Here There be Monsters
Hi, friends! Here I am with a new fic in a new fandom when y'all know perfectly well I have unfinished fics hanging out there like poisoned apples. Goddamn Scarlet Letter shit up in here. But anyway, shit happens and so does fic.
So basically this is retelling NICK'S story with the addition of my OC, and of course a few changes along the way because I'm not just rewriting the damn book here. Consider it an AU, if you will. So if you encounter details along the way that are different, well there ya go. AU.
I'm going to put a longer note at the end to clarify a few things, but for now I want to remind everyone that, of course, Nick Andros is a deaf, non-orally speaking character. That isn't all that important in this chapter, but in ch2 and beyond, keep it in mind. Unless I explicitly state that he's written something, if he's speaking, he's signing. I use "said" and "signed" interchangeably, but (except in the dreams) he's never speaking aloud. As for my OC, if she's talking to Nick, same deal. She might be speaking aloud as she signs, but she's always signing, too.
I'd love to hear from you guys. I've got a chunk of this written, but it's nowhere near finished, so encouragement is greatly appreciated. I'm going to release chapters 1 & 2 back to back, then start releasing maybe once a week? But pls let me know what you're thinking, because fanfic writers live or die by comments!
If you're bored come check out my tumblr, binickandros, or my fic tumblr, juiceinpanties. Which is not dirty, despite how it sounds. Minds out of the gutter!
Chapter 1: Dreaming
there must be some kinda way outta here
said the joker to the thief
Bob Dylan, "All Along the Watchtower"
June 15 - Abilene, La
Before she even opened her eyes she knew something was wrong.
How could this be a dream? She could feel the sun-warmed earth under her back. Smell its dry mineral scent. Hear the dusty rustling of something—corn, she found out when she finally peeked—in the breeze.
She had fallen asleep in her bed in Abilene, Louisiana and somehow woken in a goddamn corn field.
It had to be a dream, because she didn't believe in aliens, at least not the kind that beamed people up from their beds and dropped them off in corn fields. She pushed herself to her feet and tried to get her bearings, but the corn was taller than she was.
Early, she thought, for corn that high.
She thought she could hear, off in the distance, the familiar twang of guitar strings. Another person? Or a radio?
"Hello?" she called.
Silence and the wind were the only reply.
"Hello?" she said again, louder. "Is anyone out there? Hello?!"
"Kai?"
The voice was familiar to her, as familiar as her own. He sounded far away, further even than the guitar.
"Nick?!" she cried. "Nick, is that you?"
"Kai! I'm coming! Keep shouting!"
She opened her mouth to call for him again, but above her head the sky darkened and thunder rumbled to drown out her voice. She shivered in the sudden chill.
"Edie…," another, much closer voice whispered. Now that was a familiar name, the one everyone called her. She hadn't been called Kai since her mother died thirteen years ago, yet it had sounded so right. Perfectly familiar.
"Kai! Where are you? Say something!" the first voice called.
She opened her mouth to answer, but shot a look over her shoulder at the hissing whisper behind her.
"Edie…this way…we know where you belong."
We? she thought. We who?
She stepped toward that second voice and reached out to the wall of stalks. Her fingers trembled. Above her the thunder rolled. The wind rocked the corn, and she squinted to see between the green and gold wave. Dark. The sun swallowed by clouds, and darkness in the field.
"Kai!" His voice was faint now, clearly heading away from her, and at that thought her heart lurched in a painful spasm of loss.
"Nick!" she cried and spun away from the beckoning hiss. "Nick, over here! Don't lose me!"
Back in her own bed, she awoke with a jerk and an incoherent cry. Sweat coated her in a thin film and the sheet was wrapped around her legs like a winding cloth. She kicked it away in a fury of claustrophobia and fell back against the pillow panting like a cornered animal.
What the fuck?! She'd never heard that voice before in her life, but she'd known it, known the man behind it as well as she knew herself. Better, maybe. Nick. Had she ever even met anyone named Nick? Surely, at some point, but she couldn't recall him now.
And he'd called her Kai. Her middle name. The name her mom had chosen for her, a reminder of crystal blue waters that surrounded the Hawaiian home of her childhood, of her native Hawaiian blood.
She let out a ragged sigh and threw her legs over the edge of the bed. It was almost seven AM. Maybe that was the problem: she'd stayed up too late last night arguing over those fucking divorce papers, and now she'd slept too late in the morning, and her brain was sending her bizarre, overly-realistic dreams as a result.
It made as much sense as anything else.
