Nicholas Hayes

First appearance -14
Most common portrayal -22 to 26

Male

Nika, Kolya, Adalbert, Addie

5'9

Cyber Grape. Do not call it purple he will get pissy.

None

Carmine (again, not crimson, I’m not joking he gets stupid about colors)

Pale white

Very thin, to the point it sometimes makes people concerned. He’s been described as ‘looking emaciated half the time’. He has a small frame, he’s considerably tall and quite bony, so he ends up looking like a tall skinny toothpick if he doesn’t dress properly.

Nick has a noticeable scar on his neck that looks jagged and unsettling. The scar runs horizontally and is too close to his jaw to be easily concealed by high-neck clothing or scarves. At the same time, it's too low to be naturally hidden by his jaw. Although Nick is not particularly ashamed of this scar, he usually avoids discussing it since it has a dark backstory, and he doesn't want to delve too deeply into it with strangers.

You won’t catch him dead wearing anything too colorful. He doesn’t like calling too much attention to himself, so what little color he wears is usually pretty muted and gray. He likes layers, since it helps hide his body type. While he doesn’t like talking about his scars, he doesn’t usually hide them, and is oddly proud of them. He considers them a statement of what he’s survived, so he won't hesitate wearing short sleeves if he feels like it in any particular day.

He’s the kinda guy that wears hoodies in summer, though you’ll often find him better dressed this days (mainly from the fact that his best friend is a makeup fiend and fashion enthusiast, and his husband is also into fashion. They dress him up most days)

He doesn't give much thought to his hair, except for his strange fixation on not cutting or coloring it. As a child, he had a bad experience when his foster family sent him to a Religious Private School that required him to cut his hair. He refused, and they had to physically restrain him, causing it to become a traumatic experience for him. As a result, he is adamant that only he can cut his hair, and maybe Quincy Copeland or Aleksander ???? Zakharov after he trusts them enough.

He usually wears his hair in a ponytail, clipped back, or even in buns at times. Although he takes great care of his hair, he doesn't do much styling to it.

He’s not the most polite of people. His body language is usually very visibly relaxed and unbothered. He tries to act very self-assured, however, a lot of his body language betrays his insecurity. He tends to keep his hands in his pockets, which he tries to make look like an open gesture when in reality he does this to avoid fidgeting when he gets nervous. Similarly, he tends to scratch his arms a lot when he’s overwhelmed or feels trapped or under pressure, which becomes a big issue after his claws come in. He files them often, but his arms are still considerably scarred because of this.

He doesn’t have an accent as much as he picked up a couple of manners of speech from several of his foster homes, so it's hard to pin down how he speaks. He’s very informal, doesn’t shy away from profanity, and is the kinda person to describe himself using slurs just because he can.

Even though he’ll deny it, as a teen he used to have a slight bias against full-blooded non-humans. He’d just never met one that wasn’t a dick to him, so he was usually a little more reserved with them. He grew out of it pretty quickly, After moving in with Marie “Silver” Naserian and Abel ??? Zakharov .

Nick is absurdly talented at magic, something that probably stems from his human half, as humans are known to be exceptionally good at controlling magic. He’s also a fairly good artist and has a pretty good singing voice.

In his free time, Nick often enjoys making music with Aleksander ???? Zakharov, he likes to do ink sketches of places he visits and likes to dabble in elaborate flying, though because he doesn’t take too well care of his wings, he often cannot fly for weeks at a time.

Nick is easy to anger, stubborn as a mule, and self-deprecating to a fault yet somehow at the same time has way too much pride to admit when he’s wrong.

Nick’s motivations are pretty fluid, at first he really wanted to be someone important who made a difference, but he gave up on that at some point, without realizing it. (Even though he actually did, to a degree, make a difference). Nowadays he just wants to live a chill life, he wants his husband happy and his kids safe, he doesn’t ask for much.

INFP-T accordging to a test but m not sure i agree

Nick has a multitude of unusual medical conditions, most of which are due to his hybrid status. His dietary restrictions include allergies to chicken and alpha-gal, anemia, lactose intolerance, an aversion to olives, and an adverse reaction to alcohol when combined with his medication. He also dislikes the texture of pork, which makes him primarily vegetarian even though he is an obligate carnivore. As a result, he needs to take numerous supplements to maintain his body's functioning, and he has a difficult time gaining body fat. Additionally, Nick suffers from type 2 bipolar disorder and an intense fear of broken glass.

