#but on the other hand like claire literally does not know this man. this man went on murder rampages half the times they saw each other | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bombsquad9 · 1 month

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𝐋𝗼𝐯𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞 + 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫/𝐒𝐞𝐱𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝗼𝐧𝐬: 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐄𝐯𝐢𝐥 (PT. 1)

Characters Included: Ada Wong, Alcina Dimitrescu, Albert Wesker, Ashley Graham, Carlos Oliveira, Chris Redfield, Claire Redfield, Ethan Winters, and Finn Macauley.

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𝑨𝒅𝒂 𝑾𝒐𝒏𝒈;

—> Ciswoman (She/Her), Bisexual w/ no preference

✞ Gift Giving: God, this woman loves to spoil her significant other. Anything she sees and think they'll like? Boom, it's bought within a second and being taken home to them as soon as possible. Did you mention something? Boom, next thing her partner knows is that the same thing is on their bed with a little note. What's the point in having someone to love if you can't shower them in things they want?

✞ Physical Touch: It may not be full blown cuddling most of the time, but small subtle touches. The kind that leave a person wanting more in seconds. Ada loves having that charm on her partner, but of course she's a sucker for some hugs from behind and kisses. It really just depends with her, but she loves it regardless.

𝑨𝒍𝒄𝒊𝒏𝒂 𝑫𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒄𝒖;

—> Ciswoman (She/Her), Lesbian/Sapphic

✞ Gift Giving: Considering she is filthy rich and quite literally a lady of an entire castle, she'd like to spend some time pampering her significant other with all the things she can give them. Anything they mention wanting around her she'll find a way to acquire, even if it means a limb from one of her many maids. She'd do anything to get her partner's eyes to light up (within reason) and happily watch them as they get excited over the gifts. What can she say, she likes to spoil her baby.

✞ Quality Time: Alcina LOVES to spend time with her significant other. It doesn't matter if it's a small dinner with them, them sitting with her whilst she plays piano, etc. She loves the idea of being in the same room as her partner and having her full attention on them (and vice versa). She may be able to live a long time, but depending on the circumstances, her significant other may not be able to and she wants to have every moment with them. Don't get her started on if anything bad happens either, she just wants good memories with her special someone.

𝑨𝒍𝒃𝒆𝒓𝒕 𝑾𝒆𝒔𝒌𝒆𝒓;

—> Demiboy (He/They), Pansexual

✞ Gift Giving: Another gift giver, Wesker is not good with words, and he definitely does not like being touched. He's a powerful being, and why not show that he can do whatever by getting his significant other whatever they want?

✞ Quality Time: He's a very busy man, and if he likes his partner enough to actually be with them, then might as well spend time with them. His idea of quality time is quietly sitting in a room while both people are doing their own things. What's more ideal then spending time with your significant other and getting work done?

𝑨𝒔𝒉𝒍𝒆𝒚 𝑮𝒓𝒂𝒉𝒂𝒎;

—> Demigirl (She/They), Straight

✞ Gift Giving: Ashley is the presidents daughter, so she's bound to come from a wealthy family, why not spend some of that wealth on her partner? Gifts can range from expensive jewelry to expensive dates even. Though, I feel like she'd also like making little trinkets for her special someone.

✞ Physical Touch: Ashley would be a very touchy person, always holding her partner's hand, giving them small pecks on the cheek, etc. She loves to show affection to the ones she loves, and is shameless about it. She does know there's a time and a place though, and if they want space she'll gladly give it to them (with a bit of a pout).

𝑪𝒂𝒓𝒍𝒐𝒔 𝑶𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒊𝒓𝒂;

—> Cisman (He/Him), Pansexual

✞ Physical Touch: You cannot tell me this man wouldn't be touchy, he would be all over his significant other. He would have an arm draped around their shoulders, and arm around their waist, etc. If him and them were at home he'd be laying on them in their arms. He just loves the feeling of contact, it assures him that they're real and there, which puts a smile on his face just thinking about it.

✞ Acts of Service: Carlos would do anything to make his significant other's life easier, even if it was just by a little bit. The thought of lifting a weight off of his partner's shoulders when they're exhausted or have no motivation to do something makes him happy. It makes him feel useful, he thinks of it as a way to pay them back for putting up with his smart ass all the time.

𝑪𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒔 𝑹𝒆𝒅𝒇𝒊𝒆𝒍𝒅;

—> Cisman (He/Him), Bisexual/Demiromantic/Demisexual

✞ Quality Time: Chris has been through a lot, and has lost a lot of people. He can't get the thoughts out of his head that something bad is going to happen to his significant other, so he wants to make every second count. It doesn't matter how, him and his someone could be in the same room, quietly doing their own things even. He just wants to have enough time with his significant other before anything can get in the way and cut that short.

✞ Words of Affirmation: Sometimes he just needs to hear from his special someone that they aren't going to leave. As I said before, he's lost a lot of people, most of them being very meaningful to him. He can't bear the thought of another person leaving, so hearing the words come out of his significant other's mouth in sincerity helps soothe his nerves, even if it's just a little bit.

𝑪𝒍𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒆 𝑹𝒆𝒅𝒇𝒊𝒆𝒍𝒅;

—> Demigirl (She/They), Omnisexual w/ a preference for women

✞ Quality Time: Claire thinks making memories with her special someone is extremely important, and what better way to do that other than spending time together? Whether it be a little date night or just laying in each others arms and conversing, she cherishes every moment of it. She likes seeing her partner happy, it makes her happy to know she's doing something right.

✞ Words of Affirmation: Claire loves praising her significant other, whether it be something as simple as a "I'm proud of you" or an "I love you". She wants them to know she loves them, and words are definitely a good way to do that. Expect her to shower her special someone with compliments and praise as much as she can.

𝑬𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒏 𝑾𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔;

—> Cisman (He/Him), Bisexual w/ a preference for women

✞ Acts of Service: Ethan would quite literally go through hell and back to make his significant other happy, so why not do simple things to make their life easier? He likes doing things for people, and he loves his partner so they're a prime target off that. He takes no protests, especially if it's something so simple he could do it in like five minutes.

✞ Physical Touch: I feel like Ethan would be the kinda guy to walk up behind his significant other while they're cooking, and give them a long hug from behind. He'd come home from work after a long day and just wanna lay down with his partner and embrace them.

𝑭𝒊𝒏𝒏 𝑴𝒂𝒄𝒂𝒖𝒍𝒆𝒚;

—> Transman (He/Him), Omnisexual w/ a preference for men

✞ Acts of Service: Finny here would do anything for his significant other. Similarly to Carlos, it helps him feel useful when he makes your life easier. Since he did a lot of the C4 work for his BSAA team, he just kinda got used to doing things for people too. It's a win/win for him, he gets to keep his brain active and some of your needs get met.

✞ Gift Giving: I feel like Finn would love to give his significant other little trinkets he sees or finds, or little things that reminds him of them. He likes to see the smile on their face when he comes home with a little gift for them. It warms his heart and he can't help but smile too. He also loves to give them things with a lot of sentimental value, whether it be something related to an inside joke, or something they mentioned a while back.

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𝐓𝐚𝐠 𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭: None Currently

A/N: Comments and reblogs are appreciated! <3

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redxwater · 2 months

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Waiting Room (Chapter 1)

Leon Kennedy x F!Reader

(Warnings chapter 1 : depression, anxiety, harsh language.)

Chapter 1, Chapter 2,

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“Yeah, no i’ll be fine Claire. Call you later” a young blonde boy spoke through the phone. Call connected to Washington D.C from NYC. On the other line in the capital was a younger woman. “Okay, text me if there’s anything!” The brunette girl smiled before hanging up. Claire was Leon’s best friend, but she isn’t always capable of helping him. She tries her best though.

Leon didn’t want a foster family, even if it was for the better. He lived with Claire’s family for a few months before getting a scholarship in a music major. He tells himself he’s lucky, in a way… Claire has known him for 4 years, since they were freshmen. Her family loved Leon, sometimes they hoped they would end up together, but they never did.

With a deep sigh, he rolled out of bed and put on the jeans that were on the floor, and a sweater. He threw on his old white sneakers and put some deodorant on. He grabbed his phone and headphones and was out the door.

He didn’t brush his hair, he hadn’t for 3 days. He stuffed some gum in his mouth and spat it out 5 minutes later, before heading into english class. He had been at college for a month, it wasn’t that bad, but he thinks it is. Everything sucks. Literally everything. Depression was something he struggled with even before he lost his parents. He tried therapy for a long while but didn’t feel like it worked.

Leon is a quiet observer, he knows most people in his classes. Well their names at least, today was no different. Despite his depression his grades are peaked, he has the same routine everyday and that includes school work. “Leon Kennedy?” the professor went through the absence list. He sticks his hand in the air and puts it down again. The man in front of the class nods and goes on until it’s done.

English was boring, Leon always has been a very smart kid. But maybe that was a good thing right now too. He didn’t have too put too much effort into everything.

The blonde boy hadn’t shared a dorm for a few weeks, he didn’t expect anyone to move in by now but when he opens his door at the end of the day, he’s surprised by boxes everywhere. He just tries to ignore it and grabs a glass of water.

Leon dials Claires number and waits for her to pick up “Hey what’s up?” The other line speaks. “I think i got a roommate, there’s boxes everywhere” he says while sitting on the small kitchen counter. “Oh cool! Are they nice?” She asks with enthusiasm, hoping Leon could make some friends, maybe. “Dunno, maybe. Haven’t met them yet. But it’s a mess here and i don’t like it” he mumbles a bit while inspecting the boxes in the room.

Leon has always been quite neat if it comes to anything but his bedroom. His bedroom is a mess, not disgusting but just a mess. “Can’t you put it all in their room?” She asks sounding a bit crisp through he phone. “Why would i? It’s not my shit. I’m just gonna be in my room.” He says and abruptly hangs up. He’s not annoyed about sharing a dorm. He doesn’t care. As long as they acknowledge each other’s presence and keep things to as much as a “hi” there should be no problem.

Leon settles behind his desk in his room and does some homework before playing a few games. Around 7 he goes out the door, there’s still boxes. Where could that roommate be?

“Oh shit i’m sorry!” A girl bumps into Leon in front of the dorm room he came out of. “Oh you’re my roommate!” You exclaim. “Right.” Leon dryly replies. You tell him your name and stick out your hand for the blonde guy shake. “Leon.” He shakes your hand. “Can you sort those boxes out?” He asks with an annoyed tone “Oh yeah totally” you smile and go into the dorm. “See you later, Leon” you close the door and Leon walks away.

You spend all evening unpacking and put stuff everywhere around the dorm. You accidentally open the door to Leons room, thinking it was the bathroom. The room is dark, it smells fine. Mostly like men’s deodorant. Even in the dark you see clothes everywhere on the floor. You shrug your shoulders, you’re not the neatest either.

After 2 hours Leon returns and looks slightly surprised for a second to see you. He’s not used to living with someone in his dorm. He doesn’t say anything and just walks by to his room. Before he can enter you speak “where did you go?” You ask trying to get to know him a bit. “Doesn’t matter” he cuts off and closes his door. Weird guy, you think. But there’s something about him, you just know.

Thanks for the votes on my poll pookies!! Hope u like it

#leon #leon kennedy #leon kennedy fluff #leon kennedy smut #leon kennedy x reader #re4 #resident evil x reader #leon kennedy x you

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chiffon-and-spice · 1 year

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RE HC's: Attachment Style, Love Languages

(Keep in mind these are literally all HC's and if you disagree, it's not cannon so don't get your dick in a twist. This is literally just how I see the characters. Most are bisexual because… it just feels fitting to me. Idk. If you don't see a character here that you'd like me to do, please let me know.)

Characters in this Post: Rebecca Chambers, Billy Coen, Albert Wesker, Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Leon Kennedy, Claire Redfield, Ada Wong, and Carlos Oliveira. (if you'd like a character not mentioned here done, feel free to ask <3)

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Rebecca Chambers-

Sexuality: Bi/Demi-sexual

Zodiac: Virgo

Love Language: Becca definitely expresses her love through acts of service. She may not be all that great at expressing herself through words, and being busy with work allows her little time to be close to you in person. She will do little things like fold your clothes if they're still in the dryer, make your bed, do those chores you aren't looking forward to, and so much more. She loves the idea of helping make your life a little more easier. When it comes to being shown love however, Rebecca loves words of affirmation. She thrives best when you give her hella love and reassurance. Not being good with words, she admires how freely you can talk about your feelings for her. It literally lights up her soul.

Attachment Style: Despite a lot of the struggles Rebecca has been through, she's pretty secure in herself and the relationships she gets in. Even though she struggles with her words, she's super effective at communicating her feelings when it comes to issues. Rebecca is also really good at self-reflection and will work on herself in all the places she falters, to ensure you two have the most healthy dynamic. She's super trusting of you, and does not hesitate to give out reassurance if you ask.

Billy Coen-

Sexuality: Bisexual

Zodiac: Taurus

Love Language: Billy expresses his love through physical touch. Whether it be through gentle caresses or playful pokes and punches, he lovesss touching you in any way. He can't seem to keep his hands off of you. You go out, he will kick you playfully under the table, and in the morning he's the one to cling to you and not want you to get out of bed. Morning sex is a given with him. He loves to make you feel good, and he feels best when he's touching you. When it comes to being shown love, Billy is a big fan of quality time. He doesn't care what it is you're doing, he wants to be close. You have to go to the grocery store to do some mundane task, nothing makes him more excited than you inviting him to go. He especially loves when you take time off of work or other things to be with him. Knowing you took time out of your day and your life to make room for him makes his day.

Attachment Style: Billy hasn't had the best of luck in the relationship department, especially with his past, and it makes him weary of who to trust. He's got an anxious attachment style, and while he craves love he's also terrified it isn't genuine. Billy can be super clingy at points, and sometimes struggles when you don't seem to have time for him. He needs constant reassurance, that you're for him and only him. He realizes this about himself, and always makes sure to tell you before you start dating. When given reassurance, he is the happiest boy, and he will never tire of you showing him just how much you love him.

Albert Wesker-

Sexuality: Pansexual (this is actually not a stretch as his VA played him as a queer man Link

Zodiac: Aries

Love Language: Albert expresses his love through giving gifts. Bro is not good with words and not a fan of being touched. But if he's sees something that reminds him of you, he will absolutely get it. He will shower you in gifts. You mention needing a new set of pens to take notes, he's already half-way to the store, buying the specific ball-point or gel pens you require. Working late, he's stopping by your workplace with food from your favorite place. Have a favorite show or little obession, he will buy anything for you that relates to said thing. When it comes to being given love, Albert loves acts of service. When you do things for him, it makes his life a lot easier. Especially if it's something he's not looking forward to. Nothing impresses him more than you doing something for him, when he didn't even have to ask for it.

Attachment Style: Albert 1,000% has disorganized attachment. One minute you think he's absolutely into you, and the next he is running for the hills. He's terrified of rejection, but also craves acceptance. Albert sometimes completely shuts down and doesn't talk to you about his concerns with the relationship. A lot of the time, even he doesn't know why he's being distant. It doesn't seem to matter how good you treat him, he always has anxiety about your relationship, but if you're super patient with him he can be the most tender and loving soul you can have. Often the relationship may be confusing, and Albert doesn't really talk about his feelings. Sometimes, he can even be a little aggressive and lash out, but he always apologizes and begs for you to stay.