Out of bed now, she pulled on her running clothes: running pants, sports bra, t-shirt, those fancy socks she'd splurged on to prevent blisters; and wandered toward the kitchen.
And where the fuck was Remy? He'd said he would be in around midnight last night, but there was no sign of him in the little bungalow (he was 6'5" and nearly impossible to miss), and only her car sat in the driveway. Scowling, she flipped the switch on the coffeemaker and went to find her phone. Maybe he'd gotten tired on the road and stopped in somewhere, or maybe he'd decided to head to his place instead of hers.
She was just passing back through the living room on her way to the bedroom when she heard a car engine outside. Speak of the damn devil. She opened the front door and winced at the heavy, humid air that invaded her air conditioned space. An entire life lived in the South, and she still hated the heat and humidity.
"Rem!" she said as he poured himself out of the truck. "There you are! You're like seven hours late."
He stumbled closer (drunk? no…), and when he raised his head to look at her she couldn't suppress a flinch. Something was very wrong, and she didn't think it was drink. She knew what a drunk man looked like; this wasn't it.
"Jesus Christ, you look like shit," she said at last. She tried to keep her voice light, but something in it trembled.
He didn't seem to notice. "Feel like shit." He dragged himself up the porch stairs and she stepped back to let him in past her. "Got some kinda cold or flu or somethin'. Started feelin' bad yesterday afternoon. Figured I could push through, but I had to stop for some sleep. Wanted to get home, though. Left outta there like five. Fuck, babe, help me. Room's all spinnin'."
"Yeah," she said, breaking out of the trance the sight of him had frozen her into. "Yeah, of course. Let's get you in bed and I'll make you some tea and some soup."
As she stepped closer and tucked herself under his arm she couldn't help but notice the heat that radiated from him, and how bad his breathing sounded: thick, labored, nearly choking. There was swelling under his jaw and in the armpit pressed against her shoulder. They made it to the bedroom, and she tugged his boots off as he flopped across the bed, the frame creaking in alarmed protest at his sudden weight.
"Have you taken anything?" she said, though she already knew the answer.
"Fuck no. I got an immune system, don't I?"
Maybe, she thought. Seems to be in the weeds at the moment. "Well. Let's help it out a little, why don't we?" She frowned down at him and pressed the back of her hand against his sweaty forehead. "Rem, you're burning up. Like, seriously hot. Let me go get the thermometer, and…I think I should call the doctor."
"Doctor?" He broke off to cough, deep and rumbling and scary as shit. "What's the doc gonna do? Gimme some Tylenol and tell me to drink fluids. I'll be fine, Eds." He said it with a long e, though it sounded slurred and garbled in his illness-thickened voice.
"Maybe more than that. At least let me call Sarah."
He gave a clogged snort. "Great idea, genius. Might as well put a shotgun to my head."
Something in his tone made her pulse kick up several unpleasant notches. That…wasn't how he talked to her. To anyone, but especially not to her. Remy hated doctors and despised being sick, but in the six years she'd known him, that was the closest he'd ever been to sounding…mean.
He cracked a bloodshot eye and glared at her. "You just gonna stand there useless as a bump on a pickle, Eden D'Arnaud, or you gonna get me my goddamn soup?"
She took two slow steps backwards. "Sure, Rem," she said, her voice low and even. "I'll be right back." It took all her self control not to run once she was in the hall, and when she got to the kitchen she gripped the counter with both hands and dragged in several rough, gasping breaths.
Useless as a bump on a pickle. It was one of her father's favorite sayings. The guys at the DMV were useless as a bump on a pickle. The LSU offensive line when they let the QB get sacked. His idiot boss down at the refinery. And, of course, Edie herself when she didn't do exactly as he wanted before he even asked for it.
She hadn't heard that turn of phrase since she was seventeen, and she sure as fuck hadn't missed it. Hearing it now, from Remy's mouth, when he had come home so sick out of nowhere and not at all himself….
And her name. Her full name (minus the middle; that one had belonged to her mother alone). She was having a weird morning with names and it wasn't even eight yet. He'd sounded just like her father, exactly like him, and Remy had never met the man. Never heard more than a few passing anecdotes, most of them good, because for all that he'd been an abusive, drunken bastard, it hadn't been all bad. Not every second.
She should call Sarah. Remy would bitch about it, and Sarah wouldn't exactly be thrilled to hear from her (Hey, if you're not busy could you maybe come check on my snotty boyfriend? 'Kay thanks bye!), but she'd come. She hadn't been a practicing doctor since they'd opened the restaurant, but it wasn't like all those years of medical school had just evaporated.
