+ Alma_Nevada +

The first is that MC has already met someone with that kind of mindset before. That's why BB says he knew she'd understand. If my theory about MC knowing RB before BB is true, and RB encouraged or influenced BB's dangerous riding habits, then that makes sense. MC isn't just understanding BB. She understands RB too, or maybe both of them.

The second possibility is that MC herself is the thrill seeker, or at least someone who's drawn to that kind of mentality. Maybe she was the one who introduced those ideas to BB, or maybe she simply encouraged RB whenever he acted that way. If that's the case, BB's comment takes on a completely different meaning because he already knows she'll relate to his way of thinking.

Of course, we have no idea what actually happened between these characters, so this is only how I interpret BB's words. I could be completely wrong.

Now, about RB's riding gear.

Just because someone wears full gear doesn't automatically mean they care about safety. Some people wear it simply to avoid getting pulled over by the police.

But in RB's case, I like to think the reason is much simpler. He just thinks it looks cool.

His helmet has a devil face painted on it, which could've been something he customized himself. We also see, in the corner of the photo inside BB's locker, a jacket that's theorized to belong to RB, and it has Ducati branding on it. His red racing suit also has racing numbers #27 and the word "Redline" across it.

To me, all of that suggests he might be a hardcore MotoGP or motocross fan.

Sometimes people wear merchandise or replicas because they love the sport and want to look like their favorite riders. It's like kids showing off their favorite toys or collectors proudly wearing jerseys from their favorite team. If RB enjoys customizing his gear and building that image, then the equipment might be more about style and identity than protection. He probably wears it when he wants to make an impression instead of every single time he rides.

I did a little research and found a few interesting things that might support this idea. (Have no knowledge about this field, stay with me).

The Number 27

In professional motorcycle racing, especially MotoGP, riders choose a permanent racing number that becomes part of their identity. Number 27 is Casey Stoner's iconic number. He kept it throughout his career, including the years when he dominated the championship before retiring in 2012.

The Suits

Stoner won his first MotoGP World Championship in 2007 while riding for Ducati's factory team. Ducati's signature color has always been bright racing red, so Stoner wore an all red leather racing suit during that period.

The "RedLine" (The term has a double meaning here):

The Mechanical Meaning: In motorcycling, the "redline" is the absolute maximum speed/RPM an engine can handle before it risks blowing up. Casey Stoner was famous for riding an aggressive, hard-to-control Ducati bike right on its absolute limit (the metaphorical redline).

The Gear Meaning: Famous motorcycle gear brands (like Alpinestars or Dainese) have historically made high-end racing suits with names like the "Red Line" series, featuring distinctive red accent stripes across the leather body.

As for the devil face on RB's helmet, I couldn't find any reliable sources connecting it to a specific racing tradition. Most of what I found came from discussions with motorcycle fans, so take this with a grain of salt since different communities have different interpretations.

One explanation I heard is that the devil represents becoming a "speed demon."

The idea is that when riders push 250 horsepower motorcycles past 220 mph, they have to enter an almost fearless state of mind. They leave behind their normal selves and become something more aggressive and reckless while chasing the rider in front of them.

Is that basically the motorcycle version of entering the Zone in basketball? 🤔

I also came across Fabio Quartararo, whose nickname is "El Diablo" or "The Devil." However, he was born in 1999 so I don't think he'd be the reference if Shift's inspiration comes from the late 2000s.

So overall, I think RB could simply be a die hard motorcycle racing fan. Maybe he collects racing merchandise, loves Ducati, follows his favourite riders, and enjoys dressing the part. The gear isn't necessarily about safety. It's part of the image he wants to project. If the devil motif really is intentional, then it also reinforces the impression of someone who wants to look intimidating, reckless and almost supernatural whenever he tears down the road.

I like to associate him with this song.

If my theory is right, then honestly, if I were BB, I'd probably become friends with RB too.

BB's life feels very emotionally neutral before all this. He doesn't really have a direction, purpose or anything strong enough to pull him out of his own head. That's why he constantly spirals into his thoughts and ends up consumed by them.

Then RB suddenly appears and throws color into his life.

Motorcycles. Racing. Adrenaline. Dangerous stupid decisions at 2 AM.

For the first time, BB has something to focus on besides himself.

RB distracts him from those thoughts, but at the same time also enables his reckless behavior. Instead of calming BB down, he gives him a new outlet for all that self destructive energy. I can totally see BB clinging onto that because even chaos is better than feeling emotionally numb all the time.

Like Randova said, you'd never know how stoopid men can get when they're trying to impress a woman they like.

That's why I still love the idea that both of them ended up racing each other to show off in front of MC, only for it to go horribly wrong while she witnesses the entire crash happen.

Because from BB's perspective, RB isn't just some random biker guy. He might've been the person who unknowingly gave BB a reason to feel alive for once, even if it came packaged with recklessness, obsession and eventual disaster!!

