patrik gabriel valentin. patrik is convinced that when his mom was pregnant with him, she thought that she would be giving birth to a latino baby with a beautiful singing voice and with a future topping the music charts. she insists that she just liked the name patrik and gabriel, but what patrik doesn't understand is why she had to leave the goddamn c out of his name. but it is what it is and a name change is just too much of a damn process. there was already a little brother waiting at home for him upon patrik's arrival, he would become patrik's protector, best friend and the worst influence in his life. alex valentin was two years old, already a trouble maker and every parent's worst nightmare. patrik wanted to be just like him, but his parents swept in fast and attempted to derail any influence that his older brother had on him before any bad habits could form. such behavior and overbearing parenting could only eventually backfire, and while patrik did do as he was told, he was also planning his own silent rebellion. he was planning on following in his brother's footsteps, it may have been eighteen years later, but it was happening.

until he was "of age", patrik was a good kid and did as he was told. his brother never resented him for being the favorite, but he did resent his parents and made their lives a living hill growing up. he was constantly in trouble, he skipped school so much that social services were called to their home and by the time he was old enough to drop out with his parent's permission, his parents just let him. they simply gave up on him, they didn't bat an eye when he took off to move to new york city with his flavor of the month and they didn't offer any help when he called up saying he literally didn't have anything. their reasoning was that he dug this hole for himself, they tried his entire life to help get him out of it but now it was up to himself to dig himself out. not that patrik was in any position to talk about proper parenting, but what his parents did and how they raised him and his brother, it was easy to see they didn't know jackshit about how to be parents. patrik was constantly praised for everything he did, while alex was constantly overlooked, even when he did attempt to make small strides with his life. it pissed patrik off to no end, he secretly loathed his parents and when he got his first chance to get out of there, he was gone.

patrik was eighteen when he moved to the city to live with his brother, they struggled and they struggled pretty badly even with alex now having an extra set of hands around the apartment to help pay rent. patrik was more reliable when it came to actually paying rent, alex didn't really put forth the effort to try and find work when he'd get fired from jobs and he didn’t put forth the effort to try and better his life in any way possible. it was infuriating. his parents felt betrayed, so much so that when patrik called home and asked if he could move back home and take them up on their initial offer of letting him come back and paying for community college, they ignored his calls and then they ignored his pleas when they finally did answer. he wasn't welcome there anymore, just like his brother, he was stuck in the hole that he dug for himself.

patrik felt pretty goddamn trapped upon realized what he had done to his promising future. he blew away his chance to go to a good school, he threw away any chance of a normal career, even if it was 9-5 and in office, at least he would be making money and not surviving off a high sodium diet of ramen noodles that he was pretty sure was slowly killing him every mouthful. he knew why his parents had been so protective over him, why they tried to steer him away from his brothers influences, he was going to end up just like him and that realization put him into a pretty deep depression. the next few years were a shit storm, patrik didn't have the means to move out or he would have. he didn't have any desire to sleep on benches outside or to become a subway performer, so he took up any and all jobs that he could get to help make ends meet while his brother mostly twiddled with his thumbs up on his ass and provided very little money for rent.

it was when his brother turned 28 that he was forced to really turn his life around, a one night stand returned to their apartment with a growing belly and claims that he was the father. patrik believed her when she said his brother was the father, he was too lazy to do anything else, pulling out would have taken too much damn energy. the one night stand, who they later learned went by molly, eventually moved in and when her due date started to approach, alex dumped the ton of bricks on his brother that he was going to need to move out. he barely gave his brother any time to properly move. he was going to need to be out within a week cause they were turning his room into the nursery and plus, it would have been too crowded with him living there when the baby was born anyway. "thanks, alex. that’s really fucking considerate of you. " alex told his brother. he stayed with friends for a couple of months before managing to secure his own place, he went back to working and resuming his normal lifestyle until he met her.

he married lucy six months into dating her, he didn't know enough about her other than she was batshit insane and got his blood boiling in a way that no other person could. he was lonely, slightly desperate and he masked both of these conflicting feelings for being in love. the marriage barely hit the one year mark before lucy was serving him divorce papers, sad thing is that if she hadn't done so, patrik probably never would have. their fights were intense, they were in love and hated each other at the same time and patrik had grown so used to having chaos in his life, that it didn’t really occur to him how unhealthy their relationship was. since the divorce, patrik has kept a low profile when it comes to dating by not dating at all. he created a couple of online dating websites when the bar scene wasn't really working out when it came to meeting new people, not looking for anything serious mostly just short term dating and someone to bring home for the night for an hour or two and then send them on their way. it was a close friend of his that suggested he try grindr, he never really explored that side of himself, but he was willing to everyone on the site seemed as easy as his friend was making them out to be.