AC/ Clay headcanons II

 originally posted on tumblr, May 22nd 2023

i'm inspired so as a cont to this post, Clay headcanons that only make sense to me part 2:

• Clay had several instances of carpal tunnel syndrome and other hand tendon issues. Some of it was from biting more than he could chew when working for his father, others from simply overworking himself during college;
• His mother had a penchant for outdoorsy activities, particularly hiking and nature preservation efforts, and they would often go on trips to camp out and just spend time together. His father would accompany them when he was younger but with time it became a son-and-mother activity even as things grew tenser at home;
• As a child he struggled with retaining spoken requests which made helping his father a bit of a struggle since he needed to memorize measurements and the right tools to bring him, so he got the habit of writing things on his hands and arms which followed him to adulthood. He used to get bullied about the ink stains on his skin and his parents even got a bit of a chiding about it at a parent-teacher meeting once, because the ink might make him sick;
• Before that he once went around naming each tool on his father's toolshed, even writing them down on the handles. To his credit, Harold did his best to recall the names and use them so Clay could find them more easily. Even as an adult, in his head certain pliers are Julie or Thomas, and each size of torques are a different B name like Bob, Billie, Bernard, Bart, etc;
• He'd rather die than ever, ever admitting to that particular habit to another human being, though;
• One of the things he truly misses from when he was a kid and things between his parents were still nice, was their movie nights on weekends. Without failure, his father would drive them all after breakfast to the nearest Blockbuster or cinema, and they'd pick out a movie to watch together. Even when things got hard financially and in his parent's marriage, that was the one thing they kept trying to keep alive, though it often ended up in arguments and tense awkward silent drives back home;
• Once he began to explore his sexuality, he started to use a clip-on earring on his right ear but never around his family. HHe never got it pierced so he didn't have to raise questions with a hole in his ear but also because his phobia of being stung in general;
• As anyone who works with machines of any kind, he developed his own rituals for his computer as well as for when he started to study the Animus software. One of those is tapping a camera lens before using it, or rubbing the logo of whatever computer he's using;
• While he's not exactly a fan of tea himself, he really dislikes straight black coffee. It's either lattes or several spoons of sugar for him, and if he's drinking black coffee then you know it's a Bad Day;
• He has opioid tolerance, which majorly sucked when he needed to have a corrective surgery for a hernia, and doubly sucked during his time at Abstergo since the Animus may require drugs to induce an altered level of consciousness;
• He has a drawer containing all the extra bits and leftovers from projects. From extra screws and caps from furniture kits to chips and boards that aren't obsolte or broken to bits that he meant to put back eventually but always forget to. Over time the drawer evolved into a shelf and then to a considerable corner of his childhood room at his father's house. Both men refuse to do a cleanup of it just in case they need those at some point;
• Speaking of, he had a small period of job hopping fresh out of college, mostly out of HR mismanagement and trying to juggle more than one job at once. Long story short, he ended up with three different work laptops that he never managed to return and are now way obsolete for much use. He keeps meaning to get rid of them but they always make him laugh, so he gives them a pass;
• He's a tense and fussy sleeper, so he has a tendency to get tension migranes sometimes and they leave him with a very sour mood;
• While he always nurtured an interest for space, he had a more complex curiosity for the sea and ocean life. He found it fascinating but it always left him feeling morose and ill at ease, while space always put an idealistic twinkle in his eyes. The ocean was just too close to be so full of mysteries and unknowns, while the final frontier seemed too far to give him any sense of foreboding;
• Even so, he never met the sea. Only lakes and rivers, or seen it from above when he flew on planes, but he's never stood on an ocean beach proper.