#briarmichael

you and i are on the same page here, the briarmichael (coined by @feyburner) spinoff that lives in my head has rapidly grown to at least 35k worth of plot so far. some highlights:

brian has cared deeply about carmichael since high school, but isn’t In Love with him until later. like the summer makeout could’ve been the start of something, but when carmichael seemingly freaked about it and ghosted, brian pretty much moved on. he mourned the friendship more than the potential relationship. he was always the only one to really see past carmichael’s bullshit exterior, but brian was also 18 and going to college and not going to fight for carmichael’s attention if he didn’t want to give it.

meanwhile carmichael has been screaming crying throwing up in love with brian since like middle school, which he would admit to no one ever

carmichael now goes by "carm" as a nickname (per @cairoscene)

until they reunite post-college, brian does not know where/why carm left, because they weren't really talking at that point, and also brian is going to rutgers and experiencing living somewhere where they don't do like fear gas drills on campus for the first time. brian finally gets to flourish in his true form (affable bro who gets to flirt with everyone he wants at house parties)

i’m still deciding if brian even knows carm got disowned or if it was like a society secret. like carm’s parents made it sound like he just went off on a rebellious little trip or something. or if it was like, society gossip

also haven't totally nailed down the disinheritance situation but i want to say like. carm was interning at his dad’s company or his dad’s friend’s company and saw an executive do something Bad in a way that was very jarring to carm, who until this point has been willfully ignorant about most real-world things, and carmichael still saw himself as untouchable and used his annoying personality for good for once by making enough of a fuss to his dad about it that his dad was forced to cut ties with the executive to save face, but in the fallout carm was quietly sent away aka disowned. which carm did not expect, but had just enough backbone by then to not come crawling back immediately.

it was like. in carm’s mind. the right thing for him to do but also like he wasn’t even losing everything to be heroic, to save the world even the city. he just refused to shut up. and he ended up here.

he leaves gotham for a bit. i think he ends up working in a low-level mob restaurant in bludhaven for some time. he finds out he likes designing logos for things so he’s been taking cheap classes when he can and doing a bit of freelance work (starting with again a bludhaven mob but like, not like he could choose his clientele. and they paid him with bonus free dinner every shift). graphic design is his passion.

Also I will be thinking about briarmichael obsessively while I reread, thank you for feeding us <3