"out in the garden where we planted the seeds there is a tree as old as me." to build a home by the cinematic orchestra
He doesn't remember falling asleep. He doesn't remember waking up either, or drifting in and out of awareness as the comet roared forward.
(He does remember all the bodies. He finds that he can recall every single horrified face with perfect clarity.)
His wedding is a beautiful affair, his wife as radiant as the first day he saw her. His honeymoon is in Paris, where Sarah said she always wanted to go. They kiss on top of the Eiffel Tower and spend their days in bed. They love each other, Nick knows that much.
When Sarah finds out she is pregnant, he almost has a panic attack.
"We've only been married for six months! What makes you think we can have a child?"
She smiles, touching her hand to his cheek softly. "Hey. You're gonna be a great dad."
They do things that normal people do when preparing for a child, like painting a room in their house to be a nursery, buying a crib. She insists on pink, claiming that she knows the child will be a girl.
"How do you know she'll be a girl?"
"I just do, Nick, now help me paint."
His baby is the most beautiful girl in the world, her tiny pink hands gripping his fingers with a surprising strength. He gazes at her in wonder as Sarah cries from exhaustion and joy.
"What are we naming her?"
"I thought we decided on Beth, right, honey?"
"Yeah, I forgot. Beth."
He goes back to his work as a financial analyst, trying to take care of Beth as best he can when Sarah can't take it anymore. She's still not off of her maternity leave yet, so she hasn't gone back to the office.
He is happy there. A small town in Delaware isn't where he was expecting to end up, but he's happy with what he has.
He leaves for Chicago on a business trip for three days, reflecting on how lucky he is to have found such a great girl. He turns his phone off for the flight home, knowing that Sarah can't pick him up from the airport anyway.
There is no moon in the sky when he sees the police cars and the ambulances, when he sees the front door of his house smashed open. He runs up to the police line, unsure of why these people won't let him past.
The house smells like blood and decomposition, two scents that Nick has to have identified as such by one of the officers. A run-of-the-mill home intrusion. The perp left prints. We found a match. It's an open and shut case.
Nick glances at the missing shingles on the roof, the ones Sarah kept telling him to get fixed. He falls to the ground, willing himself not to scream.
The sirens continue to blare outside, the noise so horrible Nick thinks that perhaps they're coming from the very mouth of hell.
He keeps living in the same place because it's theirs, because Beth's empty crib is still in the unfinished nursery and he can't bring himself to move it. He takes two weeks off from work for grief, plans a dual funeral for the benefit of her family and friends. He doesn't allow himself to go through Sarah's clothes, her photographs.
The neighbors all look at him with pity in their eyes, but its an artificial kind of sympathy, done more out of politeness than genuine regret. The woman who lives next door smiles at him when they run into each other while taking out the garbage, but he can't make his face grin in return.
The packed moving boxes in the nursery gather dust, the little pink shoes still unworn.
He says yes to him because he wants anger, wants revenge, wants anything to make the mind-numbing sadness end. Even as he says it, he knows he's being tricked.
The devil always was supposed to be the best salesman.
Hold on tight, buddy. Don't want you to burn up too quick.
(Oh, god. What did you do?)
He wakes up in an abandoned house, one that he doesn't recognize. The floorboards creak under his weight as he stands, the windows still icy from where his hand (his hand) grazed the glass. There's blood on the ground.
Nick wonders idly why he isn't dead, or at least in a coma. He thinks maybe someone knew he doesn't deserve that relief.
Lucifer maintained his body fairly well, he notes. There's no hole in his head from where the one boy (Dean) shot him. He sees his reflection in the window, sees the angry red scars formed on his face. He didn't fix those. The marks travel from his temples down to his collarbone, as well as all along the back of his hands and arms. It could be worse, Nick decides.
He staggers out of the house and realizes that it's a new moon once more. He runs his hands over his face, unsure of what to do next. He assesses his fingers more thoroughly. There's blood under his nails. He vomits on the sidewalk.
He checks his pants pockets, in some insane hope that Lucifer at least left him with money to get home. He finds his wallet in his back pocket, his ID still in place, all of his credit cards still in their slots. Apparently Beelzebub is more polite than Nick expected.
He buys a ticket on a Greyhound bus that stops in Dover. He finds out by looking at the schedule that Lucifer rode him to Detroit. Figures the devil would leave his body in the worst city in America. It's a very Satan-y thing to do.
He gets a few lingering stares on the bus, he presumes because of his scars. He somehow knows that they won't go away anytime soon, if at all. He's suddenly thankful that he had the foresight to wear a jacket, since the red marks on his t-shirt would be more worrisome to any onlookers.
He spends most of his time on the bus sleeping, finding that he's more exhausted than he has ever been in his entire life. The first stop, he eats enough food to feed a small family and buys some new clothes as well as a suitcase. He throws his shirt and pants out, deciding that it won't be worth it to try to clean off the blood stains.