She was reaching for her phone when she remembered she'd left it in the bedroom. Fuck. Okay, no problem. She'd make the soup, and when she went to drop it off she'd grab her phone, call Sarah, and maybe go for her run. But the way Remy looked she wasn't sure she should leave him alone.
She stood chewing her lip in a long moment of indecision until she shook herself out of it. Now was not the time to go deer-in-the-headlights. Remy had frozen some of his homemade chicken soup just last month. He'd want that rather than the canned crap, even though it would take longer to heat up. In the meantime she could bring him a slice of the bread she'd made last night, with honey. And the tea.
Eden Kai!
She dropped the box of teabags with a clatter and spun around. No. Remy was the only other person in the house. Dreams about random voices calling her name combined with this morning's weirdness…no wonder she was hearing things.
Eden Kai! Get out of that house. They comin' for him. They comin' for YOU!
She let out a soft cry and pressed a hand to her mouth. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck?! Was she having a psychotic break? Imagining Remy was turning into her father and hearing random voices from the sky?!
They comin', little girl. Get out NOW!
A woman's voice, warm and deep but cracked with age. Commanding like nothing she'd ever heard before. Remy was sick. Sick as she'd ever seen. What if he'd picked up some exotic new bug on his trip to Texas? Something super contagious—deadly even. Something the government might want to contain.
But could she just leave him? Leave him to…die. Because that's what was happening. He was dying. Anyone with eyes could see it. No one could sustain a fever that high, could live with that much phlegm bubbling in their lungs. Whatever it was he had, she'd have it now too. So what was the point of running?
The voice must know something she didn't. Something about Remy, or about her. As insane as it was to listen to random voices in the air, nothing about the last two hours of her life (dream-time included) could be described as normal, so at this point what the fuck did she have to lose?
She headed for the bedroom and paused a second to listen to Remy's breathing. It seemed to have gotten worse. He made low noises of distress and tossed and turned on the mattress. What kind of heartless monster could just leave him like this? Alone and dying?
If the voice was right, he wouldn't be alone for long. Whoever was coming would know how to take care of him, maybe even have a cure.
Mind made up, she hurried to the closet and burrowed her way to the back of it. She kept a bag there, a bug-out bag, and after a few moments' digging, her hand closed on the strap and she yanked it free. In it were a few changes of clothes, cash, a fake ID, and some other essentials for the modern girl on the run.
"Edie?" Remy moaned from the bed. "Eds, that you?"
He sounded like himself again, though weak and sick. She hesitated. "Yeah, babe, it's me. Try to get some rest. Help is coming."
"Help?" He let out a rasping, choking laugh that chilled her to the marrow. "Ain't no help for me, baby girl. Them's buzzards that's comin', that's all. Buzzards for m'eyes and jackals for m'bones." He jerked upright, his wild eyes fixed and staring, and raised a meaty hand to point straight at her. "Then they're comin' for you, Edie. Comin' to eat you all up! The coyotes is his, baby girl, and they're lookin' for you! They know what you did!" He laughed again until he coughed, and he coughed until she thought it might kill him.
Eyes huge in a naturally tan face suddenly gone deathly pale, she took several steps back toward the door and stumbled from the room. In the kitchen she shoved some protein bars and bottles of water into her bag, yanked her shoes onto her feet, and grabbed her keys from the hook by the door.
She closed her eyes and slumped against the wall. Fuck. She'd forgotten her phone again. It was on the nightstand. By the bed. The bed Remy was currently in.
She shuddered once, hard. No. Forget it. Whoever was coming for him could use it to track her, and who the fuck did she have to call anyway? Besides Sarah, but if they were coming for Remy, and they were coming for her, they'd be watching Sarah. And the restaurant.
Before she'd even made the final decision she found herself in the car. She started it and gripped the steering wheel with shaking hands. Okay. Leaving. Driving away with Remy sick nearly to death in her bed and at the direction of a disembodied voice shouting at her in the kitchen.
Just go, she told herself. Just put the car in drive and get the fuck out of here.
And so that's just what she did.
June 16 - Watts, OK
The morning after Edie D'Arnaud, the woman he'd come to know as Kai but who he didn't know at all just yet, took off from her Louisiana home, Nick Andros slept in a hayloft and dreamt.
A cornfield, the stalks higher than his head. The distant sound of music, and the even more distant call of a woman's voice. His name. Urgently, like her heart would break if she didn't find him. And he called back to her as though his would too, and dream-Nick never stopped to wonder how he recognized music or the sound of his own name, since he'd never heard either of those things before.
