( archie renaux . cis man . he / him ) . ⸻ zavian blackwood, a twenty-seven year old, has survived another day in red creek where they have lived for ten years. the lone wolf is known for being resilient and guarded and is often associated with a laughter that doesn't sound like yours. a dog with hungry eyes follows you home — ribs sharp, tail low— and you feed it anyway. ink stains, bruised knuckles, and your father's biker jacket hidden in the back of your closet, haunted by the road, still heavier than you remember. in a small town where they work as a tattoo artist at devil's ink word travels fast. it’s hard to keep a secret, and it looks like the boogeyman knows that ████ █.
i. BASIC INFORMATION.
full name: ⠀ zavian blackwood. ⠀ nickname(s): ⠀ zav, only to those close to him.⠀ birthdate: ⠀ twenty-seven; 22 april, 1972. ⠀aries sun, taurus rising and pisces moon.⠀ gender + pronouns: ⠀ cis man + he/him. ⠀ orientation:⠀ bisexual.⠀ place of birth:⠀ detroit, michigan. ⠀ occupation: tattoo artist at devil's ink.⠀ education level: high school diploma from red creek high; dropped out of community college.⠀ traits: self-reliant, impulsive, resilient, guarded, sensitive, proud, stubborn, and cynical. living arrangement: a small house on saber street, a leftover from someone who used to ride with the gravehounds, now rented under the table and shared with a roommate ( wc ). mother:⠀ ria acharya, current status unknown; once the lead guitarist of an alt-rock band.⠀ father:⠀ ray blackwood, former vice president of the gravehounds motorcycle gang ( deceased ).⠀ guardian:⠀ dolly keene, owner of dolly's diner.⠀pet(s): he's got a kitten named mitra. a little stray he found behind white pine. faceclaim:⠀ archie renaux.⠀ tattoos:⠀ a lean greyhound mid-sprint inked in stark black along his shoulder blade.⠀not a club patch, but a tribute. the line work is worn; he'd done it at sixteen, before he was old enough to know better. scars:⠀ he's got a burn mark on his forearm, the ghost of a hot exhaust pipe he brushed as a kid trying to reach for his father’s bike. a clean slice through his eyebrow, a souvenir from a teenage fight that left more pride than pain. knife nicks scattered along his hands, reminders of when he learned to use a blade too early.
ii. BACKGROUND.
trigger warning: brief mentions of gang violence, gunfire, and death.
love has always been a strange topic. his parents were never in love. it was a spark that burned too fast, born in the back of a bar and gone before it ever learned to speak. they were young, wild, already pulling in opposite directions by the time he was born. his mother left before zavian could form a memory of her chasing a stage somewhere past state lines, a guitar slung over her back and a voice that could fill a room but never a home. she played dive bars, maybe a college radio once, writing songs about the kind of love she never stayed long enough to feel. sometimes she called. sometimes she sent postcards from towns he had to find on a map. most of the time, she forgot.
his father raised him, not because he was built for fatherhood or knew how to be soft, but because the club was the only kind of family he understood. ray blackwood, loudmouthed, leather-backed, always half-drunk on adrenaline and bourbon, was the kind of man who could fill a room just by walking into it. vice president of the gravehounds, a name that carried weight on every bar wall and backroad from ohio to kentucky. he kept a pistol under the seat and a bottle under the sink and swore the road was the only god worth kneeling to.
zavian grew up in that garage in the rust and oil of it all, tattoo guns humming beside the roar of engines, empty bottles rolling across the concrete, and men who swore like preachers and laughed with their fists. they called him wolfcub when he was little. the kid who ran errands, fetched beers, handed wrenches too heavy for his arms. they let him sit on bikes he couldn’t start and taught him how to hold a blade before they ever taught him how to shave. he learned quickly. he was as stubborn as his father but quieter. by twelve, he'd learned to swing back. by fifteen, the nickname didn’t stick anymore.
ray never talked about love. he talked about loyalty, about keeping your word, about brothers who'd bleed before they broke an oath, about the road owning you if you ever stopped moving. he wasn't gentle, but he was there. he was reliable, and zavian loved him for it, even if most of that love came tangled with resentment. he didn’t say it, but he tried to earn it — every bruise, every long ride, every time he picked himself up without crying. and for a long time, that was enough. until the night it wasn't. it was an ambush on some nowhere stretch of road between counties, the kind of place the map forgets and the law doesn’t bother with. three rival bikers came up fast, no warning, no words, just the crack of gunfire swallowed by wind. ray blackwood died before sunrise. the story passed through bars and trucks stops: the vp of the gravehounds was taken out clean, with no witnesses and no survivors. the club buried him like a king — engines revving through the service, bottles smashed against the dirt, men swearing revenge they’d never get. after that, the gravehounds rode quieter, harder. and zavian stopped riding at all. he packed what little he had: his father's jacket, a lighter, a handful of sketches, and a name that didn’t open doors anymore. zavian left before anyone could stop him. the club wanted him to stay, to “carry on the blood,” but he’d already seen what that loyalty cost. he wasn't looking for revenge; he just wanted distance.
he ended up in red creek, a town he used to pass through on the way to better places, opposite of everything he'd known, but it had a diner that never closed and a woman behind the counter who remembered faces. dolly keene has always been kind to him, even when he was just ray's shadow. the first to call him kid without meaning it like an insult. she slipped him free pancakes when ray was too hungover to remember breakfast. as the mother figure of the town, dolly never asked questions, and took care of the kids who didn't have anywhere else to land. she fed him when he couldn’t afford it, slipped him cocoa refills when the nights got too cold. she made sure zavian had somewhere to go when the nights got too long.
and zavian, he stayed longer than he meant to. long enough that the gravehounds stopped calling and maybe enough to stop forgetting what happened that night. iii. HEADCANONS. 1. ) he still helps out a dolly's. not as often as he used to when he was younger, but enough that it's noticed. after eating he lingers when it's closing time. collects empty mugs, wipes down tables, and takes out the trash with a cigarette tucked behind his ear. 2. ) he has half-finished postcards inside his dresser. they've never been mailed, addressed to cities his mother once mentioned. some start with “hey it's me,” others with nothing at all. the words trail off halfway through, like he ran out of courage or faith. he keeps them tucked under old shirts, as if one day he might finish a sentence and finally send one. 3. ) what started as a way to kill time in high school —match-and-stick tattoos traded for cigarettes or beer money, turned into something that stuck. the kids he inked didn’t care about shaky lines or uneven shading, but he did. after his father died, tattooing became the only thing that quieted him down. he started sketching more, teaching himself, and by the time he turned twenty, he was doing real work at devil's ink. 4. ) his father's leather jacket hangs untouched in the back of his closet, out of sight but never far enough. he can’t throw it out and can’t wear it either. every time he looks at it, it’s like being seventeen again, standing beside a coffin.