The sky outside is gray and dismal, the rain splattering against the windows as the bus rumbles forward.
He cleans out Sarah's things when he goes home, takes the crib in the nursery to the attic. His bedroom is covered in a year's worth of dust, making him cough as soon as he walks in the room. When he finally finishes clearing everything out, the house looks as barren as the first day he moved in. He sleeps in his bed for the first time in a year and almost cries from the familiarity.
In the morning he decides to walk to the Pike Creek uptown area, realizing that he needs to find a job now that he's back. His neighbors all stare in shock as he passes by, taking in the marks on his body and slowness of his step. One mother shushes her child halfheartedly when he exclaims, "What's wrong with that man's face?" His next door neighbor is the only one who smiles, as if she always knew he was going to be back.
"Hello!"
He waves nervously, unsure of why she doesn't seem surprised. He probably looks like a murderer (which he is, but hey, he doesn't want to look like one).
He ends up getting a job at the local coffee shop as the in-store accountant, though the owner only hires him reluctantly. Apparently there were no other qualified applicants, even if he's technically missed the last year of his life. He takes it as a victory and congratulates himself.
He eats dinner alone and falls asleep on the couch, a campy horror movie playing on his TV.
(And if he dreams of ice and blood and burning up and thousands upon thousands of emptied eyes, well. He supposes that's the price he has to pay.)
He falls into a routine after the first two weeks. Wake up, go to work, go home, be alone, fall asleep, have nightmares, wake up, go to work, on and on. Sometimes he's struck suddenly with an image of his hands slitting the throat of or hanging or freezing someone with fear in their eyes, and he has to go outside until he can breathe again. No one speaks to him, and after the novelty wears off, no one looks at his face. He feels grateful for the anonymity even when he doesn't feel grateful for anything.
Life goes on. He goes on.
And it happens like this: he takes his work to the front room of the shop when he can no longer stand the six by six square his employer stuck him in. (He finds that he feels trapped in any space too small, as if he's back in a different cage, one of his own making.)
He works in silence at one of the tables, idly stirring his coffee (black and bitter, hot enough that it burns his tongue) and eating a bagel until someone sets themselves at the chair across from him and stares. He looks up, only to find his neighbor smiling at him from across the table. He quickly removes his arms from the table top and settles them on his legs.
"You're Nick, right? I don't think we've met. I'm Mae Flannery." She sticks one pale freckled hand out for him to shake. Nick debates simply leaving her hanging, but he finds himself reaching out his arm anyway.
"Nick Simmons," he replies, briefly clasping her hand before taking away his arms again.
She waits a beat before speaking again. "Do you work here?"
"Um, yeah. I'm an accountant. I decided to work up front today. No space in the back."
She laughs, and it's the first laugh he's heard since Sarah and he almost wants to hug her. He doesn't. "I get that. I used to work at this tiny little restaurant as a hostess and I had no room to breathe when there was a lot of people. I'm here almost every day though, you should work up front more often."
"Why are you here every day? Don't you have a job?" He almost cringes at the harshness of his tone, but she seems unfazed. Mae Flannery is apparently unflappable.
"I work freelance, mostly. I'm a writer. This place has free wi-fi. You do the math." She laughs again. "I didn't even mean to do that! I love accidental puns, don't you?"
He realizes suddenly that he's smiling at her in return and wonders when that happened. "I should, um. I should get back to work."
She looks mildly disappointed but nods her head in agreement. "Yeah, I should too. I've got things to type, papers to print. I'll see you around, Nick Simmons."
He watches her leave the store, her long red hair swinging in a braid down her back. He spends the rest of the day feeling slightly amused, although he doesn't really know why.
He actually takes her up on her idea to work more in the front, which surprises even him. He avoids eye contact with almost everyone, but she has some sort of magnetic pull to her that makes him look at her directly. She seems to have that power over everyone though, the ability to make people feel comfortable looking at her clear green eyes.
Most days they work in silence at the same table, the only sound between them the scratching of his pencil and the clatter of her laptop keys. A couple weeks in and he realizes that she's part of his routine. Wake up, go to work, smile at Mae, go home, be alone, go to sleep, have nightmares, wake up, go to work, on and on.
Two months after she begins sitting at his table, she looks up from her work and says matter-of-factly, "I've made an executive decision. We are friends, Nicky."
"Don't call me Nicky."
"I have to, it's in my contract. I was hired by your boss to torment you with dumb nicknames. Nickel, Nix it, Knickerbocker, we wish you a merry Nickmas. All right there."
"Well fine. Mae. M-Maen event. Maek me a pizza."
She snorts into her tea. ("Earl grey, of course," she said when he asked.) "That was terrible. Although I appreciate the reference to Zoombinis. I thought that was a little young for you."
"I have a niece. She was obsessed. She made me play it with her."
"Okay, we're getting sidetracked. The point of this is, we are friends, Nikolai Gogol. And friends hang out. So we are going to hang out. Got it, Nick Lachey? Do you understand, Nickory dickory dock?"
