As usual if this isn't your ship get off my boat, if you find an error you get one free fic! (1,000 words or less, any fandom that I know of). Eh…. Course language in this chapter. I happen to be someone who cusses a lot so expect that. Also I should probably warn you that there will be mild(mostly mentions) Nick/OC sort of.
This is a sequel to my story Those Things Without Words (I often abbreviate it TTWW) which is up on already. You can find it through my profile.
I feel as if I must point out that at this point the story will get darker, maybe a little more gory, and probably a lot more complex than the previous one. However, I believe it will be easier to read and maybe a little less chunky than the last one. This one focuses more on Nick than Monroe and will probably run about the same length. Expect large and small time leaps and me leaving out anything that I think isn't absolutely necessary for my objective. The TTWW series is an emotional study and not an action story so expect me to often just hint at physical confrontations or things like that. I'm far too lazy to write scenes that don't really matter all that much.
Warnings: violence, gore, sex, angst, children, confusing writing style, long replies to reviews. Monroe/Nick and, to an extent Nick/Warren(OC).
I feel I must also warn that unlike the majority of people I meet I wasn't raised on fairy tales or tricked into believing in Santa. I grew up banging pots with wooden spatulas and yelling at the moon if said moon was a full moon and fell on a Saturday. I'm not kidding. That was family bonding right there. That and fishing toads out of the dilapidated hot tub in the backyard and chasing after lizards under rocks near the barn. I used to howl at coyotes to warn them off our property. I grew up as close to feral as you can get and still be literate.
Without further self-centered rambling I present to you:
Chapter One: A Prologue to The Spaces In Between
His eyes are auspicious birds. Vultures mounted atop road kill. That settling feeling when a hawk has no interest in making a meal Out of you. But the raptor considers it… I've seen burnt summer skies The color of his eyes perambulator- Alive but full of heat.
He was reeling in the light, a visible strike against the whited out trees. White shapes against a white board. His jeans looked dark and feeble in the over-powering color. It seemed he spent all of his time running away these days.
When he was twelve Aunt Marie had taken him south during winter. In a rickety old Toyota, they had climbed the Sierra Nevadas. She had said it was a surprise trip- a Christmas holiday. Nick hadn't believed her breathless with nerves claims. He had simply jerked his head once and climbed out to close the rusted cattle gate behind the car. He was used to following orders and never getting explanations, pretending to forget the scars and the knife under his mattress.
The inside of the cabin had been moss green and mustard. He missed the first week of school up in the cabin, with nothing to do but let his legs carry him as far away as they could before turning around and trudging back. His aunt had sat outside the horse stable turned garage with the door cracked, witling small caricatures of bears.
Over dinner she would take stuttering words and a terrifying glint in her eyes to press into him stories. It started with Mother Goose and her orphan collection and ended with the Trickster –Coyote- and how his "harmless" pranks sometimes leant to more sinister things for those involved. In the middle had been the Interlopers- a hound man and a fox girl who had wanted to be together; they were each other's true love. At the end of the story, the fox family had used the roughness of a barky tree to violently skin the hound man whose howls had echoed in the canyon unanswered as his family huddled around their matron and watched her cube the fox girl's heart and fry it in a skillet.
Now running through the same mountains so many years later Nick was reminded of that winter vacation. His breath fogged, he could feel the moisture cling to his dry, cold face. He would keep telling himself not much farther, not much longer, it's almost over until it was.
Leaning against an oak tree, he breathed deep and allowed himself a moment to feel sorrow. He really had thought this had been done, over, completed. He spat into the snow, his stomach turning queasy from swallowing too much blood. The red in the snow brought him back to that winter vacation.
He had fallen in a gulley, granite rock too steep on one side for him to climb and the other side too muddy and covered in wild berry vines to safely climb. It had taken him hours to find his way out and back to the cabin. When he had the snow in front of the garage had been splashed in something black, it didn't melt like Nick knew snow did when covered in water. It seemed frozen and porous like the lava rocks his science teacher had showed them earlier that year. There had been dabs of red leading back to the cabin's back door.
Nick shakes himself from the memory, suddenly terrified to remember any farther and takes off again. Just a little more, he tells himself, just a little farther, he was so close.
It still hit him sometimes. He'd be cleaning the dishes or standing inside his door going through his mail and it would hit him like a prickling all over: a warm flush of guilt followed by the prickling sensation of grief. It always felt like this, with his whole body tense and hot- shame and guilt and the most horribly happy whisper in the back of his head reminding him that he will never have to deal with him again. Then the grief sets in like he's standing naked in the middle of a parking lot, his toes curled into the gritty slush below with his head tipped back, neck straining almost painfully with little starbursts of affection, love, sadness, and pain landing on his body and melting like quiet little snowflakes in the night. It seemed so peaceful and that was always the problem because it was. Grief was peaceful, nice in a near-cripplingly depressed way. He enjoyed the silence of an empty house and an eventless life. It was peaceful- tranquil with the only excitement being if he could finish an order on time.
When the silence was so loud it overwhelmed him, Monroe would walk into the kitchen and lean against the wall, bury his face in the soft leather and move his head lightly. He'd listen to the scrape of his beard against the jacket and dig his fingers into it as if it were on the man it belonged to. It felt petty and right and a little more than melodramatic to want more than anything to be held in the arms of a man whom the news reported had been fished out of the Willamette.
Monroe loved the peace and quiet, it was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Purgatory on Earth.