Chris Redfield-

Sexuality: Bisexual/Demiromantic (takes bro a lot to be romantically into you)

Zodiac: Scorpio

Love Language: Chris expresses his love through acts of service, man struggles with words like Wesker and physical touch can be too much for him sometimes. But occupying himself with things to do that'll make you happy is how he loves showing you his love. He can get physical every once in awhile, but he kinda does that with a lot of people, so it isn't exactly how he expresses his love. Doing things for you also allows him to express his love for you in a way that makes him feel comfortable. Like your coffee a certain way? Chris is working his ass off to make sure you get it. When it comes to being shown love Chris surprisingly likes words of affirmation. He can't speak for himself, so when you talk about how you feel it makes him weak. He wants more than anything to be able to speak the way you do, and that's why he appreciates when you do it so well. Using your words sometimes can be a bit much for him, and makes him want to pull away, but in the long run he does find comfort in them.

Attachment Style: Chris has an avoidant attachment style. He feels like he has to go through everything on his own, and if he isn't strong enough to do it by himself then it makes him feel weak. He can seem extremely emotionally closed off at points, which makes it difficult to communicate effectively with him. He has a bit of a negative mentality, that relationships aren't necessary and he does best on his own. Good luck getting him to talk about his feelings, because this man is closed up tighter than a shell. Most of his relationships have been in the casual/one-night stand area. Chris is the first to walk off during an argument, and can definitely hold a grudge. Being patient with him is pretty rewarding however, as he apologizes after awhile. This is very hard for him, but when he cares about you, he will try to better himself.

Jill Valentine-

Sexuality: Bi/Greysexual

Zodiac: Libra

Love Language: When it comes to expressing her love, Jill loves spending time with you. She will take breaks from work, and when she works from home she will seek you out in the house. Even if it's sitting in silence, she wants to be by your side. She's very dedicated to her job, so she can't think of a better way to show you how much she cares than to distance herself from work. She loves physical touch, and nothing makes her feel more appreciated than when you touch her. Especially on the thighs or arms. It drives her wild. Underneath that badass exterior, she's a cuddly bunny. When walking around in public, and you throw your arm around her shoulders, she never feels more loved and secure. Even if she knows she can take care of herself, having you around makes her feel secure and comfortable.

Attachment Style: Despite being a bit obsessive with Umbrella, Jill has a bit more of a secure attachment style. The most issues you may have is maybe not getting her full attention at times, but she will quickly rectify it if you point it out. She's effective at communicating her wants and needs and really appreciates when her partner does the same thing. Like Rebecca, she is also kind of patient, but she won't tolerate certain behavior past a point. If she's making a big effort, she expects you to do the same. She's super understanding of your traumas and past however, and will do her best to help you. She also encourages you not to be codependent and overall just wants you both to grow as people.

Leon Kennedy-

Sexuality: Bisexual (bro fucks a ton after RE2)

Zodiac: Leo

Love Language: Leon expresses his love through physical touch. Bro is so touch starved, he gets his cuddles in any time he can. Practically clinging to you like a koala. He loves running his hands through your hair and being big spoon to you. He covers you in kisses to, if the skin is exposed, he's going for it. Big fan of hickeys to, and loves marking you in easy to see spots. He also loves recieving love this way. When you hold his hand in public, he still gets little butterflies. Pressing yourself a little more into him, when you guys are sleeping, is the hottest thing you can do for him. Practically melts from it. He loves rougher touches to. Like you running your nails down his back or biting his lips when you kiss.

Attachment Style: Leon has an anxious attachment style, and is terrified of getting close to people. Like most of the RE men it seems. 😭 Probably cause he's seen so much death. When he does start getting close, he struggles to let go. He can be suffocating at points, with how much he wants to be around you. He wants to take every second in, because he's so paranoid about it being your last together. While Leon doesn't communicate his feelings verbally, you can easily read when things are off and after a bit of work he may reluctantly open a little. He's very hard to crack. Leon is very efficient at asking about your feelings however, and will gladly hear all of your problems. Somehow, despite not knowing how to fix his only problems, he always seems to have solutions for yours.

Claire Redfield-

Sexuality: Lesbian (cry about it)

Zodiac: Aquarius

Love Language: Claire is surprisingly great with words, and loves to show it. She expresses how she loves you through words of affirmation. She will tell you she loves you every single day, and she means it with all her heart. Claire is the type of partner to send you loving paragraphs before bed, and makes sure you get a goodmorning text every morning. She leaves sticky notes everywhere to when she thinks about it, with little things she loves about you. When it comes to being shown love however, Claire really enjoys quality time. Expressing that you want to actually spend time with her whenever you can means the world to her. Growing up with Chris, who's been very busy since she was a kid, she's always valued the little time she gets to spend with her loved ones.

Attachment Style: Claire learned a lot from Chris, which made her have the exact opposite attachment style as him. Being practically raised by him and having a good relationship with him, she's pretty secure in her attachments. Even when things get rough, she's always understanding and holds out hope. Claire has always been good at being self-sufficient, so she doesn't need to be around you 24/7 or hear from you constantly. Doubts don't really get a hold of her in your relationship, and she's super easy to connect and be vulnerable with. She'll even talk about her own personal experiences just to make you feel more comfortable.

Ada Wong-

Sexuality: Bisexual

Zodiac: Gemini

Love Language: Ada never explicitly states what or how she's feeling, she's very much a woman of action. This is why she expresses her love through physical touch. Though she's not entirely clingy with it. If you're around, it could be as simple as her feet across your lap, while you watch tv. When it comes to physical touch for her, it's not the soft little gently caresses you're used to. She likes to be rough, and she will not hesitate to pounce on you. When it comes to being shown love, Ada enjoys receiving gifts. Not being given things too frequently, it means the world to her when her partners comes to her with something they bought specifically because it reminded them of her. Hell, even if it's not something she quite understands or likes, she will try to play it cool while freaking out on the inside. Despite Ada's distant exterior, she's definitely an absolute softie.

Attachment Style: Girl has got disorganized attachment style, one hundo percent. She's hot and cold with anyone she's with, and you always second guess just how she feels about you. You convince yourself that it's part of the fun, and the second you start to distance yourself as well, she's showing right back up. Ada feels undeserving of a healthy relationship, so when she gets a good thing her first instinct is to flee. Being that she isn't entirely true to herself and is always putting up a mask, it's hard for her to make genuine connections. Ada is sick of the mask however, and is so desperately ready to let it drop and be loved. Once you have her, even if it feels like you don't, you're stuck with her. She will harass you for the rest of your life, and play it off as anything but an interest in you.

Carlos Oliveira-

Sexuality: Bisexual (he came out to me in character ai, so practically cannon)

Zodiac: Saggittarius

Love Language: Carlos loves spending time with his partner. When it comes to his work, he doesn't get a lot of free time, so the best way he expresses his love by using what little he does have with you. Hell, he'd take time off just to be with you. Despite being a massive flirt, when things get serious he isn't the best at expressing himself in a way that isn't lighthearted or teasing. So instead he shows it, by dropping everything just to be around you, if you so please. During his breaks, he stops by your workplace whether it be to give you a little kiss or something more. He checks up on you with facetime calls frequently, when he's away and can't stand when work pulls him away from you. When it comes to being shown love however, Carlos very much likes things to be physical. Anyone can say words, he knows this more than anyone being the huge flirty whore (affectionately) he is, but to actually act on these things sends his heart soaring. And not just sex, though Carlos is very fond of that aspect to, he's more into the careful and intimate touches. Being hugged from behind, soft kisses along his neck, you playing with his hair, he practically folds over it.

Attachment Style: Weirdly enough, Carlos is pretty secure in his attachments, though I think he's cautious about entering a committed relationship with someone. He doesn't just feel that kind of love with anyone, and when things do go beyond flirting and hook ups, you know you've got something special with him. Carlos might not be the best with words, but he's an amazing listener and will gladly listen to whatever possible issues that may arise between you two. Even if he struggles with how to put things into words, he tries his best to open up with you as well. Carlos's work has always kept him pretty occupied, so he's never really felt too wound up about being away from his partner or having to put some healthy distance between you to. If you can work with his pretty hectic schedule, he will gladly work with you. Carlos is also a super gentle lover when no one is looking. All his rough talk and flirts are definitely for show, and the second you start getting a little bit serious with him, he gets flustered.

#resident evil fic #leon kennedy x reader #resident evil x reader #carlos oliveria x reader #jill valentine x reader #claire redfield x reader #chris redfield x reader #ada wong x reader #resident evil headcanons #resident evil #rebecca chambers x reader #rebecca chambers #billy coen x reader

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webbo0 · 3 months

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What happens if I don't like it? It's only-

Sierra Six (Courtland Gentry)

AO3

Length: 4,252

Summary: Six goes to a support group to make Claire happy. Senanigans ensue.

In which Six has a sexuality crisis, Ken is a being of pure sunshine, Driver would kill to protect his loved ones, K is tired of everything, Richard and Henry are messy as always, Barbie is intimidating as hell, and Claire was probably right the whole time.

Content/Warning: Sexuality Crisis, PTSD, Brief description of flashbacks/panic attacks, Brief description of abuse, Awkwardness

Authors Note: This all started bc I thought too hard about how Lloyd never unearthed every man or woman Six ever slept with and I concluded that he's asexual (bc I say so lol). Then he joined the group of goose boys I also headcanon as ace and, well, this happened.

Title is from "It's Only Sex" by Car Seat Headrest bc Jesus Christ that song hits HARD

Shoutout to the Goosecord as always, especially @ken-f-cker and @hollandstrophyhusband for beta-reading!!

Six had jumped off of high rises and not even blinked. He’d gone undercover in every major mob without even a raise in his heart rate. Hell, he’d even gotten shot multiple times and only huffed in annoyance. But this? Knocking on the non-descript doors of a high school gym? It was enough to make him want to turn tail and run for the exit, memories of awkward teenage years and repressed childish fears nipping at his heels.

He steadies his heart by telling himself he’s doing this for Claire. As student body president, she was aware of the multiple support groups that used the school’s gym after hours and had insisted he join one.

(“Setting aside the fact that you desperately need someone to talk to in your life, it’s a good look for me if my Da- Guardian participates in school functions, even if it’s after hours.”

Claire stood with one hand on her hip, the other firmly shoved in Six’s face with a paper containing a list of social groups. He didn’t let his face show the flip-flop his heart does at her almost-slip-up.

“For the love of god, I’m not lonely , how many times are we going over this? I’m literally trained to be alone!”

“I’m tired of you brooding all over the house all the time, you need to go talk to other adults that aren’t the delivery guy or that old lady who runs the laundromat.”

“Claire it isn’t safe for me to be out in public, you know this. One slip up and Carmichael or his cronies come for us both”

“I’m not asking you to go on live television , Six, the groups are literally just in the school gym and you drop me off there every day anyways. You need to get a life.”

Eventually, he chose the Gender, Sexuality, and Alternative Lifestyles and Families Support Group. Lord knows his “family” certainly isn’t exactly typical.)

Six takes a deep breath, then knocks on the door. The group starts in half an hour so the gym doors are closed still, but he wanted to get there early to do a complete surveillance check (can’t have any wannabe Lloyds finding Claire). He hears a Very excited voice from the other side of the door yell out.

“Be right there!”

A second later the doors swing open to reveal possibly the most energetic man Six has ever met. This guy has platinum blonde hair, an outfit straight from Malibu, and a bigger grin than Six thought was physically possible. The man sticks out his hand for a handshake.

“Hi, I’m Ken! Are you here for GSALFS?”

Six blinks, then composes himself, shock from this man's exuberance still clinging to his nerves. The man in front of him - Ken - was definitely not a threat, but in Six’s history, when people had been excited to meet him, it usually spelled trouble. He grabs Ken's hand.

“Yes, I know I’m early, but I wanted to get here with time to fill out any forms if I needed to.”

He’s not fully lying, he knows he’ll have to join a sign-up sheet or something, but really he’s here early to carefully scan the entire interior of the gym; both to assess his safety at this meeting and Claire’s safety in general. Can never be too careful.

Ken nods his head and opens the doors wider to let Six in.

“Well, you’re in luck! We just set up the chairs so I’ll give you the forms now while we set up the food, that way you can grab a bite once you’re done!”

He beams as if this is the best news he’s ever announced. Six would be irritated if it wasn't so begrudgingly cute. They both walk in and Six takes the time to scan the room, noting entry points, hiding spots, anything that would be useful in an emergency. Ken quite literally bounces away, returning only a moment later with a clipboard and a pen. Six takes them, quirking an eyebrow at the feathery pink pen attached to the forms, and nods a thank you at Ken.

“If you have any questions about what to fill out just ask, most things are optional but the more details you fill out the better, it’ll help us group you with the right people!”

Six scans the form. There’s basic information, name, age, pronouns (don’t see that every day), how did you find out about the group, etc. He pauses briefly at “preferred name”. Six might not be his legal name, but then again legally he didn’t exist anymore. And “Courtland” felt wrong coming from people's mouths now. He just puts “Six” down as his preferred name and leaves the other line blank, hoping no one makes a fuss about it.

He moves on. He has no emergency contact and almost scoffs at the “triggers to avoid” line. Like he would give anyone anything that could compromise him.

Then there’s the next part of the form.

“What group would you like to join today? If unsure, here is a list describing each group”

Alternative Lifestyles and Families is explained first. Apparently, it means more “people in polyamorous relationships, people in the Kink/BDSM world, etc.” and less “on the run from the CIA and most other major government organizations with a newly acquired teenager who’s the niece of your now-deceased ex-handler”. Whoops.

Not wanting to waste the trip out (or risk Claire’s wrath), he looks at the other options.

Gender identity is irrelevant to him, he’s never questioned being a man, but Sexuality? Six pauses again.

He never had crushes as a kid, on girls OR boys, and he went to prison too early to have any sort of normal teen experimental phase. Sure, he’s hooked up with women (and occasionally men) while in training or between missions, but those were mostly due to peer pressure or simply stress relief. Does he… know his sexuality?

Ken must see his frozen confused face because he subtly hands him another form after glancing at where he’s stuck on the paper.

“If you’re unsure of where you fit in here, this might help clarify a few things.”

Six sheepishly takes the new form. It’s some sort of self-assessment, questions and answers that tally up to different identities. Skeptically, he fills it out.

“Who have you felt romantic attraction to in the past?”

Mostly the same gender

Mostly the opposite gender

Both opposite and same gender

Neither opposite nor same gender

Six blinks. Romantic? Is that different from other attractions? And “Neither” is an option? He circles “D”

“Who have you felt sexual attraction to in the past?”

Mostly the same gender

Mostly the opposite gender

Both opposite and same gender

Neither opposite nor same gender

Six circles “D” again, more confident this time. He continues through the quiz and finally adds up the numbers. He has 2 results.

“Based on your results, you match best with Asexual . Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others, or low or absent interest in or desire for sexual activity. It may also be categorized more widely, to include a broad spectrum of asexual sub-identities.”

And the second.

“Based on your results you match best with Aromantic. Aromanticism is a romantic orientation characterized by experiencing little to no romantic attraction.”