"I understand," he says, laughing as he takes a bite out of his bagel.
"Good. Some of my friends and I are gonna watch really shitty movies and throw popcorn at the screen. Tomorrow, my house, six o'clock. Be there or be square." She closes her laptop with a triumphant snap and flounces out of the shop. Nick feels something tighten in the pit of his stomach when he notices that every male eye in the room is turned on her.
He goes home and begins the book she recommended for him a week ago. He's totally unsurprised to find that it's fantastic.
The inside of her house is exactly as he imagined it (not that he was imagining what her house looked like, not at all). Books take up all of the available space on the tables and shelves, her coffee table is stained with water rings. The entire place makes him feel like he's seeing everything about her, like her skeleton is in the frame of the house, her heart in the stone fireplace.
He's the first one there because he arrives up at exactly six o'clock.
"Nicket fence! You actually showed!" She gives him an awkward half-hug and takes the box of cookies he brought. "Aw, you brought food! Store bought, but I appreciate the sentiment." She smiles at him to show she is joking, more dazzling than ever. Nick forgets how to breathe for a second. "Here, make yourself comfortable. Everyone will be here in just a sec."
She retreats to the kitchen and reappears with more food. Nick decides to settle on the couch in front of her TV, not quite sure what to do otherwise. She sits down on the couch across from him, stretching her legs out so that her feet just touch his thigh. "No one is ever on time anymore. I mean, you have an unfair advantage because you live ten feet away, but my point still stands."
He chuckles into his soda. (He lost his taste for anything alcoholic after Lucifer spent months pumping him full of vodka and then demon blood. Nick knows that he only did it to show his control, but.) "How many people are coming, anyway?"
"Four. Two of them are married to each other, so be prepared for that. They're super annoying about it sometimes. But they're cool."
There's a second of silence before Nick says softly, "I started that book you wanted me to. It's really good."
"I told you so. You can borrow any of mine after you're done with that one. As you can see," she sweeps her arm around the room self-deprecatingly, "I have plenty to spare."
"It's nice here," he says slowly. "I like it here. It's very- you."
She smiles, gentler this time. More familiar. "Thanks, Nick."
The doorbell rings, accompanied by a series of loud knocks.
"Let us in, Mae," a voice calls out from behind the door.
She springs up from her position on the couch and skips to the door (as in literally skips, and Nick hasn't seen someone actually do that since fucking grade school). Behind it are four people, two men and two women, all of them in their late 20s or early 30s by the looks of them. Apparently he's the oldest person here. Great.
"Hey! You guys are late, c'mon, I want to introduce you all." She leads them over to the couch and gestures to Nick. "This is Nick Simmons, my next-door-neighbor. We work together, sort of. Nick, this is Emily, Georgia, Calvin, and Jack. Say hi, everyone." They all wave at him nervously, taking in his scars and blank expression.
He returns the gesture. "Hi, everyone."
The one Mae introduced as Georgia is the quickest to react, dragging Jack behind her by the hand (so they're the married ones). "It's nice to meet you, Nick. Mae has been telling us about her friend from the shop." She holds out her hand for him to shake and manages to mostly cover her wince when she feels the sores on his hands. "Let's get started, huh, Jack? I came here to feel better about the fact that I can't act."
The tension in the atmosphere lessens noticeably as Georgia and Jack settle on the ground in front of the television and Calvin sits on the couch across from Nick. Emily wanders over to the kitchen where Mae had apparently disappeared to again, glancing back over at Nick with something like morbid curiosity in her eyes.
The film is as horrible as Mae promised. Calvin makes loud comments about the quality of the effects throughout, calling it in the style of Mystery Science Theater, and it kind of makes Nick want to punch him in the face (especially when Mae laughs at one of his jokes, but Nick can't explain why that's connected). Georgia and Jack snuggle on the floor, wrapped under one of Mae's large flannel blankets, and while everyone else groans, Nick tries to avoid thinking about when he was like that. Emily continues to stare at him in fascination as they watch the movie, sneaking glances at him in what she must think is a subtle manner.
When everything is over, Calvin, Georgia, and Jack leave, all claiming that they need to work tomorrow. None of them shake hands with Nick on the way out, avoiding his gaze as they go outside.
Nick goes to the bathroom just before he leaves, despite the fact that he could just wait until he walked home. He splashes water on his face and wipes it off with a towel again. He studies his reflection, tensing his jaw until he thinks his teeth might break under the pressure. Every open sore, every red scar he notices, until he thinks that maybe he can still feel Lucifer in the pit of his stomach, behind his ribs, freezing and burning him from the inside out.
"Don't," he hears Mae say from behind the door. "Don't do this to him."
"Do what?" the girl named Emily replies.
"What you always do. You meet a guy and develop a weird obsession with fixing them until they're more broken than they were before. Don't do that to Nick. He's a good guy."
He raises his hands to his face, tracing the outline of one of the marks on his temple. He's a good guy?
