a/n: I've only read the first three books (Infinity, Invincible, & Infamous) so if their are mistakes, in standard facts, I apologize in advance.
Disclaimer: I do not own the CHRONICLES OF NICK books, they belong to Sherrilyn Kenyon.
Pairing: Nick(18)/Kyrian -established relationship- -
Character: Nick, Kyrian, Cherise, Rosa,
w/: Bourban Street, Sanctuary,
Characters Mentioned: Acheron, Ambrose, Noir, Madaug, Artemis
Summary: Nick decides to tell Kyrian about being the Malachai, just as Cherise thinks this foolishness has gone on long enough, leaving Nick vulnerable and perceptible go outside influence.
Secondary Note: (Obviously AU) (Probably OOC)
Title: Promise
Part 1
C—H—R—O—N—I—C—L—E—S ~ O—F ~ N—I—C—K
Darkness and despair slowly became his home. He couldn't remember ever feeling this... desolate before. He wanted to feel something, anything, other than this pain that he was feeling right now.
Ambrose always told him that it was Acheron's betrayal and his mother's death that sent him to Artemis—he never said it would be his broken heart.
...
[... Before...]
...
Cherise watched her son as he paced the length of their house on Bourbon Street's living room from where she was in the kitchen, making a cup of coffee before she headed to her job at Sanctuary. She was having second thoughts. He had a nervous and desperate energy about him. And knew that it was time to step in when he looked about to start biting his finger nails and pulling his hair.
"Nicky, baby," she spoke gently, taking her boy's shoulders and stopping him in his tracks. "What's wrong? You were up even before I was."
He was shifty in her grasp, like he needed to keep moving, but he would never push her aside or walk over her like that, so he made himself focus on her. He looked down at her, an undecided expression on his face—she'd come to learn exactly who that expression was associated with, at least while discussing it with her.
There was going to be trouble.
She'd only recently found out about their relationship. While she didn't care whether Nick preferred boys or girls, and just wanted him to be happy and unashamed of himself, she'd been totally broadsided when he'd revealed to her that his boyfriend was actually an older man (though he only appeared to be in his mid-twenties at most).
Not once, in all these years since they'd know Kyrian, did she once notice any attraction of the sort between the pair, though she could only say that she'd been with them both at the same time, only a handful of times. It never seemed like that. She'd always suspected Kody, or maybe even Caleb. She would have been fine with either of them, they were his own age, they were appropriate. Her mother-intuition had been malfunctioning in this regard.
Nick was biting his cheek but forced himself to stop. "Kyrian hasn't called me back."
To distracted with his own troubles, he missed the guilty but determined flicker of her eyes. "I'm sure he's just busy, sweetie."
Nick shook his head and pulled from her grasp. "He said he'd call."
Cherise sighed. "You both have lives apart from each other. You can't always be together."
Nick pulled at his dark brown hair in distress, only seeming to be half-listening to her. "I don't understand! He said he understood, he said it didn't matter to him. He promised!"
She looked at him in concern, obviously she was missing something, obviously there was something that she hadn't accounted for.
"I can't do it without him. I just can't." A sob broke through and he dropped onto his knees to the floor.
Cherise instantly went to him and gathered the young man in her arms. fourteen-years-old, eighteen-years old, 5'8", 6'4"—none of that matter. He was her baby, no batter what. She pressed him comfortingly to her bosom and cooed to him and gently rocked him, just like she'd done when he was a child. "Shhh. You're the strongest person I know, Nick. You can get through anything."
The pain in his chest was harsh as he cried in his mother's arms. "He promised he wouldn't leave me, he promised!"
She hushed him, hugging him all the tighter, her cheek pressed to his crown. She'd know that it was a bad idea and doomed from the start—dating your boss never worked out. Hoping and dreaming was not the glue that held a relationship together, it was work that did that. And she wasn't about to let her baby's life be ruined by it, so she did was all mother's did—she'd taken care of her baby.
...
[... Before...]
...
Even after all these years, after all the preternatural bounties hanging over his head and the Daimon battles for his power, Noir's pursuit of his soul, he'd still managed to keep the fact that he was the Malachai from his mother. He'd lied and fibbed and hung on by the skin of his teeth to the truth—but he hadn't been able to hold it back from Kyrian any longer.
