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Gareth "Gary"

Gareth Benedict Cerejeira, more well known as Gary, is a TV news station host and owner. He's a grumpy old man who lives a very comfortable life, surrounded by private residences and security gates in the big US metropolitan. Gary lives with his 16yo son Ben and his partner Steve, who looks after his son as well.

Gary’s a prideful but paranoid man. He values the independence his fortune gives him, but also whatever work it was he’d done in the past to get to where he is now. Also a very sickly man, Gary seems paranoid or fearful of the concept of death, seeing it as a personalised fear that he’s been running from his whole life.

Gary’s past is shrouded in mystery; nobody is sure where he came from, if he’s related to another celebrity that disappeared decades before, where his wealth and son came from.

Profile

Appearence

Gary is a tall lanky man, pale as a sheet. His skin is extremely pale and dull, wrinkled with age and time, though still decently preserved. His face is long and thin; lips equally as pale as his skin, thin but wide, nose long and hooked. His eyes are a dull blue, wide but short, always tired. His hair the most well kept; thick and fluffy despite his age. It’s styled in an overgrown mullet, reaching about halfway down his back, naturally white but dyed black with white roots already pretty long. His eyebrows are black, blocky and thick.

Gary has cosmetic surgery scars that run around his upper biceps and thighs. Said cosmetic surgeries made his upper arms and upper legs unnaturally long for their full length. He also has top surgery scars under his pecs. The tips of his fingers and toes are stained black from severe cyanosis.

Usually, he wears a white button-up shirt with small, round blue gems on his cuffs. Over that, he wears a sleeveless black blazer with large, pointy shoulder pads, adorned with a red tie with an equal blue gem under the tie. He wears black pants and white knee-high boots with red soles.

Personality

Gary is an old, worn out man; bitter, lonely old fashioned loverboy. He’s very pompous but isolated, preferring to show off his way of presenting himself behind the security of a TV screen, cameras and security. Money has indeed gotten to his head, giving the all too normal stereotype of the “old rich white man” a face. Despite how much he likes to perform for cameras, Gary has a hard time displaying emotions when they’re genuine; he’s a very pokerfaced person, the more extravagant emoting reserved for his job as a news host.

Story

Past

Gary was born Theresa Benedict Cerejeira on December 5th 1963. Her first name doubled as Teresa, which was great for both British and Portuguese sides of the family to pronounce. She grew up in Britain, closer to her father’s side of the family; always taught to be a nice little lady, to follow the social norms the gender she was born in came attached with. On her mother’s side, she managed to spend the summers over at her grandparents’ house in Portugal, which she much preferred. Summer time in Fundão, her mother’s hometown, was filled with frolicking on yellowed fields, stealing fruits from the neighbour’s yards and playing with neighbour kids who she couldn’t even talk much with due to language barriers, not that it ever stopped her from finally being “one of the boys” in the playground.

One night, to escape the burning heat of the sun, she decided to go outside to play during the dawn hours. It was much easier to travel up and down hills when the sun wasn’t burning into your skin. She went so deep into the woods behind her grandparents’ house that she quickly lost her way. ‘Her’ woods weren’t as recognisable as they were during the daylight, trees and bushes turning into looming creature with twisting, angry faces. While only worried at first, being sure that she could find her way back home, Theresa ran into one of the wild animals that lived in the outskirts of the town. She’d heard stories of wild boars, how massive and threatening they could be; beasts that not even the best hunters in the whole town could take down, monster that took bullet after bullet without so much as flinching, creatures that would tear children apart on sight. Children like her. Theresa wasn’t even sure if the animal had spotted her; she knew it’d started chasing her as soon as she ran off. But there wasn’t much she could do besides running and hiding, not when she was this lost in the middle of the woods. As her legs gave out under her, she was face to face with the woods’ monster: a black wild boar, back arched and as tall as a man, the shadows of the steam coming from the animal’s fur making it look like some evil omen. And as she stared into the glowing beady eyes of the creature, she felt like she’d faced Death. Death itself coming for a child.

But even so, after short seconds that felt like excruciating minutes, the animal walked away, the massive lump on its back disappearing in between the bushes and taking its shadowy self with it.
Theresa found her way back home, her grandparents and mother sick with worry.

Down into her teenage years, Theresa began questioning her life, her sense of self, who she wanted to be. She wasn’t sure of what to make of her feelings, but her encounter with the wild beast remained deep within her subconscious. Later on in life she’d be able to label these feelings more accurately and put into perspective the choices she’d go about making into adulthood. Life was too finicky to follow rules. One moment you’re here, the other you’re gone. She could be dead by tomorrow morning, the wild boar returning to take back the life that had been first spared. So, Theresa aimed to live her days like they would be her last.

When she turned 18, having already changed her name and sense of self by then, Gary started preparing his life. When he turned 20 he moved out and travelled abroad to escape his parents and the rules that were still haunting him. With the era of industrialisation drawing near, he worked many jobs to fund a plane ticket to Japan, intent on seeing a world so far removed from his own.

Not much is known of what happened with Gary when he moved to Japan. It’s known that he spent his life there until his late 30s, and it was presumably where he started his job as a news host, his European charm differentiating him from other people trying to get into Japan. It’s also suspected that during the time he was there, he traveled between Japan and Korea often to undergo cosmetic surgeries and other procedures.
Despite the fame and life he managed to create for himself, one day, the man suddenly vanished from the face of the Earth.

Gary was gone for 20 years. With the internet appearing, people started finding out about this overseas celebrity and the bizarre circumstances of his disappearance.

Already a few years into the 2000s, Gary suddenly reemerged in the US. His return was announced with the sudden reveal of a TV studio of his own; one that he ran and was the newest host of. To the surprise of many, he returned with what seemed to be a kid of his own, already into his late teens.

