Height: 5'9½" (176.5cm) | Build: Stocky, chubby, muscular

Not exactly the typical vision of a lithe little pixie, Nik has a somewhat stocky build, and pretty easily puts on fat and muscle in near equal measure. His long, silver hair is completely unruly, only its sheer weight preventing it from entirely sticking up and out every direction. As-is, it still likes to flare out, and he often stuffs it under a hat and/or ties it back to avoid dealing with it too much (but would look at someone like they'd just stepped on a kitten if they dared suggest he cut it). Though his insistence on keeping it so long despite the hassle might suggest vanity, he honestly ranges between indifferent and moderately dissatisfied with his appearance.

His hair is kind of nice, and his blue-gray eyes are kind of nice. The freckles that smatter across his face are... okay most of the time? Even though he worries they make him look younger. But his facial features in general feel plain to him, particularly compared to faerie standards, and he wishes he was a bit smaller and curvier. He does, in fact, sometimes glamour himself to fit that image, though it is tiring to maintain over long stretches. His face tends to be "glamoured" in a more practical manner: with a fair amount of eyeliner more often than not, and occasionally a bit of lip gloss when he's feeling it.

He wears a lot of neutral tones, various shades of blue, occasionally soft pink. His style ranges from casual modern attire to "I don't know what this is but it's loose and comfortable so screw it". In terms of his more modern clothes, cargo pants and shorts are very common (less than 6 pockets is a waste of time), as are t-shirts with references and/or smartass remarks. When it comes to more "gendered" aspects of clothing style, Nik tends to present more neutral or masculine, but commonly accents or accessorizes in more feminine ways. When dressing "to impress" someone, his presentation tends to get more feminine.

He favors stocking caps/beanies a lot, even in summer, but has an absurd number of hats, some of which are even more absurd than the size of the collection. He has two piercings in his right ear and one in his left (all in the lobes, no cartilage), usually wearing studs or very small rings/"hoops", but occasionally venturing into some dangly earrings. The higher right piercing is always just a stud. Of course, he can only wear pure metals like gold and silver. He has no actual tattoos, but has been known to glamour random things or draw on himself with markers. He has a few scars across his back and on his upper chest.

When left visible, Nik appears to have four blue, butterfly-like, glittering and subtly glowing wings protruding from his back. These are made of light and are not actually solid unless magically imbued to give them substance, but they do occasionally move a bit like physical wings would. Their visibility can be "toggled" in a sense, with it requiring a bit of concentration and effort to swap modes but none to maintain either visible or invisible status.

Nik to most comes off as either distant and quiet, or vaguely discomforting. It's hard to say exactly what it is, but even when he's being polite by all measurable standards, something often feels just a little "off", as if every word is laced with a backhanded compliment, or else the mere act of speaking to someone is making him mentally scream. If anyone calls him out or asks about it, he swears it's a fae thing and acts offended about it. In reality, it's largely a mix of all of the above filtered through extreme social awkwardness in general. He also finds it quietly hilarious to mess with people, as well as taking some comfort in the fact that it keeps most people away. After all, it's a lot easier to deal with people keeping their distance because Nik encouraged them to than to let someone get close only to have them realize he's still garbage and leave.

As much as he enjoys making people mildly uncomfortable, though, he is extremely conflict-avoidant toward anything too serious. Physical fights or the threats of them make him especially stressed and anxious. He'd much rather rely on words to solve problems, and when he has enough focus and desire to try he can actually be extremely well-spoken and diplomatic, the majority of his vague evasion dissipating and what awkwardness that remains mostly just resulting in some occasional stuttering or voice-cracking or other minor affectations.

As a faerie, part of that well-spokenness just comes with his blood. It is physically difficult and painful for him to outright lie, although lies of omission are effortless and common, and misdirection and hyperbole are fine, the latter tending to register in his mind more as "teasing" than "lying". Vaguely sarcastic semi-truths also function as a loophole, which works well (although likely contributes to his offputting vibe) for something like "that dress looks lovely" [just not on you], but doesn't really work if being interrogated or the like. He could say, "yeah okay, I went that far out of my way to steal your cookies, seems legit" in an effort to deny blame, but could not convincingly say "I did not take your cookies" unless it were true. Very carefully chosen words are par for the course in faerie culture; he just needs to muster the effort to make them as effective as they could be.