He loved the Dark-Hunter with his heart, his whole body. If he ever believed in soul mates, Kyrian was his. He didn't care how sappy or girly that sounded. It was the truth, it was how he felt even if scum like him—a monster destined to destroy the world—didn't deserve this kind of hope and happiness.
But he clung to it with all his strength, and would continue to do so—no matter the fire their relationship was under. And now, he was going to douse it in gasoline and lighter fluid, and then hand Kyrian the match.
"Nick, are you—"
"—I'm the Malachai!" he blurted. Not exactly the way he intended to tell the man his deepest and darkest secret.
Kyrian stilled as he registered what he had just confessed and looked across the room at the teen, stock still, his expression stoic. He'd only been about the ask his lover if he was staying the night—this was entirely not what he'd been expecting.
He'd been teaching Nick about the preternatural, ever since he decided to make the teen an official Squire, but he never remembered telling him about the Malachai.
"Where did you hear that?"
Nick knew that he couldn't spill everyone else's secrets, so what was he supposed to say? He couldn't very well say that it was his dear 'uncle' Ambrose who told him, because Ambrose was not his uncle, but Nick himself from a completely different time-line. That wouldn't very well help his confession of being a monster, now would it?
"Remember when we first met? That whole thing with Madaug and the jock-bies? It was a Mortant that told me when it tried to get me to play the game and control me."
Kyrian knew of the Malachai, anyone attached to the preternatural worth his/her/its salt knew about the Malachai. A most powerful and dark Demon. Unfeeling and uncaring. Once matured, it can only be killed by its own offspring.
That didn't suit Nick in the least. Of course, he could sense that there wasn't something human, that there was something powerful about Nick. He wouldn't call himself a Dark-Hunter if he couldn't at least sense that—but for him to be a Malachai?
It was just too unbelievable.
"Nick—this isn't funny."
Nick shook his head and swallowed. The Dark-Hunter didn't need super-hearing to pick up the uneven and rapid beats of Nick's heart. "It's not, I swear." His hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
He'd never told anybody that he was the Malachai before, and obviously he was doing a bad job of it. How did you explain to your boyfriend that you were a demonspawn, the worst kind of scum and darkness and death and destruction? It would have been easier if he had to admit that his favourite colour were pink to an assembly of his piers and that he secretly watched ballet and figure skating—which were all untrue.
He stole himself. Kyrian stayed still as Nick walked up to him, tense. And felt the teen's sweaty palms as he reached up and cupped the man's handsome face.
"I love you." Nick told him seriously, firmly. "And no matter what, I'll understand..."
Kyrian's tongue froze, because for an instant, for just the fraction of a blink of an eye, Nick released all the concealments on him, his camouflage—and he felt the potent power that the teen possessed.
Though Nick had no where near mastered his powers as a Malachai yet, he knew enough that he was still one of the most powerful Demons in the world. And in the fraction of a moment, Kyrian felt that competence.
Nick was reluctant to let go of the man, even after he concealed his power again. He was afraid that once he did, the glass would finally shatter after this fracture and he wanted to prevent that for as long as possible.
He could feel the man shaking slightly through where he cupped his face, his magic still swimming through his blood. His dark green eyes were unfocused, and Nick thought for a moment that he might have broken the man.
"Kyrian?" Nick whispered.
Kyrian's gaze sharpened and focused in an instant, his Dark-Hunter instincts kicking in. He fought the survival instinct to strike out and jump away. Nick, feeling his impulse anyway, reluctantly let go of the man and took a step back.
Kyrian swallowed quietly as Nick stood in front of him, waiting for the executioner's axe to fall. He looked like the same man that Kyrian had unexpectedly fallen in love with, but what he had just learned and felt. Nick was the Malachai.
Nick stuffed his hands into his jean pockets, ill at ease as the silence stretched. Whatever the immortal chose, the teen wouldn't force him into something that he didn't want—he wasn't that kind of guy, no matter how much it hurt him.
Kyrian finally reached out behind him and pulled the chair closer before collapsing it. He pushed his finger through his neat locks, leaving it mussed. "I just need a bit to process this, Nick, okay? I'll—I'll call."
