Character Sketch: James Briggs Mikhailachev
Of course, how could I forget the current love of Rasputin's life? :P
1) James began to discover his attraction to boys at the tender age of thirteen. It certainly made for some awkward moments growing up in a household full of homophobes; the incident with his grandfather yelling at two gay men kissing in the street being one of them.
2) James tried various different ways of pretending that he was straight while in his teens and even resorted to dating a few girls. One of the girls had been crushing on him for the longest time and was happy that he'd asked her to the school dance in their freshman year of high school. Unfortunately, the relationship was short-lived when she took him to her house afterwards (and her parents were out of town for the weekend) and she made sexual advances towards him, much to James' discomfort. He claimed his Christian religion as an excuse as to why he refused to have premarital sex with her.
3) For refusing the girl's advances, she went off and told the whole school, much to James' chagrin, that he was still a virgin. It made for some long days of boys' locker room bullying and one of the guys blurted out that he suspected that James may be a "fag". To ward off such assumptions, James took advantage of the fact that there was a new girl in school by his junior year named Marion Cho and the two became fast friends and a popular couple. He never had sex with her as he did with the other girls, but Marion seemed fine with that, as she told him about her past with her family and that she was living with a friend and wasn't quite ready to hit the sack for sex just yet due to her PTSD.
4) When they went to college together, Marion did want the relationship to become more serious. James, who was still afraid of what would happen if his family knew that he was gay, wanted to oblige Marion, just to keep up the public front. But Marion was very perceptive of James' obvious discomfort that one evening that they were kissing and stripping down and asked him what the problem was. It was then James realized he had to face the truth; he could not ever be sexually attracted to women. He confessed this to Marion, afraid of what she would think, but to his surprise, she said, "Yeah, that's what I thought it was", and then proceeded to tell him that she was bisexual. They remained friends, but it became more on a brother-sister level.
5) James did not have his first boyfriend until junior year of college when some guy in the dorm expressed an attraction to him. James began dating him and he would have his first sexual encounter with the guy on a day that his brother Vincent came to visit. That was when Vincent reported the matter to their father, who promptly forced James into a "de-gaying" camp where he would spend his summer break. The incident would mess him up for years, and he broke up with his boyfriend with a heavy heart and stayed away from dating up until he met the zombie Pavel Mikhailachev. Marion, during this time, would be the glue that kept James together and the two started their law firm.
6) Rasputin is James' third relationship as well as the one that lead to marriage. James would often joke about what it would be like if his late father had known that he was a gay vampire married to another gay vampire, as his father had a hatred of both gays and vampires.
7) Even though his relationship with Pavel had to end, James is still on good terms with him and credits Pavel for allowing James to finally embrace his homosexuality and to stop caring what others thought of it. The experience allowed James to make way for his heart to open up to being with Rasputin, who was just ready at that time to start fresh since the death of his first husband Malcolm.
8) It saddens James that he'd outlived his daughters Kennie and Ana, his brother Vincent, sister-in-law Carolyn, and his nieces and nephews, but at the very least, he'd since learned that Chase did show some genuine concern for him when Kliment told him and the others at the Briggs house that Jay was dying because of an incompatibility to Mikhailachev vampirism, which was thought at the time to be caused by Jay's blood type, which meant in spite of Chase being a homophobe, he still did care about the welfare of his uncle.
9) James was just as horrified as everyone else when the truth of Jay's death was revealed; that the incompatibility was caused, not by Jay's blood type, but by developing resentment towards Kliment. He was disgusted to learn that Jay had used Kliment all along, and would be the one to keep Rasputin's sanity in check in the days that followed.
10) James hasn't yet met Bogdan, but he would like to one of these days.