ustulation » lightwood+bane [1]

TWENTY-SEVEN

USTULATION; INVERTED WORLD

NICHOLAS SHRUGGED HIS BAG off onto the dining room table at his parents' apartment, since it was weighing him down as if was filled with several psychology books. He rolled his shoulders as he attempted to regain circulation in his shoulders. The blond repeated this until his mother came over and rubbed his shoulders for him.

When Jocelyn finished, the blond turned to accept the hug his mother was offering. "Is that better?" She asked, smiling up at her tall son. Nicholas nodded in response, allowing her to continue, "it must be all that stress from university. You need to work less."

At that, Nicholas' eyebrows furrowed in confusion, "that won't be happening, especially when I have exams coming up that I need to cram for. Stress is just a companion I have to embrace if I don't want to fail." Ever the dedicated student.

Valentine poked his head around the corner to say, "Nicholas, how's Alec?" The blond immediately began blushing and fiddling with the ring on his finger. "He's...great...magnificent even. I'm meeting him after this actually."

Jocelyn and Valentine shared a look before the woman ushered her son to sit down at the table, which he did as he put his bag on the floor next to his feet. The two walked back into the kitchen, allowing Nicholas to pull out one of his psychology textbooks and a pencil to annotate with.

Footsteps entered the room, causing Nicholas to speak up in greeting, "good morning, Clary." The redhead girl paused in her movements, surprised he knew it was her but responded regardless, "good morning, Nico." With the name, she received a strange look from her brother, who didn't even look much like himself, which was understandable since she was currently in an alternate universe.

Alternate Universe Nico had a casual business look about him. He was a fit young man with short curly dirty-blond hair and warm dark brown eyes framed by a thick frame of black glasses. He wore a light blue button up covered by a red woolly jumper, light blue jeans and red converse. Combine that with the books he was reading through determinedly and Clary deduced that her brother was the epitome of a nerd in this AU.

Another thing Clary found odd was that he was studying psychology again but why would he be doing that when he dropped out of university? Although that was in her universe, so maybe Nico didn't drop out because of the lifestyle he took up, or it might have been because of his alcoholism.

She turned to observe the differences in the room around her, noticing everything seemed a lot brighter. As she gazed around the room, she began hearing a male humming: at first, she thought it was her brother but he wasn't the type to do so. And the humming was deeper than the blonde was capable of doing.