Hey, look! It’s [CHANSE AINSWORTH] at [HEYWOOD UNIVERSITY]. Did you know they [WORK] there as a [SOFTWARE ENGINEERING PROFESSOR]? I guess they’re from [LONDON] and have been in town for [1 WEEK], living in [MAPLE HILLS]. I also heard they’re a little [HOTHEADED], but also very [ADAPTABLE] which definitely makes sense.
BASICS
Name: Chaunsey Ainsworth Nicknames/Alias: Chanse Face Claim: Penn Badgley Age: 39 Gender: Cis Man Sexuality: Homosexual Date/Place of Birth: November 22/London, UK Currently: East Haven, VT Occupation: Software Engineering Professor at Heywood University
HISTORY
Chanse was the third child to Maggie and Edward Ainsworth, a prominent London couple. Maggie was a social butterfly, at every event and tea that happened in their neighborhood. Her husband a businessman, successful in his own right. Everyone knew them, knew their picturesque family, and everything was perfect.
Behind closed doors, it was another story. Maggie was never in her right mind, a timid drinker and self-medicator. Edward detested his wife's habits, but never took it out on her. Instead, he took it out on the children. They learned to hide their bruises, and to stay out of his way if they could. Chanse, being the third born, found it easiest to stay out of his home whenever possible. He was social, like his mother, and managed to befriend just about anyone. It was no wonder he was never home, he just had too many friends; it was normal, nobody asked questions, and nobody knew what went on in the Ainsworth home.
As he got older, Chanse knew he was different than his siblings. His sisters would dress him up sometimes, and he loved it. When they invited him to tea and talked about the boys they fancied, he giggled and chattered with them, happy to fit in with the girls. Which wasn't to say he didn't enjoy time with his brothers, as well, because he did. He liked to be rough with them, and he loved the sports they'd play at the park with the other boys. But he was always just a little bit more sensitive the rest, prone to getting upset and running back to his older sister, who always comforted him just how he needed.
He fell in love as a teenager. A close friend, maybe even his best friend, who became his first in a lot of things. And as they got older, they made plans to live together, and Chanse couldn't have been more excited. Finally, out of his family home, away from the danger that lurked in the shadows that nobody knew about, that the Ainsley's pretended didn't exist. Unfortunately, things didn't work out the way they were supposed to.
It was the last holiday he was going to take with his family. He promised himself that. They went somewhere warm, somewhere sunny, and he did try to have a good time. But at the same time, he was planning. Making a list, as he often did when he was stressed out about things. What was he going to pack, what was he going to leave behind, how would he make his grand exit, etc. It wouldn't have been a big deal to his mother when she found it, except that he'd written a few little notes to himself about his love for another. Maggie recognized the name, 'Owen', and brought it to her husband's attention that their son was not the son they'd thought he was.
Edward was angry. Extremely angry. And he let Chanse know it. The police might have been called, but Edward wouldn't know. After hitting some sense into his son, he dragged him downtown, past the exotic nightclubs and to someplace darker. Someplace dingier. Where women took money in return for certain favors. And with Edward sitting outside of the dilapidated building he'd shoved his son into, Chanse was given copious amounts of tequila until he was in a twilight state that allowed the woman paid to give Edward's son the good time Edward had paid her for.
Chanse barely remembers that night. He doesn't remember most of the holiday afterwards, either. He knows his father hit him several more times, he knows his mother cried at his bedside when it seemed like he wouldn't get out of bed again. And a few weeks later, just before they were going to head home, the woman from the dilapidated building showed up demanding more money. She was pregnant, he was the father, and she was going to have that baby so they were going to have to keep paying her. Mortified, Chanse stayed in the warm, sunny place with his new baby momma. His family returned to London without him, and he fell into a deep depression.
Once the baby was born, the woman took whatever money Chanse had left and abandoned the both of them. Lost, Chanse took his baby to the United States, figuring at the very least he could figure something out in a new place, with a fresh start. He might have given up entirely, if it weren't for the child who now relied on him.