Six blinks. Then rereads the descriptions. That’s… a thing? He isn’t just broken or built wrong? The words slot into a place in his heart, filling a void he had ignored for so long he’d almost forgotten it was there. Asexual. Aromantic. There are words to describe who he is and an entire community around them. He suppresses this newfound sexuality crisis for later; right now he has to bare his soul to strangers or something.

He hands the forms back to Ken who’s still arranging the (extremely sugary) snacks. Ken looks over the forms and smiles widely.

“Well Hello Six! It’s nice to put a name to the face! And I’m glad the quiz helped clarify things for you. The Ace group could use a new face, they’re always so existential.”

Ken pulls a sticker pad from seemingly nowhere and hands it to Six.

“Here, put whatever you want to be called on this, and pick some pronoun stickers, however many you want. If you want to add any we don’t have, just write them down on the nametag!”

Six groans internally at the nametag. He’s not used to people readily being able to identify who he is. Part of being the Gray Man was being untraceable. But he shakes the thought out of his head. Those days are over (hopefully). Now he’s just a paren- guardian taking an interest in his child’s community. He takes a breath, steadying his resolve. He once flew a helicopter one-handed through a snowstorm while escaping Siberia. He can deal with talking about himself for a couple of hours.

He thanks Ken and writes down “Six” on the purple, black, gray, and white name tag, adding a “he/him” sticker to it. He hands them back to Ken who is now on the phone, talking animatedly to someone. (No way it’s with someone named Barbie. He must’ve misheard.)

He sticks the nametag on and picks a chair in the back of the room (close to the nearest exit, with plenty of improvisable weapons close by) to sit down on and watch everyone slowly trickle into the room. He takes note of all of them, assessing their appearance, demeanor, and threat level.

A blonde man in a white jacket and driving gloves, holding hands with both a blonde woman in a sundress and a Latino man with a shaved head and work clothes. The woman and shorter man greet Ken with a hug and lively words, but the blonde man just smiles at him,

A bleach blonde man in biker gear with tattoos peaking out wherever skin shows and a sad smile that hides the slight edge of danger Six senses from him. Six identifies several prison tats but doesn’t judge. He might even have matching ones.

A brunette in a perfectly tailored suit and immaculate grooming who greets Ken with a kiss on both cheeks

Two women, one feminine and one masculine who enter in a heated debate but holding hands

A dirty blonde man in a suit who only stops humming some old jazz song to greet Ken

A thicker, nervous-looking man in a winter coat (why?) with a nicely trimmed mustache who doesn’t do the usual hug-greeting with Ken but still waves at him

A silent, almost vacant-faced man with an eyebrow slit, who refuses to make eye contact with anyone

Three people that Six honestly couldn’t tell if they were male or female (he chastises himself for thinking in binary terms in a group literally about gender diversity, but hey, it's habit)

Two men, one with a trashy mustache goatee combo and a cast, the other with a harsh face and slicked back hair, both looking like they stepped straight out of the ’70s

A greasy-looking kid with long hair falling over his face that must be old enough to join the (18+) group, but only barely

A model-gorgeous woman and younger-looking person who both are dressed like they stepped out of a catalog and who greet Ken with squeals of excitement and kisses before helping him with some last-minute preparations (must be the co-runners of the group)

A tall built man with blonde highlights and a goofy grin to counter the muscles Six can make out from under his tight t-shirt. Six would consider him the biggest threat in the room if not for how clumsy he seems and the last person to enter.

The last man is perfectly nondescript (as if on purpose), but Six can feel that he’s…different. Military haircut, scars peeking out of his long overcoat, perfect posture, perfectly neutral face, and most condemning, he's subtly scanning the room for threats. The same way Six had. Six tenses slightly, on edge but no alarm bells are going off in his head because this guy doesn’t give off any aggressive vibes. If anything he’s acting… submissively? He’s acting strange either way.

Done with his threat assessment he turns his attention back to Ken and the two others that have joined him at the front of the room. Ken claps his hands to gather attention, exuberant smile never wavering.

“Hello everyone, and Welcome to GSALFS! For our newcomers who aren’t familiar with how this works, on your entry form you indicated which group or groups would be best suited to your needs, and that’s who you’ll be talking to tonight. If you fit into multiple groups don’t worry! You can choose another one to join next week. Take a look at your nametag and sit in the circle with the flag that matches the colors. We try to stay on topic during discussions but encourage the conversation to flow naturally. Have fun!”

Six looks at his nametag colors and searches the room for the chair circle with the corresponding flag, smiling a bit when he sees that it’s towards the back of the gym, right next to an exit. He grabs a snack (giving in to his sweet tooth) and makes his way to the chair with the best view of the room. He sits and takes in the other people arriving.

The man in the white jacket and gloves sits first and Six examines his expression further. He seems calm, if not a bit aloof, but Six can tell that underneath the boyish looks and gentle face, something is hiding. His name tag is… blank? Is that allowed? The man still has pronoun stickers (he/they), but instead of a name he just has a crude doodle of a car. The “car man” (or whatever his name is) nods his head as the next person sits.

The second man has short, cropped hair, an eyebrow slit, and the build of a boxer. He has none of the swagger of a fighter though, instead moving slowly, as if in a dream. Unlike the man in the white jacket’s calm, composed expression, this man’s face is entirely blank. He doesn’t nod his head back in greeting, instead slowly raising a hand in a halted wave. His name tag reads “Julian” in scratchy handwriting and he also has a “he/him” sticker.

Six watches curiously as the two men start gesturing to each other in presumably sign language. Their hand movements are slow, but he can see the man in the jacket quirk up the corner of his lip, and the other man’s shoulders seem to untense a little as they communicate. They keep “conversing” and Six is desperately trying to remember the little ASL he knows when the third man approaches.

Six straightens up automatically. The military (?) man walks up and Six knows for a fact now that he’s not a civilian. The man walks with precision, every step calculated and efficient. Six is bigger than this man, but the tight shirt under his coat lets him know that this other guy is nothing but muscle. He can’t help himself (the CIA drilled situational awareness into the fiber of his being); he does a quick room scan. There are 3 major exits, 2 potential ambush spots, 23 potential weapons within a couple of steps, and 42 ways to defend himself (both lethally and non-lethally) if he needs to. The newest group member sits down with his hands resting perfectly on his thighs (huh, interesting) and Six takes the opportunity to read his nametag.

“K”. That's it. Okay then. Not like Six can judge someone for not using their real name. K makes eye contact and Six, never one to back down from a challenge, locks his eyes right back at him. The other man isn't combative, but he isn’t backing down either. Six crosses his arms. K blinks, and a slight twitch of amusement flits across his lip, but his gaze never wavers. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices Julian and Car Guy have stopped signing at each other and are waving at K, probably saying Hi. K waves back, eyes still fixed on Six, and Six could huff out of annoyance if the double doors don’t creak open at that exact minute.

A slightly scrawny-looking blonde kid no older than 20 with a smarmy-looking grin slips in, presumably late to the meeting. Six darts his eyes toward the sudden movement, then immediately curses himself for seemingly backing down in front of a potential threat.

K smirks (granted, it’s not unkindly), and turns his head to greet the other two men in the circle. He signs something at Julian and Six quickly realizes he either will need someone to translate for him, or he needs to start taking ASL lessons if he wants to communicate in this group effectively. Thankfully, when K turns to Car Guy, he speaks aloud, breaking the silence that had settled over the group. His voice is soft, steady, and deliberate. As if he thought over each word individually before speaking.

“Did Standard or Irene draw that this time, Driver?” he asks, gesturing to the name tag with the car doodle on it.

Was this guy’s name Driver? Ah well, again, not like Six could judge. His name is just a goddamn number.

Driver lets a shy smile creep onto their face.

“Benicio. He wanted to feel included.”

Julian finds this amusing, letting his facial features relax a bit. (Maybe he’s not deaf? Or he can lip read- but no, he hasn’t looked at anyone's face yet. Just mute?)

“Friend of yours draw that?” Six asks, trying to be friendly.

Driver’s smile lessens at his words and Six suspects he may be unwelcome in this apparently tight-knit group that’s formed.

“Kid, actually.”

“Oh, you have a kid?”

He really is just trying to break the ice, he swears. But Six can see Driver’s jaw clench, his gloved fists tightening, and he realizes he chose the exact wrong thing to ask this man. Casually, he moves his arm towards his waistband, not liking the alarm bells this guy is setting off. K must notice what he’s doing, and, muscles tensing, he reaches for his waistband. Julian notices the energy shift as well, but he’s not poised to defend himself, instead, his head is hung low, and he’s slightly trembling.

Six takes a breath and before he can dart for the exit, a shout cuts through the quiet gym, grabbing everyone’s attention.

“What the FUCK are YOU doing here?!”

He nearly draws and fires right then and there, but it’s immediately obvious the yelling isn’t directed at him.

The greasy, long-haired kid is standing right in the face of the blonde guy who slipped in late to the meeting. He has tears in his eyes as he pokes the chest of the shorter guy, who looks nervous but isn’t backing down.

“You really think you can just show up here like nothing happened? How fucking stupid do you think I am , Richard?”

All eyes in the room are on the two men arguing. The tatted guy Six eyed earlier is glaring at Richard with his hand in his pocket, and Six can tell he’s fidgeting with some kind of knife. The mustached man in the winter coat looks close to tears himself, and the equally broad but muscular guy with highlights is gently soothing him. The two men in suits (one immaculately groomed and the other that had been humming Jazz) exchange glances, vaguely amused by whatever drama is being played out.

“You blocked me everywhere, how else was I supposed to talk to you?” Richard’s words are just as angry, but he slowly backs up as the taller man stalks towards him.

“Obviously you weren’t supposed to talk to me.”

Across from Six, K sighs, slumping back into his chair, while Driver rolls his eyes.

“Henry, come on, you’re overreacting, I never-”

“I’m OVERREACTING?!”

“Okay, let's all take a breath before we do anything we might regret,” Ken interjects, stepping between the two men and placing a (surprisingly muscular) arm on each of their chests to keep them apart. “That includes you, Luke”

The tatted man — Luke — scoffs but stops twirling his knife in his pocket.

“Now Richard” Ken starts, turning to the seething blonde, “you know you’re on probation from this group, let’s calm down and talk about this outside”.

Richard seems like he’s going to protest until the blonde woman who helped Ken earlier steps up.

“Either you and Ken talk things out together outside or you and I can. Your choice.”

A flash of nervousness flits across Richard's face, but he grumbles out a “Fine” and lets Ken escort him out, muttering the whole way.

The tension in the room dissipates.

Six lets himself relax slightly, the brewing conflict between him and the other group members now forgotten in the chaos. K seems weary, Driver looks vaguely irritated, and Julian-

Julian is still frozen in place, trembling, eyes somehow more distant than before.

Six frowns.

“Is he OK?”

Driver’s face hardens again, but before Six can ready himself for the venom about to be spat in his direction, Driver turns to Julian and softens. He takes one of Julian's hands, squeezing softly before gently rubbing a gloved thumb over his skin.

Six isn’t an idiot (despite Claire’s insistence).

He’s seen plenty of guys have panic attacks in prison or even full-on flashbacks during CIA training. For a moment he recalls the countless nights in his cell, unable to breathe from the crushing weight in his chest, he feels himself being restrained and berated by his commander for blacking out and mistaking an officer for the enemy because he beat him just like his dad would-

Six squeezes his eyes shut for a beat.

Inhales.

Exhales.

Not now. He can flashback all he wants later when he’s not in front of a bunch of strangers.

Distraction time.

He turns to K, who’s staring at Julian mournfully. He clears his throat.

“Ahem. So, uhhhh, what was that whole fight thing about? Richard and Henry, was it?”

K hesitates, but when he notices Six dart his eyes pointedly at Julian and Driver, pursing his lips, he nods almost imperceptibly and slowly opens his mouth to explain.

Good. If he is ex-military or whatever like Six suspects, he probably gets it too.

“Richard and Henry, yeah,” he sighs, sounding almost disappointed.

“They met at this high school and started dating in college. Henry has a history of… Issues.”

(He’s trying to be gracious, Six can tell)

“Richard exploited Henry’s, uh, instability , convincing him he'd never hurt him. Then Richard’s best friend lets Henry know Richard’s been cheating on him the entire time with him and even sends him a videotape of it. Apparently, Richard secretly records all his ‘conquests’.”

K’s lip curls in disgust.

“Anyways, Henry was shattered, and word got back to Barbie, Ken, and Allan. I’ve never seen them so angry before; Ken had to calm them down before Allan got into another fight they couldn’t win, or before Barbie eviscerated him.” K smirks.

Allan must be the other person running the group, but then —

“Wait, hang on, they’re actually Barbie and Ken? Are those just stage-names or…?”

K smirks again and Six can hear Driver huff out what could be a laugh next to him.

“Yeah, everyone has that realization once they join. I swear those are their real names. Apparently, they were raised together too?” K shrugs.

“Huh, wild. But yeah, that Richard kid seems like an asshole.”

K chuckles and Driver lets out another huff of laughter. Julian exhales an almost-giggle and signs something that makes Driver honest-to-god snort , while K has to put a hand over his mouth to cover his slowly widening grin.

Six’s grin falters a bit, wishing once again he had paid better attention to his ASL lessons during training.

“Sorry. I, uh, I don’t know signs all that well,” he admits, flushing with embarrassment.

Julian just nods and before any other group members can interpret for him, he opens his mouth and translates for himself in a cracked voice:

“Bitchard.”

Driver snorts again, hiding his head in his shoulder.

“He’s not wrong.” K smiles.

Six takes a breath. Biting the bullet (heh), he extends his hand out to K for a handshake.

“We got off on the wrong foot. I’m Six.”

K takes his hand. His grip is strong but not too tight, the kind of handshake businessmen swoon over.

“K,” he replies.

He elbows Driver slightly, who nudges him back, as if irritated, but he still turns toward Six. He hesitates, then sticks out his gloved hand. Six takes it, more gently, and is surprised that his grip is almost as strong as K’s. Driver’s shoulders tense, but he relaxes them and flashes Six a small smile.

“Nice to meet you”

He doesn’t introduce himself, but K calls him Driver and he responds, so that’s what Six’ll stick with.

Julian doesn’t extend a hand, but he does bring his head up to look at Six’s face. No eye contact, but Six is just flattered the man trusts him enough to even just look at him. He doesn’t say anything but nods his head in greeting. Six nods back, smiling.

Maybe Claire was right. It was nice to feel like he belonged.

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hannahssimblr · 3 months

Text

Chapter Ten (Part 2)

I have never known cold in my life like the cold of the early morning in Berlin. It’s the kind of morning that feels like the sun will never rise. The cars still have their headlights on as Claire and I haul our bags up the stairs of the U Bahn station and out onto the street for the first time. It is seven in the morning, and it is not beautiful here.

We huddle together beneath a massive BAHNHOF NEUKOLLN sign and peer through the grey in search for a familiar face. The metal barriers all around us are lined with chained up bicycles overlapping each other, and there is careless graffiti on the shutters of the electronics shop across the road from us. It isn’t open yet. Nothing is open yet, including our hostel, so we stand with our backs against the frigid metal of a cigarette machine and wait.