The mentality to try is something of a problem in a lot of areas, as he is bipolar, and struggled with depression for most of his life. His manic states are rarer, and even then wind up being high-strung and tense and irritable 24/7 for days or weeks straight as or more often than they make him upbeat and productive. He hates sitting trying to make himself do something for hours and making zero progress, hates feeling like he has no control over his life, so many times he makes no effort in the first place. It's hard to fail if you never try.

He loves music and plays several instruments, and although his speaking voice can be a little grating aside from it's most soft-spoken tones, his singing voice is fairly pleasant. He loves drawing and painting, and dabbles in creative writing. He also has quite an appetite for tv/movies and video games. He prefers them to books, finding the multimedia format much more appealing than mere words on a page, something he's pretty sure some fae would find vaguely blasphemous but they can bite him.

He dislikes a lot of things to some degree or other, far too many to reasonably list, and his list of fears is nearly as long. He is extremely anxious and paranoid over a lot of things, including but not limited to being fairly agoraphobic. "But don't faeries like, live in forests or something?" Yes wow gee thanks for that Karen way to stereotype. Anyway, there is a massive difference between highly populated towns in forests and like, dark creepy quiet woods where things are lurking and bears will eat your face. The more familiar an area is the better he can deal with it, but being somewhere "wild" or way out in the open alone makes him feel stranded and break into panic attacks.

For all that he is a bitter, reclusive, abrasive, lazy coward, and for all that he wishes he just didn't care about anything, he cares. There is some part of him-- his feelings for said part often being "thanks I hate it"-- that is incapable of not-caring about people who are genuinely in need, especially if he can relate to them in any way. Placed in a situation where his own life, and only his, is at risk, he may be strongly tempted to lie down and wait for the sweet release of death (or find some very trivial excuse to resist); but seeing someone who genuinely needs protecting and who no one else is stepping up for, Nik will fight until he passes out to defend them.

Nik's mother, Iris, is a low-ranking noble within Regnum, albeit high-ranking within Fae Court. For roughly a century she ruled her village and the surrounding land alone until meeting the man who she'd eventually fall in love with, Feliks. He was much younger than her, but very endearing, and the two were wed.

Not long after, Iris gave birth to twins, Nikolai and Dasha. Post-partum depression hit hard, keeping her from being as involved as she wanted to be in their lives growing up and leading to a sense of distance between them. Feliks was a good father when he was around, but he often avoided dealing with home life by pursuing his love of the outdoors instead. Still, the twins were well cared for and never wanted for anything, and the two were always thick as thieves as a result of being each other's one constant presence.

When their little sister Ilya was born, Iris resolved to be a better mother this time and was much more involved in her life, leading to a lot of jealousy and resentment from both of the twins, though Nik was always aware Dasha got the worst end of the stick, since at least he still got a little special attention as the only boy. He always did his best to remind Dasha she was his favorite person, though, hoping to make her feel special if only around him.

The twins received a quality education in both academic and social fields from private tutors, and Nik always did pretty well at these, although he found all the social rules really pretentious. He could follow convention fine, but sometimes he'd bend it just for reactions as a lowkey act of rebellion.

Eventually Nik started dating, but went through several less than ideal relationships as well as a lot of flings. One recent girlfriend in particular had a violent temper and would hit him whenever he did anything she didn't like, leading Nik to develop a sense of paranoia and an aversion to any form of physical violence. Fortunately that relationship didn't last too terribly long, though it did leave him hesitant to try again.

Eventually, Dasha joined the military, leaving Nik feeling abandoned and alone. He didn't have many people he'd really consider friends, with the two closest-- Alex and Jakob, two of their servants' children-- having also joined the military and gone on to magic school respectively. Nik developed a bit of a habit of guilting Dasha into visiting home, which led to some occasional bickering between them, but at least she didn't stay gone all the time like she might have if left to her own devices.

Nik is currently trying to explore himself and figure out if there's anything that suits him the way the military does Dasha. He is fairly skilled at politics and slated to be mom's heir, but fae are so long-lived and she is so confident as a ruler that could be centuries away, and in the meantime he feels like he should be doing Something, he just doesn't know what. Working on facing his fear of the outdoors and seeing more of the world seems like a fair place to start, even if he still doesn't plan to go to any dangerous wilds any time soon.