my favorite headcanon/au of Adler as a parent is the reluctant father.
Adler doesn’t want children merely on the basis of keeping collateral damage from his career to a minimum. The kid would be hurt by his constant absence or even worse, by his enemies.
It’s a risk he can’t justify.
When he unexpectedly ends up becoming a father he stays out of the child’s life, he’s made his stance on the subject clear. He provides financially without question if asked (routed through multiple accounts to prevent being traced) and maybe knows a detail or two about the kid but he stays away. Nobody but himself and the child’s mother know anything.
Nobody can know. To be associated with a man like himself is to be in danger, in his mind.
What Adler also doesn’t tell anyone is that he has that baby’s birthday memorized, he thinks of them every year. He wonders if they look like him, or if they have traces of his personality. He thinks of them far more often than he’s comfortable admitting. And deep, deep down in the darkest corner of his mind he knows he loves them with every fibre of his being despite not knowing them just because they’re his.
And when he lays critically wounded in a far away battle field, near death and slipping in and out of consciousness, he regrets more than anything that he doesn’t know what his own child looks like.
Hello! Do you have any hc of Adler being a boy dad? I have a oc that’s his son and I would like to know what you’d think what kind of dad he’d be 👉👈☺️
As a passionate dadler stan you have come to the right place anon 🫡
Russell Adler: His Relationship w/ A Son (Headcanons)
His connection with a son (especially his first, if he had multiple children) is quite unique. There was once a time that he was the son, and he clearly remembers the way his own father influenced his life, whether it was good or bad. He’s keen to not repeat any mistakes his own dad made, but at the same time he knows he’s going to have a very hard time being of any sort of influence with his work constantly keeping him away.
When his son is a baby/toddler, they are glued to the hip. In his mind, his son is comprised of the very best of himself. All that is good about Russell Adler, how little that may be, is contained within that little body. He’s filled with wonder at the very sight of him.
Adler takes him everywhere, doing all the things he enjoyed himself as a kid or just simply showing him the world. It’s like he’s been born again because his son helps him remember the simple things that brought wonder to his own world as a boy. A dip in the backyard pool, exploring the interior of dad’s car, riding on dad’s shoulders at the park, etc.
Adler is the rough and tumble kind of dad, and mom is never happy with things they get up to. Running with his son on his shoulders, swinging him around, playing in the dirt, etc. Adler definitely plays rougher with his son in comparison to the way would if he had a daughter, and he gets super into it. He will break into a literal sweat because he’s that committed.
As his son ages, he does begin to feel the subconscious pressure to raise his son to ‘be a man’ as it was a concept his own father had drilled into him from very early in his life. One of his own earliest memories was his dad telling him to “toughen up” and it’s something that still echoes in his head often.
Then again he also remembers his own experiences in Vietnam, and how much all of that really didn’t matter in the end. He’s seen what pride can do, too many young men that suffered and died for nothing because they were told by society that it was what they had to do in order for their lives to matter. It was one thing to die for something you believe in, it was another to do so because you were told you had to in order for your life to mean something.
From the very first time he holds his son, Adler knows he just wants to protect him. He does not wish the life he’s chosen for himself upon this innocent, perfect being. He can’t let them be tainted in the same way he himself is.
Hi hello! Wanted to try finally the new model of Adler on DAZ, and I’m very happy with the results!
I made close ups so you can notices all the details, it was rendered on 8K but unfortunately tumblr lowers the quality, but I’ll send a link sooner so you can take a look at the original pic!
Also rendered him again with a Charger because yes 👁️👄👁️. I have come a long way since my first render last year!
Also I’m working on requests and will post them soon!
How do you think Adler would act around a friend or loved one who was ill? Not any life threatening illness but definitely feverish enough to impact their daily lives
Russell Adler - If A Loved One Was Sick (headcanons)
thanks for the prompt ❤️ sorry it took so long!!
