ANOTHER ALEX DOODLE PLUS MORE HEAD CANONS / AU LORE
Woah who saw that coming? I'm just FULL of surprises
He's not coping too well with being dragged to Seattle. ANYWAY SLOP BELOW THE CUT 👇
Ew
Okay anyway.
This one's gonna be a lil differently formatted cause I have some listed in a word doc from a while ago
and there's no way I'm letting all those forgotten goodies go to waste >:]
So, most other blacklight infected can maintain their body temperature except for Alex, he's in general very physically unique compared to other infected anyways, taking on a lot of Elizabeth's physical traits after Heller hard reset him. So he's usually very shaky and uncomfortable in cold weather, he can absolutely put up with it but it does slow his shape shifting and healing significantly, sometimes just outright freezing his flesh and borderline paralyzing smaller portions of his body with bad circulation
He's almost entirely blind in bright light, anything brighter than a grocery store is physically irritating and painful to see, causing excruciating headaches and occasionally nosebleeds. This typically gets worse the longer he goes without biomass or stays in bright light (he got a lot of vampire jokes about this from Delsin until he saw Alex pass out during one of these episodes)
Definitely an insomniac, the virus doesn't really have an "off switch" or at least not an effective one. He tosses and turns constantly due to just general physical discomfort, he's hyper aware of everything which makes it hard to sleep in the city with all the noise, and it takes hours to convince his subconscious he's safe and it's okay to sleep. He suffers from frequent night terrors typically related to his own shitty memories or fears, usually involving Dana's passing or the virus trying to hijack his psyche again. It's a good thing Delsin doesn't really need sleep all that much because he's usually got enough voltage and potential energy stored up in his body to fry a whole building, so he doesn't mind staying up to talk or make Alex more comfortable
He's got a strange "squirming" sensation beneath his skin, the virus is prone to aggressive random muscle spasms, and you can sometimes see him twitch or move strangely when it effects larger muscle groups. But there's a thin portion beneath his outer layer of skin and flesh that regularly squirms and jerks around uncomfortably in response to stimulus, he thought he was just imagining this at first until Delsin confirmed it was HORRIFYINGLY REAL. The only thing that's actually visible is him flinching or sneering in response, you'd have to press your hand against him really hard to notice any of it yourself
He gets hyper aware of everything when the virus starts starving, it picks up on every potential "target" it can, hearing everyone's heartbeats and breathing, every cough or "mouth noise" drives him crazy, blasting music through his headphones to try and ignore it. It also makes him less aware of some things when it's concentrating on "people noises" having a few moments where he's almost walked into traffic or losing significant portions of time. Delsin's had to literally yank him away from roads because he just absent mindedly kept walking, so it's better to just keep him fed before it gets to that point
he's got severe neurological and memory issues, much moreso after what happened with Heller. He mixes up events, forgets important details about himself and others, struggles with some very basic bits of common sense, has trouble making natural facial expressions that don't look "off", and often "wakes up" finding he's forgotten half a day of events or wound up hours away from where he remembers, sometimes words just sound like complete nonsense to him for a few seconds before snapping out of it. This is probably a result of years of brain damage and blacklight fuckery in general, (in all truth Elizabeth's flawed DNA really did a number on him, Heller just kinda put the nail in the coffin really)
He struggles eating normal food a lot, the virus wants biomass and calories yes, but it mostly wants LIVING biomass, he definitely feels hungry most of the time since that's the only way the virus can convey what it wants. Sure he's got a digestive system but it only sorta half works, rejecting most food and making him extremely nauseous and sick while still feeling starved and shitty. Sandwich meat, sushi, and very few select Chinese food places are acceptable safe-ish bets, unfortunately those Chinese food places are back in Manhattan so he's just stuck with cold deli meat for now. It does kinda make Delsin feel a little guilty for getting takeout, because he knows he'll either have to put hours into considering what the virus would be okay with or Alex will just have to deal with getting sick(er)
He forces his voice down to sound more intimidating, and he doesn't know how ridiculous he sounds doing it. The original non infected Mercer also did this constantly, so it's just leftover muscle memory that he's not really aware of now. It takes a lot to break him out of this but it happens sometimes, extreme pain or surprise will usually do it, especially since he's lost most of his pain tolerance and composure
He does occasionally hallucinate, not often, mostly when he's tired or starving. It can be visual, auditory, or touch related. It's usually pretty random, things like spiders or hands in his peripheral vision, the feeling of a nosebleed that isn't real, someone yelling his name or screaming. The ones involving people he knows are rare but horrible, some are of Dana or her corpse at least, he's had a few involving Elizabeth typically standing behind him or grabbing his neck, plenty of himself or "himself" during his psychosis back in New York. Delsin's new enough in his life to appear rarely in these, but the few he's had are Delsin screaming at him or degrading him. He's not sure why exactly the virus would do this to him, the best he can come up with is that the virus is trying to rebuild the long term brain damage he has, and it doesn't understand how so it just throws random cells together to try and compensate for the missing instructions
The red beneath his eyes is a fairly common symptom of the blacklight, it's just really visible on him. It becomes very exaggerated when he blushes, extending down his face and onto his shoulders in enormous sickly red-ish pink blotches. He's grossed out and embarrassed about it of course, he's terrified of being recognizably infected, so getting extra symptomatic tends to freak him out. Delsin likes it though, sometimes purposefully antagonizing or teasing him to intentionally cause it, like I said in my last post I chose to keep Delsin karma neutral so he's still very juvenile and selfish in a lot of ways, not really understanding why it freaks Alex out or bothers him
GREAT GOOGALY MOOGALY THATS A LOT OF WORDS
Anyway, I can't stop blabbering about these two
I know I promised some more Alex and Ruvik stuff a while ago (and don't worry that's on its way trust me, I need muh toxic psycho shit show just as much as the next guy) but Delsin and Alex just fit together in a really entertaining way
Feel free to drop any suggestions or add-ons in the reblogs ty!!!
Until next time ;] (just imagine that smile a little more malevolent and menacing okay byeeeeeee)
