The following is the headcanon I developed for Brendon "The Shark" Park as a character and Sharkleberry in my writing. Feel free to use, adapt or ignore (based on his screen time we're basically fabulising here).
Brendon is an orthopedic surgeon in his mid-forties, highly respected, coldly professional. He's built his life with surgical precision: his routines are fixed and his emotions are contained. He's not a guy for chaos or vulnerability. He's control.
His nickname, "The Shark," fits. He moves through the world with quiet, predatory efficiency. He's observant, patient, and dangerous when provoked. But the nickname also hints at something else: he's a creature of the deep, solitary, comfortable in cold water, not built for warmth.
As a Dom, Brendon is experienced, skilled, and principled. He has a strict code: safe, sane, consensual. He teaches safety protocols, establishes safewords, checks in on his partners. He takes pride in his ability to read people, to push them to their edges without breaking them. When Dennis comes to him with bruises from another partner, he's offended. Someone damaged what was to be cared for.
In conclusion his ethos is built on control and care. The care is real, but it's expressed through control. He applies salve, offers painkillers, holds Dennis after a scene, all of it is practical, deliberate, and devoid of softness.
When it comes to emotions Brendon is constipated. He cannot name what he feels. He can't even recognize it half the time. When he feels something uncomfortable, he shuts down or lashes out. His ego is fragile. Sportscar, money, prestige. He needs that.
He's avoidant. He processes pain through physical exertion because he doesn't know how to process it any other way.
In private Brendon is not a man who suffers. He's built his life to avoid suffering. His hobbies are solitary: diving, the gym, photography. His house is empty by design. His job consumes him, and he likes it that way.
He doesn't have friends. He has colleagues he respects (Garcia, Abbot) and people he tolerates. He's not lonely; he's alone, and he's okay with that.
Brendon is not a man who secretly yearns for love. He doesn't yearn or pine, never has. He doesn't wake up in an empty bed and feel a tragic void. He wakes up, runs, works, plays, sleeps. His life works for him.
When Dennis enters his life, something shifts. Not necessarily romance, Brendon isn't built for that. But something. He starts to want things he didn't want before. Lazy mornings. Soft sex. Waking up next to someone. He doesn't know what to do with these wants, so he frames them as practical arrangements: a contract, exclusivity, ownership.
What he feels for Dennis is recognition, not romance. Dennis surrenders in a way that few people can. He's responsive, resilient, and he trusts Brendon with his body in a way that feels rare and precious. Brendon values that. He wants to keep it.
But the world doesn't have a language for that. Every movie, every song, every friend says: if you miss someone, if you want them close, if you care about their well-being... that's love. That's romance. That's what you're supposed to feel.
Brendon isn't immune to that pressure. He's smart enough to know what he doesn't feel, the butterflies, the need to share a life, the desire to wake up next to someone every morning. But he's also confused. He misses Dennis. He wants Dennis. The world says that's love. So maybe it is?
It's not. He'll figure that out eventually. But it takes time, and it takes someone like Dennis, who has Michael to compare him to, to name the difference.