In general, Adler is someone who uses his actions rather than words to show how much he cares about someone, but he’s also very analytical and precise with the actions he chooses. He’ll study his loved one in their daily life and secretly make note of things that person may not even notice about themselves alongside the obvious things like their likes/dislikes. It’s part of what makes him good at his job, but it’s also something that makes him better at caring for the people in he values in his life.
Keeping it low key is the name of the game for him, and he tries not to be super obvious about any sort of worry he may feel. He may politely check in if he notices someone is under the weather (“You feeling okay?”) but won’t immediately jump to sympathies either.
This translates into him just sort of…going and doing things without prompting. He honestly doesn’t really ask what the person needs because he’s studied them enough to know how they want to be cared for. For each person it’s different, some feel suffocated having someone wait on them hand and foot, but for others it means the world. He really tries to take care of each person in their own way.
Though the common denominator is that he does it quietly, and he’s sort of shy about it in a funny way. He tries really hard to not make a big deal about it.
Medications will just magically appear on nightstands or in your workspace.
He will just “randomly” decide to make a hearty soup or stew for dinner. He’ll deny making it for anyone specific and insist he was just in the mood for it.
Will take on responsibilities that he doesn’t normally undertake without asking. The garbage? Already taken out. Groceries? Done.
Bedsheets will be magically changed to a fresh set while your in the shower if you’ve been bedridden and if he’s particularly close with you.
Once again, Adler will never admit to anything. He just happens to suddenly be in the mood to do these things.
He cares for his loved ones like the wind: You can’t see it, but you can feel it.
happy holidays everyone!!🙂 to everyone that sent requests just know I’m working on them but likely won’t finish the bulk of them until the new year as I’ve been busy with the holidays + end of year stuff 😩
summary: adler doesn’t go back to berlin to forget, but he isn’t so eager to remember, either. after leaving you for dead on that clifftop in the arctic, he knows best to leave the past well alone. too bad that past seems to be alive and walking right in front of him; though where he wants to forget, it seems you’ve already beaten him to the punch.
or; bell survives solovetsky and only has a hole in her head and amnesia to show for it.
read on ao3
tags/cw: bell!reader, amnesia, light angst, referenced adlerbell, somehow bell survives the ending of cw, adler can't let shit go, adler is not capable of remorse but mayyybe a lil guilt?? dog symbolism always, no pairing yet but hopefully i continue this as a spicy drabble series idk
wc: 2.7k
a/n: sooo this is my first fic for the cod fandom and the first fic i've posted online in a long time so hopefully this lil ramble suffices!! i've had adlerbell brainrot and wanted to get at least something out before bo6 ruins all of my headcanons so here's a snippet of something i hopefully find the motivation to continue into a mini series. enjoy :')
Sometimes, he goes back to Berlin.
Stumbling out of the muggy bar into the dank alleyway out the back, Adler fishes out a pack of cigarettes from the front of his jacket; two firm knocks of it against his palm before he plucks one out with his mouth, pockets the box, and flips open his lighter. The clink of the metal echoes into the empty around him, the sudden quiet suffused with the sounds of passing cars on the street, muffled laughter from inside the bar, and the distant barking of dogs. Strays.
The cigarette ignites, glowing a cherry red, and he gasps around the filter greedily. Upon exhale, he sighs.
Adler isn’t a sentimental man by any means. What little he clings to, he does so with a loose grip, less than happy but stolid enough to allow whatever else he deems unnecessary slip through his fingers. Places, people. Things. Memories. Tucks the important things- logic, rationality, work, duty- into orderly compartments at the forefront of his mind, archived and marked off ‘til he needs it, while the rest, the mess, gets done away with, thrown into the great black gorge of oblivion. Anything else that stays- more often than not a thorn in his side, an unbidden, wriggling tumour he can’t find let alone cut out- is sequestered to a dark aperture in the back of his mind, anchored deep where it can’t come back up. Yet somehow, some nights, they always do. The smell of his ex-wife’s hair. The day he got his scar. Vietnam. The lab. Solovetsky—
The next word, the name, forks across his mind like lightning, and he bites his tongue before he can think it. It sits at the back of his mouth, nestled like an aching cavity in his molars. A tremulous breath that he forces down with another drag of his cigarette. Out with the rest. Out with the rest.