As he called her, what struck him as odd wasn't that he was speaking it, aloud, with a voice waking-Nick didn't possess, but that as he said it he signed water over and over. Water and sometimes sea, a series of waves with both hands, but that didn't seem strong enough, too gentle and easy to describe the human force of nature that was the woman he sought.
But as his eyes snapped open and the dream washed away in a confused memory, he knew he'd never met her at all. Of course he didn't know the voice; he'd never heard a voice before in his life; but he didn't know the name, either. Kai. Thoughtfully he signed it as he had in the dream: water. He rolled over and dug his phone out of his backpack. He had to guess at the spelling, but apparently he got it right, because his Google search told him that the word kai meant sea in native Hawaiian, and also in Japanese.
Water, he thought. Maybe a little simplistic, even insulting, for someone named after the ocean. But then that hardly mattered, because she was just a weird figment of his subconscious anyway. Like the corn and the music and the freak thunderstorm.
Like the crows that cawed like death omens and the coyotes that circled on padded feet.
Nick shuddered and hid his phone away again. It was his last day working the farm before he headed north, further into Oklahoma and then maybe after that up into Arkansas, and if he didn't get his ass moving he'd miss breakfast. He was skinny enough, and the work was hard enough, without skipping meals.
He tugged his dark curls back into a stub of a ponytail with a frustrated grimace. He needed a haircut, but that would have to wait until after he got paid. In the meantime he had to keep it out of his face, because he couldn't stand messing with it all day.
It was already hot up in the loft, and only going to get hotter as the day went on. By the time he returned to his makeshift bed, well after dark, it would have cooled enough to make sleeping bearable, but only just.
He really didn't have enough hours of sleep time to waste having bizarre dreams about cornfields.
He found himself signing her name (or his version of it) again as he got dressed, the way other people might hum or whistle. He'd known her, in the dream. Been desperate to find her, like if he didn't the world would end and he'd be stuck in that fucking cornfield forever.
He descended the ladder, and as he rounded the corner one of the farm hands sneezed into a bandana, three times in violent succession. Nick signed a quick bless you, and he nodded his thanks.
"Summer cold comin' on, I reckon," he said. "Don't got time for it, so let's hope it just passes on through."
Nick nodded in commiseration. They had fence to run up in the north pasture, something that would take most of the day, and then they had to move the animals out of the south pasture…but that would probably be tomorrow. One more night here, two more days, and he'd move on. He didn't like to overstay his welcome, and once the work moved more into cowboy stuff, that wasn't really his area. Cows and horses were fine, but they made him nervous.
He rolled up his sleeves and dragged a forearm across his sweaty forehead. Maybe at his next stop he could look for something indoors.
The hand sneezed again, twice, before he shoved the bandana into his back pocket, wiped his palms on his jeans, and headed toward the yard. Nick made a mental note not to shake hands with him today and followed him into the already blazing sun.
Hi friends! Here's the endnote I promised. I want to clarify a few things, since we're dealing with a 42-year-old book with 2 adaptations, and maybe y'all are wondering what this is actually fanfiction OF! Easy question: all 3. Sort of.
MOSTLY this is based on the book and the 94 mini-series, but I've incorporated a few elements from the 2020 adaptation that I actually liked. A very few, because there weren't many I'm not gonna lie. Let's see...
- Some of the casting choices: Larry, Stu, the change from Ralph to Rae Brentner, and like...half Alexander Skarsgard. My Flagg is like a Jamey Sheridan/Alexander Skarsgard combo pack. You'll see later on. Also Nick. I'm imagining Nick as like if Dev Patel and Henry Zaga (as he looks playing Nick) had a love child. I know Dev Patel is a hearing actor, and I wouldn't want to see him playing Nick any more than Rob Lowe or Henry Zaga, but inside my own head, that's the look we're going for. If you'd rather imagine him looking like Henry Zaga alone, without Dev Patel genes, that's fine. If you wanna go Rob Lowe, that's cool too. I don't mind; it's your head!
- One or two of the plot choices. That'll be more apparent in the latter half of the story, so don't really worry about it right now.
Basically we're following Nick's story line as it unfolds in the book/94 miniseries, and eventually we'll make it to Boulder and etc with everyone else. But for now I'm leaving them out because I'm not rewriting the entire book.
I had like this whole long endnote planned out and now I can't remember any of it. Lordt. Oh well, if it's important I'll remember. On to chapter 2...