"Why, Mae? Because you want him for yourself?"
"I didn't say that, I just said don't mess with him. Jesus, his wife and kid were-" she lowers her voice to a whisper, "killed right next door. I just don't want you thinking of him as just another guy to screw around with."
"Is that what you think of me? I'm some whore who finds these messed up guys so I can feel better about myself? You know what? I'm out of here."
He hears angry footsteps marching to the exit, the opening and shutting of the front door. He tentatively leaves the bathroom, only to find Mae standing a couple of feet away.
"How much did you hear?" she asks sheepishly.
Nick briefly considers lying, but instead states simply, "All of it."
"Sorry about that. Emily has a habit of trying to fix every guy she's ever met, but she usually ends up making it worse. I love her, but she's not great at relationships."
"It's okay." He shoves his hands in his jeans pockets, shrugging his shoulders. "Right now, I don't think I am either."
"I get that. Trust me, I do." She leans back and crosses her legs nervously. "If you're going then-"
"Yeah!" Nick quickly walks toward her front door, resting his hand on the gold knob. "I'll just be getting home. I'll see you on Monday."
"Yeah, see you," she laughs as he jumps outside.
The click of the door seems like the loudest sound in the neighborhood, the silence outside so consuming Nick can hear the blood pumping in his ears. In the dark, he can't see his hands, can't see the scars that proclaim him as exactly what he is. He thinks that perhaps right now he could disappear altogether, could feel his edges melting until he's as part of the air outside, only just passing through. He heaves a sigh, and walks up the steps to his house.
His dreams are still as cold as ever, but from his prison in his own body he thinks he might see a flash of red skipping by.
He thinks sometimes of Sarah and Beth, can feel an ache hollow out his chest until he can't breathe. But then he thinks of the thing he let inside because of the pity he felt for himself and he thinks maybe he shouldn't be allowed to grieve after all. He brings up all the faces when he believes he's getting too complacent.
(When the fall gives way to winter he cries the first time it snows. He crumbles in the middle of the living room over the sudden snap of cold, the ice frosting his windows until he can't see anymore.)
Yes, um. Nick is wearing a bit thin, I'm afraid. He can't contain me forever, so.
(Oh, god, please. I want out. Let me out.)
The store in December is a sight to behold, as the owner is one of those people who gets a little too excited over the prospect of Christmas. Nick simply wraps himself up tighter in his sweater and focuses on the tiny scratches of numbers he makes on the page.
Mae takes to spending more and more of her days at the shop, citing the fact that her furnace doesn't work very well. She drinks elaborate hot chocolate concoctions with little mint candy canes and piles of whipped cream, looking for all intents and purposes like a very large child as she clutches the mug in her mittened hands. She complains constantly about the cold, something that would normally bother Nick, but he finds that he likes the way she doesn't romanticize the weather.
"It's always gray and slushy and horrible, and I hate it. I think that's as good an explanation as any."
Nick simply repositions his pencil and rearranges the papers on his desk as he answers, "I always did take you for a summer person. Guess I was right."
She smiles at him over her drink and sets it down to clatter away at her laptop. She works slower than usual due to her large knit mittens that she refuses to take off, but she still seems satisfied with the amount of content she produces.
Nick spends the holiday alone, reading one of Mae's books in front of a fire to stave off the cold. He doesn't remember why it is he's by himself until the early hours of the morning, but he doesn't break down until an hour later and calls it progress.
The summer comes so abruptly he barely notices when he no longer needs to wear a jacket to work.
(Someone brings a dog into the store one afternoon and Nick spends his whole workday avoiding its wild gaze. He can only think of massive monsters with wide jaws and steel teeth, their breath coming in short shallow gasps as they ripped and tore. He doesn't have a panic attack like the last time he thought of the hellhounds, but it comes close.)
When something actually does happen it is by the side of the road when Mae drives him home from the optometrist, as his pupils are too dilated to see clearly.
"Oh, this song is amazing." She turns up the dial on the radio until the music is blasting through the car. "I love the Pixies."
And the ground's not cold, and if the ground's not cold everything is gonna burn-
Nick listens absently to the lyrics, noting that's it's a little too rock for his taste. Sarah always liked classical. When she stayed at home with Beth she would play Beethoven and Mozart in hopes of helping her development. Even after their deaths Nick still plays that music around the house.
We'll all take turns, I'll get mine too-
Suddenly he notices what the singer is saying, listens a little more intently to the lyrics.
This monkey's gone to heaven, this monkey's gone to heaven-
He realizes his hands are shaking, and Nick runs his fingers through his hair a little desperately.
If man is five, if man is five, if man is five-
"Hey, are you okay, man?"
Then the devil is six, then the devil is six, the devil is six, the devil is six-
Nick pushes against the dashboard, trying to keep his arms still.
"Oh god, are you okay, Nick? Nick?"
And if the devil is six, then God is seven, then God is seven-
"Let me out! Please, god, let me out!"