The barking doesn’t cease. Dogs, a pair of them, he can hear a couple streets over. He pictures them from the gravelly register of their snarling- maybe German Shepherds, a Bullmastiff or a Rottweiler. Their fight enunciated by the violent rattling of chain-link fences, segregated, the only threshold that keeps teeth from necks.
But no, not a sentimental man. He tells himself that the itch to revisit Berlin every Summer is for superficial reasons, and by no means is renting out a shithole hotel room opposite a sewer-laden river considered a vacation from anything other than the luxuries he gorges himself mindlessly on at home- maybe this is to keep him humble, more than anything. It doesn’t do well to remind himself of old times, not when he’s lived the life he has. Remembering seldom accompanies itself with the bittersweetness of reminiscence, and the taste it leaves in his mouth is always acrid. He doesn’t miss Berlin any more than he misses that dismal safehouse, or that sterile room he wheeled you into, questioned- tortured- no, interrogated- well, he doesn’t care to remind himself of the picture. Or the person he strapped to the gurney. But he catches himself thinking back to the city divided more than he likes to admit, and for whatever ostensible reason it is that drags him back here, he relents to it every time.
He tells himself it’s the weather, the cool rain a nice reprieve from the scorching California heat. Or that the food is better, not so much overprocessed shit and sugars. Can take his coffee as black as he likes without the waitress turning her nose up about it and double-triple-checking if he’s sure. And it’s the people, maybe, who leave him well enough alone. Or the drinks. The views, some places. The- air.
Not like Arctic air. Not like—
The one dog’s snarl rips bloodcurdling through the night, all froth and venom, and as the chain-link fence screeches and judders in its rusted welding the other mutt quiets a moment. Cowers under the meaner dog’s ferocity. Then, like it had been wounded, it lets out a low, anguished howl, beast reduced to a scared little pup. Adler holds the smoke in his chest around a stifled breath anticipating a release. But the first dog just grumbles, the fence clinks, and there isn’t much noise after that.
But the quiet doesn’t last long- just as Adler drops his cigarette and snuffs it with a wrench of his heel, another sound resonates, yowling through the alley.
The grinding of tires upon wet asphalt crunches from just beyond the alleyway entrance. The streetlamp overhanging the entryway glares bright yellow as it bounces off of the garishly coloured taxi cab, pulling up to a groaning halt outside the bar.
He thinks nothing of it, pulling at the collar of his leather jacket. It’s getting cold, and he’s left his drink inside. Wouldn’t want to waste good beer. Adler turns, and makes for the door.
And you step out of the car.
A half-finished cigarette bounces on the sidewalk before you exit, the softened heel of your boot following soon after in a splash upon the flooded curb. Your German is rusty- always has been- but it’s easy enough to utter a quick and easy danke as you pull yourself up out of the cab. The door shuts with a slam, and you tilt your head back to gaze up at the sign above the bar- Der Fluss Lethe glaring in faded lightbox red- and you let out a contented sigh, your breath suspended in the frigid air. Pink, bitten fingers pluck at your gloves, fingerless faded green knit, shovelling them into your jacket pocket.
Adler’s fist is already curled around the handle of the back door as he clocks your presence in his periphery, a stranger like any other- but your image resembles the one that coagulates in the borders of old memory, the dried blood of you he hasn’t been able to wash his hands of since ‘81. Enough that he does a double take, his eyes wide behind tinted glasses, and he stops, his heart following suit.
He’s seen enough bodies in his time to fill the morgue in his mind twice over, and plenty ghosts to wander coldly among the unmarked graves. Vietnam alone is an unwinding cemetery stretching endless, catacombs along the inside of his skull, lined with what his old shrink would call remorse. Guilt. As if the feeling mattered. As if self-reproach could turn self-flagellation into something so incandescent as redemption. As if the bile in the back of his throat could bring back the dead.
