"Can you hear me, Major Tom?"
Nick
21 ⚬ Male ⚬ Homosexual
Pink Barrel Bartender and Silvervale Resident of One Month
⚬ Appearance ⚬If someone were told to imagine their dream guy, Nick probably would not be what they see, a fact he is all too aware of. However, while he isn’t quite the All-American dream with an easy smile, he’s not quite sore on the eyes either. Besides, beauty is only skin deep, right?
Tall and built are adjectives that have never, and probably never will, describe Nick well. At 5’6 (he likes to tell people 5’7), both women and men could quite possibly top him in height. While he has a height advantage on some people, it isn’t hard to rival him in bulk. He’s never been the type to put on muscle mass easily, something he learned the hard way after several frustrating months of constant gym sessions. His skin, consistently light no matter the month, stretches tight over tendons and lean muscle. A warning, underestimating his strength is a mistake many have made in the past and few would like to repeat.
If not his height, Nick’s most startling feature are his eyes. They are arguably his most attractive feature as well. His eyes are hooded and downturned, his irises a blue green color that contrasts with his light skin. His eyes are probably the most expressive facial feature, and the easiest way to tell what is on his mind.
His hair, curly and a dark brown that bleaches in the summer sun, tends to flop over his eyes. Most days Nick tries to straighten it out a little bit, but some days he leaves it to its own whims. On nice occasions, however, Nick tends to straighten it and push it up and back from his face.
Clothing wise, Nick’s wardrobe is pretty monochrome in color. He tends to stick to blacks, greys, navys, jewel tones, and neutral tones. The style of clothing, however, ranges depending on what he is feeling by the day.
Nick has a couple of unique and identifying characteristics, mostly tattoos and piercings. The lobes of his ears are pierced, and he tends to stick with disc shaped black stud earrings, or minimalistic black ear cuffs. On his right hand hand, on the inner side of his middle finger is the silhouette of a knight chess piece, a tribute to the countless chess games his father played with him. On his left forearm is a tattoo of a brass antique compass. A long scar runs over his abdomen, running from a couple inches below his sternum to his lower right side.
⚬ Personality ⚬Reserved . Empathetic . Adaptable . Focused . Honest . Independent
Above all else, Nick is driven. If he sets his mind to something, very little can successfully stand in his way of him doing everything he can to achieve what he wants. The man has something to prove, a model for everything he doesn’t want to be, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t take every opportunity he can to improve his life.
Formerly extremely aggressive and short-fused, Nick was prone to getting into violent and severe fights in high school. This caused him to be isolated from other students, his sole interactions being conflict. This causes him to struggle with genuine connection to other people his age presently, despite the fact he could really use a social life. He tends to be very guarded and cautious around new people until he decides how much personal information they can be trusted with. He comes off as almost overly formal with strangers, with very short answers accompanied with overcompensating politeness.
After hours spent on self-improvement, Nick is nothing like the person he used to be. Much more level-headed and reasonable, Nick has an almost charming vibe to his personality. Quick with a sharp comment or sarcastic quip with an obviously good underlying nature, it’s probably his best defense mechanism. Honest to a fault, he’d rather deflect a question or change the subject rather than lie. This can also cause him to be a little blunt, even if not trying to come off as such.
Surprisingly, the easiest way to befriend him is persistence. Those who have the best success come off as gentle and inviting, but non-threatening, almost as if they’re approaching a stray dog. After Nick warms up to people, he’s quite pleasant to be around. He relaxes much more, and becomes incredibly caring, almost like a mom-friend. He likes to bring presents to those he cares about, or take them to places to spend time with them. He has an almost puerile sense of curiosity and attitude around those he is comfortable with. He’ll do anything to please his friends, with a tendency to be pleased by receiving compliments (although he’s not quite good at that yet) or earning a laugh.
Nick refrains from public displays of anger or aggression unless there is a physical threat perceived against him or a friend. However, he is very easily flustered. An unexpected praise or comment can short-circuit his brain, which most describe as as endearing as it is humorous.
⚬ Likes/Dislikes ⚬o. Volunteering at animal shelters
o. Cooking
o. Sweets
x. Smoking
x. Bitter food
x. Fighting
⚬ Habits ⚬⚬ Nick loves to people watch! He particularly enjoys the subtly mundane aspect of it, such as people’s expressions.
⚬ If Nick isn’t working or studying, he’s probably at the animal shelter. In the year prior to his enrollment volunteering became less of a chore and more of a grounding presence in his life.
⚬ Nick has a terrible tendency of working himself to exhaustion. Often times he ignores his stress points to push to make more money or do better in classes.
⚬ Nick has yet to kick his smoking habit, despite his severe distaste for it. He’s always carrying at least a loose cigarette, and always has gum. (He hates mint, and likes fruit flavors.)
⚬ Another habit that has stuck with Nick from his reformation year is goal-setting and planning. He has a notebook that has the same energy as the poster’s on a middle school teacher’s wall, full of goals and dreams and phrases that inspire him or remind him of what he wants to accomplish.
