Summary: While dying by his hand was a fair thing, living by him was worth having to kiss someone with a face full of tears... Nny x OC one-shot.
You make me sick
I want you and I'm hatin' it
Got me lit like a candlestick
Get too hot when you touch the tip,
I'm feelin' it, I gotta getta grip
And it's drivin me crazy
baby don't you quit
Can't get enough of it
You got me goin' again
Baby, you got me goin' again
You make me sick…
It was the worst idea in the world for those two to meet. I mean...really. But Devi had that insatiable inner hatred for her somehow and arranged it...she didn't know. For all she knew, a blind date was for a blind person. Maybe that's why she showed up wearing a blindfold as to be courteous to her visually challenged fiend of a date. He asked what it was for; she simply explained she thought it was the polite thing to do.
"Wait...how can you see that?"
He was doing 8-0 on the freeway
In the 6 double O, bumpin' Isley
He was gettin' kinda close, kinda touch-ay
Cuz he had a little too much Hennessey
She came a hair's width of getting killed. But someone thought it was funny to trip her the same instance, a stranger's foot caught on the back of her chair. Her feet flailed and felt that would-be-fatal cut of the steak knife. Perhaps a steakhouse on the first date was a mistake. And wearing a blindfold. And agreeing to date in the first place.
"Fuck you, you think you're so fucking-"
She cut off his line of speech, choosing not to listen to her attempting murderer cuss loudly. Rather, she made off like a bullet. Well less like a bullet and more like a blind, wild shooting man. But judging from the screams of the restaurant's patrons, at least he could go home saying he had something like a good time. She so sure about that...she was too busy apologizing to all the people in the mistaken apartments in terms like "Sorry, sorry, wrong room...No I don't want to take that baby thank you sorry sorry..."
He told me that he wanna go home,
with me up on the hill to my condo
Told me he would keep it all on the low-low
But I told him, "boo, I don't really know though"…
He snuck into her apartment, attempted to kill her, and kissed her before finally learning her name. Effie. Fortunately she never used it much and gave him the thumbs up, "Yes you can bury me without an engraving or anything."
Kissing? Now that was an accident. He zipped when he should've zapped and Effie had the most deadly case of clumsiness and after all that tangle and fuss over trying to slit her throat he was squished almost pleasantly against her mouth. He tasted like a fresh cherry Fizz Wizz and once he regained a bit of his sense and pulled away she gave the last request for one in grape. They left...and were pleased to find the Fizz Wizz machine still running.
"I'm Nny by the way..." he said. Something was productive about Fizz Wizzes and the exchanging of names. Effie merely shook his hand and kicked rocks all the way back home while he whistled loudly, his throat fresh and shrill as it was refreshed with the icy cold beverage. Effie forgot about dates and kissing and asked for tips on whistling.
He got closer to me...it started gettin' deep
He had me in a zone when he started to show me things
I never saw before
More than once Nny and Effie left for a Fizz Wizz and a whistling lesson. Effie had all the time in the world to pay attention to Nny's mouth (such a nice thing really, not too big and plumply like a frog and not so ordinary that it put her to sleep) and to improve. By the end of the week she was already whistling the tunes to the classics. It annoyed everyone and made Nny cackle with laughter as she recalled whistling to the point that it bled ears.
He mentioned the Doughboys and Nailbunny once...how it was hard to keep a wall wet with blood and how very annoying it was when the people in his basement got too loud. Effie was prompted to buy him a blindfold and ear plugs and wished him a better night's sleep. The blindfold didn't work, much too silky and silly for Nny to wear even in private. But the ear plugs were a nice change. When they vanished, Nny merely shrugged and pestered Effie to buy him some more.
Baby was smooth but I knew it was game
Hell-of-a-cool but you men are the same
The way he licked his lips and touched my hips
I knew that he was slick…
Effie tried not to laugh around Nny, poor thing he was so sensitive. Only Effie was soft enough and crazy enough to call him that, "Poor thing, poor dear, here let me help you." But enough of Nny is a man and he hates it when she's all squishy and pitying and feminine...he just threatens her again and again until she begins to cry quietly...something he's obviously unaccustomed to. Something was natural about wailing and weeping loudly, so her faint sniffles and half-hearted wipes at her face were unusual.
He got weird stares when she cried. Like a second thought about something. He tilts his head in bereaved wonder, then returns to whatever he was doing...occasionally looking back as Effie sniffled and hugged her pillow as he fiddled about in her room. It was almost two o'clock in the morning...if she didn't stay by his side he would be prone to fits of mourning and self-pity. Effie needed him; the city was too big and too lonely to survive in it all alone.
Devi didn't like her much anyway. She saw too much happiness in Effie's life to like it.
In the 6 now, so hot
Gotta pull all the windows down
Eyes lead and I'm thinkin' bout the sheets now
Wonderin' really should I take it there now
Effie never told him about her fear of visiting other people's houses, but Nny found out anyway. Even as she screamed and protested that she'd just make a mess, he carried her none-too-gently back home. She calmed down after promises of Cheese Nubs settled her into the couch. He'd very courteously offered her a dead dog as a pillow to lie down on. She declined equally politely and made him a bit angry. He'd been angry the night of her first assassination attempt, so he tried again. Effie let herself be clumsy and accidentally fell into another kiss that made him howl in frustration.
