When the morning comes

When we see what we've become

In the cold light of day we're a flame in the wind

Not the fire that we've begun

Every argument, every word we can't take back

'Cause with the all that has happened

I think that we both know the way that the story ends

-Marshmello and Bastile, Happier

Chapter One

'Alone Together.' The words had been working their way through her mind for weeks now. Each time they chimed they got just a little bit louder and she was beginning to think that she may no longer be able to contain them in her mind. Another song she'd forgotten about somewhere along the way that Thorn had reminded her of. And yet again this song was not a positive reflection of their relationship, or lack of one. Her fingers threaded through the carpeting of the hallway as she tried to get lost in her thoughts.

She and Thorn had been living together now for nearly a month. The new year was right around the corner and through the last few weeks, she had finally begun to grasp the difficulty of her self given task.

It had been okay at first. The high of succeeding in getting her necklace back and getting home safe had given them plenty to talk about over the first few days of being home. But as those words ran dry she'd struggled to keep the wolfman talking. He was unwilling to talk about himself and she wasn't quite ready to start digging through her past either given the new trauma that came with thinking about it.

It wouldn't have been so bad if they'd both had jobs but Thorn had been laid off after coming home and was too weak to look for a part-time job for the winter and he missed the seasonal window. Nikki had tried but she'd soon found out that she had no documentation to give out. So while Thorn was able to collect a pitiful unemployment check she was forced to face the moral dilemma of glamouring humans to give her a job illegally or under the table.

Of course, the only under the table jobs around here during winter were pet sitting, kid sitting, or shoveling snow.

When she'd gone back to sift through the paperwork in her caretaker's house she'd found nothing at all. Worse, when she'd called a realtor to come to look at the house she'd found out that the faeries that were assigned to watch her hadn't had any moral dilemma at all when moving out to Connecticut. They'd found an abandoned house, glamoured it up, and glamoured anyone who came asking questions about it. No deed, no faked birth certificates, nothing. She hadn't even gone to get a driver's license so she couldn't use that either. As the days passed the glamour began to peel off the house to reveal the rotting wood of a complete dump.

So not only could she not prove to anybody that she did, in fact, belong there, she had no house to sell, no money to help Thorn pay the bills, and no way to earn any in a normal human way either.

During that first week, she had used her magic only a handful of times, to get her caretakers cremated and to get the cops to stop asking questions about the corpses 'body mods.' She'd squirmed at the idea that humans would ever do that to themselves on purpose, elongating their ears or tattooing their eyeballs. It made her gag but she'd struggled through it so she could at least spread their ashes. Thorn had gone with her and she'd spread them out behind the house, not knowing where else they should go.

But as their ability to talk about things other than their feelings dwindled, the two had barely spoken at all. She had expected that after he'd regained his strength they would talk about all the shit that hung in the air between them but he'd only pushed her away.

He'd been having nightmares nearly every other night. The first few times she'd come in and sat down beside him and sang to him to calm him down or to try and soothe him back to sleep. He must not have enjoyed his dependence on it because he'd told her to get out one night and she hadn't dared to go back in since. Some nights he would wake in a total panic and run from his room only to find her waiting for him. When he'd woken up and realized he was at home and safe, he'd ranted on about how she shouldn't be waiting for him like this. How helpless it made him feel that she was always there, waiting for him to need her.

She understood what he'd meant but she couldn't figure out why he hated needing help so much. Was it a human thing or was it just a Thorn thing? Here she was again though, sitting on the floor in the living room, around the corner so he wouldn't be able to see her if he came rushing out of his room again. She dared not go closer but every bone in her body ached to go and calm him.

She'd thought it would be different than this. After he'd admitted to not being enchanted in the cabin she'd longed for that to become normal for them but it simply hadn't. She hadn't touched him in days. She forced her way into a hug a few times in the first few weeks, kissed him once or twice in the first few days but that was all. She'd tried to escalate these encounters but she'd been denied every time.

She'd started seeing him out in town when she went out to hunt for work. Started her habit of glamouring men to look like him back up after she'd thought she might have it under control. She hadn't grabbed any of them yet, thankfully, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to walk past her own illusions.