He smokes like a goddamn chimney, for one. He insists it doesn’t matter because he’s half dragon so his lungs are made to process smoke and fire anyway. While he’s not wrong, it still bothers a lot of his friends and family, so he tries to slow down when he’s around them. Although he never completely quits, he reduces his smoking significantly after the birth of their first child.

Likes
❤ Spicy Food
❤Drawing
❤Dogs
❤The Moon
❤Winter
❤Tattoos
❤Coffee
❤Gray Clothes

Dislikes
💔Mint
💔Summer
💔Sunny Days
💔Shitty Medications
💔Hospitals
💔Close Minded People
💔Colorfull Clothes

Magic professor at the Institute of the Sacred Arts (past)
Apothecary and partial owner of the Mandragora Flowers and Apothecary magic shop. (Current)

He likes Dogs! He also has a soft spot for rodents, rats in particular. He had a dog growing up named Lola, a greyhound that he used to walk (or skate) with.

He very rarely gets into physical fights, mainly because he knows he’s a scrawny toothpick and anyone worth fighting will snap him in half. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t get into fights, he does, he just tries to be smart about it. He fights in the dark where he has an advantage, and uses magic instead of any physical strength about 90% of the time.

When his impulsiveness (and/or mania) wins over common sense, he tends to punch his issues away. He doesn’t normally win physical fights, but he’ll sure as hell try his best.

A moonstone pendant that Marie “Silver” Naserian gifted him. It is a magical amulet that was enchanted by Abel ??? Zakharov to help regulate his mood episodes, and he’s incredibly protective of it.

Anything spicy flies with him. You can occasionally catch him drinking Tabasco straight from the bottle. It's horrifying and he enjoys how distressed people get when he does it.

Green!

Currently, he’s a professional witch and apothecary at Mandragora Flowers and Apothecary Magic Shop. His husband opened the store when he decided to retire from politics, and after it started making a profit, Nick also quit his job to help manage it. He slowly started making small spell bottles and herb mixtures for people who would ask, which escalated into him making them for sale regularly at the store, which then escalated into him turning the back room into a small witch-hut-and-apothecary where he makes custom-made spells for people, does some divination and hand-makes most of the magical artifacts sold at the apothecary.

Nick was once heavily involved in politics, particularly advocating for the rights and recognition of hybrids. Being a half-human himself, he had experienced firsthand the mistreatment and neglect of hybrids in both human and non-human politics. During his late teens and early twenties, he actively fought for the cause. When he met Aleksander ???? Zakharov, a well-known non-human politician, he became more strategic in his activism, trying to network with influential people to advance the cause. Nick was successful in many cases and helped Aleksander ???? Zakharov plan and implement numerous pro-hybrid policies. However, Aleksander ???? Zakharov eventually became burnt out and stepped down from politics, causing Nick to also become less involved as his priorities shifted towards personal matters.

He grew up in a weird spot since several of his foster homes had different religions and belief systems. He had stuck with the standard growing up since it was the most common, and it made people treat him better, however, he always felt disconnected from it.
After he finds out he’s a hybrid, he dives head-first into the religious beliefs of his dragon heritage. It sticks a lot more, and after a while, he becomes a pretty stubborn follower of the moon deity. It’s worked well for him so far.

He went to public school while in foster care, and at about 15 after being adopted by Marie “Silver” Naserian, she sent him to a private school that focused on educating non-human children. She did this with the intent of him catching up with his non-human side since he knew basically nothing about it.

Orphaned really young, Nick spent his entire childhood stuck in foster care. The circumstances of his parent's death, or even their identity, was a mystery to everyone tasked with taking care of him, and so he ended up being raised as a human, oblivious to his draltur heritage. He was given a random name and last name and sent off.
He became close friends with a human girl named Luna who went to school with him as a kid. She helped him deal with a lot of his personal issues and stuck with him regardless of his poor conflict-solving skills. They became pretty much inseparable, and he spent a lot of time at her house with her family, who became his first stable support system.

