John was born in England in 1823, and joined the British Army when he was a very young man. When he was eighteen, he met Geoffry, another Redcoat in his regiment. The two quickly fell in love, keeping their affair a secret to protect themselves. When Geoffry was killed in a raid of their camp, John was destroyed. And when he came across an eerily beautiful man in a clearing in the woods, he thought little of joining him for what felt like a lifetime of pleasure. The man, it turned out, was a faerie who enticed John to return with him to a faerie mound. Glamoured out of his mind, John remained there, unchanged by time, for a hundred years or more. He could no longer leave the mound at that point, less all the years return to him at once, killing him instantly.
When John met Gabriel at the wedding of the King of the Fae, he was reluctant to let the pretty young King get close to him. They shared a night or two of passion, but John would kick him out immediately afterward. Slowly but surely, however, he lowered his walls and let Gabriel in. They fell in love, and began a courtship despite the fact that John could never leave to be with him. This changed, however, when John was attacked in the hallway by one of the faeries who hated to see the human man happy. Gabriel was sent for when it became clear that John wasn’t going to make it, and while he was on the brink of death, he begged the vampire to ‘take him away from all of this’. Gabriel changed him then and there, and removed him from the faeries, showing his lover the night sky for the first time in a century.
John is painfully shy, and being thrust into the role of the king’s consort has been a struggle for him. Gabe has been patient with him, and he’s getting better. But it’s been a process.
The Good Stuff:
- Allergic to cats and certain pollen (snez) and cinnamon (not snez)
- Photic sneezer since becoming a vampire.
- Tends to sneeze in slow fits of three or more.
- Suffers from terrible seasickness.
- Has panic attacks in large crowds of people
- Even the smallest cold will cling to him, and keep him sniffling for weeks, even after the rest of the symptoms have cleared up.
- There is a purple flower that only blooms in Etrania, and he is horrendously allergic to it. He doesn’t know the name of the flower, so he just calls it ‘the purple monster’.