He’s like an otherworldly spirit when he emerges from the fog, bundled in a big black coat, breaths turning to clouds that absorb into the thick mist around him. He raises a hand in a wave, and his smile is the brightest thing for miles.

“Good morning.” Jude says. “I’m sorry I’m a bit late.” He bends down to hug me and I immediately feel my lack of sleep. I could almost sleep right here on the cushiony softness of his puffer coat with his cheek somehow still warm despite the weather.

“So this is your home.” Claire says as he gives her a hug, and he shrugs nonchalantly. “Looks like shit this morning, to be honest. It literally couldn’t be uglier, but welcome to Berlin.” He offers to carry some of our bags, and we let him. We head down an identically bleak street that’s lined with Doner Kebab takeaways, phone shops and tiny supermarkets, all closed. Jude gently tugs on the back of my collar when I try to cross the road.

“You have to wait for the green man.” He says near my ear.

I stare at him incredulously. “I know, but there’s no cars coming.”

“I don’t make the rules here.” We stand then, stupidly, waiting for the lights to change as not a single car passes us by. Then finally, it does, and we can cross.

“That was ridiculous.” I say. “What’s going to happen if I just walk? They’ll throw me in jail?”

“No, worse.” He says. “An old German woman will materialise and start scolding you from her kitchen window. Happens literally every time.”

“Hm. So they’re pretty rule bound here.”

“You’re telling me.”

Jude lives a twenty minute walk from the station in a large brutalist block of flats that is identical to all of the other brutalist blocks of flats that flank it on all four sides. I wonder how he can ever remember which is his, or how many times in his first few weeks he found himself wandering around trying to recall which block he walked out of that same morning, because I can certainly imagine that for myself.

“Oh, cats!” Claire comments as a pair of tabbys appear from the vegetation around the base of the building, one of whom starts winding her slinky body in between Jude’s ankles and mewing rather impatiently at him while the other sits watch from a short distance away. He leans down to scratch her head. “Nothing for you right now.” He says to her. “I’ll come back later on.”

“You feed these cats.” I say. Not a question, a fact.

“I’m the crazy cat man of the neighbourhood.” He admits. “But they just love me, they must know that I have a kind soul.”

“It’s because you feed them.” The tabby gives up on him and approaches me next, mouth open in a startling maw, her meow the cat equivalent of a screech. “Jesus.” I whisper.

“It’s just how she sounds.” He explains. “She’s actually a well tempered cat.”

“What’s her name?”

“I call her Main Street, because that’s where she mostly hangs out, and that one.” He points his thumb toward her noticeably more timid pair, hovering by the wheels of a parked car. “That’s Ten Feet Behind.”

“Because she’s always-”

“Yeah, ten feet behind the other cat.” He grins with chattering teeth. “Let’s go inside, it’s so damn cold.” With stiff fingers he punches in the code for the apartment and leads us into a hallway stuffed to the gills with more bikes. There is no lift, which means we have to carry our things up the stairway, winding around and around, hoping that each landing will be our last, but we keep going up until the seventh floor, where finally, mercifully, Jude lays our bags on the floor and fumbles in his pocket for his keys.

“Jonas is probably still asleep.” He warns us. “So let’s try and keep it down until he surfaces.” He gingerly opens the door to his apartment and lets us inside, and the heating is on, and my body is flooded with the kind of warmth and comfort that makes me want to curl up on that inviting green couch in the living area and fall asleep for hours.

“You two can sit down wherever.” Jude says, so we peel our coats off and leave them hanging in a closet by the door. “I’ll make something for us to eat.”

“Oh? Food?” Claire says, as she and I sink into the soft cushions of his couch. “You don’t have to make anything.”

“I’m hungry, I’m sure you’re hungry, we can eat.”

“Okay.” She says, immediately convinced, and I wind my arm with hers and rest my head on her shoulder as my eyes flutter shut with contentment. The apartment is so nice. It smells good. There is nice art on the walls that looks as though it was picked out by someone with a good eye, rather than the usual landlord special back in Dublin, which consists usually of some ancient picture of a hideous, jowled dog that was likely dug out of the bottom of a bargain pile at a car boot sale.

I can’t believe that this morning I was in Dublin, and now I’m in a different country. I’m really in Berlin. I’m in Jude’s house. He’s cooking breakfast. It feels like something that would only happen in my head, but I keep opening my eyes to make sure that it’s real, and finding out that it is. After a while I peer over the back of the couch, and he has his back to me, whisking eggs in a bowl, and I read the spines of the cookbooks stacked neatly by the hob. Ottolenghi. Samin Nosrat. Grace Young. There are no books with unsophisticated titles like One Pot Wonders or Meals in Minutes! His are specific cuisines. Middle eastern food, Japanese food, North African, Italian, Chinese, French. I prop my chin on my hand and regard him with fresh interest. “I didn’t know you cooked.”

He glances over his shoulder at me. “Of course.”

“I mean that I didn’t know that you cooked cooked, as in, more than just improvised tomato pasta and shepherd’s pie from a container.”

He chuckles. “I seem like I enjoy food from containers, do I?”

“Not particularly, I just never thought about it.”

He takes a serrated knife to a hunk of soft bread and cuts off several thick slices. “I’ve always liked to cook. I had to do it a lot when my parents were too busy to make dinner for my sister, it all kind of fell on me, and I grew to like it a bit, I suppose. Luckily. There’s not much that beats the taste of something you made yourself. When it’s good, I mean.”

He casually drunks a slice of bread into the beaten eggs with one hand and fires up the gas stove with the other. “Weird that you never knew that about me, honestly.”

“I suppose it never came up.”

“Hm. Well, surprise.”

The door from an adjoining room suddenly opens, and I glance around to see a very broad, bare chested man emerge from the darkness of his bedroom. “Hello” He says groggily. “What smells good?”

Claire, who had drifted into a shallow sleep before, regards him suddenly with wide, shocked eyes. He’s wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts, looking like a viking, with blonde hair the length of his shoulders and messed up on one side to suggest that he sleeps on his right.

“Oh.” He says when he notices us on the couch. “Hello ladies.” He steps in front of us so that we’re just about eye level with his crotch and extends a hand for Claire to shake, then me. “I don’t need introductions. I know that you’re Claire, and you’re Evie.” He points his thumb at himself. “I’m Jonas.”

Jude peers at him from the kitchen. “Yeah, they’re pleased to meet you, Jonas, can you put trousers on please.”

He shrugs nonchalantly. “Okay! If you want.” and goes back into his room.

“Oh my god.” Claire says under her breath. I can’t tell whether she’s appalled or impressed, but she’s wide awake now.

Jude starts dealing out plates at the counter, and we get up to take our seats as he carefully places a slice of perfectly golden French toast in front of us. He takes a bowl of fresh berries out of the fridge, along with some sort of mascarpone cheese cream, and slides a jar of maple syrup across the counter into my waiting hand. “Enjoy.” He says, and stands on the other side of the counter to eat his the way that Italians drink espresso, al banca. He stabs his fork into the centre of the toast and swipes the knife across it. He’ll have it all eaten in ten seconds, but Claire and I will savour every delicious mouthful.

“Sorry about the berries.” Jude says eventually. “They’re off-season.”

“Oh God, no, we don’t mind that.” Says Claire. “It’s actually so good, this is unreal.”

“Absolutely.” I agree. “This is like something you’d get in a restaurant.”

“Calm down, lads, it’s just French toast.” Says Jude, but the tips of his ears have gone red.

When Jonas reemerges, dressed, he takes a plate from the cupboard and starts unceremoniously shovelling food onto it, and then stands barefoot in the middle of the kitchen eating it like a wild animal. I side eye Claire to gauge her reaction to this, and just like I expected she’s horrified.

“What is everyone going to do today?” He says, mouth jammed with bread.

“No big plans.” I tell him. “Maybe see the sights a bit, wander around. Look at the shops.”

“Oh, have you got costumes for Saturday night?”

“Sort of. Halfway, maybe. We were hoping to find something here.” I glance at Claire and she nods. I have the shoes I want to wear, but nothing else. She hasn’t got a single item, so some serious shopping is in order.

“There are so many places for thrift shopping.” He says with a wave of his fork. “You will find something great.” He prods Jude’s shoulder with his fork. “Are you going too?”

“Nah we’ve agreed to meet up in the evening, I have to go to the studio today, unfortunately.”

“Work work work.” Jonas says with an eye roll. “I hope you get a good job after all of this is finished, or it will all be for nothing.”

“Agreed.” Jude says flatly. “Who are going as, by the way? I mean, costume wise” he says to Claire and I then, eyes flitting back and forth between us, and I smirk at him. “We’re not telling you.” We don’t know. “We’re going to surprise you on the night.”

“Fine, then I’ll surprise you too.”

“Well I’m expecting to be impressed.”

His smile falters. “Don’t hold your breath.”

“You mean you’re not overly prepared?”

“It was a difficult theme.”

“It’s not difficult.” Jonas informs him. “It would be difficult if it was, I don’t know, 1930s soviet politicians, but it’s 60’s celebrities. It really couldn’t be easier.”

“Okay.” He shrugs. “Just mostly men were just wearing variations of the same suit.”

“Not true. You could have been a beatle, or a rolling stone, any of those groovy woodstock men, you didn’t think outside the box.” Jonas turns and winks at us. “My costume is good. Wait and see.”

Beginning // Prev // Next

#lucky girl part 3

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geddy-leesbian · 5 months

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RE2 Serrennedy AU headcanons

(I'm a Darkside Chronicles stan on main so that version of the events is usually what I have in mind, with some bits and pieces from other canons thrown in)

so a lot of these were in a fic I posted like a couple months ago and eventually deleted because I wasn't happy with it, so until I rewrite and post it again here they are in list format

Prior to Luis and Leon meeting: Birkin is how Luis ends up getting transferred to Raccoon City. There's something in Wesker's Report about how Birkin went totally insane when he felt upstaged by the 10 year old Alexia Ashford, and while Luis isn't as impressive as her, I can still see Birkin's ego feeling somewhat threatened when Umbrella Europe starts trotting out their new hotshot child prodigy. He would hope Luis just meets the same fate as Alexia and dies in an experiment, but it never comes, Luis just continues to be impressive and live up to expectations, so eventually he gets really psycho on main again and starts scheming to get Luis transferred to Raccoon City. So that he can take matters into his own hands and arrange a tragic "lab accident."

There's enough rumors and gossip for Luis to be able to figure out that the transfer is likely bad news for him, but he doesn't feel like he has much of a choice– Either he accepts it and maybe gets killed, or he tries to fight the transfer and gets branded "disloyal" and sent to Rockfort.

Leon and Luis meet at a bar on the way to Raccoon City that Leon stops at when he decides not to go. But then Luis lets a bit about what's happening slip, and Leon goes into hero mode and decides he does want to go after all, and Luis goes along with it because he's instantly down bad for Leon. (it's not essential reading for this post but I have a one-shot of them meeting that spawned this AU)

Luis would try to downplay how much he knows about Umbrella overall, acting like he had no idea what they were up to until he got transferred to Raccoon City. Leon is still naive enough to not question much, but Claire would be a lot more suspicious.

Overall Luis is kinda useless at first. He goes into it with a daydream/fantasy about how the little bit of shooting he did with his grandfather will kick in and be enough that he'll be badass and save Leon. That does Not happen. He doesn't panic and become a burden or anything, but he can't contribute much as far as fighting goes. Of course he's brilliant and able to help with puzzles/navigation/etc.

Luis tries to feel useful by being obsessive about making sure Leon is okay. He gets so much as a scratch, and Luis wants to clean and slap a bandaid on it.

SHERRY. Luis becomes the Designated Babysitter because it's a way for him to be useful, and at first he's Struggling because he has like negative experience with children. Like when he was Sherry's age, he was being groomed by Umbrella and being told how he was so much smarter and more mature than normal kids his age and already working on his degree and being treated like an adult for the most part. So not only has he never been around kids her age, he has no idea what it's like to even be a kid her age. And it doesn't help that she's Sherry Birkin. "hey so I'm like 75% sure your dad was going to kill me haha" isn't a great icebreaker. But once they warm up to each other, Luis ends up being a natural at the whole Being A Dad™ thing. He has no idea what he's really doing, but she likes him and he tells stories and sings to her when they're not worried about being quiet, and carries her to comfort her when they don't want to make noise.

Luis literally just speed runs having a family. Dude goes from being a man whore sleeping around with random women to basically having a husband, daughter, and sister in a few hours.

Tbh I'm still kind of thinking about how exactly Ada would fit into everything, but she would definitely know about Luis to some extent. She wouldn't want to give away too much, but might drop something about her "boyfriend, John Clemens," knowing that Luis would recognize the name, but to Leon and Claire it would sound pretty generic and not mean anything.

And Luis would REALLY want to get (and stay) the fuck away from her after that, because 1. he's playing with his cards close to his chest witch Claire and Leon and trying not to let on just how much he knows about Umbrella/how involved he really is, and doesn't want to run into people who know about him and might. 2. He's not sure what the hell he's going to do after this, and therefore would like it if no one at Umbrella finds out where he was and thinks Luis just fucked around partying the whole time, and didn't go to Raccoon City. (While he definitely doesn't want to go back to Umbrella, burning the bridge literally puts his life in danger.)

So when Leon and Claire bicker about going after Ada, Luis would jump in to back up Claire. It would be for his own personal reason, but his argument to appeal to Leon would be that clearly Ada knows what she's doing and can take care of herself, so instead of going after her they should focus on finding people who do need help. (they would still bump into Ada here and there tho)

Using Leon A/Claire B as precedent, Sherry doesn't get infected, to make a neat happy ending easier. Luis goes with Claire to look for Chris, but before leaving, he drills into Leon (and Sherry to some extent) what to say/do: Play dumb and naive. Insist that he drove into Raccoon City and saw shit on fire and knew something was up, but no idea what. All he did was go to the police station, find it was trashed and Sherry was the only person there. He took Sherry and immediately left the city, without looking around or investigating what was happening. And thanks to having 3 people working together, Leon isn't visibly wounded enough to make it Immediately obvious he went through some Shit. (And Luis instructs him to simply say "rough sex" if questioned about any wounds that are noticed.)

Leon plays the part well enough that the government just views him as a potential useful idiot. He acts like he's still confused and asks if they know what happened to the city, and they feed him a bullshit cover story that he pretends to whole heartedly believe. They still tell him not to talk about it and give him some money they say is to compensate/reward him for the trouble he went through and rescuing Sherry. Really it's just more of a bribe than anything. They assume that if they're nice to him this naive kid that trusts authority and eats up the cover story will happily regurgitate what he was told and vouch that it wasn't the government's fault at all and they even treated him so well after, making him a useful idiot for damage control purposes, if the story starts getting out.

So basically: Leon isn't a government agent or anything, just a normal dude. During the questioning he also keeps saying that if they can't find Sherry's parents then he wants to adopt her, pulling the "I was an orphan too!" sob story card. And they do give him custody of her, thinking she has zero clue what happened/how her parents were involved, so keeping her with a useful idiot like Leon who won't ever try to question anything or dig into her family makes sense.

