NICK KOVALSKY , dependent muse for starstruckrpg. ( i , ii , iii )
NICKNAME nick ( preferred ) BIRTHDATE january 2, 1981 AGE 42 GENDER cis man SEXUALITY 2/3 on the kinsey scale FC / VC jon bernthal
FAMILY dad (henry, newly deceased); mom (daniella, incarcerated); older brother (michiel); younger sister (hannah), youngest brother (ari) PARTNER ex-wife, jessica
TW emotional abuse implied, alcoholism, religion implied, hospitalization, schizophrenia implied, adultery, death implied
nick wasn’t just born rich. he was born dirty rich. it was all shiny new blue money, albeit, but this is goddamn hollywood. all money is new money here. so different than new york city, where his daddy made it the first time, where it’s the creased and folded and pocket-warm cash that keeps things running. makes things happen. for henry kovalsky, it went like this: shed your mother’s poverty, make your first million, have four kids, buy the big house, buy the boat for the bigger house on martha’s vineyard, and keep the government’s hand out of your pocket. easy peasy.
so what did it mean to nick? it meant opportunity at all crossroads; opportunity in the blank face of all curiosities and bored queries. spoiled, spoiled, spoiled, and with no idea what to do with it all. to buy seemed to be the only thing to do — toys, bikes, gifts, experiences. ah, the experiences. and the 80s were full of them. but he really hit his stride in the 90s, either because or in spite of tech advances and general deterioration of community idealism. he never figured out which. but at the core of it he was brutish, reckless, selfish, and a damn pussy when it came down to it — if you want the details, as always, ask and ye shall receive. ✨
but — and this is a turning point, so pay attention — when he's 14, his mom is president and founder of a multi-level marketing scheme. post-mary kay and pre-doterra, daniella ostermann-kovalsky was imprisoned for falsifying tax information and maliciously deluding over 2.8 million people into signing up for an mlm weight loss company. cute, right? WRONG. while daniella wasn’t the breadwinner, she was the most stable piece of the kovalsky home. without her, quite frankly, everything went to shit, and fast.
and eventually he was 18 and had settled into the antithesis of routine — turns out sending your kid to a catholic college doesn't do much more than give them a step up into a life of alcoholism and weeknight partying. but in the middle of it all, while the kovalsky home hemorrhaged any ounce of love it ever held and his siblings took turns falling off the deep end, nick met his forever love. so by the time his dad was diagnosed with liver failure and heart disease, nick managed to get married, graduate with paid-for honors, and take over the operations side of kovalco all in the same week. his dad called it “the biggest fucking risk of my life.”
but shattered nerves and self-hatred and mimicry gone wrong led to nervous breakdown after nervous breakdown. the third hospital he was forcibly checked into leaked his diagnosis — exhaustion, dehydration, alcoholism, possible paranoid schizophrenia. his wife, to her credit, called every day. twice a day, sometimes. did he sleep well? was he seeing the therapist that day? what did he want for breakfast when he came home? and all in the name of loyalty, love … love. hah. loyalty to what? love for whom? even when he came home, his nerves all sewn up straight and steady, he held the waist of a woman who’d found someone new to love.
it'd been years, he found out later, since she’d stopped loving him. only stayed for him, to keep him safe from himself. healing, it turned out, was the kill switch for his marriage. then the last of her things trickled out of their home and he stopped smelling her on the bedsheets and new york just lost its goddamn luster. he worked. kept working. started drinking again but kept exercising, kept his mind and his body and his will as strong as possible. and maybe it's just the death of his dad looming, bittersweet. maybe he's desperate to prove himself as more than a risk. or maybe he’s just fucking desperate.
so … hello, los angeles.
TL;DR new york-born rich boy becomes rich man, takes on the family business, suffers mental health blows, divorces a wife who never really loved him, and moves to los angeles.
HE MIGHT REMIND YOU OF mr. darcy (pride & prejudice), peter joshua (charade), christian bale’s batman, and a touch of tom wambsgans (succession)
