Nate Boyd (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
soicantlose) wrote2036-01-25 12:17 pm
soicantlose) wrote2036-01-25 12:17 pm
info / history
FULL NAME
Nathan Boyd
AGE // BIRTHDAY
default around 24/25, but flexible // Nov 24
OCCUPATION
contract killer
NICKNAME
Nate
PRONOUNS
he/him
SEXUALITY
bisexual
TRIGGER WARNINGS
violence; physical, emotional, and verbal parental abuse; growing up in a homophobic environment; manipulative/abusive romantic relationship; self-loathing and passive suicidal feelings
IN A NUTSHELL
Angry mess with inferiority complex that can be seen from space becomes surprisingly good protector the second someone in need is left in his vicinity.
Dresses casually, jeans and t-shirts most of the time, always easy to move in. He usually has a jacket on him outside the house, but he actually gets warm pretty easily, and in his own space is usually running around shirtless well into the winter. Lots of moles and birthmarks; lots of little scars, the biggest and most noticeable being a bullet graze on his left side.
Takes up a lot of space both when comfortable, and when trying to be aggressive or stand his ground; if he's shrinking into himself, it's a pretty big sign that he's actually upset/uncomfortable, not just angry for once. Gets defensive about his height if people say anything, but otherwise not particularly insecure about his looks.
Takes up a lot of space both when comfortable, and when trying to be aggressive or stand his ground; if he's shrinking into himself, it's a pretty big sign that he's actually upset/uncomfortable, not just angry for once. Gets defensive about his height if people say anything, but otherwise not particularly insecure about his looks.
PERSONALITY
✚ protective, loyal, creative, perceptive, honest
– self-sabotaging, insecure, awkward, quick to anger, depressed
– self-sabotaging, insecure, awkward, quick to anger, depressed
Nate has a good heart, but he also has Issues, and he wears his defense mechanisms on his sleeve. The most prominent of those is the anger. He's often snappish and sarcastic, and while he doesn't tend to target people unless he's lashing out, it's not very difficult to get him to lash out, either. But he's capable of tempering himself, and he doesn't actually want to hurt people unless they've actively hurt him already, so when it seems to be getting under someone's skin unintentionally, he'll try to tone it down. And if someone takes him in stride and isn't bothered by it, he'll often end up turning down the grumpiness without meaning to.
He's always blunt, and he's not bad at finding people's weak points. Sometimes he tries to use this to help people and it goes wrong; finding the right words is not his specialty.
He's a fairly honest person -- he rarely says things he doesn't mean unless he's backed against the wall or working, and he doesn't promise or offer things he doesn't plan to give. He's trustworthy, and good at keeping secrets. And he cares about people, deeply, whenever he actually lets himself. He's a good caretaker, and once he decides somebody's one of his people, he's good for them: patient, accepting, thoughtful. A little possessive, but it comes out more in the form of “must keep them safe” than anything else.
He does not think of himself as any of these things, even as he’s actively caretaking and protecting people. As far as Nate’s concerned, he’s an asshole and a pretty terrible person, and he only does this if he feels like encouraging someone to leave him alone will lead to them getting in a worse situation. If he found himself attaching to someone who wasn’t in a place where they had nothing, he’d probably try to detach himself because he’s going to fuck them up.
He’s smarter than he gives himself credit for in a lot of ways – he has a lot of common sense, he’s quick-thinking, his memory's pretty good, he’s good at reading people. But he’s not traditionally clever or book smart, and he gets easily frustrated and flustered when he feels like he’s around people who are smarter than him and are lording it over him or rubbing it in. The second part is the key there: being smart is fine, it’s using it to put him down (or feeling like someone is) that fucks him up.
Nate has an artsy streak: he has a secret soft spot for beautiful things; he likes to sing, and he likes making art, and he's good at both. But he's buried it so deep down that it takes a lot of work and a small miracle to get it back up to the surface these days. His self-loathing and depression has led him to cut off most things that give him joy and live his life in a state of perpetual "good enough to survive on", and it takes a desire to give someone else something better for him to ever even consider doing better by himself.