"Okay, okay hold on, I'm pulling over!"
Nick stumbles out of the car as Mae pulls into the breakdown lane, falling to his hands and knees as he gasps for air.
"Jesus Christ. Nick, are you okay? What happened?"
He vomits onto the rocks as the damn words keep coming from inside the car, filling his head until he can't think of anything but the ice cold burn of the creature he let inside. (I'm not going anywhere, Nick. Might as well get used to it.)
"Nick! Oh god, please be okay." She rests her head on his shoulder, rubbing his back as he curls up on the ground. "You're okay, you're okay-"
This monkey's gone to heaven, this monkey's gone to heaven, this monkey's gone to heaven-
Somehow Mae manages to get Nick back into the car and drive him home, although he doesn't quite know how she does it. She pulls him up the stairs to his house and frantically searches for his keys, holding them up triumphantly when she finds them.
"Okay, alright," she breathes gently into the crook of his neck, "down you go." Nick falls lamely onto the couch, folding into himself as he adjusts into a curled ball. Mae kneels down in front of him, brushing his hair out of his face as she feels his forehead.
"God, you're burning up." From this angle, he can't see her eyes, can only see her white neck and red mouth, making the smallest motions to speak. "Let me take your temperature."
He hears her rummaging around his cabinets in his kitchen and bathroom until she finds a thermometer, muttering a swear word when she accidentally knocks some of his medicine over. She returns and shoves the stick into his mouth without ceremony, shushing him when he makes a small noise of discomfort.
"Shit. Okay, Nick, we need to bring your temperature down." Nick feels himself moving up toward his bathroom even as he tries to lay down again. "Come on, we need to go."
She pushes him into the shower, fumbling with the handle to turn on the cold stream. Nick sinks to the ground as the water turns on, ice cold. He doesn't even really feel it, but mumbles a protest anyway.
"Sorry, we need to make it this cold. You need to try to stand, Nicky. Come on. Stand up."
When he makes no indication of moving, Mae sighs and climbs into the bath opposite him, pulling him up to a standing position even as the water beats down on her clothing. "Are you feeling better?"
Nick nods, noticing suddenly how cold the water actually is, how his teeth are chattering. He shivers violently as Mae pulls him out again, smothering his hair with a towel to dry him off.
"Can you move?" She makes no move to dry herself off, looking at him with wide, scared eyes as she waits for an answer.
"Yeah." He pushes himself up off the floor, walking clumsily to his bedroom to change.
When he returns, Mae is still on the floor of the bathroom, her head resting against the cool tiles of the wall as she closes her eyes, still dripping with ice cold water. "You must be freezing," he says softly from the doorway.
She blinks at him, some drops of water still clinging to her eyelashes falling down her cheeks, making it look like she was crying. "Go to sleep, Nick. I don't want you getting sick again."
When he continues to stare, she huffs and stands up, pushing him toward his room and into his bed. "I'll be back in just a minute. I'm just gonna go home and change."
Nick falls asleep before she comes back, dreams of ice and fire as his body tries to heal itself.
And I said, "Father, I can't!" I said, "These human beings are flawed, murderous!"
(Let me go. Please. I'll do anything.)
"What happened to you?" Mae gazes at him from her position kneeling next to his bed, her green eyes boring into his. Judging from the lack of light coming from behind his curtains, it's night. "What happened in the year you were gone?"
When Nick remains silent, she continues. "Did you go on a bender or something? Because I've never seen any fucking thing that could make scars that bad."
"It was new," he finally replies softly, clearing his throat as he sits up. "Something totally different. I should be dead."
She smirks in reply, moving to sit on his bed, her legs tucked underneath her like a child. "Yeah. I know that feeling." She rolls up the sleeves of the sweater she put on, holding her arm in the light of his bedside lamp. "You've probably already noticed them, but sometimes they're a bit of a shock." She runs her fingers along one of the more prominent track marks on the inside curve of her elbow.
Nick blinks at the sight. "When?"
"About seven years back." She covers up her arms once more, prompting Nick to finally tear his gaze away from her scars. "I didn't- let's just say I had a rough childhood. When I finally- left all that behind, I fell in with some bad people. My brother found me in an alley in New York, I don't know how he knew I was there. He made me go to rehab. I cleaned up, started writing. Moved back home to good old Pike Creek. And here I am."
He nods, slightly relieved she drew her own conclusions about what happened to him.
"I'm glad you got yourself better," she murmurs. "I don't know anyone who could do that."
"Oh, I didn't really. Someone else just helped me get it all out."
Mae ends up accidentally staying the night, stretched out along the side of his bed on top of the covers, having nodded off in the middle of one of her stories. Nick wakes in the morning to find her pressed against him, her slender hand resting ever so lightly on his forearm.
The sun making its way through his curtains cuts a strip of light along her body, casting her white jaw in a golden glow. He finds himself mesmerized by the image and reaches his hand out as if to touch her pale skin, until noticing once more the open sores along his knuckles, still not healed after a year. He pulls his arm back just as Mae begins to wake once more. She shifts, withdrawing her hand as she opens her eyes.
