▬▬ FC: IAN SOMERHALDER ▬ TAKEN ▬▬
❝ My name is Eric Grant. I’m here to show you how to get what you want. The art of persuasion is a useful skill in the right hands or a weapon in the wrong ones. I can show you how to talk a man down from a ledge when all he’s got left is his despair or — I can show you how to make sure he jumps. Choice is yours.❞
✔ Straightforward, humorous, cunning
✘ Innapropriate, boisterous, tempermental
Eric strikes me as somewhat enigmatic. The fact that he uses a sort of iron-clad charm as a weapon of diversion is really interesting to me. I think he’s his own worst enemy, however. He doesn’t allow people to get close to him. Instead, he throws up a veneer of sly smirks, an unflappable disregard for authority and carries on his merry little way without anyone asking too many questions. There’s something darker there, something he doesn’t want others to see. It’s easy to please a crowd with some sleight of hand and a smile. Keeping their propinquity in check is another art altogether.
That said, Eric does enjoy his life to a degree. How could he not? All it takes is a swerve of his honed ability into the mind of some unsuspecting sap and the game of cat-and-mouse is over. There’s something to be said for his ego, though. While one would think a man who takes what he wants (simply because he wants it) would have an impenetrable arrogance, Eric struggles with self-worth. There’s no one that remains in his life for the sole purpose of being in his life — it seems they’re all hypnotized by him, tranced — not genuinely interested.
His abilities have made him quite lax; not having to work hard leaves him feeling unstimulated, bored, lonely. Then again, he’d much rather cast a will-shattering smile someone’s way than bother with the task of actually getting to know someone. His short temper stems from his violent past. It’s one of those telling signs of what lurks beneath the water, one of those that no one seems to notice.
TW: domestic violence, child abuse, rape, suicide, and drug use
Eric Grant was the bastard son of Salvatore Damiani (a wealthy investment tycoon), born to twenty-year-old Elizabeth Grant (a waitress turned prostitute). Even before his birth, Salvatore made it very clear he would have nothing to do with the child. Elizabeth, young and poor, was without the money to sue for child support and so it was that Eric was welcomed into a very grey, very unwelcoming world. He grew up the way any kid might, left abandoned to such a dire situation. Despite his mother’s dependency on heroin and her lack of reliability, he was very loyal to her. Even when she brought home miserable oafs willing to pay her for a twenty-minute fuck, he simply leaned his head closer to the torn speaker on his record player. Grubby fingers on the volume knob.
By the time Eric was eight, he was smoking cigarettes his mother left half-smoked in the ashtray and cooking his own dinner. It was around this age that he started understanding that he was a little bit different. His mother seemed to know it, too, even from within the limits of her drug-induced fog. Instead of paying for groceries, she’d send him into a store alone where, at the check-out, he’d weave some tragic story for all those witnessing to pore over. Nine times out of ten, he left with a basket full of groceries. Either on the house or on the dime of some sucker in line behind him.
At ten, his mother brought home Marion Bevel. Marion was a balding man in his fifties whose fingers were always black with tire grease. He owned a small auto repair shop a street away from the little diner in which his mother worked. One night, over his usual helping of cherry pie and black coffee, he asked Elizabeth Grant to marry him. At first, young Eric was pleased. His mother had gotten into the bad habit of coming home, way past his bedtime, crawling into his twin-sized bunk-bed and crying into his ear until it ached. She wanted a man, she said, someone that would take care of her, treat her good. Someone that would be a good father to him, like he deserved. It was a relief to the boy when he saw an possible end to that sadness.
As soon as the marriage was made official in judge’s chambers, terror ensued. It started with drunken brawls in the dining room over a cold dish of lasagna. It escalated into his mother’s black eyes and and yellow, pitted skin. As soon as Eric took it upon himself to stand up in his mother’s defense, all the negativity turned towards him. Belittling remarks. Unwanted touches. Bruises. Slaps. It only grew worse and worse over the years, always beginning and ending with the same threat: “You tell anybody, I’ll kill your momma, boy.”
At fourteen, Eric was failing out of school. He had started drinking pretty heavily. This was after procuring a shady group of friends, all of which openly praised him for his ability to talk a gas station clerk out of a six-pack in thirty short seconds. On a not-so-particular evening, he arrived home in his usual state — with whiskey on his breath, his mind whirring madly. He was met by the familiar glower of his step-father. The man towered over him, his yellow eyes effervescent with diabolical intent.
It was that night that Eric talked Marion Bevel into putting a pistol to his temple and pulling the trigger.
Delivered from the devil’s hands, Eric has since flourished. He mastered his ability and forwarded his career, making great strides for himself with just a practiced application of trusty ol’ mind manipulation. Despite his vulgarity, his lackadaisical approach to the world, and his disregard for structure and authority, people seem to migrate towards him. His energy, his charm and his wit keep him in everyone’s good graces. (Even if sometimes that requires a little extra action on his part.) He wasn’t at all surprised when he wound up teaching at Elswood. He is, undoubtedly, the best at what he does. However, he does it while hiding in plain sight and that’s the real trick, isn’t it?
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