Her only escape from the drama had been when Val had come to visit them for a few days. She'd wanted to check up on Thorn but to Nikki's surprise, she'd actually wanted to check up on her more. She hadn't found it possible to talk to Thorn about how she'd killed that troll in the Court of Teeth but she'd found it much easier to talk about with Val. She'd been there. She was able to bring it up when Nikki couldn't quite find the words. While that had helped, Val had still been insistent that it wasn't her place to tell her Thorn's business and sadly Nikki had agreed with her at the time.

It was then that she was ripped from her thoughts as she heard Thorn jolt up in bed and let out a small yelp of fear. She stood as she heard him jump from the bed and run for his door. She pressed herself, front first, into the corner of the wall she was hiding behind, hands over her heart as he threw open his door and ran out into the hallway, breathing so heavily she thought he might pass out.

She tried to keep her breathing as soft as possible as she reached out with her magic and tried to let it reach him and calm him down. It worked for a moment before he felt it. He turned his head toward the wall and growled, "what did I fucking say about that shit?!" He yelled and she stopped.

She could feel him staring at the corner of the wall and she slowly let her fingers creep around the corner before shyly peeking around it at him. "I'm not sorry…"

"Why would you be?! Clearly, you love doing shit against my will."

Her nails dug into the plaster of the wall as she gritted her teeth. "You need to talk about your problems Thorn," she said shakily, trying to keep from becoming emotional.

"I'm fine," he growled again, "I don't need anything!"

"You need to talk Thorn!" She shouted back at him. It was the middle of the night but she didn't care anymore, the people below them were going to have to deal with this long-overdue argument. "And I want to help you!"

"Help me?! Why? Do I look like I need fucking help!"

"No!" She yelled back as she stepped around the corner. "That's not what I meant!" She continued as she walked to him and grabbed his arm. He did look like he needed the help of course but she didn't want her words to sound the way they had. He ripped his arm away from her though before she could get a good grip on him.

"The only reason you wanna help is so you can get close to me and fuck my life up all over again!" He shouted back at her and she froze. Her hands fell to her sides as she balled them into fists and looked down at the carpet. Her tears began to flow and fall down to the carpet as she listened to his breathing become slower and slower as he calmed down.

Part of her might have been happy that he seemed to be realizing what he had said to her and was regretting it but if it was she couldn't feel it. All she could feel, to her own surprise, wasn't sadness, but instead, boiling rage.

She'd bottled her feelings up for so long that she had skipped right over sadness or regret and went straight to 'rip your eyes out' levels of anger. As her hands began to shake Thorn sucked in a nervous breath and tried to speak.

"Nik I-" he began but he felt his lips close without his permission. He felt his limbs stiffen a little too, unable to move them as he saw her look up to him, her eyes glowing an even brighter cold blue than usual. Her right hand wound back and when it came forward she slapped him across the cheek as hard as she could before letting go of her hold on him. He stumbled to his side and cupped his cheek, gritting his teeth to try and keep from yelping in pain. He looked back to her and saw her shaking her hand in the air as if it had hurt her as well.

And like that, she turned and walked back to her room and he heard as she began rummaging through her belongings. He sucked in a deep breath and walked to her bedroom door, intending to look inside but when he got there he found her nude, getting ready to pull on a new set of clothes.

As she noticed his presence she walked to the door and he put his hands up to defend himself from her advance but was surprised when all she did was slam the door in his face. He was left alone and blinking in disbelief in the living room outside her door.

Inside her room, Nikki filled her satchel bag with a change of clothes before pulling on a t-shirt she had stolen from Thorn and one of his hoodies as well before she found a pair of socks and panties and covered them with one of her many pairs of black leggings and then a pair of cut off short jean shorts. She then grabbed her cell phone and charger from the wall beside her bed and shoved that in as well. Nikki moved to the mirror which she had hung on the back of the door and glamoured away her horns and tried to whiten up her skin as fast as she could before she ripped the door open.

Thorn was still standing there and as he moved to speak she pushed past him and headed for the bathroom. She scooped up a few toiletries and shoved them into her bag before turning around again to find Thorn behind her in the doorway.

"Nikki I'm so-" he began before again he felt his lips zip shut as she waved her hand at him.

"Move or I'll move you," she threatened but he didn't budge. When he didn't she shoved her weight into his chest with her shoulder and he let go of the door frame and she snuck past him and dropped her small hold over him. As she made it to the door of the apartment she felt his hand on her wrist and she, against her better judgment, hesitated.