Luis also gave Leon his jacket to hold onto before leaving. It was originally a present from his grandfather to his mother and eventually got passed down to him, so it's sentimental and he's afraid of it getting fucked up on his adventure with Claire. Leon uses it as a pillow some nights.

Leon decides to just live off the government money for a bit, being unwilling to let Sherry out of his sight. Eventually Claire/Luis get an address for where Chris is and send it to Leon, before getting captured and losing contact. Leon gets there and catches him up on everything, and Chris introduces him to Barry so he's got some type of support system and not just raising Sherry all on his own, and Sherry gets to get some social interaction without Leon going down anxiety spirals worrying about if she's okay.

Chris finds out where Claire and Luis are and goes to rescue them. Leon wants to go, but stays with Sherry.

will probably do another post with headcanons for Luis's adventure with Claire and after they get back?

#send me asks with a topic and i will do more headcanons <3 #like just a general theme or about any of my au's or just my headcanons about Luis's backstory. Anything #luis serra #leon kennedy #serennedy #serrennedy #sherry birkin #luis leon and sherry are the focus dont want to clutter up the tags for other characters who arent a focus here #re2 #resident evil #headcanons #hc

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winderlylandchime · 9 months

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I have a question that I wanna know your thoughts on, if you care to have them :). When and how do you think Brian Kinney became Brian Kinney. The ‘no excuses, no apologies, no regrets’ Brian Kinney. And when do you think he became the stud of Liberty Avenue? I mean Debbie does tell in s1 that Brian has basically been a loose canon since the day Michael met him when they were 14. And in season 5 i think it’s revealed they went to the club for the first time when they were like 17/18 and Brian even makes a tiny brag about the backroom (btw i will never be over that scene because they put them in “teens” clothes and said fuck it) but I always wondered at what point did Brian become ‘the man, the myth, the legend’ and like how that had to be for him and his friends or I guess Mikey since he was obsessed with him and then suddenly he was fucking everyone. Sorry for such a random all over the place question, you can tell I recently started a rewatch.

Oh dear sweet anon! I love all {kind} asks in my askbox equally, but some I love more equally than others. You have truly unleashed the beast with this one as I literally have a doctorate in analyzing characters (sure, at work I call it ‘case conceptualization’ but tomato tomahto and all.) I’m going to put this all under a “read more” because I love my mutuals and I don’t want to subject their dashes to what is undoubtedly going to be an unhinged character analysis. Pour yourself a beverage of your choosing, grab a snack, and buckle in.

My mother is a frigid bitch. My father was an abusive drunk. They had a hateful marriage, which is probably why I am…unwilling or unable to form a long-term, committed relationship of my own. The fact that I drink like a fish, abuse drugs, and have, more or less, redefined promiscuity doesn’t help…much. As a result I have lost the two people in my life that mean the most to me.

- Brian Kinney, 508

Early Childhood

Brian is the youngest of two from married parents. His mother, Joan, is not employed outside the home and is devoted to her Catholic faith. His father, Jack, is employed in some unnamed blue collar job and is a union man. His older sister, Claire, is a presence but left the home and married and had children shortly thereafter. Both Brian’s parents struggle with undiagnosed and untreated alcohol use disorder. They are both abusive in their own ways. Brian suffers physical abuse at the hands of his father. He suffers emotional abuse in the form of religious trauma and neglect in the form of Joan not intervening when Brian is being hit by his father by his mother. He also grows up with the family lore that he was an unwanted child and his father asked him mother to abort him. In his understanding, it is his mother’s Catholic faith that has doomed him to this miserable life. And throughout his life, it is clear his mother cares more for outwards appearances within her church community and for his eternal soul than his happiness here on earth. He observes their marriage as a hateful one. Jack cheats on Joan and apologizes with empty gestures (bringing her flowers) and words (apologies and good behavior before reverting back to his philandering ways). He’s told repeatedly by his father that Jack should never have been a family man, that Kinney men not not designed to be family men. In other words, Kinney men are not made to be “tied down” to one partner. And in the absence of a model or understanding of an ethical nonmonogamy, Brian learns that men, if they have partners, will cheat. Brian also learns from his family that words and apologies are empty - Jack can apologize to Joan but if he never changes, what worth do his words have?

We also see from his family where his determination to earn money and be able to afford a luxurious lifestyle comes from. He is determined to avoid any suffering (failing at monogamy, struggling to pay bills) that they endured.

Adolescence

Around age 14/15 Brian meets Michael Novotny. He either moves to Pittsburgh or several junior high schools feed into one high school (this is not uncommon in the US). Michael worships him immediately - Michael is gay and Brian is cute. And then Brian defends Michael against the school bullies. Brian also meets Debbie and either meets or hears of Uncle Vic. For the first time in his life, Brian has adults who are accepting of their son being gay, he has a model of a gay man who is loved by his family (for the most part - there’s reference to a sister that rejects Vic and a grandmother who may be oblivious to her son’s sexuality). He receives mixed messages from the Novotnys. From Michael, he gets a best friend. Someone with whom he can be silly and have fun. But everything they reference from their teen years is about Mikey’s interests - the Captain Astro club for instance. What were Brian’s interests as a teen? Did anyone nurture them? In Mikey he also gets someone where he can safely explore his sexuality (Patrick Swayze). In Debbie he gets a mother figure who is a firm (albeit imperfect) ally. We don’t know when the Liberty Diner opened or when Debbie began working there, but there is a sense she was also a portal to the world of Liberty Avenue and the diner provided a sort of safe-for-teens queer space. However, Debbie also cares for her son first and foremost (as she should!). She is not Brian’s parent. When she sees Brian’s influence taking Mikey down a path of - getting in trouble at school for fighting back against bullies, sneaking out to go to Liberty Avenue, espousing an nonmonogamy ethic, experimenting with drugs and alcohol - she rightly calls him out. However, with his background, when she - a clearly loving mother who would have no reason to lie - calls him a little shit or an asshole, he believes it. There is a paradox that develops where Brian does not believe words because they are meaningless so refuses to apologize or make promises - unless those words are cruel and directed at him, especially by people he trusts.

For historical purposes, this is taking place in 1985 or 1986 - as the AIDS crisis is reaching an inflection point. The CDC (US Center for Disease Control) estimates that more people were diagnosed with AIDS than in all earlier years combined (source). It is impossible to overstate the impact this had on the queer community more generally, and on Brian more specifically. We see his unwavering commitment to using a condom even in the face of other reckless behavior. As someone who predominantly tops, he is at lower risk of contracting HIV but he cares enough about his partners to never ever fuck without one. His alcohol and drug misuse harms him and him alone, fucking without a condom harms others. Coming of age during the height of the AIDS crisis shaped Brian. We don’t know exactly when Vic seroconverts but we know that relatively shortly before the Pilot episode, Vic was on his deathbed and Debbie was nursing him and they go on that trip to Italy and max out all of Vic’s credit cards… (because those credit card statements come to him in S1) So the AIDS crisis is also front and center in this little safe(r) space Brian has found away from his childhood home. With the AIDS crisis there is also a loss of nearly a complete generation of gay men who could have provided a model for the type of relationship Brian and Justin eventually try to find for themselves. I’ll say it again AIDS WIPED OUT AN ENTIRE GENERATION. We learn from the models around us. If we are an ethnic minority, we learn about that from our parents. As queer people, we often cannot learn from our parents how to be queer. We need queer elders in our communities. Brian comes of age exactly as all those queer elders are dying and changing their lifestyles to protect themselves and their partners from a hideous disease with (at the time) no known treatment and in which the government’s inaction is actively contributing to the loss of entire communities.

And then we have the famous locker room gym teacher incident. Brian’s first (as far was we know) sexual experience was at age 14 (iirc) when he walked into the showers after soccer practice and saw his coach showering. Brian as a gay teen, gets hard, and to cover up any embarrassment about what this reveals about him (it’s the 80s in a public American HS!) gets on his knees and gives the coach a blowjob. This is the first instance of Brian using sex and his sexuality to protect himself and to empower himself. However, he is a kid and a student and he has been taken advantage of by a teacher. No matter how much Brian tells himself (believes) that he was in power in that situation, the power dynamics are always that the teacher has power. That is the reason those laws exist (and even when everyone is an adult, professors cannot sleep with their over 18 college students, nor can they sleep with their graduate students - that goes against every university’s guidelines because that power imbalance cannot be erased). Brian may not self-identify as such but he is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.

Late Adolescence/Early Adulthood

Around 17/18 we know Brian and Mikey are sneaking into Babylon and Brian is engaging in more experimentation with his sexuality. How is this different than Justin doing the same? Well, first and foremost Justin’s was incredibly lucky that Brian was the one to take him home that first night and treat him with respect and kindness. Brian made sure he enjoyed his first time. Brian’s speech about wanting Justin to always remember this tells us that virginity, while a vile social construct, is something that can feel very important. And the first time being penetrated can set the stage for one’s expectations and beliefs about what is good and normal for future experiences. Does Brian realize this because his first time with penetrative sex was similarly good and kind or because it was the opposite?

We also know that Brian graduates high school and goes to a traditional four year university/college (per fanon it’s Carnegie Mellon where Ben is later a professor and is a prestigious university) where he meets Lindsay. Unlike, Brian, Michael attends a few semesters of a community college. Anon, I’m not sure if you’re in the US but a community (or junior) college is usually a two year college that is intended to prepare students for transferring to complete their education at a 4 year college or university. Some students just complete their Associates Degrees and do not transfer. The reason a student might do this is a) finances - community colleges are public and much less expensive than 4 year institutions (even 4 year public universities) and b) readiness - if a student’s high school grades are not good enough to get into a 4 year institution or the student personally doesn’t feel ready for college course work, attending a community college is a great place to get adjusted to college level coursework (classes tend to be smaller, especially compared with large universities). My spouse is a community college professor, nothing but respect to the community colleges. Mikey probably attended due to finances and poor grades (he is canonically not book smart). Brian comes from a similar background financially - I would find it hard to believe that Jack, who later asks his son for money, was saving for college tuition when Brian was a child. Given the lavish lifestyle Brian later leads, I find it hard to believe he took out (predatory) student loans (he also doesn’t mention them among his expenses post- Concerned Citizens for the Truth so I’m going to believe he doesn’t have them). I am going to guess that he attended a prestigious private university (in 2021-2022 tuition for one year at CMU was $58,924 and in 2023 it was $62,260 with another nearly $20k for room and meal plan) on a combination of Pell Grants (for students with exceptional financial need) and merit based scholarships (due to good grades in high school). This means that Brian, in order to gain admission and to earn scholarships to afford to go, despite all his antics at school (ahem chemistry club!), was studious enough to earn the grades needed. This is no small thing. For comparison, I attended a high school in one of the wealthiest school districts in the US and I had special counselors who helped me decide what schools to apply to, how to craft my applications to be more competitive, and I was taught explicitly ways of approaching SATs (college admissions test) that improved my scores (like test taking strategies). Basically I had every advantage. Brian had none of that. I imagine the school district that the Kinneys and Novotnys would live in, would not have all those advantages. In the US, local tax dollars pay for schools - wealthy areas have better schools as a result. It says a lot about Brian - his determination, his native intelligence, and his ability to code-switch and pass as someone who belongs as at a place like CMU - that he succeeded.

This is also the first time that he is apart from Mikey. He’s making new friends like Lindsay who come from wealth and privilege and getting a taste of that life. He is also away from Mikey’s hero worship and any pressure from Mikey (and Debbie) to date Mikey. He probably sleeps his way through the gay, bisexual, and questioning male student body. I do believe at this point he probably hadn’t instituted his “no repeats” rule but he learns that after a certain number of hook ups, expectations begin to build. He doesn’t want to be his father, so it’s safest to make sure his partners have no expectations. He learns that if people expect the least and the worst from him, he will never disappoint them.

We know that if he wasn’t before, he’s certainly experimenting with drugs in college (references to spiking the punch with ecstasy after Lindsay’s heart was broken). He is studying something that is immediately practical (we do not know if he goes onto graduate school, but my headcanon is that he does not - he would have gotten his masters degree in marketing or business and those are expensive and, again, he doesn’t seem to have student loans). I believe he studies marketing, but though general coursework, his own intelligence and curiosity, he learns enough about the arts and other areas of study to be able to pass in upper class worlds and not betray his working class roots. And to appreciate Justin’s talent. Of course.

Post College/Adulthood

He is hired by Ryder Advertising and quickly moves up the ranks. He purchases his own home (the loft) and decorates it with only the fanciest furniture and appliances. He wears designer clothes. He wants to fit in and belong to this world that is so different than where he came from.

My guess is that by the time he’s working at Ryder, he has fully become the man, the myth, the legend we meet in the pilot.

No apologies - he learned that early on from Jack, apologies are meaningless.

No regrets - life as a gay man may be difficult, but he is not going shy away from experiences just because it might make his life harder. His life has already been hard on someone else’s terms. If it’s going to be hard again, it may as well be on his own terms.

Actions matter more than words, unless those words are from someone he believes cares about him in which case, if they are negative, they are true.

Protect others, even to the detriment of yourself. People want you for what you can do for them (protect them from bullies, make them feel special for one night) not for who you are.

Brian has no model of nonmonogamy that isn’t monogamy with cheating. He cannot conceive, until Justin comes along, that he can have a primary partner and also have an open relationship.

Being a “Stud” is another status symbol, like the loft, like the Jeep, like his wardrobe.

Everything is a wall built from his childhood to protect himself from the pain he experienced and to protect others from what he believes is his destiny - to hurt others the way his father hurt his mother and him. Walls don’t just keep out others, they protect others from the (imagined) monster within.

There is a good fic on Midnight Whispers that goes into this quite a bit: Why Not with Me

#dear sweet anon #ask winderlylandchime #queer as folk #qaf meta #brian kinney #the stud of liberty avenue #no apologies no regrets #the man the myth the legend #brian kinney’s origin story #(is this meta?)

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charcubed · 1 year

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Listen. I'm going FUCKING. INSANE. because it seems like almost no one on the internet gives a shit about Shy Baldwin/Reggie Harris from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which boggles my mind because like ???? they're in love?????? and their relationship is so compelling??

And what we see of what becomes of Shy's story is so tragic obviously but to me it also hints at potential for him and Reggie to maybe someday get out of showbiz and be together. And from what I can tell, no one in fandom TALKED ABOUT THISSSS when season 4 came out!!! What the fuck!!!!! This is maddening!!!

So. I'm making this post mostly to get this off my chest and as a yell into the void. Because maybe somewhere, someday, someone else will ALSO be searching tumblr to see even a glimpse of content about these 2 exceedingly compelling characters, and I will write this so that I save that person the despair of coming up empty-handed like I am.

I'm also gonna drag other people down with me if anyone who hasn't seen this show happens to be curious enough to read this, so in that vein, I will cover some basics to outline this. Because I want to TALK ABOUT THEM despite most of this being obvious and no one giving a shit, Goddammit!!

(Spoilers or whatever I guess but who cares)

This is Shy Baldwin. He's a singer (clearly) and canonically a Black gay man who (obviously) has to hide his sexuality because this is set in the 60s.

This is Reggie Harris, Shy's manager and longtime best friend.

