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Nicky Hemmick

#8 -- NICKY HEMMICK, BACKLINER
May 23, Gemini

NOW:

Nicholas Esteban Hemmick is the only son of Luther (a Baptist minister) & Maria Hemmick (a make-up consultant at Macy's). His parents met while Luther was doing volunteer work in Ensenada, Mexico. Nicky was born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina.

Maria taught Nicky some Spanish once he started middle school, but Nicky switched to German his freshman year at Macon High. He was slowly coming to terms with his sexuality, and he needed a safe way to express his confusion and fear. He started keeping his diaries in (broken, misspelled, half-unintelligible) German and passed the pages off as a school project whenever his parents asked.

Nicky spent his senior year of high school on a study abroad program to Stuttgart, Germany, where he met and fell in love with his host brother Erik Klose. Nicky returned to the United States long enough to graduate and tell his parents the truth about Erik and his sexuality. He was on a plane back to Germany the next day.

After Nicky's Aunt Tilda died, Nicky came back to the States to keep an eye on his cousins. Erik gave him the green light when Coach Wymack tried to recruit him for the Foxes, so Nicky signed a contract to Palmetto State University.

Nicky is a sophomore during the trilogy, but his time between high school and college means he is the oldest player on the team at twenty-three years old.

THEN:

In the first (comic) version, Nicky was not on the team and wasn't even related to the twins. He was the only friend the six-man Exy team had outside of the line-up. He served as a potential suitor for Neil and a point of contention: constantly afraid Neil would forget or shun him the more time he spent with the Foxes.

MORE RECENTLY:

Nicky joined the team when the comics transitioned to book format. Erik was invented several drafts ago, but until the current draft Erik always died before the books began. In those versions, Erik moved to South Carolina with Nicky to help get the cousins through high school (to work on his English and give him an edge when applying to international law firms).

In the book Nicky says he was attacked outside of Eden's Twilight. Andrew intervened when security called him and almost beat the men to death--laying the groundwork for the deal that put him on his current medication. In the original version, Nicky and Erik were both jumped when some drunk homophones saw them making out. Nicky survived the fight, but Erik died in the hospital. Andrew killed the men over Christmas break and brought Nicky the newspaper clipping as proof.

Nicky wore Erik's ring on a chain the rest of his college career. After graduation he moved to Germany to work at a PR firm and got a position on the summer major league team in Munich. Five years after graduation, he met a business-to-business salesman named Jon at a New Year's party and fell in love once more.