"Ugh. Hey." She blinks blearily, rolling onto her stomach and pushing herself up by her knuckles.
"Hey." Nick can feel the absence of her heat acutely as she sits up and stretches, her spine curving like a bow.
"Sorry I fell asleep. And invaded your privacy. And went through your medicine cabinet."
"No, god, don't be sorry. I should be thanking you."
She smiles, falling off the bed into a standing position. "No problemo, Nixon. What are friends for?"
He grins at her in return as he clambers out of his bed on the opposite side, adjusting his sheets until they lay flat. "You're a good friend then." He pauses and continues with a little more conviction. "You're my best friend. Actually, you're my only friend. Thank you."
She smiles again, softer this time. "You're welcome."
It isn't until later, when Mae leaves to go home again, that he realizes that he didn't have any nightmares for the first time in a year.
The next night, his sleep is the kind of deep, dreamless blackness that Nick thought was lost for him forever. He goes to work with a smile on his face and can't stop grinning the whole day.
Nick realizes after it all happens that he probably should have seen it coming.
They take to walking to the store together in the morning, Mae still stubbornly clinging to sleep, refusing to carry on a conversation until they reach work and she can get her coffee.
"It's too early," she whines.
"It's nine o'clock."
"Too early."
He laughs and continues walking while she stomps halfheartedly behind.
It's something close to normality, having a friend. Until one particularly hot day, she wears a tank top instead of a t-shirt like she always does. Nick doesn't see anything wrong at first, till she stands in line to get her morning coffee as he sits down. He begins working as she recites her usual order, enunciating each syllable with perfect clarity (as once someone got the order wrong, and she is very picky about caffeine).
What happens is that Nick looks up in time to see two very specific marks on her back, marks she never allowed to be uncovered before in front of him. The first, on her right shoulder blade, is a raised bump formed in the shape of a spiral, cut short by a long, jagged burn. The second, on the opposite side, is a star in a flaming circle, faded from black to dark gray.
Nick feels a sudden wave of nausea, remembering cold fingers delicately tracing the spiral on one of his followers, remembering cold hands strangling the life out of someone with a dark, angular tattoo.
He finds himself standing, pulling Mae out of line before she takes her coffee as she asks him what he's doing, dragging her by the arm to the alley behind the store. He shoves her out the back exit in a fit of uncharacteristic anger as she yelps.
"What the fuck, Nick?" She faces him head on, moving into his space as she screws up her face in confusion and rage. "Don't touch me like that ever again."
"Or you'll do what?" he finds himself asking in a low, vicious voice nothing like his own. "You'll hunt me down?" As her face drains of color he smirks bitterly. "Yeah, I know what you are."
"How do you- who are you?"
"You're a hunter, aren't you, Mae? If your name ever actually was Mae. I bet you have tons of different aliases, come to think of it. Had to, since you've been everywhere. Let me guess, the binding link was from when you weren't quite careful enough? Had to get the anti-possession tattoo to make sure that didn't happen again."
Her eyes fill with tears even as she jabs a finger at him, backs him up against the wall from the sheer force of her fury. "Shut up! Shut the hell up! Who are you?!"
"Got out of the game too early? I would've thought you had heard of me."
She reaches out and wraps her hands around his throat, screaming now. "Who are you?! Who else knows I'm here?!"
"Why did you lie to me?"
"Who are you?!"
He grabs blindly at her hand, vainly attempting to pry it away. He coughs, stutters out, "Let me go, and I'll tell you."
As she releases him, he falls to the ground, wheezing as he attempts to regain his breath. She yanks him up again by his shirt, pulling him to a standing position as she brings their faces inches apart.
"Who. Are. You?" she asks darkly, punctuating each word with a hard press on his chest.
"I'm only a vessel. Lucifer is the one with the spark."
She gapes at him, stumbling back a step as she takes in what he said. "You- you were Lucifer's vessel? You let that- thing inside of you?" She reaches out again, grabbing his throat once more. "You kickstarted the entire fucking apocalypse."
"You lied to me. You're not who you said you were."
"I'm a hunter. I keep my ear to the ground to make sure no one will find me here. Did you really think I would advertise that? Least of all to some random sad-sack of a human being who let in the fucking devil. People died because you gave him a body. He didn't have anyone else."
"It would've been someone else. They always have a backup plan."
She laughs derisively, releasing him once more. "You know, I moved here to avoid all of this. Leave it all behind. This is one of a few towns in America was no demonic activity, did you know that? I guess I should've figured it'd also be the hometown of Satan." She takes another step back, her face twisting from anger into emptiness. "You want to know why I lied to you? I didn't. I got hooked on heroin after I left and collapsed in an alley trying to fight a Vetala that my brother was chasing. Luckily there was only one."
"You're a part of it. I was trying to leave it all behind and turns out you're a part of it."