The Doctor is no stranger to aggressive behaviours, nor is it an emotion he has never experienced. After all, it is one of the most basic behaviours a creature can exhibit: how could he, one whose knowledge is held in such high regard, not know everything that can be known on the matter?

There is accidental aggression, one born of carelessness and distraction. There is expressive aggression, usually occurring in youth, wherein causing harm is more a side effect than the intention. There is hostile aggression, in which the primary intent is to hurt another individual, and instrumental aggression, which is the means to an end. He has studied each of these extensively, and of course there are many behaviours falling under these umbrellas, such as the playful fights Pierrot and Harlequin got into as children, but all of this is something that the Doctor understands to the letter.

See, something quite peculiar has taken place ever since you started frequenting the circus (or rather his tent, his, a detail that occupies his brain a non-insignificant amount of time) more often. Where at first he felt only curiosity towards you, then a blooming sense of endearment, he now finds himself feeling something completely new - a feeling akin to aggression, but not one that aligns with any definition he has previously learnt or established.

Well, used to understand would be a more apt statement.

This bizarre emotion rears its head within the Doctor’s chest seemingly without rhyme or reason. The first time it occurred, you had been in his medical tent trying on his gloves, the size of which was far too large for your small, human hands, and he had been overcome with a sensation unlike any he has ever felt. He felt his facial muscles tighten, his claws clench, and he was overwhelmed with a peculiar need to squeeze, whatever that could mean. You had looked at him, then, head cocking slightly at his odd behaviour, and he had felt some strange sound try to claw itself out of his throat. He had spent the rest of that evening taking note of this fascinating physiological reaction, believing it to be a one-off incident that he must record lest he forgets and never gets the chance to document the occurence.

Alas, he was mistaken, for it was not a one-off incident. Not even close.

Now, all he needs is the only stimulus seeming to provoke such a reaction - you.

To his ever-increasing confusion, the feeling keeps popping up: when he notices how short you are beside him, when you buy him a crow plushie that you insist is a spitting image of him, when your eyes crinkle just right mid-laugh. Truly, in one of these moments, the Doctor is grateful that he is the one experiencing such a thing, not just because it might evoke a different kind of aggression in, say, Jester, but also because he is the only one that can truly appreciate what is happening. He is a scientist. He is on the verge of a breakthrough. He is the perfect subject of such bizarre emotions.

The Doctor invites you one spring evening to his tent, requesting that you partake in a study but refusing to elaborate. Your eyes light up at that, asking questions despite knowing no answer will be given, and this curiosity that so mirrors his own has his heart take on an irregular pulse. Not quite the feeling he is hoping to relive, but it is not an unpleasant one either.

He takes you to his private quarters - a place you scarcely visit, spending more time strapped to his examination table - and asks you to sit yourself on one of his chairs. With an easy movement, he brings round another, settling easily in place before you. Then, he leans forward, elbows on his knees as his cyan lenses stare at you.

And he stares.

And stares.

“Uh, Doctor?” you ask, the small wrinkle by your lips betraying your bemusement (how endearing) as you cross your legs upon the chair. “When’s the study starting?”

He chuckles at that. “My dear patient, it already has. The moment you entered, as a matter of fact.”

“You didn’t give me anything, though,” you protest in confusion, and he’s about to give you the smallest amount of clarification when you reach the conclusion yourself, eyes lighting up in realisation. “Oh, is this, like, a behavioural study? Rather than a how-I-react-to-your-concoctions one?”

There it is. He feels a spike of that peculiar emotion in every muscle of his hands, wanting to just reach out and- No, he must focus. It was a spike, but not one strong enough to warrant concluding the experiment. He must provoke it again.

But how on earth did he do it?

“Penny for your thoughts, Doctor?” you ask, throwing him out of his deliberation. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”

Hm. Perhaps it would not be folly to let you know of his plans. After all, he is studying his own reaction, not yours, and maybe you could assist in helping it reappear.

“I have been experiencing a most peculiar sensation,” he starts, focused on every microexpression and blink and shift of your face. “See, you have a tendency of making me feel some sort of aggression, yet it differs from any I know.”

He watches how your brow furrows at that. “Aggression? Did I do something wrong?”

“Not at all, my dear patient,” he laughs under his breath.

“But it annoys you.”

 “No, quite the opposite. This emotion seems to be somewhat pleasant, albeit it fills me with a desire to… compress the one evoking it. As such, I am trying to have it occur once more, in a controlled environment. For science.”

He watches how you hold your chin in your hand, eyes finding his. “So it's a pleasant aggression. Rivalry, maybe? Though that wouldn't make sense.”

“It is certainly not that,” he agrees.

“Possessiveness?”

Oh, now that is a feeling you evoke in him, but… 

“No, it is not that, dear patient.”

The two of you go back and forth like that for some time, listing every possible emotion you can think of, yet nothing matches what he is experiencing. How peculiar - it has been building in him the whole conversation yet the name of this stubborn sensation eludes him.