"Nick please," she could hear the sorrow in his voice but this was no time to go easy on him. He'd treated her like shit for weeks and she couldn't let him get away with it, no matter how much she wanted to stay.

"Let go of me," she said softly, her voice cracking as she fought back tears. "Don't make me enchant you to do it," she threatened when he didn't let go.

At that though, his grip loosened and she wrenched free. She opened the door and again, hesitated in the doorway before turning to face him. She hadn't wanted to look at him but when she did she found him looking at her with sorrow drenching his face. No tears, but she could tell he knew how badly he'd fucked up and at that moment, all she wanted to do was leave. Unfortunately, her mouth had other ideas. The small part of her that liked to make trouble and loved to play with her food.

"And you're stupid enough to wonder why Anya fucking left you," she spat out and shook her head in disbelief. "Don't follow me," was all she said after that, not even sticking around to see if her insult had elicited a reaction. She was out the door and she flung it shut behind her. As she went down the stairs in a hurry though she was stopped by the sudden sound of what she could only guess was Thorn's fist smashing through the drywall of the kitchen. Moments later she was out in the cold and walking through the snow down the road. She headed down over the train tracks and to the library down the street.

It was the only bus stop around and as her butt hit the bench she put her face in her hands. She then pulled the collar of his hoodie up and over her face before screaming incoherently into the fabric to dull the noise. The cold of the night bit at her fingertips and her nose and ears but she wasn't about to go back. She'd wait here on the bench for this bus all night if she had to.

She looked up at the clock inside the small sheltered stop before looking to the bus schedule. She needed to get on the Hartford or New London Bus so she could get on the train. She had tried her best to not spend too much of the cash she had left from her parents and she figured she must have enough to get her to New York. She didn't have anybody to talk to in the world other than Val and so that's where she would go.

She pulled her phone up from her bag and checked the time, four-thirty in the morning. Still dark and she had a notification that it may start to snow soon. She checked back up to the notice board again and sighed. Only half an hour till the first bus for Hartford for the day arrived.

All she could do now was wait. She wiped her cheeks on her sleeves, finding partially frozen tears flake off of her cheeks as the fabric swept them off of her. She pulled up the hood of his sweater and leaned her head gently into the plexiglass cover of the bench and waited in silence, thankful that for once her thoughts seemed to be leaving her in silence in the cold and dark night.

/

Nicole squinted harshly as the bus bounced over a bump in the road and the sun caught her tired eyes. Her head was leaned into the window where she had temporarily fallen back asleep in the waning hours of darkness. As she straightened up and looked out over the road she realized they were off the highway. She figured they must be close to the train station now. She'd pulled a pair of mittens and a hat from her bag when she sat down and done the very best she could to cover most of her skin, even wrapping a scarf around most of her face so that only her eyes and a few stray strands of blonde hair poked out. It had helped her breathe on the bus. For the first few stops, there hadn't been many passengers so she'd been able to keep her window cracked but after a while, she'd felt bad for the people filing in.

Still, it hadn't been too nauseating. Shed grabbed a seat in the middle of the bus, as far away from the engine and the exhaust as possible. It certainly wasn't as bad as Thorn's stupid pipsqueak of a car. She did have a headache but it could be a lot worse.

She'd tried to keep herself occupied with how she was going to explain herself to Val for showing up unannounced. This way she wouldn't have to think about how hurt she must have made Thorn with her words and quick exit. She hadn't even told him where she was going and she'd ordered him to not follow her. She wasn't sure how long the magic would last on him but she did know that he was experienced with faeries. He could break the enchantment himself if he really wanted to.

Any normal person would stay enchanted for days or even weeks if a faerie glamoured them like that. She just needed a head start to get away from him and clear her head. It served him right anyway. He deserved to worry about her and not know if she was okay, didn't he? It's not like they were together anyway. Two loners living in the same apartment. Why would they need to be more connected than that? 'We've only saved each other's lives,' she silently reasoned before realizing how stupid that sounded.

When the bus stopped she got off and walked inside the train station before rushing up to the counter. She ripped her wallet from her bag and shoved money through the ticket window, "first train to New York," she said, trying to hustle the conversation along so she wouldn't need to pull the scarf down. As she was handed her change and her ticket she turned and read the time on the card. She had ten minutes to spare and with it, she headed right to the Dunkin Doughnuts inside the station and bought a coffee and breakfast wrap before she rushed to the bathroom.