Where Gary went and how he managed to live two decades of his life completely under the radar remains to be explained, but with his new fame and mystery to go along with it, he’s too well-off to care.

Present

Now well settled in his new life in the US, Gary starts paying someone to look after his son, Ben, who honestly doesn't need a babysitter since he's already 16 but Gary doesn't understand that. He gets the cheapest man on the job listing, a man named Steve who'd come over to Gary's place during the week to look after Ben while Gary was away at work. Steve had a small daycare business that ran during school days but was closed during the summer, since he assumed most people would be able to take care of their kids then. Gary, however, could not, or at least wouldn't bother to. Steve was offered a place to sleep at Gary's flat, though he'd usually chose to sleep at his own place.

Despite starting off on the wrong foot, Steve seeing Gary as some rich old man who didn't know what to do with all his money, he did eventually grow to know there was much more to him than that. From things he'd pick up from their flat and Ben himself, Gary seemed like someone who'd worked to get to where he was, sacrificing and suffering through lots of things to have the security he has in life now-a-days. After a few months of working for the man, Steve would try to pull simple chit-chatting from Gary, figuring out more and more things about him as well; about how he was an immigrant from somewhere in Europe, how he had Ben but never mentions the boy's mother, or how Gary never takes his gloves off in front of other people.

One night, Steve came over to look after Ben as scheduled, only to find out Gary was home. He apologised for forgetting to let Steve know that Ben would be sleeping at a friend's place, but that the man was still welcomed to stay the evening with Gary if he wished to. One drink led to another, and soon enough both were on the couch of Gary's office, venting about their lives, half-giggling about whatever cards life had dealt them. Eventually, Steve admitted to why he liked working with children so much; he couldn't have his own, and his partner left him because of it. Gary, in a moment of empathy, insisted for the man to sleep there since they both were pretty intoxicated, and that he didn't want him returning to an empty home after this. They both decided to crash on that same couch, together.

After that night, the two became much closer, Steve coming over and even sleeping at Gary's place to spend more time with Ben and the man he was falling for. Gary, for a change, started enjoying the company he got from somebody else for the first time in a long while. He'd start to regard Steve much higher, and even invite him for some of the gatherings and parties the TV Studio planned. There were rumours the two had officially cemented themselves as a couple, but other news medias would be left chasing them, since nothing was ever confirmed publicly.

Relationships

Ben

The son he had away from the world. His dad will never tell him this, but Ben was an accident child. Gary never knew how to feel about Ben. Seeing the kid as nuisance did cross his mind more times than he was fine with admitting. It felt wrong to do so when he tried so hard to make his ‘pa’ proud, picking up a job as a tour guide for the news station, something incredibly rare to have as an open to the public, all-year-round activity. He doesn’t hate his son, but always had a hard time figuring out what else is there in his heart for the boy. Because of that, and Gary’s inabilities to express himself, apathy was the default reaction to anything his son tried doing for him. It’s only later in life, when Steve joins their little family, that Gary’s able to reason his thoughts and feelings not only about Ben but himself, and come to terms that despite everything in his situation, he could still love Ben just as he was, and bond with the kid just like any other parent. On a lighter note, Gary’s left infuriated whenever Ben tells people that “he doesn’t have a mom anymore”, since it implies something else completely than what actually happened - most people assuming Ben’s biological mother to no longer be in the picture, when Gary simply transitioned to being his dad.

Steve

Son’s baby-sitter turned partner. Despite his TV fortune, Gary didn’t want to spend too much money on someone to look after his son. The cheapest listing on the market was of one daycare worker who was free during summertime, since his daycare was only opened during the school year. A man named Steve. Despite rough first impressions, Steve getting lost on his way to the house and the man’s less than professional approach, Gary didn’t have time to replace him. They butted heads for a while; Steve disagreeing on how Gary was raising his own kid, and the older man throwing off-handed, passive-aggressive comments at his employee. Despite that, Gary could tell Steve took good care of Ben; going past the basic work to know more about the boy and entertain him. Love him naturally, like Gary never could. Once they got past their differences in an alcohol-based vulnerable night, bonding over complicated childhoods and other life-altering shenanigans, they grew closer. From amicable to friends, eventually to something more. Gary owes Steve a lot. He hopes to show it in his own odd ways, to honour how Steve fixed his little family, and do a little more than that in the future perhaps.

Trivia

• Gary's surgeries, from their description, seem to be limb-lengthening surgeries. This is an extremely invasive cosmetic surgery where, over a period of months, a bone is repeatedly broken and healed, its two pieces slowly being pulled further and further apart. The idea is that the bone will heal with a longer length and consequently make the bone’s body part longer.
• Consequently, this can be assumed to be the reason why Gary’s body is described as “uncanny” and “disproportionate”. It can also be the cause of Gary’s chronic pains.


• Gary also suffers with PICA, an eating disorder that makes him want to eat non food items. His biggest cravings are for laundry supplies, especially scented, colorful things like laundry pods or detergent. He tries to always have food alternatives stashed away like gummies or yogurts since they mimic the smell and colors of laundry supplies.


• Gary has a pet centipede called Absolem, a scolopendra gigantea that he mostly lets walk around the house freely. We learn that Absolem was a pet Gary bought from an animal shelter his news station gave a donation to. According to Gary, "nobody wanted the old thing, so we took him in."
• This seems to be a reference/easter egg to another original character, Absolem.


• Gary is a "Sonic the Hedgehog" fan for no other reason than the fact Ben is a "Sonic the Hedgehog" fan. His favorite game is Sonic CD and his favorite character is Metal Sonic.

Playlist & Aesthetic

Gallery