” Annika replied, setting her tray of cookies on the table, “It is unfortunately a mother’s job to worry, and I would rather not take my son to the ER on Christmas Eve.”

Falcon laughed in response.  “We’ll be careful then.”

Seth wandered over to where Annika was transferring cookies to a cooling rack.  “So,” he said, “You guys throw a party like this every year?”

“Yes,” she replied, offering him one, “At first it was just for family, then we invited a few neighbors, then Falcon became a regular in our house, and now it’s a crowd.”

Seth considered his next words as he nibbled on the cookie.  “Isn’t it a lot of trouble to have that many people in your house?  Why do you still do it?”

“Because we can,” Annika said with a smile.  “Christmas-time just gives us a good excuse to serve people.”

“I see,” Three said, masking his confusion.  He turned as a yelp sounded from behind them, finding the two boys behind them looking in disappointment at the lights piled on the floor.

“Gabe!” Falcon whined, “Why’d you drop them?”

“Just lower me down,” Gabe sighed.

“Wait, wait.  I think I can hook them with my foot and launch them up to you.”

“That’s so dangerous.”

“Pfft, it’ll be fine-”

“You boys better not,” Annika warned, untying her apron.  “One kid being lifted in the air is bad enough, but both of you on one foot is a recipe for disaster.”

Three let out a laugh.  “I’ve got them,” he said.  He walked over and picked up the tangled strings, winding them into a neat bundle as he went.

“Thanks,” Falcon said.  He paused and considered Seth for a moment.  “Want to try?” he offered with a mischievous sparkle in his eye.

“No thanks,” Three replied immediately.

“Aw, c’mon, you’d be great,” Falcon wheedled shamelessly. “You’re built like a twig; it would be so easy to lift you.”

“First, that’s mildly insulting.  Second, no.”

“At least he’s warning you first,” Gabe contributed from above.  “Last year he just picked me up.”

“I thought someone was being murdered from all the shrieking,” Annika laughed.

“Mom!” Gabe complained over Falcon’s laughter.

“Alright, alright, from the singular shriek.”

“Mom!”

Falcon lowered his hands so Gabe could step off, still chuckling.

“Your turn,” he said to Seth, his grin turning a little evil as he advanced.

“No!” Seth said more vehemently.  “Falcon, I’m warning you…”

“What’s going on in here?” came a booming voice from the corridor.  A tall man with flaming red hair like his son’s appeared in the doorway and leaned against the frame.   “How’s the decorating going?”

Annika walked over to give her husband a kiss.  “Arthur, you missed the cheerleader lift,” she told him.  

He slapped a hand to his forehead in mock dismay.  “No!  That’s the highlight of my year!”

“Don’t worry,” Falcon said, “Seth’s about to do it too.”

“I’m not.”

“He is,” Falcon replied.

“I wish I was a little younger and more spritely; I’d like to be able to do something like that,” Arthur said with a little laugh and a scratch at his beard.  

Falcon stopped and looked him up and down, calculating.  “How much do you weigh?”

“Oh,” Arthur chuckled, “Much more than you can carry, my boy.”

Falcon grinned.  “Let’s try it!”  He cracked his knuckles gleefully.

“This is a bad idea,” Three said.

“Nonsense!”  Falcon  replied, “When do I ever have bad ideas?”

In the back, Gabe rolled his eyes.

“Fine,” Seth huffed, wandering back to the table, “Go ahead and break your back.  I’m not gonna be the one driving you to the hospital.”

“Isn’t there an easier way to put up Christmas decorations?” Annika asked, half jokingly but half seriously as she hovered in the background.

“C’mon Annika, where’s your sense of adventure?” Arthur teased her.  “You’re sure you can do it though, Fal?”

“No problem,” Falcon assured him, crouching with his hands together.

Arthur shrugged and stepped carefully on his hands.  “I’ll jump off if you can’t,” he told Falcon before he lifted his other foot, and the teen replied with a nod and a wink.

“Here goes,” Arthur said, and lifted his foot off the ground.

Falcon grunted and winced a little.  “Oof, okay, a little problem, but we’re still good!”

Annika and Seth sighed almost simultaneously.  “They’re so dumb,” Annika whispered to Three, who simply nodded with an unimpressed look.

Falcon’s face was slowly getting redder, but he stood firm with his feet braced apart as Arthur gleefully taped the rest of the lights up to the ceiling.

“And… done!”  Arthur announced, and Falcon immediately dropped to one knee to let him hop off.

“Whoa,” he gasped, “Okay, so I’m a little more out of shape than I thought.”

Arthur let out a booming laugh and clapped a hand on his shoulder.  “You lifted a 250 pound man for 5 minutes; I’d love to see what you can do in-shape!”

“Can we move on?” Gabe asked flatly.  “The rest of the house is still undecorated.”

Heya!  This is KineticVo, aka KV, the second writer/creator for this blog!