Finally, you throw up your hands. “Ok, I'm at a loss. I've run out of ideas.”

At that, he cocks his head to the side. “You are hiding something, are you not?”

You blink. Blink again. His superior senses allow him to detect how your face heats - something you surely must hope he cannot sense - though he cannot quite decipher why that is the case.

“I mean- I have no logical ideas.” When he doesn't answer, you continue rambling. “I mean, it kind of sounds like cuteness aggression but I doubt-”

You gesture vaguely with your hands searching for words. “It’s like when something is cute, really cute, and you just want to squeeze or bite it, I guess.”

“Hm?” Now that is a term unknown to him. “Please elaborate.”

Oh? Is that how this is to be resolved? He had not thought it would require something as intimate as a bite (though he cannot deny the appeal), yet-

 “Or like how you squish a baby’s cheeks or something,” you continue, gesturing the motion. “It's pretty common, from what I've heard.”

There it is again. That stirring in him, provoked now by the way your face scrunches up in thought, how your eyes flit as you try to coherently explain this foreign concept to him.

“I suppose that is not implausible,” he thinks aloud, hooking a finger under his chin. “So you claim that I find you ‘cute’, and that in turn elicits an aggression-adjacent state, correct?”

He senses your face heat more, your hand going to the back of your neck nervously. He hears you mumble something about hardly being cute, but that is not where his focus lies. He is fixated on the nervous smile on your face, the fidgety movements, the way you are so affected in his tent, in his chair, which he now realises is a lot more suited to his size than yours, and the feeling spikes so sharply that he cannot stop himself from rising from his seat, lenses of his mask no longer cyan but blood red. 

Right where you should be.

With a surprising gentleness, despite the thrumming in his limbs, he picks you up by the shoulders, ignoring your confusion as he sets you down on his bed among his blankets and pillows and gifted plushies. You, among what is his. In his space.

He has enough mind to think back to what you said earlier, how people seem to relieve this feeling. Perhaps following such a chain of actions will allow him to feel something new? A hypothesis worth testing.

Carefully, he reaches out, cradling your face in his hands and resting his clawed thumb atop the plush of your cheeks, feeling the warmth of your soft skin under his fingertips.

So, he leans over you, feeling your temperature rise as if he were Harlequin about to engage in some debauchery. No, he is doing this for science. For knowledge. The self-indulgence is an added bonus.

“Doctor?” you ask, voice thin with what is either confusion or some type of emotional arousal. Still, he follows through with his plan and gently, softly, squeezes your cheeks.

The pleased noise that sounds in the back of his throat is unlike any he has ever made. He cannot describe it, and he will not, for suddenly he finds his arms wrapping around you, crow mask nuzzling the side of your face and neck. He will analyse this instinct in detail later, but for now he revels in just how right it feels, and just how endearing his little patient is, and just how much sharper the feeling is at the squeaks of surprise that leave you due to affection.

Oh, what the Doctor wouldn’t give to know what is going through your head right now as you lie pressed beneath him, practically restrained under his weight and unable to do anything but lay there and take his affectionate touch and listen to the increasingly pleased noises leaving him. Then again, there is much he can deduce from the hammering of your heart and the quickening of your breath.

“You seem to undo me in ways I have never experienced,” the Doctor mutters once the urge to press himself against you fades somewhat. “How interesting.”

“Is that a bad thing?” you ask in turn, your voice a tantalising mix of anxiety and excitement.

“No.” He feels himself smile against you, the words making that feeling spike again.  “No, not in the slightest.”

“Do you need me to, uh, to do anything?” You're trying to help the situation, but all you're doing is making the Doctor more worked up in this pleasant little feeling. The fact you have absolutely no idea as to the extent of the effect you're having has him positively elated.

“All I need from you, my dear subject,” he speaks, voice low against the shell of your ear, “is to stay here, with me, under me, whilst this feeling you have me experiencing subsides. I trust it's not a difficult task.”

At this, for some reason, a laugh escapes you. “Alright, I guess. Only ‘cause it's you.”

How interesting. “Whatever do you mean?”

“If it were Harlequin saying all this, I'd have thought it's some kind of elaborate foreplay,” you half laugh, patting the Doctor's back as he remains pressed against you.

The larger man hums in amusement at your words. “You need not worry. I am very adept at keeping such desires to myself.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know–” He feels the exact moment you connect the dots from how your breath catches and heart stutters. “Wait, wait what?”

He keeps his face hidden in the crook of your neck, as if not wanting you to somehow spot his amusement at your confusion through his mask.

Once more, he just laughs, content in your adorable little state of fluster and the steady pulse of your heart beneath him. He is not Harlequin: you need not worry about such activities for now. There are still so many things he needs to test, so many reactions he wants to garner from you and himself alike. That, he tells himself, is an experiment for another time.

“Doctor, elaborate,” you press, voice higher pitched as your face heats.

“No, I don't think I will,” he just hums, still pressed right up against you.

“Doctor?”