And it couldn’t, because it isn’t… that’s not—
Bell.
It’s in the way you stand, your back rigid, that slight slouch to your shoulders, always dragged down upon you like they bore the weight of the whole world (and they did, once, do you remember?). The pelting of rain smacks off of the lapels of your jacket and ricochets like stars, caught in the light of the streetlamp overhead, but for all he knows or cares it could be raining diamond and all he sees is you- the wrinkling of your nose as you accommodate to the cold, how your cheeks flush at the chill (as they had those nights he pulled you into the darkroom, evidence of your apprehension drowned in the red glow of safelights); your hair is longer, unkempt, but still that same colour (clumps he’d find in his clenched fist when you’d argue yourselves into a wrestling match, pinning each other by the throats to dented walls in Die Landebahn); that scar upon your brow; that wavering line of your lip, pursed and hiding behind your reticence as you always did, and your eyes- your eyes—
—you feel someone watching—
—your eyes turn, and fix upon him with the startled softness of a doe, hunter betrayed by the snapping of a branch underfoot. Adler’s heel crunches against broken glass, his hand lingering right in that threadbare threshold upon the doorhandle, and he can’t speak, can’t move, can’t think—
Open the door, Bell, open the door—
—and you stop outside the cab, your breath caught in your throat. You see a shadow in the alley, in the shape of a man.
The darkness of the alley gives enough cover that you don’t see much, but what you do make out of the man prickles at a part of your mind long dormant: the haughtily broad set of the shoulders; the halo of blond tinted red just beneath the flickering exit light above the door where he stands; the shadow of a strong, clenched jaw; and in the brief glinting of passing headlights as cars rush on behind you, you see a face half gorged by a thick, forked scar, a fissure struck down his furrowed expression. A pair of dark aviator glasses hide those eyes that you know are looking at you, reflecting back nothing but your own bewilderment.
There is something you know. Deep inside that half rotted head of yours, where an incomplete recollection of your existence before you awoke bleeding on that clifftop lies, you feel a twinge of recognition. Familiarity. Something. Something stirring deep in your marrow- a fear inherited, a conditioned surrender, a faded polaroid, a kiss? Your migraine, chronic, comes clawing back with a vengeance, as it does most nights, but this time with a savage fervour that wrenches your face into an involuntary grimace. Where the hole in your head had once been all those years ago it tickles and burns, burrowing into your brain and groping greedy fingers along remnants of memory. It claws at you, digging through your amygdala to find something fresh, something old, something palpable, real, something- anything. Searching what little remains visible to you in the thick fog of your own mind to pin a meaning to this feeling, an answer to your question, a name to that face.
You’ve seen him before. You swear. Somewhere. In a dream, reoccurring, behind a red door. You don’t know how, or why you’d think you recognise him- in those dreams, the door never even opens. Your hand ever stuck on the handle, jammed and impenetrable, what sits behind it forbidden to you. Like not even your own mind wants you to know. It confines you to your ignorance, almost blissful.
Adler’s heart kicks violently in his chest. He shot you. He killed you. He’d heard your death rattle on that clifftop in Solovetsky and the sound was almost like singing, your last word, your last breath. A miserere for your short and fractured life. And he’s looking at your ghost, standing there all owl-eyed and as beautiful as the day he found you bleeding out on that airstrip. Before he took you. Before he took you and collared you and made a damned mess of things.
The only thing separating you from the Bell he knows he killed- his Bell- is the star-shaped scar split across your left temple. The only wound he never had to sit and heal as he belligerently patched you up, poking and preening you like his prize dog. Yet in spite of never seeing it before, he recognises the wound all too well. He put it there himself.
