Character: Beau ‘Bugsy’ Lawson
Species: Werewolf/Ghost
Age: 25
Gender: Male
Pronouns: He/him
Occupation: Park Menace
By: Tabs
They say it takes a village to raise a child, though in Bugsy’s case, it was a trailer park. Deadbeat parents are no surprise in the south, though just plain dead ones are a little harder to contend with. Bugsy had both, early on in life. Still, the 'Trailer Pack' stepped up for him, and he had plenty of family to go around in the Happy Tails Trailer Park. He was never so much adopted by any one family, and he never so much settled into any one trailer. He drifted amongst the pack, appearing in different trailers each night to sleep on a couch, in a spare bedroom, even floors. The whole of the pack became his family, true to what a real pack ought to be. And as a child, he lacked nothing.
Growing into his teens, Bugsy started to feel the displacement of not having his own home. Yes, the pack was his family, and yes, the park was his home, but he was missing something still. He was a straight-A student without so much as cracking a book, the golden child of the park, the baby, if you will. But still missing something.
Tentatively, he began exploring into the community of the town, falling into the influences of the teens outside of the park. It was an innocent thing, at first. But Henrietta is a town full of strange creatures, plenty of them holding grudges against those in the Trailer Pack. Bugsy was at a party when it happened, few memories besides blood and teeth and pain. He had been drinking. Someone had kissed him on the neck. The kiss had turned to pain, and then more pain, and then he had been dead.
Against all odds, he didn't die. The chances of a werewolf surviving a vampire bite are slim to none, but Bugsy beat the odds. He lived. He went back to the only home he knew and survived it as well as he could. Far from the boy he used to be, the effects of the bite had left him addled and just a little bitter. He dropped out of high school a few weeks before graduation and slipped into the black hole that was small towns. Of course the whole of the pack felt bad, felt guilty, and so he always had people to come home to and help him out. He started with drinking to cope and moved on from that into drugs. After a brief foray into the harder options that a small town had to offer, Bugsy settled on the easiest and most harmless option.
Count four or six years forward, he hasn't moved on, as if that night at the party was where his life was paused. It's harder for him to think straight, though at this point it's hard to say if that's from the bite or the drugs, and yet the pack still opens their doors from him. Older, but still the baby of the pack in many ways. At any given time, he could be found smoking a joint atop one of the trailers, or sleeping in someone's living room floor without asking them first. Getting a job every now and then, lasting a few weeks before getting fired, or forgetting to show up. All in all, it wasn’t the worst existence, though it wasn’t the best either.
It was a full moon that he finally stumbled forward a step in life. He never meant to turn anyone, but he’d been startled and lashed out, scratching a stranger. The stranger was far too kind in return, never sharing who had turned him, moving into the park, nothing but kindness for Bugsy. The two of them became fast friends. In little to no time, Bugsy developed feelings for Wade, feelings just as quickly repressed and learned to pretend they didn’t exist, unwilling to harm their friendship.
Then came the curse. Wrong time, wrong place, Bugsy upset a witch and found himself cursed with Hanahaki; a disease which targets unrequited love. Convinced that Wade would never return his feelings and unwilling to have those feelings surgically removed in order to survive, Bugsy solemnly accepted death. It was only after he died and found himself back again that he found out much too late Wade had returned the feelings.
Too little too late, they both knew they had to move on. There was too much between them at this point, un-navigatable waters of two very different beings.