⚬ Nick is a terrible over-apologizer, to the point where an apology is used as a filler between words or a preface to a statement.
⚬ Nick is very good at cooking! He loves to cook for other people, but is too gutless to offer anyone as of yet.
⚬ One of his biggest distractors stressors is the amount of time Nick spends in his head, overanalyzing and Nick spends way too much time in his head, overanalyzing and overthinking just about everything. This is one of his biggest distractors and stressors.
⚬ Background ⚬If you looked at Nick’s family several years ago, you’d never imagine it to degrade to the state it is in now. Frankly, Nick wouldn’t have expected it either, if he’s being completely honest. He normally is.
Nick’s parents, Alessandro and Amber met near Hollywood, where they had both come to chase a dream. They first met at an art gallery, where they proceeded to argue over an art piece. They spent the day together, and by the end of the day, they thoroughly hated each other’s guts, a detail that would bring a lot of doubtful chuckles when they would tell their story. However, as fate would have it, the two were interning at the same art museum that same year. While the work up to it was slow, the two found they had more in common than they didn’t, and eventually Nick’s father won Amber over.
They married young, and their relationship, for as long as it lasted, was flawless. Outsiders would speculate that a relationship that perfect was too good to be true, that it was an act for the public and the pair fought like cats and dogs behind closed doors. They couldn’t be farther from the truth. The two were inseparable, even basing their careers off of each other. They grew in popularity in Los Angeles for their collaborative art that brought two different art styles together perfectly. Often sold in a set of three, two smaller pieces would be coupled into a large piece.
After several successful years in the art industry, Nick was conceived. Their life had been perfect so far, with a wonderful marriage and a successful career, and so they saw a kid as the next step. And for a while, Nick’s family was indistinguishable from those sickeningly happy stock photos of families that served as placeholders in picture frames. Of course, what goes up must always come down. Not even a happy family was safe from unpredictability. When Nick was nine, Alessandro was killed in an accident involving an eighteen wheeler with an intoxicated driver on the Nick’s parent’s anniversary. He’d been driving home from the florist, and in just a second’s glance away from the road he missed the moment the eighteen wheeler rounded a turn just a touch too fast.
For the first three years, Nick’s mother handled it incredibly. At least, she appeared to. Despite a lack of a college degree, she took on every job she had time for, while taking night classes to situate a better future for her and her son. She was always cheery and optimistic, but years later in retrospect Nick would wonder if it was all a wonderfully executed act.
Regardless of when it started, the signs eventually were unignorable. The empty bottles went from being stashed in drawers until trash day to being piled around tables and on countertops. On occasion Nick would return home to find a tower of bottles had rolled from the table and covered the floor in glass. The smell of smoke lingered in the house, sticking to the walls and furniture. Drugs came in and out of the house almost as often as Nick’s mother had a new man in her bed.
In the years passing came stepdads one, two, and three, each sleazier than the last. His mother eventually pulled out all the stops, leaving Nick scrambling out of the way of rough and angry house guest who misplaced their anger on Nick. All too often Nick would find his mother slumped in the living room, staring blankly at a sitcom that was playing way too loud. Even more often Nick was the one dragging her to the bathroom as she emptied the alcohol from her system only to double the amount within an hour. Nick had seven different family “friends” on speed dial, as his mother refused to allow him to call an ambulance when things got out of hand. Somewhere down the line, Amber offered him a cigarette, and by his late teens Nick was trapped.
Los Angeles claimed another person to a slummy lifestyle, and in its wake, Nick was left behind. Confused and angry, Nick spent his time getting in fights at school, and coming home and taking care of his washed-out, has-been of a mother. He worked several jobs and stashed money away, hoping to eventually get out of town. The turning point of it all was when Nick came home facing expulsion for his latest brawl to find Amber had stolen all of his money. He graduated high school and left immediately, leaving Amber in his rearview mirror.
For a period of time Nick was homeless, hopping from couch to couch and getting into shady situations all too often. However, on a stroke of luck, Nick made it on to the couch of an old friend of his father. He told him about another one of his father's friends that had grown up to become a professor at a university, somewhere in Louisiana. He got Nick in contact with him, and thus began his journey to get into college. Because of his poor high school grades and track record, Nick had closed off nearly all of his options. However, he was able to make a deal with the professor. If he could turn his life around in the following year, retake the classes he’d done poorly in online, and bolster up in community services, the professor would advocate for him and fund his first year of college.
If this wasn’t Nick’s golden opportunity, he wasn’t sure what was. Within a year he worked furiously. By day he went to counseling services to kick his drinking habit and gain some self-discipline, got back into shape, and worked to save up money for the following years of college. By night, he studied and retook classes in all areas, settling for nothing less than stellar grades. By the time the year ended, Nick had drastically reformed his habits.
Presently, Nick is not quite in the clear. While conscious that the hardest part of it all is (hopefully) over, he has little time to relax or congratulate himself. His future at Silvervale University is not guaranteed if he relapses to his violent and uncontrolled nature, or doesn’t save enough funds to keep him in college. He still struggles with a smoking habit, and could use a little help branching out and connecting with others.
