After a serious car crash, Rhys decided to change his life around and moved from Portland to Edinburgh, where he now happily lives. Note: Yeah I know Portland is a terrible place to live in in real life, but in THIS fantasy world, it's not as bad. Also the legal age is changed to 18. :P

Childhood and teenage years

TW for: Bullying, severe PTSD, suicide ideation, ED

Rhys comes from a small town on the west coast, growing up in a middle-class family. His dad used to have a good paying corporate job (before being fired and opening up his car service) and his mother is a well-known local politician – easily put, he never went to bed hungry and never had to worry about much, maybe just sometimes fighting with his older sister for a TV remote. Before he got his name changed on his 18th birthday, he was actually named Connor.

Anyway, when he was still young, Rhys was a proper nerd in the most stereotypical meaning of the word. He wore glasses, was a lot more interested in drawing, writing and playing DnD rather than doing sports, never missed an episode of his favorite TV show and spent countless hours playing as his favorite characters outside with his best friend Sage. These two were an inseparable couple going against the world, before tragedy struck and Sage moved away from the small town, leaving him there alone. But things were about to get a lot worse for him when he started middle school. As a blonde sensitive and creative guy, Rhys was easy to be picked on and quickly became the main target of a cruel school bully, relentlessly making fun of him for his childish interests, destroying his drawings, insulting him publicly and as the time went on, harassing him physically. Rhys, in that time to scared to speak up, let the bullying continue without ever telling anyone, which only made things escalate quicker.

It was a warm early summer evening in the eighth grade when his bully mentally snapped and decided the world would be better without a weak nuisance like Rhys, fully falling into insanity. He waited for Rhys outside of the school with his two buddies and a baseball bat, deciding to terrorize his victim by hunting him down like an animal, taunting him and laughing at the pure fear he saw in Rhys’s eyes.

To this day Rhys remembers the wires from a fence cutting through his clothing and into his skin, gravel under his nails as he was crawling on the ground and the bat swinging down, crushing first his knee and then his wrist into a bloody mess. He remembers how the air smelled and how the laugh of his abuser cut through his screaming for help. He remembers the blood all around him, soaking into his shirt. Even though the days before and the days after are a blurry mess in his memory, the incident left a deep scar that sends him into a panic attack if he recalls it. If the janitor didn’t saw it happening, called the cops and rushed in to save Rhys, he would be dead.

Months after the incident were spent in the hospital, reconstructing his knee and wrist. It was the restless nights filled with nightmares that ultimately forged a deep hatred for himself, fuelled by the recent traumatic event. Rhys concluded that if he wants to survive, he will have to change. Long gone was the nerdy kind boy who daydreamed about dragons. In his spiralling mental health, Rhys imagined a different version of himself – one that people respect and fear, one that is accepted and loved by others. And as soon as he was able to leave the hospital bed, he began to train excessively, joined a self defence class and focused on his image. He started dying his hair brown and clothing appropriately, changed his glasses for a pair of contact lenses and focused on building his reputation in a new school. In just a year after the incident, he became a different person, one who hated everything about his old life and everything about his new life as well. Though he attended therapy sessions, he couldn’t open up to people anymore, living his life as someone else, someone stronger and prettier and more social, a party guy, the cool new guy, the dark mysterious guy… as anyone else but the nerd who almost got killed by a sociopathic freak.

He had a lot of unaddressed issues – be it his raging eating disorder he developed in order to gain muscle quickly, his severe PTSD and nightmares or the hatred he held against his true self and his fake persona. The only thing he couldn’t give up of his old life was drawing – though he only drew in the middle of the night, filled with dread and anxiety and haunting memories. In the end, he chose to study art, legally change his name and forget about his hometown – apart from visiting his parents, but only sparsely.

Adulthood

In university, Rhys was able to ease a bit more into the art guy. He realized it’s his main passion in life, but he couldn’t abandon the persona he created anymore – and so he still masked and tried to get on well with other people, while keeping the “book boyfriend” persona around him. He got into a few more relationships after Fran in highschool, but they all failed terribly, as Rhys realized he actually cannot form a deep connection when he’s not his true self. He still experienced terrible panic attacks and was still deep in his depression, but he was able to create a normal outside life, with people he didn’t really care about and talked about things that didn’t interest him.

One day, he met Sage on campus, doing the same major he was. It was then when his life was about to change again. At first, he tried everything in his power to avoid her – after all, she was a token of his past, someone who remembered his as Connor, not Rhys, and someone who only knew his blonde nerdy side. But she recognized him after a while and carefully, step by step, tried to bring back the friendship they had. She was slowly able to get under his skin, easing him into the idea of talking again. Maybe even playing some DnD together. This process took about a year with many obstacles from Rhys, too scared to give in, before they finally became friends again. After a major fuck up from Rhys’s side and one hookup later, they started sharing their secrets, realizing that the thing they both lacked could be found in each other.

Rhys, someone who had to be constantly aware of everything around him, was looking to give up himself to someone else, to lose control and shut down, while Sage wanted that control of someone else, being the one who makes the decisions in life. And that’s how these two started experimenting, slowly exploring the power dynamic they both sought after.

For Rhys, bondage and submission quickly became his own form of therapy. Being owned and controlled allowed him to clear his head, to take a break and let others do whatever they wanted with him. It was freedom in its own way, a part of him he hid for way too long.

Though they were doing things you probably wouldn’t with just a friend, they couldn’t imagine themselves as a couple – after all, they were just best friends. With benefits. Lots of benefits. And so, they formed an agreement that they’re only a distraction. Just two friends fucking until they each find a proper partner.

Rhys was able to quickly start up his art career, make good money and move into his own apartment, but even with a good job and good company, his problems didn’t just magically disappear – and they probably never will. Throughout his twenties, he hit several ups and downs, from considering ending his own life several times to staring in a movie series, always haunted by his trauma, hurting people around him and fixing his relationships over and over, his life was filled with many events that slowly led to a path of becoming closer to the person he once was. In order to survive his own head, he had to find balance between young Connor and current Rhys. I’d say he’s still looking for it.

• Rhys has a severe fur allergy.
• He loves plants and has many in his home, some of them being over 10 years old.
• He has a youtube channel where he teaches people how to paint for free, being dubbed as the “sexy Bob Ross” of his generation, usually wearing suits and masks to hide his face and joking with the viewers.
• He never finished his art degree, dropping out of school third year in, to work with a big animation studio on a movie. That has got his name out there and he’s been able to find gigs and job opportunities ever since.
• He struggles to admit his attraction to other men, irrationally afraid it somehow affects the carefully curated persona he created for himself.