El and I have been wanting to tie our individual blogs closer for a while, and just recently decided to expand from our original WordPress character blogs to a wider variety of platforms.  Tumblr is a bit new for both of us, so thanks in advance for your patience!

Falcon has been a character of mine for around 13 years now, but only in the last 6 months or so have I been writing and drawing him, thanks largely to El’s encouragement. On his individual character blog here, my friend pacerB writes his first person blog posts and coordinates the layout of our joint blog, while I write third person short stories and do art for it.  On this blog, El and I anticipate sharing more cowritten short stories and art for the both of them, as well as asks and texts.  I absolutely love Falcon to bits, so I’m very very excited to share him with you!

Just for fun, here are a short little character overview for this good boi and a vignette from his backstory.  Thanks for reading, and enjoy!

Name: Falcon Rynn

Nickname: Fal

Age: 18

Physical Appearance: Bright green eyes and longish black hair that he usually ties back. Unknown ethnicity, but probably some cocktail of Asian, European, and Latin American. About 5”3.  This boy is swole, but in a subtle way, like if you saw him you might think “Oh yeah he probably works out a bit” but you wouldn’t actually guess he could bench press a man.

Family: His adoptive father, Lawrence Rynn, is a rather infamous private detective.  While he is young and inexperienced at being a dad, he tries his best and he loves his son with his whole heart.

Taste in Clothes:  Generally, loose t-shirts or sweaters and those skinny jeans that are stretchy.  He also occasionally wears a wide bandage around his waist if his shirt is especially baggy, to hide the mark on his side/hip.   

Friend Situation: At the moment, he has three good friends.  Gabe Kelly, his best friend, is like a grumpy mom who is the glue keeping both Falcon and their friend group as a whole together.  The most recent addition to the group, Lily, is an awkward sweetheart who is like the baby of the group.  These two are also my characters.

Three, who is El’s character and also known as Seth to most people, shares some of the same life experiences as Fal.  The two of them have a relationship of understanding that Fal doesn’t have with his other friends, and so while Fal, Lily, and Gabe are like “the squad” and always hang out together, Seth and Falcon have a unique connection. 

What Would Break Him: Something happening to the people he cares about as a result of his past.  He’d never forgive himself if he was unable to prevent a tragedy that he feels was brought about by his presence in people’s lives.

Basic Backstory:  The biggest part of Falcon’s backstory will be slowly revealed over time, but the basics are that his biological father had him in a bad situation as a child.  At 12 years old, he was rescued by an operation headed by Lawrence Rynn, who then took him in as first a foster kid and then an adoptive son.

Falcon Rynn stands on his tip-toes, silks wrapped around his hands and wrists.  The binding tape around his hands and the chalk dust on his palms are familiar feelings, and he huffs a breath of air to steady himself as the music starts.  A familiar drum line reverberates through his ears and he swings himself up into a split, the fabric wrapped around his wrists steadying him as he twists up and around until he’s upside-down, his ankles tangling themselves in the aerial silks and anchoring him there.  His muscles ache a little as he forces them to hold his entire body weight on a thin strip of fabric.

His muscles used to ache like this for another reason.

The skin on the palms of his hands burn as he climbs up the silks, his legs hooking onto the cloth as he gets higher and higher.  The burn is worth seeing the ground so far below him and still knowing that he is safe as long as he holds himself up.

He’s used to surviving on his own skill and strength alone.

The silks now wrapped around his body hold him up as he swings himself into a complicated move that send his feet whipping around and up in a flip.  He takes a moment to twist one of the hanging silks around his thigh as his other hand swings wide in a flexible stretch towards the ground.

It’s so nice to swing around in a kick like this and not be met with the sound of cracking bone or the thud of flesh against his heel.

Despite the dark of the auditorium, his sharp eyes spot a particular figure in the audience.  The figure claps and throws him a thumbs-up as he swings around in the air, and he sends a half-grin in his father’s direction.

The eyes on him used to be cold and calculating, seeing him as an asset and a prize to be owned.  How sweet it is to be seen as a son.

One of his legs straighten to point towards the ceiling, and suddenly he is plunging towards the floor as the silks uncoil off his ankle and shin.  Air whips past his face and stings his eyes, and exhilaration twists in his stomach.  In the audience, several people scream.  

He’s caused screams before; he knows because he dreams about it sometimes and wakes up shaking with tears running down his face.  He hopes that for the rest of his life the only reason anyone will scream like that because of him is because they are scared for him rather than of him.  

At the last moment before hitting the ground, his second leg snaps out and catches him on the second line of fabric, halting his downward plunge as a particularly loud cymbal crash echoes through the speakers of the stage.  The audience erupts in cheers.

He always survives; it’s who he is.  He’s just happy that now, he doesn’t need to fight so hard.  All he has to do is hold on to the silks.