His breath caught in his throat. "Promise?" Nick asked, almost like a little boy, scared.
Kyrian nodded. "I promise, Nick."
...
[... After...]
...
He might have been the most deadly of Demons, but he was still human. He was still raised by a loving mother to love. His heart was what made him human, it was also his biggest weakness. It left him attached, and it left him vulnerable.
It was causing him the worst pain he'd ever know.
...
[... Before...]
...
Kyrian had made several big mistakes, two thousand years left a lot of room for improvement, but those always were proceeded by the mistake. What drove him to become a Dark-Hunter was being betrayed by his wife, whom he had trusted and loved. He swore that he would never love again, that was why he went to Artemis, to get his one act of revenge and not have to love again.
But two thousand years later, he met a punk kid in eye-watering, tacky Hawaiian shirts, with a smart-mouth and a pension for attracting trouble, three-years later and the teen convinced him to put his heart on the line again.
He'd been such a fool. Not because he feel in love again, but because of how he'd reacted when Nick confessed to him about being the biggest and baddest bastard in the whole Demon World.
For the longest time, Acheron didn't even know what the kid was. Just that he would impact his life in a huge way. The concealment on him had been incredible, powerful enough that not even him, a god could see through it. So what chance did a two-thousand year-old Dark-Hunter such as himself have of detecting it?
But it didn't matter of Nick was the Malachai. From the very start Kyrian knew that he was different, and when the teen had revealed his powers, the blonde knew that he was no normal Malachai either. He wasn't evil and sadistic, of course he would defend himself and his loved-ones, but he didn't derive a sick pleasure out of it. Being Nick was what defined him, not being the Malachai.
He'd been about to call Nick, to tell him the truth, when Acheron showed up and he was dragged into urgent Dark-Hunter business.
...
[... After...]
...
He didn't want to die. Nick couldn't do that to his mother, he was all she had, and now that same could be said for himself. All he wanted, was to not feel this pain. It tormented him every second. It haunted his waking and his slumber. It tore at his inside, shredded it heart. It was drowning him. He didn't have the appetite to eat, his days were a haze of pain and sorrow. And he just wanted it to end, he didn't want to feel this way anymore.
When he finally came to a realization on how not to feel this anymore, feel anything—dread filled him when it was concluded that he had no way of getting in touch with her. His only contact to get through to her would have been Acheron or Kyrian, and the latter didn't want him anymore and Nick didn't want the former to try and stop him.
But he needn't have worried. She came to him. His pain called to her even as it was another that he truly craved.
...
[... After...]
...
When he sensed the presence on his property, he went to the door eagerly. He wouldn't be Nick if he wasn't persistent. But when he opened the door, it was not his lover, but his mother instead. Cherise might have been a small woman, but she was fiercer than most beasts that he faced when it came to her son.
She stood there on his front steps, her hands planted on her hips and a scolding and disapproving look on her beautiful face. Kyrian didn't feel like a bad-ass Dark-Hunter in that moment, but an infant under two thousand.
"Cherise, ma petit—"
"Your relationship with my son, was foolhardy. I disapproved of it from the beginning, and this—this just proves how right I was. You have broken Nick's heart, do you hear me? You will not see him any longer, he will not be working for you anymore." Cherise told him strictly. "Despite all of this, I would still like to thank you for the kindness that you have shown us in the past. Thank you. And please refrain from contacting my son, you've hurt him enough to last more than this lifetime. He doesn't want to see you anymore,"
And the woman was gone as fast as she'd come, leaving carnage in her wake.
Kyrian couldn't move, the only thing holding him up was his locked grip on his door jamb. It was as if he'd been physically injured and it transferred onto his heart. He groaned low in his throat in heartache, his other hand clenching at his chest—his injured heart.
"Mr. Kyrian?" Rosa questioned in concern from behind him.
"Rosa," he gasped. "What do I do?"
"Go to him." She said. "Mrs. just being protective of her son. He love you. You love him. Go make right."
(tbc... in Part 2!)
C—H—R—O—N—I—C—L—E—S ~ O—F ~ N—I—C—K
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