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Sel's had a long day. High school is hell.
The only thing that's stressing him out more than finals week is the fact that Nick can't seem to get his act together recently. Every weekend there's a party, and more times than not, that means Nick calling Sel at an absurd hour, drunkenly asking for a ride home for him and his friends. Of course, Sel doesn't have much of a choice in the matter. Even if the Oath didn't come for him for abandoning Nick, Martin Davis surely would.
This particular Friday night, Nick had been the one to throw the party, meaning Sel had decided to be as far away from the house as possible. After one of Nick’s friends had spilled her drink all over Nick’s shirt in an obvious attempt to make him take it off, he’d been out the door as quickly as possible. With nowhere else to go, he’d gone to see a late night movie. That had been at twelve. It was now 3 am, so hopefully everyone had gone home.
After shutting the front door behind him, he wanders into the living room, where there are still some beer cans on the floor from the party earlier that night. The couches have also been pushed aside, and one chair is flipped over. He’s not sure what that’s about.
Though Sel would rather Nick host the parties, seeing as it means he won't be needing a ride at 3 am, it also means that Sel gets roped into helping Nick clean up, which sucks.
Where was Nick anyway? He really wasn't the type to leave the house messy. In fact, Nicholas Davis was a compulsive cleaner, so the fact that the living room was still pretty trashed was odd.
“Nick?” Sel calls.
The only response is a muffled groan coming from upstairs. Usually something like that is concerning to Sel, but he doesn’t feel anything from the bond, meaning Nick isn’t in danger. He’s probably just being dramatic.
Sel hauls himself up the winding staircase in the front room and walks into the game room, where he finds Nicholas, beer in hand and face down on his laptop. Sel rolls his eyes. Nick's whole drunk studying thing had started a couple months ago after he’d received his first ever B in a class. Leave it to Nick to freak out about grades so much that even intoxication can’t keep him from studying.
Nick groans again and then turns his head just enough to look at Sel.
“What're you doing here?”
His words are slurred and his eyes are unfocused.
“Not sure if you noticed, but I live here.”
Nick narrows his eyes at Sel as if trying to decide if he’s joking or not, then he snorts.
“That was funny.”
Sel rolls his eyes yet again and then crosses his arms. “Was it?”
“Yeah. I just said it was.”
And with that, Nick lays his head on the floor and starts to snore.
Great. Not only is Sel on clean up duty tonight, he’ll also be on massive-hangover-duty tomorrow.
For curiosity sake, he sits down next to Nick to see what he was working on. To the right of the laptop there’s an open notebook. One glance tells him that it’s Nick’s calculus homework. He and Nick are in the same calc class, so most of the stuff on the page makes sense to him. Still, when it comes to math, he’s nowhere near as good as Nick. Calculus goes in one ear and out the other for him, like it’s some foreign language. Even drunk, Nick’s homework looks neater and more thought through than Sel’s ever does, so he sets it aside. There’s nothing he can do for Nick there.
To the left of the laptop, there’s a packet of questions- reading comprehension for Wuthering Heights. He can work with that. Plus, since Sel already did these questions for his class the week before, it’s hardly even a favor at all.
There are twenty questions in total. Nick’s already answered five, but his answers are pretty short (and frankly kind of stupid), so Sel takes the pencil out of Nick’s hand and prepares to erase.
The first question reads How does Brontë want the reader to feel about Lockhart after the first chapter?
Nick’s answer says Positively, because he’s the main character.
Wow. Part of Sel hopes that Nick just didn’t read the book, because if he did and still gave that answer, that would be pretty embarrassing.
The next couple answers are mostly the same (short and wrong), but the fifth question, the last one Nick had done, is a little better.
The question asks Based on Heathcliff’s description in chapter one, do you think the reader is supposed to be more repelled or more interested in him?
Nick's answer reads I think we’re supposed to be more interested in him than anything. Though Heathcliff seems outwardly like a cruel and off-putting person, I think there’s more to his story than that. Underneath any cold person is a warmth that you can find if you just look.
It’s not necessarily a great answer to the question, and it’s definitely not something Sel would have written, but it’s just so Nick. He can’t find it in himself to change it, so he just moves on to the rest of the questions. He does his best to write answers that sound like Nick wrote them, which isn’t as hard as he thought it would be. After ten years, it makes sense that Nick’s way of saying things is ingrained into Sel’s head. It still doesn’t sit right with him.
It only takes him a couple minutes to finish the packet. When he’s done, he reaches over Nick’s head to put it back.
Standing up, Sel mentally prepares himself for another hour of cleaning up downstairs.
“Sel?” Nick’s groggy voice comes from behind. “Where are you going?”
Sel sighs and turns around again. “To clean up your mess.”
Nick huffs and then sits up, eyes immediately catching on the homework Sel just fished.
“Did you do this,” Nick asks, turning to him with this drunken grin on his face.
Sel feels his ears go pink, but there’s really no point denying it, so he says, “I just couldn’t stand to see you give such horrific answers. It was an offence to Emily Brontë herself.”
Nick’s grin only widens at that.
“Thanks, Sel,” he says, before stumbling to his feet. “And don’t worry about this mess downstairs. We’ll clean it up in the morning.”
With that, he plops down onto the couch in the middle of the room and closes his eyes.
Sel eyes him for a second before walking over and placing his hands on both sides of Nick’s head. Just a quick Mesmer to make sure he doesn’t remember this in the morning. Like always, it feels like a breach of trust, but the great thing about Mesmers is that no one else has to know.
When he’s done, a familiar wave of guilt washed over him like it always does when he takes a memory.
Nick probably wouldn’t have remembered this in the morning aways, but Sel can never be too careful. The lines with Nick are blurry. At their very best, Nick and Sel are glorified acquaintances, always making small talk and doing their best to slip past each other. At their worst, they’re each other’s greatest enemies. All of the worst parts of Sel’s life have had at least something to do with Nick, and vice versa.
A part of him still wishes things could be different. As a kid, he had this dream of fighting side by side with Nick, serving the Order and fulfilling their purpose. Now, that dream is dead, and with it any lingering feelings he might have had for Nicholas Davis.
He and Nick are from two different worlds. Even if Sel wanted to, he could never bridge the gap between them.