At around 13 he starts to develop his dragon side, and since no one knew, it caught everyone by surprise. Dragons, as well as bird folk, develop their wings in their early teens. It's a slow, painful process, and going through it not knowing what it was, was a horrifying experience, which absolutely added to his trauma.
He continued to develop his horns, claws, fangs, and tail, not knowing how to properly take care of any of them. He somehow managed to break his tail very early on in its development and never set it properly, so he was left with the tip of his tail permanently skewed.

All of this added to the fact that he was starting to present the first signs of his bipolar disorder made for a very traumatic, tumultuous year. Not knowing how to deal with the situation, he tried to ask for help from his social worker, which only made things so much worse. Turns out he was now considered too non-human to be taken care of by the human government, but too human to be taken care of by the non-human government. He was essentially caught in the middle of a political debate, while abandoned by both systems. He stayed with Luna as much as he could, but eventually started to feel like too much of a burden on her and her family, and ran away.

He had to take care of himself for a while, which was easier said than done. He learned to control several of his new dragon abilities by trying to survive out on the street. He discovered his umbrakinesis, which was really useful to hide things, including himself. He discovered he could see perfectly in the dark, which was incredibly helpful, and he also discovered, via trial and error, that by putting those two abilities together, he could be a pretty damn good pickpocketer. He became really good at sneaking around, stealing money from people’s pockets, and food off the stalls of the local market.

This is where he finally got his big cash in of luck, as at one point he made the very misguided choice of trying to steal from Marie “Silver” Naserian . Silver, being an experienced mercenary, noticed him Immediately. He tried to sneak away, and she would have let him, but she had a big soft spot for children, so instead she bought him lunch, and listened to his story. She noticed how thin he was, how physically hurt he looked, and offered help. He refused initially, not trusting a random stranger off the street, but they continued to meet occasionally, and she would buy him food and get him things he might need.

It all seemed to be going fine, until one night a mixed episode proved to be more than what he could handle on his own. Silver happened to be around that night on a job, and stumbled into the scene. She helped him out, and he finally accepted her offer for help. She took care of everything from then on, giving him a room at her house, and spending way more time and money than he was comfortable, making sure he recovered fine. At this point he also meets her roommate, Abel ??? Zakharov , an ice dragon who took the time to help him figure out his dragon side a bit better. Abel, being a healing mage, tried to help him recover better, but some things, like his fucked up tail and his neck scar were pretty unsalvageable.

Over the next few years his life starts looking up again. He gets properly diagnosed and medicated, goes to therapy twice a week, reconnects with luna, and meets a couple new friends. Everything starts going well, even if he doesn’t have the healthiest coping mechanisms. Theeeeen the slut phase happened.

So by this point in his life Nick is considerably better, however with his basic needs covered, he sort of finds himself having an identity crisis. He had never had the time to stop and thing about the situation, and he’s pretty lost regarding his identity, his past, and everything surrounding it really, to the point he doesn’t even know what his true name was, if he even had one to begin with.

While he was doing a lot better, one thing he continued to struggle with were pretty bad coping mechanisms. He went from clawing at his arms, to picking at his scalp, to skipping meals, it was sort of a disaster. He could manage it mostly, and found that fidgeting helped, however he still struggled a lot in keeping from absentmindedly hurting himself during mixed episodes.

These issues combined is what led to Nick’s infamous slut phase. He turned to sex as a way to cope with life, while also using his identity crisis as an excuse. He didn’t have an unhealthy relationship with sex, he was just ‘exploring his sexuality and identity in a totally safe way stop nagging him about it he’s being careful he swears’, When in reality he was struggling with the concept of intimacy, and trying to use sex as a way to fill that void that a lifetime of separation anxiety and abandonment issues had left in him.

