WARNING: This post includes partner abuse.
xoxoI'm not proud to have thought this idea up, and there's a lot of doubt as to whether this will be reasonable or not, but putting Rik in an abusive relationship as a teenager offers a more tangible explanation for why he is often distrustful and has such a hard time committing to Cassandra in a serious way.
xoxoAt sixteen, Rik was going through a lot. His now ex-girlfriend and her family were rejecting him. He left home. Mama Heimirsson left too. Freya started struggling. Nearing his seventeenth birthday, he was fighting for money and doing as he damn well pleased. In a stupor from drinking and fighting, he met Johnny, a local drug dealer with some issues of his own.
xoxoJohnny was not a man of morals. He did not have a filter. Rik found it attractive, knowing what it felt like to be a raw nerve around people who pretended at normalcy. It was a rare moment of empathy when he fell for Johnny, who always lovingly referred to him as "Fred". But Johnny was a mess. He and Fred were a pair, to be sure, but while the Smoker stayed unwaveringly loyal to his man, the dealer had different ideas about which direction their relationship was going in. Johnny slept around a lot, got into a lot of trouble and dragged Rik down with him. In those moments when Rik would attempt to reason with him, their relationship would turn on its head.
xoxo"You're crazy, Fred, and no one will love you like I do."
xoxoJohnny took advantage of Fred's healing like he did with his twisted sense of devotion. A lot of his injuries were not just from fights in bars and he faced the world with a lot more distrust with Johnny. Fred never fought back. He told himself he cared for the man far too much.
xoxoHe lived with this for a couple of years before the man was arrested and carted off.
xoxoA couple of days later, Sandra introduced him to the Shadow.
Edit:
xoxoDecidedly, Rik won't keep a tattoo for Johnny. Instead, he kept a couple of scars.
