you better be sure you want to know what you want to know.
#STEELEYED / BRENDAN FRYE FROM BRICK (2005). as written by k. private & selective.
look, rules are what they are across the board and the bio's under the cut temporarily because i have a drive to write this guy. i'll make a site this weekend. i just want to yap a bit.
full name: brendan tetsuji frye. nickname(s): brendan. aliases: more than a few depending on the case. gender: cis male. (idk. i might change this. i'm thinking.) pronouns: he/him. age: generally written in mid to late twenties. sexuality: bisexual. face claim: safil kawamura.
ethnicity: mixed (japanese-pakistani-white). nationality: american. spoken language(s): english, bits of japanese and punjabi.
speech/tone: quick, calm, confident. a smoothness to it. very much in the lineage of sam spade. if someone tells him that he always has a very smooth explanation ready, brendan would respond with the classic ‘what do you want me to do, learn to stutter?’—and he’d mean it. religion: firmly atheist. besides, if god’s out there, he sure as hell isn’t looking, so what's the point in believing?
occupation: private investigator of a sort. he doesn't like to be called that, but what else do you call someone who does what he does? financial status: lower middle class when he was younger, which was part of the friction at school. much the same now, although mostly because he'd rather spit on your shoes than end up how most of the rich people he knows ended up. education history: high school graduate, not that he likes thinking on the cesspool of san clemente high school much. bits of college in there, but what was the damned point of it all, anyway?
physical diagnoses: nearsighted. chronic pain from how many times he's had the shit kicked out of him in his life. mental diagnoses: some absurd kinds of ptsd. depression, although he'd refuse to ever believe it.
notable features: in most ways, brendan looks entirely average. this is intentional on his part. his posture is intentionally atrocious. once he's involved in a situation, there is a gravitational confidence he displays. he's just very good at not being noticed, at functioning alone, and at staying in the background until he decides it's the right time to move. calculated, one might say.
height: 5’10" weight: 133 lbs. eye color: brown. hair color: black. body type: thin, a little underweight. has a certain wiry kind of power under it all, but he hides it behind atrocious posture and uses a jacket to make his shoulders look more broad than they are. wardrobe: most importantly: a jacket is the most distinguishing part of his wardrobe. what it is changes. it used to be a beige us navy n-1 deck jacket back in high school. these days it varies—brown leather, something long and dark. under it, unassuming: a plain jeans and t-shirt, and a pair of scuffed, worn-out brown oxfords. he often wears paler colors because of the california heat. he's usually wearing glasses, along with a black eye and a few scrapes. they suit him—the scrapes, specifically.
star sign: scorpio sun, aries moon. alignment: somewhere between chaotic good and chaotic neutral. mbti: istp (the virtuoso). enneagram: 8w9 (the challenger). five positives: self-assured, cunning, observant, witty, efficient. five negatives: resentful, jaded, stubborn, detached, opportunistic.
skills: detective work and everything it entails—observation, interrogation, scoping someone out, and even a fistfight. brendan's not exactly skilled in terms of combat, but he refuses to give up. he would rather die before giving up. his willpower is genuinely his greatest asset, along with his ability to read a situation and figure out how to play the people in it to his advantage—or at least to push them towards the outcome he wants. interests: brendan's life is soaked through with a kind of suburban malaise, which means that most of his pursuits are solitary. he gets books from the library to keep himself busy, and he keeps none of them. he pours himself a drink and watches an old movie that doesn't make him feel too much. hobbies aren't about enjoyment. they're about using up all that extra time. intelligence: brendan is sharp in general. he likes to learn. he's got a good eye for people and a good read on them. he's especially good at reading the dynamics between people—who's in control, who isn't. it's strong street smarts with being generally well-read, though he's certainly not infallible. god knows he's got his blind spots, and he's paid plenty for it.
the city of san clemente is half-picturesque from the outside—perfect weather, gorgeous beaches, surfers. made for glossy brochures and fleeting memories. for brendan frye, born and raised there, it looks like something else. he grew up on the uglier side of the tracks—not falling off the curb, but closer to the edge. imagine it like this: single mom who worked as a nurse at a local hospital, long endless hours of seventy degree heat, no oversight, just time and boredom and quick thinking. sometimes a kid's born with a hole in their heart. if they're lucky, they get the right parents, friends, education to fill it. if they're unlucky, nothing ever does. and brendan's never had good luck. only the luck he makes. what he had: an savviness for gumshoeing, a mean right hook when he meant it, hatred for the bulls who always flashed their standards too easy, and enough years with the same cohort of self-serving kids turned teens turned almost-adults to know them inside and out. high school was where things got ugly. first problem: he got in with kara. drama vamp, liked to sink her teeth into anything that bled. back then he was bleeding too much. but it got him up close to the glass ceiling between the people like the two of them and the husks flush with too much money. he got close. too close, breath frosting there against the glass. got out from under kara, staggering up on his feet, and then fell right back down in love with one emily kostich, which was always where it was going to get difficult. things were good for a while. that's always the wound, isn't it? they were good; then they weren't. brendan fed a boy named frisco farr to the right authorities because he didn't like the look of him, sticky fingers and too much hunger, and emily walked away. disgust. maybe it hurt too much being around him, all sharp edges and cold, watching the upper crust from across the parking lot and reading malice in how they breathed. then she kept walking, right into the arms of those self-same wealthy bloodsuckers who used her all up. emily, dead in a drainage ditch in san clemente. brendan, crouching there, watching the impossible stillness of a corpse, blond hair splayed out around her skull like a halo, blue plastic bracelets on her wrist. no saving her. just breaking the right teeth, and finding out who put her in front of the gun. so he did. and it broke him into a thousand little pieces. ugly world, ugly choices. more bodies than he ever expected, bruised and battered, war between the kingpin of the san clemente suburbs and his right hand bruiser who didn't know much beyond how to break open a skull, and brendan right in the middle. neither of them got out, but he did. lost the jacket, lost that little bit of hope, and understood too much. for once the few right people who survived went to prison. not that it changed anything. brendan stayed quiet, kept his head down, bit down on that pit of hatred in his chest until it went quiet, and kept a thumb on the pulse of san clemente. it was always speeding towards the next flutter of panic. it's the same messy scene years later, even if he's sharing an apartment with the only person he trusts more than a stone's throw in the world. everything changes, nothing changes. so it goes.
