“ If I weren’t so cold, we could freeze this moment, and as we won’t grow old, we’ll leave no heart unbroken”
[cis-male, he/him] Welcome to Aurora Bay, [ARKIN O’CONELL]! I couldn’t help but notice you look an awful lot like [JAMIE CAMPBELL BOWER]. You must be the [THIRTY THREE] year old [ACTOR]. Word is your [PASSIONATE] but can also be a bit [VINDICTIVE] and your favorite song is [17 CRIMES BY AFI]. I also heard you’ll be staying in [CRYSTAL COVE]. I’m sure you’ll love it!
Tw: drug abuse, Abuse, overdose, gaslighting,
Family
Janey O’Connell: Mother
Keith O’Connell: Father (deceased)
Addison O’Connell: Twin Sister
Eden O’Connell: Younger Sister
Olivia Alderidge: unknown daughter
Wanted Connections
Ex girlfriend/ secret baby mama : Iris Alderidge
Current hook up in town : Sterling Levin
Ex girlfriend from Hollywood
Former high school hook ups
Best friend from high school:Cordelia Danvers
A therapist
A lawyer
Ex girlfriends family: Buddy Wells, Delilah Carrẽno
A best friend :Cordelia Danvers
An enemy
History
Arkin looks like the classic bad boy in every way and his public life has done little to persuade anyone to think differently. However the truth about his circumstances is far more complex than just rumor. Born in Aurora Bay to a couple who decided that having a children would fix their already rocky marriage, Arkin was the first of three band aid babies and the oldest of twins that were essentially used as a tool to repair a bad situation. When things fell apart when his youngest sister was barely out of diapers, Arkin’s dad walked out in his mom after years of abuse and cheating and left her struggling financially. The huge move forced them to move out of seabrook quarter and into Oceancrest; where Arkin found himself sleeping in the couch most of the time so that his mom and sisters got to have their own rooms. All the while the rumors of their dad’s philandering, abusive behavior, and penchant for ruining marriages had a way of making the O’Connell’s look like too much trouble than they were worth.
Money was tight and the mostly affluent environment he was surrounded with did little to make Arkin a cheerful child. In fact it made him into a fairly dramatic and self destructive individual. The characters you would read about in classic literature that were very intense and brooding became almost a blueprint to his personality. It was an act at first but quickly became who he was with a series of additional setbacks. His mom tried her best but when bottles of empty alcohol would appear in the trash more frequently; it was clear the family’s coping mechanisms were growing more destructive for everyone; not just Arkin. He tried to shield his sisters from it but when his twin started to get into just as much trouble outside and in school it was clear they were all struggling. His own behaviors of getting caught stealing liquor bottles from grocery stores, causing drama in school, being a bit of a playboy and just being a chaotic little shit wasn’t helping in any capacity.
As he grew older he started to fall behind in school and most of the staff began to allow him to fall into the cracks since he didn’t show much promise. He was just another one of those kids that was going to fail out. However, the high school theater teacher took one look at all of his pent up dramatics and theatricality and knew it could be put to some positive use. The only way he was able to pass his classes was because he was now part of the schools theater program. In fact Arkin had an affinity for most art forms. While math and science made not a single bit of sense to him, it was painting and plays that made him start to see a way out of his family situation and off his couch and able to provide.
Arkin could have been the most talented person on the planet but that didn’t mean he was ever going to be good enough for some people. And with a mom who was becoming a well known drunk and an absentee scumbag of a dad as his parents it wasn’t like anyone would look at him and assume he was perfect for their daughter. And that was exactly what had happened. Arkin had a history of not wanting a girlfriend and would sleep around ally before the age of 16. After all ‘like father like son’ and yet as soon as he saw her in his junior year English class it was like electricity. He’d fallen head over heels in love with her and decided that maybe he was a one woman man now. Always a man of dramatic flair he felt like he was in Romeo and Juliet as soon as he began to know her. Her family was from wealth and had a positive reputation in Aurora Bay. It seemed like she was destined for greatness while he would be lucky to get out of ocean crest but that didn’t stop him from pursuing a relationship. And that idea of Romeo and Juliet was becoming more of a reality. Arkin was now seen as a bad influence, someone from a trash upbringing who was bringing down someone who was going to be prom queen and have her pick of any Ivy League college upon graduation. He was getting in the way of everything her family had worked so hard to provide for her. Arkin was seen as a dark influence. The bad boy who needed to be stopped.