And as you stand there for that brief moment- no more than twelve seconds stretched to an eternity- he thinks for a moment that you’ve put it together. You recognise him. You see him. As he is. You’ve figured him out, Bell, as you always do. You’re the only one to have gotten away with it, nearly. Or so he thought. And now he’s watching a corpse having dug itself out of the grave he put it in, standing there, staring at him. Suppose you’ve always been a dead man walking.
You could do it, he thinks. Turn. Fling your heel round and barrel towards him with all the enmity of a cornered animal. He thinks of the strays, barking. Can picture your mouth frothing at the sides as you sink your teeth down into him- gnarled canines, hooked to your chain-link fence- which he probably deserves. Not an unfamiliar feeling by any stretch, but one faraway enough to seem almost sweet now through the hazy lens of nostalgia. If there truly is a sentimental bone in his body after all, then maybe it’s just for that. Still, he holds his breath, awaiting the killing blow he’s surely due. But it never comes.
You release your held breath, finally, tearing your eyes away from the callous faced stranger. It’s a ridiculous notion. Just an uncanny instance of déjà vu. You don’t know that man any more than you know yourself. You settle on a more rational answer- just one of those faces. And with a disgruntled sigh you rub the scar upon your temple to soothe the ache, turn around, and enter the bar alone.
Adler sighs, his heart sinking from up high in his throat back down to his chest. His hand has latched onto the doorhandle for so long it’s gone numb from the cold, bruised knuckles bluer than they were before (bar fights- not here, but another, as there will always be). He wrestles his jaw pensively, knowing he ought to take it off, keep the door closed, turn away, and leave. Slink back, tail between his legs, to that shithole hotel room to drink himself into a stupor. Let you haunt him there, instead. As you always have.
But he doesn’t. He has no idea what idiocy compels him, what soft, dewy-eyed weak link in him snags on that chain, to willingly wander back into the viper den of reminiscence, but he wrenches his fist around the handle, pushes, and lets himself back into the bar, the thick, hot air hitting him like a drug that he breathes in, tart and sour with the cloy of sweat and alcohol but still faintly- just faintly- of you. Like rain carried along the wind.
And Russell Adler is not a sentimental man.
But from across the bar he hides behind his beer glass, watches as you move about, a phantom, weaving through the faceless mass of people celebrating a championship he cares nothing to follow. You take your order at the bar with a smile he’s never seen on you before, boots folded to tip-toes as you lean over the liquor-stickied top, your perfect mouth pink and sweet and laughing and alive. The world seems to move about you in a haze, an indistinct mist of blurred faces and bottled voices and beyond all the light and life and joy that seems to burn bright around you like a halo all he sees is you.
Maybe, then, he’s a fool.
But it isn’t lost on him, how your fingers skirt across your hair in an attempt to hide the scar upon your temple. Nor is it lost on him how you wince at the feeling, the stars in your eyes dimmed for just a split second as you shiver, like a touch imperceptible running fingers down your back. Nor even the way you fight the urge to look, to follow the feeling of his eyes fixed upon you, and surely not the way you lose that fight, surrendered to it, your sweet face turning and finding him in an instant. Without so much as trying, like instinct, like something as pathetic and saccharine as fate. Your heart called to it, a lighthouse in the fog. Port in the storm. Ships passing in the night but called crashing to the same shore.
(The pieces of you are scattered everywhere, Bell. He finds you in every split seam inside himself. Splintered shrapnel dug through his temporal lobe, severing synapses ‘til they go dark. Even stars die quicker than that. Quicker than you. Is that what it felt like for you, too? When the lights went out, was it him you last saw- or the sky, waxen, over the Arctic? A waning night, a distant moon. The inconsequence of death- brief celestial ephemera.)
The stranger across the bar looks at you, offering nary a smile, eyes indiscernible behind shadowed sunglasses. And where you ought to find his apparent coldness disconcerting, instead you wring out of your chest with a white-knuckled caress a feeling like… comfort.
Sometimes, Bell, you go back to Berlin. You don’t quite know why.
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