full name: rhys carrigan
gender: male
pronouns: he / him
sexuality: bisexual / biromantic
birthplace: tennessee
age: 32
date of birth: january 17th, 1993
zodiac sign: aquarius
residence: aurora bay drive
occupation: professional dancer
@aurorabayaesthetic
triggers warning: substance abuse & child neglect
Rhys was not born into the world with a silver spoon in his mouth. Instead his parents were barely in their twenties when they had him. At the time his dad was an aspiring country singer and was trying to get his big break. Few years into his "career" and he was a roadie for Syd Carrigan's band. Rather than bring him closer to fame, he found himself further away from it as time went on. Sometimes his wife and son joined him on the road and Rhys would be left to be taken care of by people in the band, mainly the lead singer. Instead of taking care of Rhys, his parents were often found in the bars and sometimes it got so bad that the group left them behind because they were too intoxicated to make it to the next stop on the tour.
It wasn't a life for Rhys and the lead, Syd, felt sorry for him. He and his wife had always wanted children but couldn't have any of their own. In an effort to help the couple, as well as Rhys, they offered to foster Rhys and pay for his parents to go to rehab. By the time he was seven, though, it seemed like fostering was becoming more of a permanent thing and the Carrigans wanted to adopt him. They had grown attached to Rhys and it didn't seem like his parents were going to get their act together any time soon. Once the adoption went through, they stopped providing his birth parents with money and started focusing on their own lives as parents, having already adopted two more children to complete their family.
For Rhys, his life was always an open secret. People knew that his parents were roadies and that they had given him up for adoption. Around the time he was a teenager, though, his parents had rebranded themselves as a religious country music duo. They became fairly open about their past struggles, something that in itself wasn't bad, but neglected to mention anything about how much the Carrigans had actually helped them out or anything about their son. They started a whole new life, including having other kids, and never once mentioned their son.
Despite being grateful for his adoptive parents, he took his birth parents lack of acknowledgement to heart and ultimately developed some pretty hefty abandonment issues. As a result, he tends to put up more than he should when it comes to how people treat him. He also has some people pleasing tendencies. It was especially bad during his teen years. Therapy helped, but it wasn't enough and he ended up finding an outlet in theater and dance. He could disappear into a role when he was on stage and it was a welcoming distraction from his angst.
Following his dreams on stage took him out of Aurora Bay. He spent the majority of his early twenties bouncing around big cities. During this time he met fellow dancers, including an Aurora Bay native, Linnea. At the time, they mostly bonded over being from the same place and he had a little crush on her but he was in and out of a complicated relationship with her dance partner. When things between Linnea and the guy started to lean more romantic, Rhys found himself kind of pulling back and focusing on his career since he didn't know where to go from there.
Though he didn't know exactly what had happened between the two, he witnessed the fall of their relationship and Linnea seemed to crash out before ultimately disappearing from the theater world. Rhys, however, was doing pretty alright for himself career wise and after awhile he and his on/off again boyfriend were back on. The problem was that they kept competing for the same roles and while both were about equally talented, his boyfriend would get upset whenever he got the role over him. Likewise, there were times that Rhys felt that his boyfriend purposely went on auditions to upstage him. So once again they would be off. This continued for three years before Rhys hit a breaking point and said he was really done.
Deciding to take a break, both from his career and his stupid ex boyfriend, he's decided to go back to his hometown for a bit. Having enough, he wanted him to know he meant it this time (a real break up) and even though he still has passion for the stage, Rhys knows he isn't getting any younger. Rhys is struggling to deal with the fact that his dreams keep being just out of reach and the one person who was supposed to be supporting him the most, was often the one getting in his way.
It wasn't long before he caught up with Linnea and they started to bond over how much their ex sucked. It started out that way at least, but he's grown pretty fond of Linnea and the crush he used to have on her seems to be coming back. Only he hasn't been totally honest with her. While he was pretty angry and adamant that things were over, he's been talking to their ex sometimes and his feelings haven't fully gone away. Although he acknowledges, and agrees, that he was an asshole to Linnea. A further complication being that he's recently found that not only does Linnea have a child, but the child is their ex boyfriends. Rhys has no intention of revealing the secret to him, feeling it's up to Linnea, but it does weigh on him.