This is how Reggie introduces himself:

Let me tell you what kind of manager I am, Susie Myerson and Associates. I've been looking after Shy since we were kids tossing rocks in vacant lots. We was running numbers for Stephanie St. Clair before we were ten. When he found his singing, I collected the money, kept him out of trouble, kept people from bumping him. I'll be at his side when he draws his last breath unless I get there first. I would lay down my life for him. That's what's going on here. You hear me?

–3x02, "It's the Sixties, Man!"

In episode 3, they casually sing "Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby" together just for fun.

youtube

INSANE harmonies. And their flirty banter in this whole 1 minute long scene makes me want to eat my own arm.

Anyway... hold those thoughts.

So, Midge Maisel (the titular character) is the opener for Shy on tour with her comedy act in season 3. The show reveals in episode 3x06 that Shy is gay, in a scene where Midge finds him bruised and bleeding because he hooked up with a guy and it went sideways. Shy comes out to her as part of his explanation, and she helps cover up the bruises on his face with makeup so he can get on stage that night.

That leads to him doing a sitting "stool set" with slower songs because his ribs are fucked so he can't stand/dance, and the unsubtle song the show has him sing is "No One Has To Know."

The clip isn't even on Youtube, which is indicative of how much I'm suffering with how under-appreciated Shy's storyline is, but you can listen to the song here or on Spotify.

youtube

No one else can tell I think you're beautiful No one else can tell You're my favorite view Let the world all think what they will I'll wait until they're through 'Cause no one has to know I need you No one but you

^^^ Literally the whole song is like this / about being gay but that's a piece of it.

Shy looks at Reggie as he sings.

Thankfully Tumblr user microclown made several GIFs. Here are two.

KILLL MEEEE

Clearly, obviously, this is deliberately not subtle. Everything telegraphs that Shy is in love with Reggie.

Now, considering wider context of Shy hooking up with a random man etc., one could be forgiven for thinking it's meant to be seen as unrequited love... but I really don't think that's the case. I think there's a delicious undercurrent of angst that ties into how Reggie tells Susie (Midge's manager) at various times throughout the season that their job is to make the hard decisions on behalf of their clients, and Reggie references making hard decisions on Shy's behalf or for Shy, because his job is to do what's best for Shy even at the times Shy doesn't like it. So... are they in love and Reggie tries to keep them from properly being Together to protect Shy? And/or does Shy think his love is unrequited at this point? Lots of room to play there.

So now comes the part that no one's talking about!

More explanation: season 3 ends with Midge being very straight and very white as she does a comedy routine in which she makes way too many cheeky references that out Shy as gay on stage if you know gay-related coding/lingo. There are Reasons why she sort of panics and does this, and the audience loves her jokes, but that is very much Not The Point. She's fired from the rest of the tour as a result–rightfully so.

In season 4, it's announced that Shy is suddenly getting married to his longtime girlfriend and it's totally a publicity stunt 🙃 Midge and Susie are invited to the wedding... but not by Shy; by the team of straight white dude management who stepped in to control Shy's every move in the name of "helping him to stay on the straight and narrow" to keep his career on the rails. Midge's fuck up gave them the opportunity they needed to control him. (Shy and Midge end up reuniting in a bathroom at the reception but we won't be unpacking that conversation and how I disagree with how Midge leaves things between them).

So the suits invite Midge and Susie to the wedding so they can escort them to a side room and have a meeting with them, and they try to pay them off to sign an NDA. (Midge declines for them both, saying she will keep her silence for the sake of Shy, not for the suits.) Come to find out that that management team also forced Shy to pay off / fire his entire band–who were shown to be like family to him throughout the tour in season 3–and also forced him to pay off / fire Reggie.

LOU: Look, he's a good guy, Reggie. I like him. But he's too close with Shy to control him. There's too much history.

...

SUSIE: Reggie got Shy to where he is now. You realize that?

LOU: Reggie's taken care of. Big severance. We threw him some publishing. He's buying a house in Westchester. Everybody's happy.

SUSIE: Oh, I bet. 'Cause when you think Reggie, you think Westchester.

–4x05, "How to Chew Quietly and Influence"

Here's the obvious thing: Shy and Reggie clearly had no choice in this matter.

There's no way in hell that Reggie would have left Shy willingly. Absolutely no Goddamn way in hell. Whether he's in love with him or not, Shy is "his boy" (his words, repeatedly) and he said "I'll be at his side when he draws his last breath unless I get there first." That was his character introduction! Holy shit!

But here's my hot take: I DO think Reggie is in love with Shy, and I do think he intends to keep that promise of being by his side as much as possible. And I'll tell you why.

At the wedding, Shy sings a short excerpt from his new single to his new wife:

Come close to me, baby Cool as the river When you're here in my arms Manhattan's getting dimmer I know it sparkles, too But city lights don't shine as bright as you

Once again the clip is not on Youtube and I am suffering.

There are a few more lines from the song in that episode referencing Paris and Rome (where Shy and Reggie and the band went on tour in season 3...), but it's a piece of a longer song. We thankfully have the song in full, here or on Spotify:

youtube

And in the episode, Shy says on stage that the song was written by Reggie.

"You just heard a little of my new single. And it's a special one because the lyrics were written by my boy Reggie Harris. Which is fitting because that man's been putting words in my mouth since we were kids begging his grandmom to buy us ice cream.

–4x05, "How to Chew Quietly and Influence"

This makes me FUCKING FERAL.

Especially because of the lyrics in the full version of the song... which, as it turns out, is all about giving up fame and the spotlight to be with the one you love.

There are hidden lyrics in the full track that are meant to actually be in between the shortened ones we hear in the episode. The lyrics from the full version that Shy doesn't sing at his wedding are as follows:

I’ve had the spotlight Been bewitched by wealth and fame But I’d give up that hot light Just to hear one special someone Call my name

...

I could search the world over Go as far as a man can roam But nothing I’d see Would mean nothing to me Like the vision of you when I’m coming back home Baby, you are my home

Buildings may rise And reach for the skies They twinkle and flash But they won’t ever last Like the beauty in your eyes

Whatever they may do Those city lights won’t shine as bright as you

Reggie wrote this song for Shy. He literally wrote this song for Shy. Shy says it himself! And Reggie's not in attendance at Shy's publicity stunt wedding because the suits are keeping them apart for now, but he's in Shy's heart, and Shy chooses to sing this song and share that backstory about the lyrics because they're each others' home in secret.

I can't handle it! I can't FUCKING handle it!!!!!

Like are you SERIOUS!!!! And in the episode where the suits say Reggie took his severance pay and went and bought a fancy house? BITCH. If he even actually did that (and didn't just claim he was doing it to fly under the radar), then he bought a house so Shy could one day join him there because ???? "You are my home." Ohhhh myyyy Goddddd ;___; A song about giving up the spotlight to be with the one you love........ I have connected the dots. Just wow.

So yeah I'm literally going insane. I LOVE them. I've been thinking about this for like 2 weeks and no one gives a shit but I love them! They are important to me and every part of their subplot is so compelling and makes me so emotional!

There is fic about all this that's in my brain and outlined in my google docs and if I ever write it I will post it on AO3 for the maybe 2 people who will care someday. But yeah.

WHERE is their spinoff!!!!!!!! Jk I don't want it because I don't trust they'd be handled properly. However, I am manifesting even a crumb of information about them in season 5 because Shy Baldwin is my son and I would like any kind of hint he and Reggie manage to eventually orchestrate their happiness <3

If you actually read this post, thank you so much for indulging me. I had to get this off my chest, okay, I'm losing it.

I love them and they're in love. That is all.

#shy x reggie #shy baldwin #reggie harris #the marvelous mrs. maisel #tmmm #shy/reggie #char writes things #FUCKING. LOOK AT THE MATERIAL. wah 😭

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mermaidsirennikita · 5 months

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i'm rewatching the crown s5 and god the charles propaganda is working over time. i didn't even realize how heavy handed it was at the time because i was too much in shock over how bad the season was but they really're pushing how modern and progressive he is! look at all the good work he has done! poor charles diana and the press are so mean to him :( the tampon gate episode literally ends with him breakdancing with some kids (???) with text saying how many people he has helped with his charity work. pray tell what brand of crack cocaine was peter morgan smoking?

I honestly have no idea, dude. Because if you were to ask me beforehand, I would've said:

Season 1--Great TV, if a little more conventional than other seasons; dominated by EXTREMELY good and character-setting performances across the board (I feel like Peter Townsend was the only semi-major player who didn't stand out, but in s2 it became very clear that Townsend being boring was The Point). Jared Harris wasn't even a true lead and he made me cry multiple times. Claire and Matt (and I say this as someone who generally doesn't care for Matt Smith) are superb. Lithgow? Knocked it out with a VERY well-known personality who's been played by other major actors. Vanessa Kirby? A definitive Margaret. Elizabeth gives Philip the ol' kneel and deliver. Amazing.

Season 2--Probably the best season of the show (even if the Kennedy episode was.... bad.... I feel like every one of the first four seasons has an episode that isn't great and is kind of totally out of step with the rest, and now I realize it was a harbinger of doom). Makes you root for a pair of objectively horrible people in an objectively miserable (if oddly loving...?) marriage. Matthew Goode shows up and does 60s excellence with Vanessa Kirby. No major standout PM performances on a Lithgow, but still, really good ones. (And I've come to realize ever since s5 and s6 dropped the ball--getting really good actors to play the PMs and seeing random glimpses of their lives was such a mainstay of the first four seasons, omg. HOW IS TONY BLAIR SO BORING???? WE KNOW THIS JACKASS.) Philip almost does a murder suicide with tiny Charles in that plane. It's GREAT.

Season 3--I wasn't as big a fan at first, but it's aged into a really solid season of TV. I think it took Olivia, who I think is one of the greatest actresses working right now so this isn't shade, a while to feel comfortable in the role. Tobias Menzies was immediately fab casting, though; I don't think I've ever seen a less than good performance from him, tbh. Helena Bonham-Carter isn't as good as Vanessa, but still entertaining and fun; and while Tony is not nearly as good in this season, he's barely there. BUT even if it's not the strongest season, you get Josh O'Connor and he is SO. AMAZINGLY. GOOD. He turns an awkward community theater performance by Charles into this intense monologue (was Charles that good an actor? No but who cares). He talks wistfully about how he'll only get a life after his mom like, dies in a helicopter crash or something. "mUMMY I HAVE A VOICE"/"NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR IT" hands down best Olivia line reading of the season if not her entire tenure on the show.

Season 4--Fabulous TV, dials up the soap opera drama, Emma Corrin is a perfect young Diana and Josh gets into his full bag as Charles. Olivia sets this tone between total unfeeling frost and a weird goofy humor that leads to the frankly hysterical "DO I have a favorite kid???" episode, where we don't know that it's Andrew but we kNOW. It's Andrew. The sense of doom builds up. Gillian Anderson devours as Margaret Thatcher. The ending with the cameras going off as we pull in on Emma Corrin's teary reflective eyes after Diana is lowkey??? Threatened???? By Philip???? Much more affecting than Diana's literal death in s6.

Yeah, man. I don't know. Peter has always very clearly been a royalist to me, but he seemed for a long time like a royalist more focused on Elizabeth and his fascination with and vast empathy for her. Charles... always got a sympathetic enough edit, sure, but in the sense that you got WHY he's such an emotionally deficient doorknob. Season 4 portrays him as outright emotionally abusive and? Tbh? Surprisingly predatory. That's something I think gets glossed over a lot. But Peter doesn't make Charles devoid of physical attraction to Diana, which I think a lot of takes on this story do. And he wasn't devoid of attraction to her. There were brief bright spots in their early marriage where Diana as much as said she couldn't keep him off her (and this was Charles so that was probs like thrice a week I dunno). There's been a lot of speculation that he and Diana DID sleep together before their wedding day; it wasn't this sterile thing it's often depicted as, at least not always.

And I think that the perceived sterility of the relationship has led some to overlook the fact that Diana got engaged to him before she was 20. She met him when she was underage and he was dating her sister. The Crown SHOWED that. Josh O'Connor PLAYED IT like Charles was checking out a 16 year old girl while he was all of 28 and about to go out with her sister within minutes. It's so deliberate? I don't know why anyone would ever be able to... not get it. So we go from that to "well yeah he had this awkward moment with his mistress, but everyone actually saw it as two people being in love" which just isn't historically accurate lmao. Charles and Camilla still get dogged out by that to this day. And look, I'm not judging what people are into--I more so judge the nature of the relationship in terms of how it pertained to, I don't know, his wife and kids, and this idea that people were NOT weirded out by it at the time lmao. Even people who aren't actively against Charles... the vast majority don't see him as this GREAT CHARISMATIC CHANGEMAKER lmao. Unless you're writing a biography of him in which he's feeding you sources.

I mean, I'll give credit where credit is due--he does seem genuinely into environmentalism, even if that's subsequently contradicted by his actions (though perhaps not as badly as is the case with Wills). He apparently dislikes Trump. Cool! But lol, this idea that Charles was really changing the world by like... doing charity work... that all royals do...................... Topped off by breakdancing......

It's SO cringe. I don't know if Peter got threats lmao. I don't know if he saw how much he made the audience hate the royals in s4 and went "oh no, that wasn't my intent" (and I will say--I do think that actors can affect things here; I don't get the sense from Josh's interviews that he is, ah, into Charles as a person, and maybe he went harder because of that) and tried to course correct...?

But he clearly made a huge change and it's such a bummer because the 90s are arguably some of the most interesting years for the Windsors and he just kind of flushed them down the drain. And he also got a perfect older Diana casting and wasted her.

#the crown

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pink-strawberry-kissess · 1 year

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Ok I just want to put my thoughts on the whole Leon should be with someone “healthier” and “better” for him. &The thing with that is if Leon wanted that, Capcom had so many opportunities to do so. Not to say Leon didn’t try, but there was a 6 year period after RE2 that Ada wasn’t around, and within that period there was a point where Leon believed her to be dead and then finds out she’s alive. Hypothetically let’s say he did want to be with Claire, he had the time & opportunity to and still didn’t, clearly they’re just friends. But generally, that goes for anyone he could have formed a relationship with during that period. Especially for the period he didn’t believe her to be alive, bc I’ve seen people act like if Ada were to just disappear completely now, then all of a sudden he could just totally forget about her, will go running into the arms of someone “better”, and his trauma will be fixed 🤪. That scenario literally existed, he had the opportunities, and it STILL didn’t happen.

Now fast forward to after RE4 where Leon sees her again face to face alive and well, all the relationships he could’ve had 1 year after in Degeneration or 2 years after in Infinite Darkness also never stuck. (I don’t count the scene where Claire falls on top of Leon in Infinite Darkness bc Stephanie Panisello said it was her idea and asked the movie crew to add it for the Cleon shippers as it wasn’t in the original script). And then at some point after, it’s confirmed that in 2009 they spent time together, but who knows how long they’ve been in contact prior to that, I just think there must have been a lot of prior interaction that developed over time before jumping straight into “that night”. Like I know a lot if us can’t help on focus on the “that night” part but in the article where Shotaro Suga mentions romantic dinner/hotel/motel room night, but I’m over here thinking so much about the “romantic dinner” part lol bc it’s beyond just them wanting to sleep with each other, they actually cared to spend quality time together, like what did they eat, what did they wear, what did they talk about ?? I feel like they try to not mix work with pleasure (there’s just simply so much she cannot answer if he tries to even ask). Especially in the behind the scene of the video of the movie Suga says “He shows his real self when he gets in touch with a woman (Ada)”. Which is very important factor with his relationship with Ada vs his relationship with anyone else both romantic and not. We know Ada rarely shows her real self and her puts on a mask, but looks like Leon does too !