Effie didn't mind. While dying by his hand was a fair thing, living by him was worth having to kiss someone with a face full of tears. But it was equally uncomforting that he couldn't get too happy sometimes. Happiness made him blind...if he didn't preserve it in that one flash of jubliance it may go away forever. Effie was forced to couple her attempts at cheering him up with failure.
So she spilt his bag of Cheese Nubs to the floor where cockroaches eagerly whisked their antennae over the feast. Nny could never catch Effie when she ran.
He told me he would make it worth it
Again, how many times have I heard this
Kinda funny, but I wasn't even nervous
Well his slick-ass lines were kinda working…
Nny and Effie were a couple in the loosest and most unbelieveable sense of the word. Effie had to make all of her even remotely romantic moves accidental with a protective back-up...and Nny didn't do anything romantic besides make her cry. He liked kissing her then...when she was hot with tears and softened with misery. The dribble of the salty water from her eyes and the slight sniffle only encouraged him to pinch her in the most painful places he knew and press more firmly than ever.
"I think there's something good with the 'ee' sound in a name..." he mused once. "All the best people who survived me have it."
"Nny," sang Effie.
"Effie," he echoed.
"Squee..."
"Devi-"
It cut off. Neither of them were comforted by this; Nny because he knew just how badly Devi despised him now for forcing her into seclusion, for promising a painful fate. Effie...because not a week after Devi realized the proximity of the two did she walk straight up to Effie and smack her. Was this the envy of a woman Effie had heard so much about?
They didn't say another word. But in the thick rain, Nny stood under his holey umbrella while Effie let herself get soaked. She'd be shivering, sick, and freezing tomorrow but this was the only way to kiss him without suffering.
Her lips itched with a kiss. Hot and cold. Wet and dry. Happy and happier.
I felt my knees get weak...his body was callin' me
Just couldn't take the heat
Anyway it was 2 or 3, I had to get off the streets
Devi suffered. In her unique angry fashion she was suffering. It made Nny uncomforted, his messages meant absolutely nothing to Devi and Devi would have been happy to see Nny suffer at her hands for once.
Effie made Devi cry her happiest yet. Devi had slapped her, set her up with her (hers hers she reminds herself of this all the time now) homicidal maniac, and more than once was despicable about Effie's fate. But with a tug of the hand that said she wouldn't be swayed by death threats or physical violence, she took Devi out on the town. Devi trembled in mixed rage and a stubborn sort of happiness while clutching the bundle of carnations as Effie held her hand and led her through the spiced airs of the Arabic restaurant, the mall, and finally the park where Devi decided that rage and sorrow were a pain in the ass and just burst into noisy sobs.
Effie patted her back and gave her some chocolate while Devi laughed about her first successful date being with a girl...of all things.
Baby was cool but I knew it was game
Said, he was too schooled to be screamin' my name
Even though we made the best of it
I still told him this...
Nny stayed far away when Effie suffered her first episode of delusional fevers. For hours she sat crying and hot in her apartment, utterly nude save for one appropriately fire red sheet, while flames licked and tickled around her vision. She crawled on the floor and was snot-faced for days, waking up to the terrible crust of mucus on her face and a ring of acidic tears around her eyes as her temperature flared and flared.
She clenched her fist for hours at a time, terrified that if she couldn't even hold a fist together that Nny wouldn't be the one to kill her after all.
Whatever possessed Nny to carry her to the emergency room, to threaten the doctors and wave his favorite blade around to get some results was beyond Effie. She merely gasped in the artificial chill of her room, no longer making a fist as she whimpered at the press and prick of needles injecting her cure. But it was okay. Nny said it was okay to clench his hand for as long as she wanted...and even to hold his favorite stabbing knife around some. She didn't care for the knife particularly, but was handy to know that if she was about to approach Death's door, Nny was there to secure a good, clean murder.
I want you and I'm hatin' it
Got me lit like a candlestick
Get too hot when you touch the tip,
I'm feelin' it, I gotta getta grip
And it's drivin me crazy baby don't you quit
Can't get enough of it
You got me goin' again
Baby, you got me goin' again
You make me sick…
It was a lonely two o'clock. Effie and Nny were sitting on the roof of his car, staring out over Nny's favorite bluff. Effie bit mechanically into a jelly pastry while Nny sucked at a Brain Freezy, not really tasting it but doing it because it was there and it would be a waste otherwise.
"I went swimming on a starry night once..." Effie sighed. "Like floating in space."
Nny replied how wonderful it would be to go over them. Effie agreed, before pointing out the sea. "You see?" she said, lips smeared with powdering sugar and strawberry filling, "It's just like the stars. Even better."
That night, they went for a last swim. With a sigh like a job well done, Nny carried a gun, keeping it dry as they waded. Nny was not quite so bold as to skinny-dip, but he was pleased to see the white glow of Effie's skin in the water. They weren't even above the stars yet and she was already making the change. The bones of her ribs, under-nourished from the now-and-then diet of gas station food, curved like the crescent moon. There was the faint reminder of the smiles on the Doughboys but he shook it off. Best not to disturb the moment.
"Wait up." he said quietly, pulling her close as she nuzzled into his neck with the smooth barrel of the gun pressed against her skull. "I swear I'll be right behind you."
Pulling the trigger was easy.