He knew Aurora Bay was a dead end for him and he didn’t see the point in finishing high school; not when his art teachers told him he was talented and his girlfriends family told him he’d wind up in a gutter or leaving her pregnant and alone. So Arkin hatched a plan, they would run away together. Make their names in Hollywood and he’d also be able to provide for his sisters and get his mom the help she needed. There was just one problem, his girlfriends family found out about their plans of escaping and began to work their own plans to break them apart. Arkins past as someone who would cheat came back to haunt him when rumors about him sleeping with his high school best friend began to leak. Rumors about him planning on leaving his girlfriend alone in the city soon followed.
“ Arkin O’Connell was an opportunist. “
“ he’s only using her families money to get to Hollywood and then he’s gonna leave her in the dust “
“ he’s been cheating on her since they started dating”
They were all lies but the closeness of him and his best friend; coupled with the fact his dad had essentially done the same if not worse to his own family started to form cracks in the relationship and as Arkin packed his bags and showed up to whisk the love of his life away in an adventure; she never showed up. He wrote her a letter begging for answers but it was never delivered to her. It was intercepted by her own mother. All he got was a letter saying it was over. That he was the same scum of the earth his father was. And that he was foolish to believe that he could ever be with the likes of her.
The letter was a hard wound to his heart and Arkin disappeared into the night never to be heard from again until he became almost a mega star over night. By that point it was impossible to avoid seeing his angular jawline and tattoos covering film billboards and making headlines for all the right and wrong reasons. The bad boy image he had in Aurora bay became a persona. He made millions by milking that aesthetic into a career. No longer was he someone who seemed like trouble as much as he was one of the names in town that was looked at with more reverence than his youth gave him.
He used the money he made to help out his family like he promised. His mother got sober and he put his family in a large house in Aurora Bay drive. If his sisters needed anything financially from him, he’d be able to help support their hopes and dreams. Arkin seemed like he truly had it all. But the problem with a bad boy image meant that you behaved in a way that gave you that moniker. While he tried to help his family out he was still crumbling under the weight of success and legacy. And the ghosts of the past would haunt him again.
Arkin had tried to get answers about why his father had done for years and when he finally found the man he was only met with a headstone. He’d also heard word back from his sister that the ex that had believed the lies was thriving. Unable to have any closure with his dad and realizing there were still wounds from the relationship; Arkin started to spiral more and began to move from just drinking too much to doing recreational drugs on the regular. It started to grow and grow to the point where he was getting fired from projects due to his on set behavior and the news about him wasn’t about a movie but about whether or not he was going to show up on a red carpet halfway coked out of his mind and getting into a fight with some PA.
It was then he overdosed and reality came crashing back in. He sat in rehab trying to figure out just what went wrong and he knew it was a million little things. They all added up and painted his trip into this strange and unfamiliar place.
He was now Sober, clean, and out of work. Three things he dreaded.
With prompting from his little sister who told him coming home would do him some good and unable to say no to her; Arkin came back to the town he dreaded ever stepping foot in again. He had no intention though of letting people see him when he was down. As soon as he set foot in city limits; the chaos bringing; dramatic and troubled image the news rejected him to be was the only thing others were allowed to see. The only ones who saw the truth were his family and friends and even then he was keeping people at a distance. He didn’t want anyone to see how many cracks had appeared on his veneer. He didn’t want anyone to know just how fragile he was emotionally and within his sobriety. The guy who took care of his family needed his sisters and his mom to take care of him. He’s attending meetings, seeing a therapist, painting as a way to heal the wounds he still carries with him as he tries to figure out if his acting career is over.
The longer he spends in town the more he remembers how much he hated it. Everything reminds him of both good and bad times. Everything reminds him of her. He hasn’t had the courage to reach out and ask why? If he did he would realize the truth. How her family had manipulated the whole situation. That she never had sent him that scathing letter and that it was her mom who delivered the killing blow. That when he left; those rumors about him leaving her pregnant and alone had actually come true and that they have a teenage daughter out there that had been adopted so that she could finish school. If he knew the truth about everything would it finally grant him peace or send him spiraling back into chaos and addiction
@aurorabayaesthetic