BACKGROUND
Nate grew up in a family with very specific ideas what a man should be, and only ever hit those markers in the worst and most off-center ways. Being a ball of explosive rage would be fine, if he didn't keep directing it at his family, or at defending people his family didn't want him defending. Being a fighter would be fine, but despite winning most of the scraps he got into, he still managed to do it in ways that weren't clean enough, weren't manly enough. Realizing he was bisexual and that his family would probably quite literally try to beat it out of him if he ever came out just seemed like the inevitable cherry on top by the time Nate was a teenager.
Already feeling like he's never good enough, he went to college, and things might have slowly started to get better from there if he hadn't met Kat. Nate was 19; Kat was several years older, and a thief. She genuinely liked Nate, which is probably worse than if she’d been purposefully fucking with him, because he knows that she did; and he was head over heels for her. It wasn’t that long into the relationship that she ended up needing help, someone to play backup and keep her safe, and Nate didn’t even need to be asked before he volunteered. Turns out, not only could he win a whole lot of scraps with his fists (and teeth, and knees), but he was damn good with a gun, too. It’s probably the first time anyone ever encouraged him with something he felt like he was good for, and he ended up leaving school in order to stay with her.
Through Kat came Billy, who runs a bar that tends to attract a lot of questionable figures. Billy encouraged both of them to end it, because it was clearly fucking Nate up, and though Nate never listened, he did manage to make a friend. Enough that when Kat did dump him and leave after a few years, Nate stayed behind, drinking himself into a stupor at Billy's bar until he could tell himself he was over it, and then picking up his "career", such as it was, in the only direction he could think of anymore.
Which leaves him where he is now in his mid-twenties: extremely self-loathing, depressed and definitely not admitting it, basically a little ball of spiky armor to everyone but the very, very small number who manage to break through it and become His People. He's been shutting the world -- and in many ways, his better nature -- out for pretty much his entire life for one reason or another, and doesn't seem ready to stop for his own sake any time soon.
Already feeling like he's never good enough, he went to college, and things might have slowly started to get better from there if he hadn't met Kat. Nate was 19; Kat was several years older, and a thief. She genuinely liked Nate, which is probably worse than if she’d been purposefully fucking with him, because he knows that she did; and he was head over heels for her. It wasn’t that long into the relationship that she ended up needing help, someone to play backup and keep her safe, and Nate didn’t even need to be asked before he volunteered. Turns out, not only could he win a whole lot of scraps with his fists (and teeth, and knees), but he was damn good with a gun, too. It’s probably the first time anyone ever encouraged him with something he felt like he was good for, and he ended up leaving school in order to stay with her.
Through Kat came Billy, who runs a bar that tends to attract a lot of questionable figures. Billy encouraged both of them to end it, because it was clearly fucking Nate up, and though Nate never listened, he did manage to make a friend. Enough that when Kat did dump him and leave after a few years, Nate stayed behind, drinking himself into a stupor at Billy's bar until he could tell himself he was over it, and then picking up his "career", such as it was, in the only direction he could think of anymore.
Which leaves him where he is now in his mid-twenties: extremely self-loathing, depressed and definitely not admitting it, basically a little ball of spiky armor to everyone but the very, very small number who manage to break through it and become His People. He's been shutting the world -- and in many ways, his better nature -- out for pretty much his entire life for one reason or another, and doesn't seem ready to stop for his own sake any time soon.
ABILITIES
PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
Marksmanship. General violence and deadliness. Blending in. Good sense of direction. Discretion.
PERSONAL SKILLS
Cooking. Art and singing, but you'll have to twist his arm to get him to admit to them.
MISC
🠚 Also comes in a supernatural-world AU where his best friend is a crossroads demigod, but Nate is forever the Lone Beleaguered Human in his supernatural AUs, so nothing actually changes about him.
🠚 Gets about a billion time healthier when he has somebody relying on him to look after, forcing him to actually take care of himself in order to take care of them. In worlds where he stays on his own, he's probably gonna die by 30.
🠚 His love languages are "let me do this for you without you ever mentioning it so I can pretend I'm an asshole", "gentling my sharp edges very carefully for fragile people", and "SO much touching". In roughly that order.
🠚 Gets about a billion time healthier when he has somebody relying on him to look after, forcing him to actually take care of himself in order to take care of them. In worlds where he stays on his own, he's probably gonna die by 30.
🠚 His love languages are "let me do this for you without you ever mentioning it so I can pretend I'm an asshole", "gentling my sharp edges very carefully for fragile people", and "SO much touching". In roughly that order.