NAME : colton vincent hill
HAIR STYLE / COLOR : brown, medium(ish) length, middle part, really curly in the back, loose curls hanging over his eyes. it all gets really curly when wet or played with a lot.
HEIGHT : 5'7". for now. until i chop another inch off him for fun again.
CLOTHING STYLE : he's a big Jacket Guy and has a lot of them he likes to pair with his outfits, so he typically likes a lot of layers. his denim jacket in his favorite. he also wears a lot of graphic t-shirts (of bands, silly illustrations, etc — never any sports teams or anything like that). he's typically always wearing high top converses and he does have them in every color to match anything and yet he usually only wears the black ones. likes to cuff his pants (and often has to) and mostly wears chinos but sometimes wears jeans or joggers. studded belts. always wearing jewelry — wears a thick skull necklace on his 4th right finger, typically wearing rings on his pointer + middle finger on his left hand. he never goes anywhere without wearing his sword necklace that rust gifted him long before they were together. he's also typically wearing a crocheted bracelet that victoria made him + other metal bracelets. after the massacre, he mostly buys new clothing instead of washing it because he's an annoying rich person — he also starts wearing sporty crop tops then and some more hunting jackets / plaids, really fitting in as rust's boyfriend. he also really likes stripe patterns.
BEST PHYSICAL FEATURE : the sharp jaw he could kill a clown with.
FEARS : i don't think he's really scared of specific things, or at least that's how he approaches everything, very much ready for anything. post-massacre, and especially after the riots, he's wary of anyone touching his neck; it's the first place his father goes both times he tries to kill him + i imagine there is even some history before that despite it hardly feeling 'violent' to cole. the exception is rust; he flinches if anyone else comes near his neck but always readily accepts it when it's rust. when rust is around, he feels secure and safe. once he and rust are together, cole is a little worried that someday, rust will decide all the waiting he did for cole and all the self-sacrificing (+ the way saving cole again and again has literally shaped rust's body) isn't worth it, even though there's some part of him that understands it's irrational.
GUILTY PLEASURE : rust voice does cole experience guilt? (he does). spending money in general, definitely. vaping, but less so after he loses his previous group of friends. in the frendo lives era he's generally always drinking a beer in the shower. pre-series, probably the biggest guilty pleasure is enjoying fleeting moments with rust where he can almost pretend they could just be together, only to leave rust disappointed + rejected when cole still doesn't know how to commit to it. for a lot of his time in high school, he liked spending his alone time driving + listening to really loud music, mostly as an excuse to not be home or to not feel like he has to perform with his friends.
BIGGEST PET PEEVE : slow driving, bad tippers. i honestly can't think of any other pet peeves because i know that cole probably does a thousand things that are everyone else's pet peeves and yet is still so beloved <3
AMBITIONS FOR THE FUTURE : he didn't really have any other than knowing he wanted to get away from his father, but it was so hard to imagine himself anywhere but kettle springs. part of him always understood that the baypen / hill legacy wasn't something he was welcome in. the videos + his online persona were fun and he had vague dreams of doing that in college, but it was always hard to picture himself anywhere; that was mostly because he didn't know himself yet. he was also passively suicidal for many years, so he kind of didn't think he'd have a future anyway. once he comes to terms with being gay + understands who his father really was, it's a lot easier to imagine a future for himself, especially after surviving his father and realizing how much he actually does want to live. rebuilding kettle springs is really important to him, leading "the three" in media coverage comes naturally to him. i think he'll get more into activism as the years go on, but at this point, he's focused on getting their story correct — which is what i imagine the next book will focus on for him.
FIRST THOUGHTS WAKING UP : did i even sleep?
WHAT THEY THINK ABOUT MOST : himself but not necessarily in a selfish way, more so in the way that he spends a lot of his time trying to figure out who he is beyond who people perceive him to be; he's also often thinking about who he's lost and what he's left with in the aftermath of it. and rust, of course.
WHAT THEY THINK ABOUT BEFORE BED : his mind is always spiraling at night to the point where he just tries to tire himself out til he falls asleep. he's usually doomscrolling for hours before he falls asleep. so no real thoughts other than that he's just never comfortable in hill manor. once he and rust are together, he tries really hard to focus on the fact that he's with rust and he knows what it's like to be loved, but it's hard sometimes when so much of his young adult life has been about people trying to take away everything he loves / punish him.
WHAT THEY THINK THEIR BEST QUALITY IS : cole does understand he's good at connecting with people even if he knows people don't really "see" him anyway. he's just really good at talking to people, even people who hate him. maybe doesn't go for his father.
𝙻𝙰𝚈𝙴𝚁 𝟶𝟶𝟺 : 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓’𝐒 𝐁𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑?