"I didn't want to be a part of it," she hisses. "You're the one who brought it here. All because you felt sorry for yourself-"
"You didn't know what it was like. My wife was killed, my daughter was murdered in her crib. The house smelled like rust and iron for days after, her nightgown was dripping with red. You don't know what he can do. He looked- he looked like Sarah. He made Beth's crib overflow with blood. He told me he would make it better, that he would make God pay. And I believed him. And I know I fucked up, I made all of it happen. But don't you dare tell me that I let him in because I felt sorry for myself. You have no fucking clue what it was like."
For a second they just stand there, chests heaving as they assess the person opposite them. Mae moves first, straightening her spine as she looks him directly in the eye.
"I'm a hunter, Nick. I'm not sorry I lied. I'm sorry about Sarah and Beth and the devil, but I'm not sorry I lied." She turns to leave before pausing and facing him once more. "And you're my best friend, too, you know. I hope you remember that."
He watches her walk away, barely noticing that his hands are shaking, that he's fallen to the ground once more.
No one gives us the right. We take it.
(Please. Just. Let me go. Please.)
"Hey."
He gapes at her standing in his door, both of them still in their pajamas, and she shifts nervously on her feet. He is acutely aware of his hair sticking up in all directions as he rubs the sleep from his eyes. "Mae, it's two in the morning. That doorbell is horrifyingly loud. Why?"
"I came over to apologize, actually. I'm sorry I threatened you and acted really crazy back there. Look." She shoves a plate toward him. "I made you cookies."
"You can cook?"
"My brother made me learn. He and my dad are totally inept when it comes to cooking."
Nick nods, opening his door wider as Mae lightly steps through.
"I'm sorry I said those things about Sarah and Beth. That was out of line. I'm sorry I acted like you saying yes to Lucifer was your fault. I know it wasn't. I'm sorry I tried to choke you. There. That's my apology."
He takes the plate from her hands, setting it on his table as he jerks his head toward the kitchen. "Do you want anything to drink?"
"Yeah, sure. Do you have any coke?"
At his look, she shrugs. "What? Coffee has too much caffeine for this time of night."
"And coke doesn't?"
"Ugh, whatever, I just want a soda. Do you have soda?"
"Sure." He rummages around in his fridge, pulling out two coke cans, and takes two plates from the cabinets. "You sure you want to eat chocolate chip cookies without milk?"
"Positively 4th street." She makes a face and fake shivers as she cracks open her soda. "Eugh. Sorry, my dad was big into Bob Dylan. And the Pixies. Patrick, my brother, used to flip flop between Björk and Nirvana and Joy Division. I have a pretty weird musical background." She takes a sip of her drink and grabs one of the cookies. "I guess now I know why that song didn't sit right with you."
"Yeah." It's silent for another moment before Nick clears his throat and speaks again. "I'm sorry, too, by the way. I got really weirdly accusatory back there and I shoved you and that was- not okay. At all. It's fine if you don't tell me every single detail of your life. It just all came back to me at once. I wanted to leave that all behind, and finding out you were a hunter was like finding out Santa Claus isn't real. It was just a horrible shock that I should've seen coming. So, I'm sorry. You're my best friend, and I shouldn't have acted like that to you. Or anyone even."
She smiles at him, a wide grin that Nick was afraid he wouldn't see again. "You're forgiven. Are you gonna eat these or what?"
He munches on his food for a few moments before deciding to speak.
"What's your real name?" he asks softly, thumbing one of the scabs along the side of his throat.
"It's still Mae," she replies, looking up at him from underneath her colorless eyelashes. "I just changed my last name. It was actually O'Doyle. We're very Irish."
"Are you actually from Pike Creek?"
"No. We're from Las Vegas." She chuckles ruefully. "I always hated Nevada. At least we never really lived there."
"What happened to your mom?"
"My parents are divorced. She's still alive, actually, but I haven't seen her since I was a kid. I like to keep tabs on her. She lives in Paris, she's working as an art consultant for some rich French guy."
"Why did you all start hunting so young?"
"Runs in the family," she explains absentmindedly, twirling her empty can around on the tabletop. "That's why my parents divorced."
"Are your father and brother still alive?"
She nods. "Yeah. My dad says he's gonna try to get out of the game soon. He's been saying that for years, though."
Nick hesitates a moment, not quite sure if he should say what he wants to say next. "Why did you leave?"
She pauses, glancing down at her hands. "Because it wasn't good anymore, if it ever was. It didn't feel good. And when I was- doing what I was doing- I didn't have to think about it anymore. Patrick made me quit. I'm the only one I know who stayed out."
He smiles encouragingly at her until she looks up and he takes her hand in his. "Well, I'm glad you did."
They devour the rest of the plate in a comfortable silence, falling asleep at the table in the early hours of the morning with the fingertips still touching.
What do you say, Sam? A fiddle of gold against your soul says I'm better than you.
(Please say yes, please just-)
He wakes up, gasping for air.