He struggled to make ends meet for a long time. But he started working an IT job at a local college, and quickly picked up on the ins and outs of the computers he worked on. He'd always been clever with technology. Eventually he started creating his own software at home, and ended up inventing a malware protection software that the college he worked at began to use. Once it had been proven successful, other colleges bought his work.
At the time, he had finally come to terms with his own sexuality and was seeing an older man, Pietro. Pietro saw an opportunity, and utilizing Chanse's intelligence and lack of entrepreneurial know-how, he founded a company that based its work on Chanse's original software. Chanse continued to engineer, believing himself to be an equal partner in the company, not realizing he was actually the equivalent of a kept housewife who just happened to do all of the work. He was young, and stupid, and he came to regret everything.
For eighteen years he worked for this company he believed he'd helped found.
Things at home weren't great, but Chanse had a twisted idea of what love was, anyway. So for eighteen years he let himself be treated badly, mostly because it kept his child in a good home and in good private schools. He did his best to keep the toxic behavior of his boyfriend hidden from his child, though. Any bruises he hid, and any arguing he would back down from, letting Pietro always have the last word. Chanse believed it was what he deserved. He'd let his life get this way, after all.
When Pietro passed away, eyes were on Chanse. Who fell from a third-story balcony in the middle of the day, anyway? Autopsy said Pietro was quite drunk, however, and so Chanse was dropped as a suspect. Just a terrible, tragic, accident.
Pietro had a will, and nothing was left to Chanse. Suddenly he lost everything. The company he believed himself to be part owner of? Gone. They took his work and they abandoned him, just as he'd been abandoned so many times in the past. Once again, he was struggling, the difference being he was older now, and he no longer had a small child to support. Still, he looked for work that would pay what he felt he deserved after working so hard for nearly two decades. And eventually he received an offer from Heywood University. They were losing their software engineering professor, they needed a new one, and his name was still on so much of the work his old company produced.
So he moved to East Haven, bringing his son, the one person in the world who meant absolutely everything to him, with him. For the time being, they are renting a house in Maple Hills, but he is looking for something that will be more permanent for them eventually.
PERSONALITY
Chanse is smart, but definitely foolish. He can memorize numbers, build a computer out of spare parts, and solve intricate math problems in his head, but he'll also hand all of that work over to the nearest person, believing them to have good intentions, and be baffled when they take his work and put their name on it instead.
He's a lover, not a fighter. All his life, he just wanted to be loved. And when he had love, he did everything he could to keep it. When it seemed like he'd lost it, he gave up immediately. Such as with Owen; knowing he'd slept with someone else, even if he didn't remember it and even if it was basically forced on him by his homophobic father, he felt immense guilt and knew he would just hurt Owen when he told him. And so he never did, he just stayed gone, terrified that Owen would hate him. And thus, he likely made Owen hate him just based on his own disappearance.
In addition to looking desperately for love wherever he could find it, he accepted a lot of things as love, even when he knew they weren't. He believed his parents loved him, even though they ignored or hurt him. And he believed Pietro loved him, though their relationship was bizarre to say the very least. He could write books on the things Pietro did to him, especially when he was a young man with a small child, but chances are he won't open up to anyone about all of that. Now that Pietro is gone, Chanse is realizing exactly how fucked up he is after twenty years of that relationship.
He's a good person, believe it or not. He wants what is best for others, though he seems snarky and sarcastic most of the time. His social skills are lacking, but if you can get through to him you'll have a loyal friend for a long time.
Were he to ever seek professional help, he would be diagnosed as bipolar and autistic. He'd probably be given ways to cope a little better than he has in his lifetime, and it could probably be very good for him. Unfortunately, he's never had anyone around to tell him to seek that sort of help, so he's never known how it might actually benefit him. All of the problems he faces he believes are his own fault, and thus his own burden to carry.