SINGLE OR GROUP DATES : pre-series he preferred group dates because he was only dating girls and never knew how to be alone with anyone because something always felt off, and he couldn't make sense of it, and he always felt like he was performing, so it was easier to be in group settings. once he comes out and is with rust, he prefers single dates. he's open to group ones as long as rust is.
TO BE LOVED OR RESPECTED : he wants to be respected. literally the least his father could've done is respected him — cole would've accepted that his father didn't love him if he could at least give him that. being loved is kind of scary for him because of how rare it's always felt, some part of him always aware of how much rust loved him and it scaring him away.
BEAUTY OR BRAINS : brains. he's into clever people. helps that rust is the most beautiful person in the world to cole.
DOGS OR CATS : cats. cole is the type to bring a stray cat home (+ he does, in their ranch era). he's good with other people's dogs but doesn't want one of his own.
LIE : yeah. often to himself. his lies to others aren't necessarily harmful, though. he never intends to hurt people, but often when he's lying to himself, it's inevitable he's going to hurt himself + others (rust the biggest victim of this in the years before they got together).
BELIEVE IN THEMSELVES : not really. it's hard to believe in himself after victoria's death; he blames himself, so does his father, and he starts to believe what people are saying — that he only inevitable causes trouble and heartache. but... he does try to prove them (+ himself) wrong about it. he wants to believe in himself, most importantly.
BELIEVE IN LOVE : hard question. romantic love was confusing to him for so long because some part of him was always aware that he loved rust, but he didn't know what that meant for himself + struggled so much with his sexuality. he kept trying to date girls and push himself to be open to those relationships, but nothing ever came of it, he always felt hopeless, so there were times when he thought maybe he just wasn't capable of romantic love, but only because he was desperately trying to ignore what his feelings for rust really were. so now, of course he believes in love — rust is the love of his life, and he always has been. but it's hard to understand how he'd gotten here, how rust never gave up on him, how rust ever loved him at all and kept loving him despite everything.
WANT SOMEONE : rust. it's always been rust. even before he was ever willing to admit it to himself / to rust / to anyone, he could never really want anyone else because rust still existed and rust was still an option and his heart was always with rust.
𝙻𝙰𝚈𝙴𝚁 𝟶𝟶𝟼 : 𝐇𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐘 𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑…
BEEN ON STAGE : kind of metaphorically. he's always had a platform but especially after the massacre — so he's used to being the face of interviews + always camera ready, but even before the massacre, he was used to being the voice of his people + being on stage / giving speeches. in a sense, he'd been acting in his videos, but... he's not actively an actor / someone seeking that kind of stage. cole is always performing in some way, though.
CHANGED WHO THEY WERE TO FIT IN : not exactly but it's complicated. mostly he just hid himself (from himself, too) in high school and when he made a bunch of new friends, obviously there was a role he was giving himself to be the guy they all expected him to be. only rust ever knew who he really was. but none of this was really to 'fit in' — cole was popular even before making his new friends. he mostly changes himself to fit in with the version of himself that people expect from him, in a sense.
FAVORITE COLOR : blue, gray. tends to gravitate towards darker shades.
FAVORITE ANIMAL : deer make him think of rust. he likes goats but not because it was his high school mascot. incredibly fascinated with whales.
FAVORITE BOOK : lord of the rings.
FAVORITE GAME : fortnite, but he hardly plays after tucker dies.
DAY THEIR NEXT BIRTHDAY WILL BE : please don't make me come up with a birthday <3
HOW OLD WILL THEY BE : 22 in canon... or somewhere around there.
𝙻𝙰𝚈𝙴𝚁 𝟶𝟶𝟿 : 𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐒𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄.
I LOVE : rust, quinn, glenn, jerri, jim, sybil — they're his family now.
I FEEL : generally sad. ironically, he's a little less sad after the massacre, but mostly because he feels like he has some kind of reign on his own life that he didn't have before when he was living under his father's roof — but of course he's still all kinds of messed up after learning who his father really was.
I HIDE : his own fears + insecurities to others, and often to himself — particularly post-massacre when he refuses to really consider the fact that his father could still be alive.
I MISS : victoria / the person he was before she died. his mother. tucker, janet. the people he thought matt and ronnie were. the false perception he used to have of his father before he realized how horrible he truly was (because it was a version of arthur that still hurt but was at least bearable to live with).
I WISH : that he could trust new friendships. part of him always understood that hunter was never going to turn out to be the friend cole needed/wanted him to be, in a time when he'd lost most of his and lost so much sense of himself. he always understood that hunter was taking advantage of that friendship in some way, but he was so desperate to have a friend that he (felt like he) let him weaponize that. after hunter dies, it's going to be hard for cole to trust that any friend is really willing to be a real friend, who isn't trying to gain something from it (because that's what matt and ronnie were doing, in some way, too— hunter didn't betray him as badly as they did, but it really does just add to it + influence his heartache from that).
