#|| BEEP BOOP THIS GOT LOOONG

[prideraiised]

@iruludavare asked: 🤕 + 🚬 ! (for gold) | Meme here!

🤕 + 🚬 for a pain headcanon + a bad habit headcanon!

(We're going to mix these together because honestly they're kind of the same thing, teehee)

Theres only one thing you need to remember with Gold when it comes to pain: It doesn't happen. It never really has. For as long as he can remember, some part of Golds body just...turns off when it's supposed to tell him he's in pain. Not even he really knows why, but he doesn't really care.

This isn't always the case, which makes it arguably even more confusing. In casual environments if you were to slap his wrist or bonk him on the head, of course he'd feel it. In combat though? Not so much. If you were to ask people in the know, such as Nate, they would say Golds almost primal obsession with fighting, the pure love of bloody knuckle combat and desire to throw as many punches as he possibly can until his body breaks rewired his brain.

To that end, in a fight, Golds pain receptors do not work. I've always maintained that Gold is one of the most terrifying people anybody could ever face, even in fights they're winning and this, combined with the sheer presence he has on a battlefield is why. It does not matter what you do, stab him, shoot him , cut him open or break his arm it wont matter. He'll still glare at you with a wide eyed toothy grin , skin stained with his own blood as if you'd barely scratched him, fully prepared to keep fighting until his body gives out, but it will always give out before his so-called 'fighting spirit' does. If you're not careful, he might even try and punch you with the arm you just broke.

Naturally, this is horrific. Imagine a regular human being shrugging off a gunshot or a fractured rib , and then imagine that same human being has razor sharp teeth and sharp, feline eyes staring at you, happily licking his lips as he gets ready to pounce, shrugging off even the most gruesome of injuries as if it didn't matter. This is also , obviously, a horrible habit. A lack of total awareness of the damage he's taken doesn't equate to ignorance, it equates to dismissal. In most scenarios Gold's fully aware that whilst adrenaline has overridden his ability to 'feel' pain anymore, he's still aware that he's been fucked up. Its a conscious choice for him to persist in those scenarios regardless.

Perhaps thats just another reason why he's so terrifying. A look at his bare form would reveal a body so mangled and scarred that there's barely any skin left that doesn't have at least a few signs of old scratches. Its a testament to his almost super human endurance and force of will that he's commanded his body to survive and work as well as it does , seemingly without any tangible sign of a lasting consequence beyond the scars themselves. Whilst he's not a Picasso of gruesome war wounds or anything like that, most injuries are more shallow than others, the fact that he's always littered with cuts and scrapes, new and old, depicts somebody so committed to his vices and absolute refusal to surrender that they will always choose to risk his body to the point of shattering it over and over, rather than just throwing in the towel and licking his wounds.