Welcome to my fic, and thank you for reading! I shall endeavour to update quickly… an unfinished story is simply a huge tease. Hopefully the chapters should be only a few days apart.
Onward!
The events take place a month after the vanquishing of Black John.
Disclaimer: These aren't my characters, but I always feel LJS implied they might do as they do here…
Tonight is the night of our reckoning
I will deny you every victory
though I will not know you when you come
Their eyes meet through the flames.
He had been watching the flames, lost in thought, while the Hendersons whoop and cheer, while Laurel laughs with Sean, and Adam and Cassie dances to the music. But then the amber flames shift vaporously, and Nick looks at Faye. She looks at him.
Their gazes hold. She knows what he thinks of. She knows, because it has been on her mind ever since Diana's noble sacrifice.
The silver cord.
A stupid, poetic little description. Likening it to some archaic piece of string, some non-offensively glittering colour. A silver cord that marks two souls as belonging to each other.
Belonging. Faye smiles, though she doesn't know why.
Nick doesn't smile. Nick's eyes are cold and dark, even with the warm orange light of the fire cast upon his face. Most of the time Nick is stolid and stoic, expressionless, reserved. A little warmer to a chosen few after the trials they had been through… still cool and blank to the outsiders… but to her, Nick shows a different and special kind of expression.
Put simply, it is dislike.
Faye raises her chin a little, all the better to see him, for him to see her. She smiles more, and it's not even an act. Warmth burns and turns inside her as though mirrored by the leaping fire. It feels like anticipation and pleasure and malice.
Nick turns, abruptly, walks away, ostensibly to light one of those disgusting herbal cigarettes that he had taken up ever since dating Cassie.
Faye watches him go. She ignores the rest of the beach party- Suzan's half-hearted jibes at the nervous outsiders who have been brave enough to come to the first Circle-outsider party. Deborah's loud conversation about motorcycles with some greaseball. Wherever Diana is, she ignores her- though Diana is probably doing her best to ignore Adam and Cassie. She will find him later.
And when she does, they find themselves alone. Night surrounds them. Nick knew they would have to talk, sooner or later, and he has been waiting around a rocky outcrop, far from the party.
"Nick," Faye says in a honeyed, caressing tone.
He throws her an unimpressed look and stares out at the dark sea, drawing air unnecessarily harshly through his cigarette before taking it out to speak. "What do you want, Faye?"
Faye lives for moments like these. She feels she is walking on the edge between knowing and unknowing, between success and loss, hatred and… passion. Even hate is exciting to her, it always has been, because it is passion. "Don't you know?"
"No games," he said coldly. "Say it."
She considers goading him more. Surely she should enjoy such sport- provoking his anger until he reveals himself more, she's good at that sort of thing. Outsiders and goody-goodies are marionettes on strings… Nick, though, Nick…
It surprises even her, though, when she does say it. No games. And Faye recognises something that makes her uneasy… a kind of hunger.
"What I want is for us to discuss our arrangement."
He made a small, scornful noise. "I regret ever making that 'arrangement' with you."
"That's not quite what I was talking about." And perhaps she has lost control of herself, a little, the words come out too quickly. Faye would like to choose her words more carefully… but decides to go with her sudden spontaneity. "I'm not talking about sex, Nick. But I am talking about you and me- and what we are to each other."
Nick doesn't react other than to flick the starved cigarette stub from his lips to the sand. He doesn't look at her. He's still looking at the sea. "We're nothing to each other, Faye," he says. But his voice sounds oddly tired. As though…
"Liar," she says. No, she breathes the word, saying it so softly, like a forbidden lover's name. "As Adam and Cassie…"
He turns suddenly, as though the names are jabbed thorns. Faye has taken a step forward and stops, almost to prevent him from noticing, from backing away. "Nothing like Adam and Cassie- and I'm happy for Adam and Cassie-"
"I want you to *acknowledge*…" Faye begins, but doesn't know what to say next. No…
She steps forward. Nick teeters briefly, considering shifting backwards, then holds his ground, because he is strong and is not intimidated by Faye, and does not care or fear her games.
No, she didn't say anything else, because there was nothing else to say- there was only this. Her.
-…*me*- she thinks, and the ethereal charge in the short breath of air between them is dizzying, unbelievable, shocking in its unfamiliarity and familiarity. She had removed all of the spell, the shielding, before she came out tonight.
They are not yet touching, but something still binds them together. Then she lays her fingers on the sides of his bare hands.
The silver cord roars into life.
Thank you for reading, and I hope this story entertains even just a little. See you soon...