#gyrocore

(I’ve mentioned before that Gyro is a clingy sleeper, to the point where if he’s sharing a bed with someone, they’ll wake up with him practically clinging to them for dear life.

But I also had a thought last night that sometimes his non-domesticated instincts might take over and he might end up sleeping on top of them, both as a means of keeping them warm and also as a means of keeping warm himself since he’s a dang icicle. He doesn’t do it on purpose, it’s like sleepwalking but for chickens.

(Thinking about Gyro, and his worst fears and anxieties.

He’s terrified of being socially isolated from people he really cares about, far more than he’s willing to admit. Obviously, the events of Tokyolk played a key factor in creating this deep-seated fear in him. The fear that eventually he’ll slip up again and end up as a social pariah.

And while he managed to deal with those fears by building walls around himself for twenty years, it has gotten increasingly difficult for him to keep a lid on.

Despite a lot of his anxieties and stress of the last twenty years being eased after he found out the truth about Boyd, that particular fear only increased due to the things he said and nearly did to the boy back in Tokyolk. And it probably didn’t help that he’d found himself a family who cleared loved him, which only further fed into Gyro’s anxieties. Obviously Boyd wants to go back to them, and wants nothing to do with him. Who could blame him?

But of course, he’d never show that side to anyone outside the lab. It was hard enough masking it inside the lab, and he didn’t even do a good job of it. For the first few weeks after they’d returned inside the lab, Fenton could tell he was barely holding it together. When he wasn’t working, he was just sitting and going over Boyd’s memories on his computer. Cycling through all the horrible things he said. It’s one thing if he’s isolating himself; it’s another if others are doing it to him.

These fears of being a pariah were even worse in the DTLS AU, due to the fact that...he was one for the first few volumes. He was pretty much loathed by everyone until Akita’s attack, aside from Pietro.

And just as he was starting to find his place in the group, his crush on Hazel popped up out of nowhere. And obviously, crushing on someone who isn’t exactly popular in the group is sure to make him a social outcast again. So he had to try and squash that down for a while.

Then when that failed and realized he didn’t want to lose Hazel or the kids, there was the fact at the back of his mind that he might end up losing his social group he struggled hard to obtain.

And then the part with Ruby and the Apathy happened. Bringing all those anxieties and fears to the front of his mind and forcing him to bear it without an escape. Almost to the point of drowning him.

Not sure how to end this, and there’s still a lot of things that keep this fear of his from being squashed for good at this point. If it’ll ever truly go away, which it might not. He’s definitely in a better place than he was, but who knows what’ll come along and potentially bring back those fears.