( BENJAMIN WADSWORTH | CIS-MAN | HE/HIM | TWENTY-TWO ) — — — it's just been another long week in boring - ass hawkins. isn't that right, GARETH EMERSON ? shit, i guess they can't hear me over LOVE BITES by JUDAS PRIEST playing through the headphones of their walkman. it looks like they're gonna be late for WORK at RADIO SHACK. did you know GRIZZ has been in hawkins for SEVENTEEN YEARS ? yeah, their family and friends describe them as CREATIVE, but i've seen them be SELF-DESTRUCTIVE too ! i would also say they remind me of neon gas station lights on wet asphalt, liquorice rolling papers, skinned knees, sweat running into your eyes during a drum solo, leaning tight into corners astride a motorbike, briefly defying gravity. but is that weird ? i guess nothing's too weird for this little town, huh ? — — —
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name : gareth jason emerson
nicknames : grizz, gar, gar-bear, grizzly-adams
age : twenty-two
pronouns : he/him
sexuality : bisexual
birthday : august 30th
birthplace : hawkins, indiana
family : jolene emerson (mother), graham emerson (father), whitney emerson (y. sister), archie emerson † (y. brother)
tattoos & piercings : septum and tongue pierced though mostly hides these unless he’s partying in indianapolis or chicago or with the freaks. inner bicep piece of a black dragon curled around a great sword, roman numerals of archie & whitney’s birthdays on his left wrist, a tiny banana between his pointer finger on the right hand for monkey, his dog. a few ugly stick and pokes and some newer ones that are way less ugly.
aesthetics : room temperature pizza, spending half your pay check on polaroid film, a wave of good aftershave, headbanging until your neck feels like it’ll snap, letting your little sister paint your nails, engine oil in denim, love bites by judas priest playing faintly from a pair of headphones, dappled sunlight through forest leaves, sweat in your eyes, broken drumsticks, slinging your arm round the neck of your friend who can’t stop laughing, purple red bruises blooming like a valentines bouquet across your ribs, lovingly restoring old vinyl in the garage, the cold brush of a chain dangling from your lover’s neck against your racing pulse, smashing your fist into concrete until the knuckles split, the scent of old paper, cracked spines and well loved books.
never worn a matching pair of socks in his life, gareth liked garage sale paperbacks, pizza rolls and not much else. back in the day, the first five or six years of gareth’s miserable existence, the family had had a nice ranch style place by the woods but then his dad lost his job and they lost the house. from then on the family were usually too on top of one another, grizz always seeming to end up underfoot.
rock and roll’s the devil’s work, obviously. has soundproofed part of their small basement to practice drumming without getting yelled at.
[family death cw] though he never talks about it at all any more, about twelve years ago grizz’s five year old little brother drowned in lake tippecanoe when his dad briefly took his eyes off them. this kind of tore the family up. his mom left when grizz was fourteen, leaving a wad of cash in an envelope in his dresser and asking him to promise to be a ‘good boy’ until she came back. still waiting.
got a job the second he could during high school and has stayed employed ever since, though bounced around a fair bit.
[child abuse cw] his dad rarely goes a couple weeks without spiralling into a rage and physically attacking grizz which has been the same since his sophomore year, he’s just about to try and move out and find his own place after saving for a few years out of high school but he doesn’t want to leave his sixteen year old sister in the house.
used to be on the track team, a very fast runner.
held average grades at the start of high school, got some special attention from his english teacher who believed sincerely that he could do better if he just focused. managed to do pretty well by graduation but lost confidence in himself and his ability to adapt to living anywhere but hawkins because of his inability to pick a college. feels kind of cursed and stuck in roane county.
corroded coffin is his outlet, along with the ice hockey league he sometimes plays in a town over. has a notebook full of polaroids, quotes or lyric ideas scrawled on diner napkins, drive-in theatre tickets, the stamp from clubs in indianapolis and anything else you can think of, that is usually stuffed in the small of his back.
wears a lot of flannel and his extremely battered leather jacket basically every day of the year.
spends tooooons of time carefully painting the miniatures with tiny brushes for eddie’s d&d campaigns. usually plays a monk or a druid.
has a dog that is a mongrel of too many breeds to count named monkey, he has a neckerchief.
drums on every surface. all. the. time.
built a tree house and dugout in the middle of the forest for his friends from fifth to eighth grade, grizz’s dad is a carpenter by trade so he knows his way around.
makes a meaannnnn mac & cheese, is pretty much always down to clown.
pretty handy at fixing most types of motorbike, has been the only person to touch his own bike for about three years.
My mother told me never go through a lady’s bag. At least, not until you’re a couple blocks away. I’m just kidding, she never said that. Though it sounds like pretty good advice, doesn’t it?