He decided to look for more people like him, to try and figure out his identity crisis some. This is how he ends up meeting who would end up becoming his closest friends, Luca, a half-human tamer, and Laeti, a half-human bird woman. The three of them became this sort of ‘half-human hybrid club’ and their shenanigans became infamous in the area. Nick had the tendency to drag Luca with him into a variety of local activism, some productive and helpful, some less so, and they got themselves in a lot of trouble in the process. Some highlights of their adventures include breaking into the mayor’s office to look for incriminating evidence of blatant discrimination (and to cover the entire office in sticky notes), painting the wall of a government building with caricatures of the politicians as furries (yes really), using elephant glue to shut closed the windows of the dragon embassy (that said dragons often used instead of doors), and plenty more. Yes they did get arrested several times, they were lucky that Silver had the money and the patience to bail them out almost every time (being fair, she found most of it hilarious, and while she didn’t want to encourage it, she sure as hell wasn’t stopping it)

A habit he had developed during this time, to cope with his depression spells, was to try to chase adrenaline by jumping off high places, free fall for as long as he felt safe, and then eventually fly off. He tended to like the big cliffs off the side of vershade for that, because the water in the bottom made him feel slightly safer. The area was right at the edge of a very busy shopping street, so the noise of people in the background also helped ground him.
It was during one of this moments where he met Quincy Copeland , who panicked at the scene, tried to grab onto him, and ended up making them both fall down the cliff.
It sounds horrifying, and it was, but they ended up mostly unharmed, and it made for a great story, in Nick’s opinion.

They became really close friends, Quill being a genuinely caring and doting person, he was the kind of friend Nick really needed at the time. He was always willing to listen, always there to talk some sense into him, and always up to get drunk off his ass on a Thursday afternoon if it came to it.
Their relationship however got a little complicated. Quill, because of some life circumstances, had issues with intimacy. He had learned pretty early on in life to equate his value in a relationship, with what he could provide to it sexually, so as they became closer as friends, this began to bleed into it as well. Nick didn’t really mind, and since Quill had always been very open about his sexuality up until that point, didn’t think to question it. So yeah, they absolutely hooked up, and Quill found himself struggling with a one-sided crush.

The Slut Phase ended with Luna’s engagement. Nick had had a crush on luna since they were kids, and her engagement to this human dude that Nick never really liked, put a stop to pretty much everything he was doing. It forced him to stop and think about his feelings for once (ew, feelings), and face the fact that he was using sex as a coping mechanism to avoid feelings. It was a pretty rough time for him. Luna valued him as a friend greatly, and wanted him to be involved with the wedding, and he didn’t have the heart to tell her no. He helped her choose a dress, recommended a catering place that he knew was good, went with her to anything she asked for, and it always hurt him to do so. He felt really guilty about it, thinking that he was seeing his closest friend going through the happiest time in her life, and the fact that he was so upset about her being so happy tore him apart. It took time, and some long conversations with Silver, to really come to terms with the fact that he was allowed to feel feelings.

He sort of quieted down after the wedding. Deciding he needed some time for himself to really deal with everything that had happened, he pulled away from his friends and dedicated himself to his studies for a while. He had been dedicating a lot of time to studying magic for the past couple of years, and it had come to a point where he felt like he was finding himself in his craft. It was a nice feeling, and the few months that he dedicated to himself and his magic really helped him come to terms with a lot of the things he had been struggling with. His human side was one of the things that made magic as natural to him as it was, but it was him dragon side that determined a lot of his magical affinities. It helped him to find a balance between the two, and he finally decided he didn’t need one or the other, he was fine as he was, and his status as a hybrid stopped being something negative, and became almost a point of pride for him.

The comeback (sparkles).
While Nick had been focusing on his studies, things were going on at home. Abel ??? Zakharov had finally managed to get in contact with his younger brother, who had agreed to pay him a visit, and stay with them for a while, to try to reconnect with him. Nick wasn’t really involved in this situation, didn’t really ask too many question, so when Aleksander ???? Zakharov arrived, he had no idea who he was.
He disliked him immediately.
Aleksandr was this obnoxious politician with the most ridiculous manners of speech, this guy looked and talked like an over-the-top Disney price type, and it was annoying as all hell. Nick tried to just stay away, since he was aware how important this was for Abel, but eventually and inevitably ended up having to interact with Aleksander anyway.
Abel had asked him beforehand to try to not get too close to his brother if he could help it, which Nick understood meant “don’t fuck my brother”, which, ok, fair, he had agreed to that, and after meeting the guy? Yeah, no problem, they’d be lucky if they got to even become acquaintances.