There's more of an understanding between them afterwards, a kind of kinship that Nick thinks means that she, too, wanted to tell someone her secret. During their morning coffee, he finds his gazing drifting to her more often than not, lingering on her smooth skin and memorizing every detail until he wonders if he could recite every tendon in her neck, every blue vein on her eyelids, by heart.
Nick goes to the attic and simply sits, running his scabbed fingers over their belongings. He packs everything into beautiful little boxes, piles them in neat stacks and mails them to Sarah's mother.
He thinks maybe it's time to move on.
The summer slowly slides into autumn, the leaves withering and curling on the dying branches as the insects fall to the ground like rain.
The anniversary of their deaths comes and goes, the black splotch on the calendar from the pen he snapped in half an angry reminder of the date. Mae shows up on his front door with hot chocolate and a candle, and they sit in silence until the sun comes up, her still tracing the sores along his knuckles with her pale fingers.
She shows him one of her poems, and an hour after reading it he wonders if maybe it was about him. He plays her one of Sarah's favorite composers, the music filling the room in soft strains. Mae sprawls herself on the couch and closes her eyes, her fingers moving as if she were trying to catch the notes.
(Nick wonders why he can't look away.)
He stretches his arm across the doorway, holding himself up with his hand, unable to keep himself upright any longer.
"I'm so tired," he mumbles, lifting his hand ever so slightly to look down at Mae's amused face. "Quite laughing at me. I'm tired and I'm hungry and I can't move and I don't ever want to leave right here."
"You have to go home. You live twenty feet away. Man up, the Scarlet Pumpernickel."
He fake shudders, a technique he picked up from her. "That was horrible. I'm not leaving. You'll have to carry me out."
"Fi-ine," she sing-songs, reaching around to grab his waist, wrapping his arm around her shoulders as she attempts to move him. "Jesus, you're heavy."
"You're strong enough to choke me, you're strong enough to help me walk. So help me." She stands just a few inches short of his chin, and he bends down to rest it on the top of her head.
"Get offa me!"
"Never."
"You're pathetic, you know that?"
"I'm cool. I'm ice cold. And that there is black comedy, which is also cool."
She glances sideways at him, blowing her hair out of her face with a huff. "You need to shave. Your stubble is scratching my scalp."
"Don't use the word scalp. Sarah always said that was the worst word."
She shrugs. "Sarah was right. It is the worst word."
"Word!"
"Okay, you really are tired. Just sit here for a second, I need to get better shoes for this."
She leads him clumsily over to the couch, dropping him heavily onto the cushions. The action throws her off balance for a moment, and they land together, Nick sitting as she leans over him, one of her knees between his and the other on the floor, her hands placed on the back of the couch. He reflexively grabbed her waist to push her upright again, and he holds it still, rubbing warm circles along her sides with his thumbs as she brings her eyes to meet his.
"Nick?" she whispers (although in the sudden silence it seems more like a yell), her breath only just reaching his mouth.
For a moment he considers pushing her back, pretending nothing ever happened, standing up and walking himself home and seeing her in the morning. Something in him, some part of him he didn't know he had (and he wonders if it is really his or someone else's), quickly discards that thought.
He slides his hand up her sides, pressing in gently until he can feel her ribcage. She is fuller than Sarah was, more substantial. More real. He runs one finger along her cheek as she looks at him with something like apprehension in her eyes.
"Sorry," he mutters, before threading his fingers through her hair and claiming her mouth.
The kiss is fairly chaste, just a soft press of his lips against hers until he pulls back to gauge her reaction.
"Why did you say sorry?"
He barks out a short laugh as he responds, "Just in case, I guess."
"Well, don't," she murmurs, leaning in once more.
He unsurprised to discover that she kisses like she speaks: with purpose, and a unique kind of feathery deftness.
She traces one of the scars along his temples as he slides his tongue into her mouth, delicately outlining the still open sore with a butterfly touch.
They fall together, her fingernails digging into the bare skin of his back, his tongue sliding along the column of her throat until he sighs a supplication of her name into the crook of her neck.
When he wakes in the morning, she is still there, warm and smooth beside him, her head tucked just under his. He draws a line along the curve of her spine, looping in a circle around her tattoo, lining along the burnt spiral, as the first rays of dawn just begin making their way through the window.
He whispers a confession into her hair, preparing himself to move himself away to make breakfast.
"Hmm," she mumbles, her voice scratchy with sleep, and he stills. "I love you, too." She runs her hand along his jaw as she clutches him closer. "You still need to shave."
Nick doesn't forget Sarah or Beth or Lucifer, doesn't exchange the good with the bad like a cheap gift. Love doesn't take away the nights when he still wakes up gasping for air, certain that his body isn't his, doesn't take away the fact that she puts road salt in all their cabinets and crosses in all of their doorways.
He thinks, though, it's a start.
He barely notices when his scars begin to heal on their own, the red settling into a patch of tough, white skin.