She touched up her glamour here and there where she thought she'd needed to and relieved herself before heading up and onto her platform. The train was already there and she was ushered on almost immediately. When she got inside she huffed in surprise. "Fucking cheapskate," she breathed out as she looked around.

The train car was, to her shock, completely metal-free. Plastic benches lined with cushions and topped with rubber handrails. Even the luggage racks were wooden and the lights were dimmed a little to accommodate the time of day. As she chose a seat away from anyone else she finished her thought.

"The train is a giant metal tube on wheels," she mocked. "Dickhead," she shook her head as she pulled her scarf down and drank in the startlingly clean air and heat of the coach.

She settled in and as the train began to set off she felt her phone vibrate. 'Don't answer it,' she thought to herself sternly. It was just a text, based on the single vibration, but she still didn't want to talk to Thorn. After a minute though she couldn't resist pulling out her phone only to find that it wasn't Thorn. When Val had come over the girls had exchanged numbers and it was that name that the text belonged to.

'Nikki? Are you safe?' was what it read. She ground her teeth together and looked up into the ceiling for a moment, annoyed that Thorn had asked Val to talk to her for him.

'Don't play messenger for Thorn,' she typed back and sent.

'I just want to know if you're safe.'

'I'm fine. Don't tell him that but I'm fine.'

'Alright...Do you need anything?' she read and found herself a little shocked that Val cared enough to answer. They had been friendly but she hadn't expected them to become close. She'd never had a friend that cared enough to ask her if she was truly okay before.

'Call me?' she typed back slowly before sending the message and waiting to see if Val would actually do it. Her eyes lit up and she even jumped a little as the phone began to ring. She accepted the call and pressed the phone to her ear. "Tell me you won't tell Thorn what we talk about…" she said before Val could even say hello.

She heard Val hesitate for a moment before she spoke, "I promise," she said softly. "Are you really okay?" Her voice sounded so soft. So gentle and caring and Nikki almost thought she might be talking to someone else.

Nikki found herself hesitating again and she felt sparks on her tongue. She'd come to know this sensation as her body rejecting the notion of lying. "No," she sighed in defeat.

"Well, where are you?"

"I'm on the train...headed to New York. I should be there in a few hours…" she said softly, not sure how else to explain that she had planned on dropping in on Val.

Val was silent for a moment before speaking, "I'll make some room for you. You can stay…" she began before she suddenly stopped.

"Val? You there?" She asked, breaking the silence.

"Stay with Ruth and Hazel," she cleared her throat and Nikki got the distinct impression that that wasn't what she had intended to say.

"Ruth?" Was all Nikki could manage. They had talked about a few things during Val's visit but a girl named Ruth was not one of those things.

"She's my best friend," she heard some of the happiness come back into Val's voice.

"I thought Hazel was your best friend," Nikki contemplated.

"No, Hazel is my work partner, who happens to be dating my best friend," she explained with lightheartedness in her voice.

"Well, I...I wouldn't want to inconvenience them or...cause trouble," Nikki admitted, fully aware of how badly she had been aching for the touch of another's flesh lately. "I can't stay with you?"

"You...Nikki you might not be comfortable staying...with me and...with us."

"Uncomfortable?" She asked, curiosity lighting up her face. "Who is us?"

"I'll uhmmm...I'll pick you up at the train station okay? I'll explain when you get here. Tell me when you're close okay?"

"Alright…" she breathed back.

"Oh and...when you get off the train try to hold your breath. I'll have something for you but it's gonna be a really shitty time for you getting out of Grand Central…"

"I've been to Grand Central before you know?" She replied with condescension.

"As a human...yes," she replied and Nikki began to realize what she meant.

"Oh...fuuucckkk," she groaned.

"Like I said just try to bear it for a few minutes I've got something for the iron sickness I can give you."

"Really?" She said as she sat up in her seat.

"Don't get your hopes too high. It's not gonna make it go away just...make it a little more bearable."

"Okay well...I guess I'll text you when they say we are almost there."

"Okay. Be safe," Val encouraged.

"Thank you," she replied before saying it again. "Thanks, for...being there Val," she smiled.

"You're welcome," Val actually chuckled a little. "See you in a bit," she finished before hanging up. Nikki placed her phone down in her lap and smiled before laying her head against the window.

"What a nice girl."

End of Chapter