the boys along the street

:*﹤ending author's note ﹥*:

george's dad didn't even try to play of the move as something casual, simply saying that george was becoming rebellious and attention-seeking and needed a change of scene. he originally wanted to send george to some kind of correction facility but his mother refused, they had a huge fight over it and eventually settled that george would move to america with his mother.

george's mum is often busy with work, but she is generally always there when george needs her and has always been supportive of him.

george only had one real friend in england, wilbur, but his dad forced him to cut contact with the brunette after george got into smoking. really, the smoking had no relation to wilbur, george just wanted to try it one day and got hooked, but wilbur was trans (ftm) and george's dad had always been looking for a reason to cut the brunette off.

without being able to see wilbur, george didn't care about moving to america. if anything, he was excited for a fresh start and the chance to get some freedom with his mum.

george's parent's relationship started to quickly demolish after his dad practically disowned him. (though, to be fair, his mum was never really that fond of him in the first place.)

george has attachment issues and is scared to get close to people but when he opens up he makes connections arguably too fast.

george likes fire.

ˑ༄ؘ ۪۪۫۫ ▹ sapnap and family

bad and skeppy are sapnap and ella's dads.

sapnap is 17, ella is 14.

there's no real reason why, but sapnap and ella grew up calling skeppy "dad" and bad "father", it works as a good way to distinguish between the two when talking.

sapnap identifies as straight at the start of the book, but he never believes it himself. he tries to force himself into liking girls, though even he isn't sure why. he has only had crushes on guys before but always ignores it and pressures himself into mlf relationships.

ella is non-binary. they are based on one of my online friends and is simply a form of indirect online bullying (/j /lh). ella will have a crush on george, who is gay.

ˑ༄ؘ ۪۪۫۫ ▹ punz and family

punz is 17 (turns 18 during the book), alyssa's 21

punz and alyssa live with their nan, puffy, because their parents died when they were children. they died when punz was only a few years old and neither of them are particularly bothered by it now, of course it still upsets them but they don't really ever remember them being around so it's just normal to them.

punz has been depressed for a while, he has suffered a lot from self-harm (though has been sober for a while when the book starts) and tried to kill himself a few years ago- which is when puffy decided to get him into therapy. going to therapy made everything worse, he had a bad experience with a poor therapist that invalidated his feelings and once got angry at him, expressing so by saying, "well maybe you would be better off dead." she has since been fired, but the trauma from the experience has turned him away from therapy and he refuses to go back.

originally, punz started doing drugs as a coping mechanism but gradually moved away from that and now just does them for fun (still, occasionally he does use them as an outlet, though he would never admit that.)

punz never feels quite right, there's always a nagging sadness in the back of his mind, but he's learned to fight it, and generally seems okay except for the odd mental breakdown/ depressive episode every now and then.

he stopped self-harming with the help of dream (who was indirectly getting help from kristin- he knew punz wouldn't be comfortable speaking to her directly.)