The prettiest one on the road stops for him. The window rolls down, apparently of its own accord.

"You're bleeding," the youth at the wheel observes.

He switches to faintly accented English to match his new friend. "I am! Though it's not too terribly urgent - I'm sturdier than I look, really. Do you know where in the blazes I am?"

"Where were you expecting to be?"

"Well- the Belgian Congo, actually, but I'm certainly not there anymore, am I?"

"It's true, you're not. ...you might not be concerned about the bleeding ass but I kind of am, do you want to come in so I can get you some help—"

"I won't turn down your help, certainly."

Tintin fumbles with the car door for a moment before working out the fiendish mechanism. Then he beholds the seats.

"Hmm. This will be... fun... ça va, ça va aller." He sits down and hisses in pain, then grits his teeth and forces a smile. "Alright! Where to, my friend?"

The door closes behind him, also apparently of its own accord, and the stranger starts driving. The air shivers oddly for a moment.

"So how'd you end up here exactly? Because I have this feeling that something really weird is probably going on."

"Well, I was in the Congo, as I said, and I got rather awfully lost, and there was a strange temple - grand, overgrown, cyclopean, you know the sort - and so I went in, naturally. There turned out to be traps, one of which struck me in the rear, and a strange orb, which I touched and which caused me very abruptly to be standing where you found me."

"...somehow that manages to be even weirder than I was expecting," he says.

There's a pause as he navigates the alien streets. He seems to be turning onto more and more deserted ones.

"...eh, fuck it," he says, and he snaps his fingers and the pain just stops. There is no longer an arrowhead, or a wound to go with it. The blood is still there, until he glances at it, and then it isn't. His eyes shine with an unearthly golden light, which fades a moment later.

"Sorry, that's a less permanent solution than it looks, because for stupid reasons my magic only works inside my car, I just—was worried and didn't want to be and now at least whatever it was won't get any worse while you're in here."

"-what on earth?"

Tintin gingerly prods himself. The feeling of having a chunk of sharpened flint inside your body is a distinctive one, and the feeling of not having a chunk of sharpened flint inside your body is similarly noteworthy.

Then he grins.

"Miraculous! Great snakes, I never thought - well, I suppose magic must be real given the incident of the orb, but I hadn't really incorporated that - what else can you do? Oh, how exciting!"

"Literally anything I want as long as it's happening to my stuff or on my territory. But this car is all the territory I've got, so it's a little less exciting than it sounds."

"Your stuff, how d'you mean, what counts there? Do you have to have a deed to it, or could I hand you this torch and you make it heal what it shines on? And then take it back, if I liked, or would that break it? If you were landed gentry and you had workers on your land - or serfs, even, like the old Russians - would you own the land, would you own the people... am I talking too quickly, you look like I'm talking too quickly."

"Maybe a little," he admits. "And I can't—make things do magic to other things—I don't think I can give things away, either, not and have them still be whatever I made them when they were mine—that's also why fixing you is temporary, when you leave my car you go back to how you were before—I can own people but only if they think of themselves as mine, I asked—and I don't know if I can cheat at that part with magic, I haven't tried. I have only been magic for about six hours, I haven't tried much."

"Why don't you try it, then?" Tintin asks. "I'll happily do my part for science, and ideally for not having an arrowhead lodged in my buttocks."

"...I mean so it's not that I'm against the idea it's just I'm surprised you want to belong to me when we just met and don't even know each other's names. Uh. I'm Sean, by the way."

"Tintin - Félix Saint-Martin's my Christian name, but nobody calls me that. And I don't really believe a person can meaningfully belong to another person, magic or no! I could see some kind of magic making me believe you're the best man in the world, that I must serve you, that the sun rises and sets upon your command - but that you own me? J'en doute. And really, you've been nothing but kind to me, I've no doubt you'd use me well if it came to that."

He appears entirely ignorant of any double entendre.

"Eh fuck it."

There's that light in his eyes again, a bright sunny gold with fiery undertones of amber and red, and now Tintin does believe a person can meaningfully belong to another person, and, specifically, that he belongs to Sean.

That's...

New.

That's very new.

Tintin's mouth opens, but he fails entirely to say anything. A soft noise escapes his lips. He turns to gaze at Sean.

"...so now I'm realizing there's a couple of problems with this plan, the first one being that the only way I know how to test if it worked is to have you step out of the car and see if you start bleeding again—also are you okay—"

Tears are welling up in Tintin's eyes. "I - I'm not sure? This is very. Um."

He swallows. "I've been - misleading you, sir."

"...about what?" he says, mildly perplexed.

"M-my Christian name isn't Félix," he says. "I don't know the words - but I can show you."

His hips rise off the leather seat as he pushes down his trousers and undershorts, revealing a soaking-wet pussy covered in thin, silky reddish-blonde hair.

"I'm sorry, sir," he says tearfully.

"...huh," he says. "Wasn't expecting that." Wasn't expecting the tears, either, and they're kind of distracting to be honest, but— "I don't feel misled? I, uh. —No, you know what," and his eyes flash gold and the magically imposed certainty of being owned goes away. "I don't know what this situation needs but less mind control seems like a good start."

Tintin twitches violently, immediately tries to pull his trousers back up, and nearly falls onto the floor of the car in the process.

"I! Um!" He continues his struggle with the trousers. "Ff - it was so easy to take them down why is it so hard to pull them up -"