HELLO so i had to take my time to read this and formulate a response

i think with the remakes, it's implied that between 1998 and 2004, he was forced to work for the government and possible did not have time to date. during this time i believe he also does not see claire either. (correct me if i'm wrong) i think that the whole baby-girlfication on leon has really rotted into people's brains that think that he's not a man of agency and can literally go date someone if he wanted to. but even with re4r with the "i'm a one lady type of guy," and the complete removal of his flirting with literally any thing that breathes, it seems that capcom is pushing it into this direction as well. with leon not holding ashleys hand, and leon not flirting with hunnigan. it's just on his own it seems.

degeneration was the weirdest film also imo. and he did have a weird thing with angela but then he just never called her again lol. and he did that in front of claire too????

yeah i agree that the scene with leon and claire in infinite darkness was especially weird considering claire has like a face of visible disgust when she falls on him.

"that night" is also followed with the director saying that yes, they spent time outside of their jobs and their lives continued on in the background of re5. it would make sense that they saw each other some how and it lead up to "that night"

i firmly believe that leon thinks of ada as a strong woman, and someone that he doesn't need to protect or feel like he has to "baby" her. she's a woman with her own choices and decisions and he finds her challenging. it's almost like they can be partners that compliment each other and challenge each other.

leon saves the day every day- he doesn't want to do that in his personal life. he needs someone who can stand on level ground with him. someone who can really truly understand him. and im sorry but it's not gonna be self insert civilian here, that understands him.

leon's characterization changes from a bright eyed rookie cop to an agent who sees that the world is shades of grey and that no one is truly good or evil. that everyone has their own agendas and that the government that he works for isn't pure either. he struggles with knowing this and knowing that even though he tries to do the right thing, nothing gets better. we even see this with ada in re6, she has a breaking point

"we're beyond humanity"

also i firmly believe that re6 ada is extremely depressed and traumatized as her smile consistently drops whenever she's not looking at leon.

both of them have lived lives where they were used and abused. and both of them can understand each other in ways that others can not. they even showed this with infinite darkness with leon not only wanting to keep claire safe, but knowing that her line of thinking was going to get her killed or worse.

even then! both leon and ada have made mistakes and that's interesting! they both live with regrets, and god damnit it just want them to be happy together.

people say they don't deserve each other? nah, they do. they should just be together already

they can be true to each other, no facades, and just be themselves.

#ask heart #heart answers #anon #ada wong #leon s kennedy #leon kennedy #aeon #leon x ada #leon kennedy x ada wong #resident evil #leon s kennedy x ada wong

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softwebss · 2 years

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haiii! so can you write some short & sweet things that percy would do if he dated y/n? like "dating percy would include:" <3333 tysm in advance!!!!

PAIRING – fem ! reader x percy jackson SUMMARY – what dating him would be like GENRE – fluffffffufufuuf & a bit of angst at the start WARNINGS – none <333 NOTES – for you hun! ily annon

(( 🌊 )) DATING PERCY PLAYLIST 🦋 I recommend listening to this playlist as you read !

riptide by vance joy honeypie by JAWNEY pasta by new rules backyard boy by claire rosinkranz with jeremy zucker stupid for you by waterparks talk too much by COIN cooler than me by ethan fields cupid's chokehold / breakfast in america by gym class heroes men are trash by scotty sire sucker by jonas brothers classic by MKTO into you by ariana grande

he has attachment issues because he kinda sorta almost LOST everyone he LOVED and he doesn't want that to happen to you

loving whispers in your ears, caressing your hands, and putting them into his..

its already almost CANNON that he has hot ASF hands. they are rlly soft and veiny??? hot???

will kill for you~ if anyone dares to even look at you and make you uncomfortable he will chop their head off with no consent. You are HIS and HIS only!!!

he is a softie at all times except when harm comes your way

lets just appreciate him for a moment

being that one pda couple, kissing during conversations and cuddling legitimately all the time.

literal forehead kisses and hand holding in public. Percy does not give a fuck about what people think, everybody should know that he has this super hot girlfriend.

when he's angry at you he will sit in a corner being a cranky scrooge. and since he's too in love with you, he always comes sobbing back. literally true love.

he steals your clothes.

like yeah Percy knows that blue hoodie you own is two sizes too small for him BUT ITS SO CUTE AND IT HAS YOUR PERFUME ON IT??? HE HAS TO WEAR IT, THE CUTIE!

sally adopted you.

"so uh, sugar, do you wanna stay over for dinner?" "DO YOU WANT TO STAY OVER FOREVER HONEY? CUZ YOU CAN-" "MOM WHAT THE HELL"

you're officially part of the jackson family

when you first stared dating he would be this overconfident lil shit and literally boast about you to everyone who would hear at camp.

Every other conversation was truckwheeled into how much of an spectacular soulmate you were to him- and even though everybody liked you at camp they were getting the SLIGHTEST BIT tired of it, you know?

"well that's great and all BUT have you heard that Y/N is my new GIRLFRIEND yeah I know its cool but see she ISNT yours she's MINE you know" "I just asked how your day was man-"

part two coming~

#i love him #percy jackson #pjo #what dating percy would be like #he loves you SM #heroes of olympus #percy jackson and the olympians #the playlist is just >>>>#omfg

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blnk338 · 10 months

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c(u)n(t) 7

"I am doing this because you’ll be fucked up to high heaven" was almost "I am doing this because you'll be fucked to high heaven." Changed due to the worry that people would find it too vulgar. Why? I frankly have no idea, yet, here we are today.

Looking back, I think I most often use the over-the-top affectionate terms for PB constantly because that is his main purpose; a comfort. A lot of Reaper's description of the things in her home used to be riddled with a muddy, jaded feeling, but as she moved to the UK, she has begun to describe her life in more beautiful terms. This also applies to Peanut Butter. He himself is quite literally the color of the sun, his eyes are a bright playful yellow, and he's described to have a "permanent smile." I intentionally chose him to be orange because orange cats are usually the stupidest, sweetest little idiots (though if your cat is of any other color, there is not a muscle in my body that does not a) want to see them and b) know they are terribly sweet).

YOU LOOK LIKE USAGI!” While I'm not sure a ton of people caught it (it's come to my attention that apparently a lot of people haven't seen or heard of the show), Stella likes Sailor Moon.

Claire is important to Reaper because she gets to see someone who looks like her, or rather, dresses like she used to, only this time, this person is happy. I think this derives from my own internal joy when I see emo/goth/alt kids just being happy, because in the time that I was like that, I faced a lot of negativity for just dressing how I wanted to. I put a lot of effort into describing Claire as happy, excitable, and filled with life, but also still a normal anxious teenager because I want people to see alt characters in good lights. While more of those characters are seen in modern pieces of media (ex: Hobie Brown), I still think we need to see more women in those areas.

I changed it, but some may remember that I added double exclamation marks for Stella's remarks-- not a terribly large note, but I used to do it to emphasize how loud she was.

Claire would love Hobie, Stella would love Gwen.

"Feels like shit gets really loud all of a sudden.” Again, something else Reaper and Claire have in common: Sensory overloads.

I changed it all, but in Ghost's pov, I used to respond to Reaper in the third person. I ultimately changed this because it no longer fit with the current iterations of Ghost's POV.

I almost didn't make a comment on the true crime thing because I know people get death threat-y. Even though I don't like the community's fawning over people's deaths and serial killers, I know that there are people who approach the topics politely, with that being said, I don't love it.

“It’s hell.” I believe this is the first time I've ever made Simon actually vulnerable. Instead of shutting Reaper's words down, he fills them in for her; he properly expresses how much agony he's in.

“Was I—was it clear?” Again, another moment of vulnerability from Ghost. He's terrified to do this, he's nervous, he's uncomfortable, it's clear, but it's Reaper and he trusts her.

... Most of the stuff I know about guns is from PUBG...

"One hand rising up, he rubbed the back of his balaclava. Perhaps he could use a trim, too." I was actually going to have a scene where Reaper cuts Ghost's hair but I... forgot LMAO. But I guess that haircut had to happen eventually, huh?

“I don’t think you could handle my stack of documents, Sergeant.” Both an innuendo and a metaphor for Simon himself. It's a bit between the lines, but I attempted to hint at the idea that Simon doubts Reaper would ever be able to, let alone want, to deal with him and his shit.

“I bet it’s just page after page of the same shit I’ve gotta do, what’s the harm in taking a load off, big man?” And it's thrown right back into his face. As in, "no, I can take care of that sort of thing, because it's not a burden to me."

there's a clear sadness when König and Reaper talk to each other, knowing they should've killed each other. It's continued in their conversations as background noise or a prominent topic, the idea that they weren't supposed to be friends. If anything, there's an underlying fear that one day, they might be the reason the other is dead.

Its mentioned briefly, but König likes to draw :)

König actively changes around people. Around Reaper, he lets his walls down. Whether this is because they don't know each other or not, he decides that she is being kind or transparent enough to be trusted with his more awkward side. This also plays into the fact that he's a Colonel (which was information that I didn't have at the time of posting the chapter).

On top of this BB was deemed to be the "squad leader." Even though I'm not changing this, I like to think that König asked BB to hold up that role for the 141 so they would treat him like a regular soldier to see how they would react. In turn, they didn't treat him like shit, and he actively gained a new friend: Reaper.

Originally, there was a push to make König's group more of a boy's club, but that changed after they split up because I felt like it was too girlboss-y of Reaper.

Mind stroll coming to a stop, you turned to look up at Ghost, but his eyes were already on you. “Do you know where we’re going?” Simon was caught staring at Reaper watching the domesticity, yearning to do the same with her. Another in between the lines sort of thing, but hey, it's there.

By this point, Reaper had begun to call Ghost "Big Man" and this is big because Reaper's never shown this kind of affection outwardly to anyone else. She has her own internal nicknames (like Bug Boy), but she doesn't call anyone them to their face. But Reaper loves that Simon is big and this is a big flirting step for her.

"Look up for me." This was WAY more sexual than I realized when I wrote it, but honestly, this is a good way to point out that Simon was super obedient to Reaper. Again, when the hell is he like this with anyone else? WHEN ELSE DOES HE WHIMPER?

Glancing between the two for a second, your lieutenant staring a lot harder than he should have. I think this might've been the most deliberate example of Ghost being jealous of König. I almost included a scene where Ghost asked König to "step back" but I thought it was too Wattpad-esq and hated it LMAO

I typically have Reaper in boxers because they're a) comfy to wear b) good to exercise in and c) pretty GNC. I know some folks aren't comfy with wearing thongs or something (which, believe me, seems fucking awful. Why are writers putting their main female characters in lacy underwear and thongs when they're in the military? That sounds awful!), so I chose a bit more of a comfy example.

Reaper likes doing things in threes. stabbing three times, triple takes, etc.

Reaper knows how to kick down doors bc of her Marine dad.

A lot of Reaper's words are cut short. Ex: "medbay will be quick." This is because she's spent pretty much all of her life in the military.

#rwys notes #rwys cn

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denimbex1986 · 3 months

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'Time isn't a physical thing yet writer/director Andrew Haigh somehow weaves the mercurial essence of it into every single frame that makes up his fifth feature, All of Us Strangers (sixth if you count Looking: The Movie). In doing so, Haigh imbues the film with an ethereal quality that's just a step or two outside of our so-called objective reality.

But actually, that's what life can often be like as a queer person. In childhood, other kids often know you're different before you do, as if they've glimpsed your future first-hand, and for those who suppress their queerness growing up, it often takes years longer to come into your own.

Even then, once you've finally found some degree of healing, past traumas can pull you back in time just like that, transforming you once again into a younger, damaged version of yourself. (It doesn't help that coming out is a lifelong process, as if you're stuck in a not-so-funny '80s time-loop movie.)

In All of Us Strangers, a gay forty-something man named Adam is literally pulled back to these traumas when he meets his dead parents as they were, all those years ago before an accident took them away.

In coming out to these time-displaced figures – who both bring with them the baggage of AIDS-fuelled '80s hysteria – Andrew Scott's character almost becomes a child himself again, and in Haigh's real childhood home, no less.

Through adapting Taichi Yamada's novel Strangers (a book that's also a product of the '80s), Haigh bridges the gap between not just his past self and the present, but also two different eras of gay men through the intergenerational love story that unfolds between Adam and Harry (Paul Mescal), a younger man who accompanies him on this journey of healing.

Digital Spy caught up with Andrew Haigh to discuss coming-out scenes of a very different kind and the importance of crafting "a love letter to queer people of a certain generation". Along the way, we also talked the hidden significance of that sex scene and why casting Jamie Bell and Claire Foy was such a gamble.

All of Us Strangers plays so much with time – like most of your work does – and that feels intrinsically queer to me. As queer people, we don't always follow a traditional timeline, so I wondered if you could share how the film's shifting of time relates to the queerness that's integral to this story?

It's so interesting, because I feel like as a queer person, time is somehow different. As you say, your life seems to go on a different trajectory, and you don't have the sort of markers that other people have, although that is changing. I do think for younger queer people, it is a slightly different experience.

So I think it's just inherent in me as a person that I see time slightly differently, which is why it's always so interesting for me to play around with the idea of time.

All of my films, whether it's been Weekend, which is an obsession with 48 hours of someone's life, or 45 Years where something from the past has come back and disrupted the present, it just... I'm just so interested in the nature of time.

Casting Jamie Bell and Claire Foy as Andrew Scott's parents, even though they're actually younger than him, is such an interesting idea to play around with, both visually and emotionally. But were you ever apprehensive or worried that this approach might fall short or not work in the way you hoped it would?

Yeah, I was really worried about it [laughs]. I thought if that doesn't work, the film is terrible. People might laugh at it and be like, "This is just so stupid". The film works on an emotional level and I need that to be believable and real.

But then, weirdly, the minute I started filming with them, my fears went away, because I could see that it was working in the moment. And I could see that it was working emotionally.

Jamie and Claire do an incredible job at feeling like they are Andrew's parents. And he does feel like he is their child. So the nature of how they look sort of becomes irrelevant. Then I thought a lot about how, of course, that makes sense.

If we think about our parents in our minds, we don't necessarily think about what they look like now, if they're still around. We think about how they used to be. It's the same with anybody in our lives. You can think of a friend that you may not have been in contact with for 20-30 years. In your mind, they're exactly like they were back then. I think that is just the nature of our memory and how that works, so it does make sense for the film.

That moment when Adam gets into bed with his parents could have been particularly hard to pull off, but it works so beautifully within the context of the narrative.

I mean it could be ridiculous. He's wearing pyjamas that don't fit, and he's trying to get into bed with his parents. It could be absolutely ridiculous. But I think it speaks to this idea... Think about those pyjamas.

We all understand the desire to want to go back and feel that comfort sometimes that we felt as a child, but of course, it doesn't fit anymore. They're too tight and he isn't a child. He is an adult. But within all of us, we still have that element of being a child within our adult bodies, not just as children but our parents are the same. Everybody is the same. The child is always trapped within us.