Aleksandr (or Sasha, as he insisted on being called), seemed to take the entire oposite direction, and constantly tried to start conversation with Nick. He always answered, because the least he could do was be polite, but it really did start to annoy him. Sasha was just. So annoyingly proper and polite, it really bothered him. Eventually he learned that Sasha had grown up with his grandparents, who were Russian, and his Other grandparents, who were Japanese, so it started to make sense why he was so weirdly polite when speaking. It also became obvious that he wasn’t completely fluent in English either, which also explained some of his weird manners of speech. It did make Nick feel like kind of an asshole, so decided to at least try to be cordial and stop being such an asshole.

Wouldn’t you know it they actually ended up getting along really well. Sasha was a surprisingly interesting person, he loved classic rock music, played so many instruments it made Nick dizzy, and apparently had had a drunk phase and had so many ridiculous stories to tell, they ended up finding themselves talking into very late at night just sharing stories and laughing like idiots. Nick’s favorite is the one where Sasha got dared by one of his friends to outdrink some big dragon guy they had met that night, and he ended up getting so wasted he at some point did a striptease in front of a news crew, who immediately recognized the son of this important non-human politician doing a fucking striptease and caught it on camera. It made national news.

They became good friends, and it was all great, until the day that they found themselves in a complicated situation at a restaurant, where Sasha used Siren to get them out. Siren being a language that only tamers and mermaids could use.
This is where Sasha revealed he was actually half merman, from his father’s side, but his family advised him to keep it a secret, since mermaids aren’t well received above land, because of their abilities, and if people knew he was part mermaid his career in politics would be ruined. Nick at that point had started to only hear static, because what that really meant for him was that Abel ??? Zakharov , someone who he had trusted since he was a child, was a hybrid all along, and never told him.

Nick confronted Abel that night, and an argument broke out. Abel tried to explain that, unlike Sasha, he didn’t really present any mermaid traits. He just had dry skin sometimes and could sing well, that’s about it, so telling Nick, who was going through several medical issues because of his hybrid status, that he was ‘like him’, would have only made it worse. He legitimately believed that it would only have made Nick hurt more by telling him, however Nick still felt betrayed and lied to, and in the end the argument ended with him leaving the house, and staying over with Quill for a couple days. He would have stayed longer, if it wasn’t for Silver, who reached out and tried to work as a mediator between them. It didn’t really work, but Nick decided to stay home anyway, if anything just to make her happy.

When talking to Sasha about some music he was making, Nick had the worst idea. He was a petty bitch, and he knew Abel really didn’t want him dating his brother. And so that’s exactly what he decided to do. It didn’t even take him a week. Apparently, and he only learned this afterward, Sasha had been crushing on him pretty much since the day they met, so the second Nick decided to make a move, Sasha was immediately on board. Now, he wasn’t a Total asshole, he didn’t set out to fuck with anyone’s feelings, even though he wasn’t aware that Sasha liked him at the time, he wouldn’t have tried anything if he didn’t at least find him attractive.

As he expected, Abel was fucking livid when he found out, but Sasha was absolutely smitten, so he couldn’t try to break them up without ruining his relationship with his brother that he had just managed to rebuilt. Nick was satisfied, knowing how pissed off Abel was at him, and he reveled in it. He ended up winning regardless, he got himself a hot boyfriend AND pissed off Abel in the process, a total victory, if you asked him.

Now, Nick hadn’t planned to fall for the guy, he liked him well enough, but he had never been the romantic type, with counted exceptions, so he expected to just enjoy the relationship for what it was, until Sasha got tired of him and decided to move on to something better.
That’s not what happened.
As it turned out, Sasha was surprisingly good at relationships. He had apparently been in several, very long term, committed relationships, even had been engaged once, so he had a lot more experience than Nick, who never really had had a real relationship based on feelings before.
So when he found himself in a situation where someone was giving him legitimate affection? And trust and communication? And made him feel valued and appreciated? Game changer. Sasha had managed to completely swoop nick off his feet by barely trying.

April 3rd

He currently has a pet rat named Ratthew. No, he doesn’t take criticism on the name.

Bisexual