That element really comes to the fore in the film's two coming out scenes when Adam reveals himself to parents who are technically younger than him. We've seen so many coming out stories over the years, but we've never seen anything like this before. Why do you think these two scenes have resonated in particular with so many fans of the film?

I mean, there's a number of things. People are always like, "Oh, we don't need more coming-out scenes. We've done all the coming-out scenes," but I think a lot of us, as queer people and gay people, are still affected by that, that feeling of having to come out and how terrifying, how horrendous that was for so many of us and the fear of having to say something to our parents, and they may reject us for that.

It was a very, very traumatic event for lots and lots of people, especially back in the '80s.

What this is about, in many ways, it's not just that he's coming out to his parents, but he's being reminded of how he used to feel back then. Because the parents reaction is how everybody felt about gay people back in the '80s. Or how most people felt. That was a very difficult time.

I wanted it to be sort of generous as well, even to the parents, because they lived in a period of time where they were just fed stories and lies, essentially, and fears about gay people. So I didn't want to vilify the parents either because that's the culture they lived in at the time.

It's so rare still to see the experiences of gay men Adam's age explored like this. Why would you say it's important that the stories of gay men who lived through the AIDS crisis continued to be centred this way on screen?

I think it's a really important generation for me as a queer storyteller. I wanted to say something about that generation, and it is a very specific generation. It is a generation of people who grew up as AIDS was decimating communities.

As young queer people in that time, we grew up surrounded by the idea that our sexuality was completely linked to death. I think it's very easy to forget how traumatic and horrendous that was, and that we are still living with the ramifications of that and the shame that went along with that.

The way that people treated us made us feel ashamed. It's not that we were inherently shameful because we were gay, but we were made to feel shamed. That has been a struggle that a lot of us have had to work through into our 40s and 50s and people into their 60s are still dealing with that, so I think it's a really important thing.

And also just to remind people that yes the world has changed, thank God, and everyone seems to have forgotten what it was like back then, but we haven't forgotten, even on an unconscious level. We can remember.

I always wanted it to be a love letter to queer people of a certain generation to say, "You know what? I know that it's still painful to think back at that time, and it is still painful. And I want us to realise that it's still painful and it's okay to to appreciate that sometimes."

I was born in the mid '80s, so I wasn't an adult during the height of the AIDS crisis, but I absolutely felt the ramifications of it still into the '90s and beyond, this idea that being gay is instantly connected to fear and death.

Yeah, the '90s wasn't a Golden Age either. Even into the late '90s, I remember there were debates going on in the House of Commons where people would still be saying that what we were doing was sinful and wrong and that we were gonna go to hell.

This is in the '90s. This is not the 1970s or 1980s. So I think that living in the '80s and '90s was not an easy time for queer people, definitely.

That sex scene early on where Harry licks cum off Adam's chest really struck me, because any kind of contact with bodily fluids like this would have once been horrifying to Adam. Did you consciously include this scene in relation to Adam's shame and him overcoming it?

Absolutely. That's the point of that shot to me. I think there's probably lots and lots of people who will not truly understand that at all. Of course, you will understand it because you understand it from a personal standpoint.

There are two gay people of a different generation and one has no fear in that moment of what he's doing. The other one is still resistant to that. That's years of something within his body telling him to be resistant. And he overcomes it because of course, you can overcome it. Lots of people do overcome that fear and shame and that is the point.

In that moment, there was a little bit of resistance, but the intimacy and the compassion of Harry in that moment allows him to overcome a sort of embedded fear.

Some people see the ending as very uplifting and hopeful while others find it sad. Obviously, tragic endings are embedded in the history of queer cinema, so did you feel pressure to try and avoid tropes like 'Bury Your Gays'?

I understand there was that trope. It's often the trope actually gets said more than the reality of that being an actual reality. It's like "Oh, you're gonna kill off all the gays" but actually, that's not always what happens.

There is a way in which this film could have ended on a very optimistic, joyful note. To me, that would have been a little bit simplistic in terms of what the story is trying to unpick and understand, which is about the actual nature, the essence of love, and what is important within that.

I also think that sometimes when you're telling queer stories, I want to dig a little bit deeper into the pain, into the reality of things. There you can get closer to the truth and I think that is important.

Let's go back to the '80s. A lot of people, a lot of gay, queer people, lost their partners young and lost a lot of people that were very, very important to them. But as that also happened, what I found so profoundly beautiful is, it sort of highlighted the idea of love in itself as being some kind of saviour and that it can save you and the importance of that love. After all, loss is still so fundamentally important.

Looking back, is there a particular example of queer TV or film that really resonated with a younger version of yourself?

It's a tricky one. I feel like in the end, it was probably watching Beautiful Thing, that Hettie Macdonald film.

I remember I was working in a cinema, the National Film Theatre, and it was the gay and lesbian film festival, I think, or it was a special screening of Beautiful Thing. There is a gay film, actually, that's very, very joyous. It's got so much joy in it. It ends on a really uplifting, joyful note.

I just remember sitting at the back as an usher, seeing that film, and I wasn't even out at that point. I was still in the closet. And I remember feeling like, "Ah, okay, there's a possibility out there for me". I remember loving that moment. It was both emotional and cathartic and joyous.

I still love that film. I watch that film now when they're running through the woods and The Mamas and the Papas are playing and they kiss against the tree. It's so beautiful. I adore it. So even though my films don't often end on moments of pure joy, I still like moments of pure joy [laughs].'

#Andrew Haigh #All of Us Strangers #Claire Foy #Jamie Bell #Andrew Scott #Paul Mescal #Hettie Macdonald #Beautiful Thing #Strangers #Taichi Yamada #The Mamas and the Papas #Weekend #45 Years

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anglespin · 3 months

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leon accidentally set off a remote bomb too soon and got sent to super hell 😔 HAHHAAKHFKDG

i also like making them suffer for story and development purposes but my FAVORITE part is absolutely slapping colorful bandaids ontop of it after. give me that comfort with my hurt, the HEALING. its just so good to me, both just in general and story wise. something something healing, strength, life goes on. :3

also im completely agree, jill would not trust him even the tiniest bit. i love how complex her relationship is with everyone like its just so interesting to think of. like how relaxed di leon and jills acquaintanceship is, while on the other hand she has negative trust in re6 leon. good. :3 and god i just love claire period. i wish leon and claire friendship was more popular bc honestly i love it. (i havent seen ID yet but my point still stands, their friendship dynamic just has so much potential)

also YES i love talking about trust and deceit bc its all so like complicated and is a major gray area. YES, they would be fucking _angry_ and hurt and obviously feel so fucking betrayed. but after the shock and anger wears off. like. i can see them trying to understand it. like. yanno?? bro i cannot brain lmao. like yeah he kept it secret and that's pretty bad for multiple reasons for them, but considering what they've dealt with and seen with BOWs--and obviously the government learning about this, god forbid they get any ideas or put him through even more hell--it's understanding for him to be terrified to even mention it. and like, i can genuinely see di leon try to defuse it and be understanding, especially with his experience with buddy in damnation albeit not entirely the same. (chris too, if in this au he's gone through the piers situation. :( ) and depending on how LONG it is until its revealed, its fucking hard fully breaking bonds and trust that have developed over time. like they WANT to believe in him and that he honestly doesnt want to do or have any malicious intentions, not to mention for DI leon its literally. himself. and he knows himself, and that man has such a bleeding heart, that he knows how he is with internalizing things, and running away, and just dealing with trauma in awful ways. some awful shit just managed to happen to this version of himself :( and its just such a damn slippery situation. they gotta make sure that resi6 leon is like, safe both to others and himself, and have to work out just. all the fucked up shit that went on. i am full on the team of working shit out :3 itll take a fucking while to reestablish trust and better communication (re6 leon is absolutely god awful at both working through and communicating his issues but time and effort is good and i love that shit!!) but i like to think it all works out in the end. stuff thats worth it takes time and effort and all that fun shit. :3

(ive completely lost myself in the text wall i hope this makes sense)

🐕

Ah! It makes sense to me. At least I think it does.

It would be a huge mixed bag of emotions and just overall issues between everyone. Nothing's going to be dandy in the beginning. RE6 gets fucking interrogated and slightly beat up (because him and DI do fight at the start and RE6 is HURT already from being practically exploded. Also he gets smooshed by DI, who probably weighs alot more than he does in terms of muscle.)

The type of BOW that RE6 Leon is not meant to be crazy powerful. Thanks to C-virus development and infusion, the Plagas the DSO designed are meant to be wholly symbiotic and free from restrictions their Spanish counterparts had. Basically Verdugo 2.0, but appearing entirely normal until the changes are required and able to return to form as needed which includes the tail being able to simply fall off and a short chrysalis state to undo anything else. It's still horribly painful. That'll be horrific if it gets out cause its literally a fast-lane to super soldier creation lol.

RE6 Leon is just a big cat. Thats it.

When it comes to the BOW shit getting out to the DI gang, RE6 harbors not an ill will bone in his body. What happened to him is not his fault. How he deals with it is because of what he's been conditioned for. He is what Leon would've turned out to have been if the DSO were more-- hands on with wanting to improve their assets. Human rights be damned. Leon isn't a human being to the government. Just some tool to be tossed around willy nilly at whatever they want and played with as some doll. DI knows this because he experiences this to a degree, though not being a labrat lol. The others don't know about how he's treated.

DI Leon having to look inward at himself in order to try and bridge gaps despite his differences (mostly in temperament/attitude) compared to RE6. Their experiences veer drastically enough. Chris as well as Claire needing to change approaches.

Jill and Claire are besties + Rebecca too!

I LOVE VERDUGOS!!!!!

I'm mad eepy so sorry for the short answer, but i hear you!!!!

#angle's inbox archive

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ragingstillness · 2 years

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A continuation of my casually feral Ethan post because ppl liked it so much. Note, my previous take was mostly canon-based, this is more headcanons:

So Chris does indeed get approval to bring Ethan into the BSAA, at least for assessment. He disguises it as wanting to take a statement from Ethan and Ethan, with amazing survival skills but zero social awareness skills, agrees.

Chris brings Ethan in through a back door so he doesn’t have to go through the front scanners which would immediately have identified him as a BOW and activated remote defenses to try and kill him. After what he’s seen Chris is not entirely sure who would win, the guns or Ethan.

Ethan is, as any middle-management office drone would be, very impressed with how sleek and technologically advanced the BSAA HQ is. He gawks around like a tourist. Claire walks out of a conference room and scans Ethan up and down then gives her brother a look like “this guy? Really?”

Chris gets Ethan settled into a reinforced conference room and sits him down. BSAA staff are standing by and all officers are viewing the meeting room remotely.

Chris sighs and sets his hands on the table. Ethan looks a bit confused at the lack of any writing equipment. Best to just rip off the bandaid. “Ethan, I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this but you are indeed infected.”

There’s silence. Ethan lifts one of his arms and stares at his skin for a moment then says, “but I’m not black and goopy?”

“You’re not, and as far as I can tell you don’t seem to be manifesting any visual signs of the virus but the scanners and your blood samples don’t lie. You are not only the most whole infected person we’ve ever seen, you’re also the most infected person we’ve ever seen.”

“Dammit.” Ethan puts his head in his hands. Chris braces for everything from sobbing to sudden mutations. But Ethan just whines, “I fell unconscious after Mr. Baker hit me in the head with that shovel but I was hoping nothing happened to me while I was out.” He peeks up at Chris. “Was that naive of me?”

Yes! Chris wants to scream. No shit! “Also, while you did not ingest the fungus while you were conscious, you came into pretty much every other kind of contact possible.”

The tech team had managed to salvage some of the footage from Lucas Baker’s cameras and Chris still couldn’t tell if Ethan was crazy brave or just didn’t feel fear.

“Um.” Chris refocused. Ethan was scratching his head. “I’m not gonna turn into one of those things am I? Like I don’t really want my brain growing out of the side of my head.”

Chris didn’t ask. It was far from the strangest mutation he’d seen in his day. “To be perfectly honest we don’t know. The fact that you haven’t mutated yet is a good sign. You’ll have to stay away from your wife though.”

Chris felt a little shitty for including this stipulation. The man had walked through hell and worse to see his wife again and now they were being separated. The true reason behind the separation was to keep an eye on Ethan and to allow the BSAA to build the case that Mia was a Connections scientist. Hopefully some more distance would help Ethan take the news better when she was officially arrested.

“Can i video call her?”

“Yes you may. As often as you want.” Chris himself had argued for this, unwilling to hurt Ethan more than they had to.

“So I guess you’re not going to kill me then.”

Chris startled. “What?”

Ethan laughed. “I’m not an idiot. This is the BSAA. You brought me here then told me I’m a BOW. The BSAA literally exists to kill them. I was expecting you to pull a gun any moment now.”

Well he had seemed remarkably relaxed for someone expecting his imminent death. Or was he so confident he wouldn’t die? Chris leaned back in his chair. “And what would you have done if I had?”

Ethan thought about it. “Well I suppose I would have tried to get away. Natural instinct, the desire to survive, but I’d probably end up running to somewhere remote where I could hide and not hurt anyone.”

This told Chris two things: one, Ethan was confident he would be able to make it out of the building, consciously or otherwise, and two, that Ethan’s primary drive was to protect not to kill. That was good, they could use that.

“As our first sane,” that might have been a bit of a stretch, “BOW, you are in a unique position. Your biology is integrated with the infection in a way we’ve never seen before. The science team has been chomping at the bit to get a look at you. Also, while your supernatural abilities are somewhat unclear, the one we can pin down is accelerated durability to injuries that would kill regular humans. We could use someone with that ability on one of our squads.”

“You mean, I could work here?” Ethan’s jaw had dropped open.

“You could. You’d be under strict supervision, have to be cautious, you understand, but yes you could work for us. Our mission is remarkably simple, you’ve probably even heard it already, to destroy all sources of the infections we can find, including BOWs, black market auctions, science labs making new virus strains, criminal organizations trying to use BOWs as soldiers, etc. We’d train you on the weapons we use so you won’t have to improvise with ancient guns again. In return you’d get room and board, a job, and have to submit to various tests.”

“It sounds too good to be true.”

“Time will tell if it is.”

Ethan rubbed his upper lip. “It’s not safe for me to be in regular society anymore is it?”

Chris shook his head. “No Ethan. We wouldn’t let you go out there anyway.”

Ethan deflated like a sad beach ball. “So I’m a prisoner.”

“You have to be. We can’t take the risk. I’ve lost too many friends and the world at large has lost too many lives to BOWs. I wish we could afford to treat you like any other human, but we can’t.”

Ethan nodded. “I’ll do it, on one condition.”

“What?”

“If I ever do start to mutate, kill me.” Chris’ eyes widened. “Kill me, kill me immediately. Don’t try to pull me in for experimentation or try to cure the virus. Just kill me. I’ve had enough of experiments and viruses and foreign substances invading my body. I claim that autonomy, if I can claim nothing else.”

His expression was fierce. Chris was reminded of Claire and Jill. He held out his hand to Ethan. “Done.” They shook on it.

#ethan winters #re7 #re7 fic #chris redfield #resident evil #resident evil biohazard

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