Dark Side Of The Moon (13/19)
Title: Dark Side Of The Moon
Chapters: 13/? ( Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 )
Authors: narya86 & tetila
Pairing: Daniel Agger/Fernando Torres
Rating: Overall NC-17.
Disclaimer: More fiction probably isn't possible. We just borrowed the names of certain people... ;)
Summary: The first demon had died under Fernando’s hands when he had been nine. Daniel had always tried to stay away from Hunters, for obvious reasons.
A/N: We're slowly getting back into our writing groove. :D
Chapter 13
I don’t believe that anybody
Feels the way I do about you now
And all the roads we have to walk are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things that I would like to say to you
But I don’t know how
Because maybe
You’re gonna be the one that saves me
And after all
You’re my wonderwall
~ Ryan Adams ~
***
Morning had woken the capital of Spain, the street lights had gone out and instead the early morning sun was illuminating the streets where the first citizens were up and about, cleaning the pavement, walking to cafés, offices, metro or bus stations.
While waiting for a traffic light to turn green for pedestrians Catalina briefly glanced at her watch, seeing that she still had more than enough time to return the books to the library and even go for a coffee before classes. The Instituto Cervantes was now just around the corner down the street that was getting livelier by the second, mere five minutes from where she was. But before the young woman had even reached the corner her gaze fell onto a familiar figure walking towards her, alone under the trees that were lining the street, head lowered, steps slow as if without destination. And all that she could think was what the hell Fernando was doing out now, when he should have long ago gone home for some sleep.
And with every step he came closer her feeling of alarm grew.
Fernando didn’t see her until she was purposefully stepping into his path so that he wouldn’t just walk on by, and when he raised his head in bewilderment, for a moment all breath caught in her throat.
His slow, weary, careful steps could have been because of a hunt. Him going home so late now could have been because of his troubles to sleep. And she had been prepared to see scratches or wounds or whatever - but not that large bruise on his neck, the one that looked too much like a fading love bite. Not that vulnerable, lost look in his eyes, shaded with mortification as soon as he recognised her.
Catalina drew in a deep breath, something like fear in her heart before asking softly, “What happened to you?”
She saw him swallow heavily, as if it physically hurt him to answer, and her gaze was drawn to his slightly bruised lips.
Definitely not a hunting accident.
“Nothing.” His voice sounded raw and almost defenceless, and she only shook her head incredulously.
“You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”
Dear God, he couldn’t have been… no, there was no way on earth, he’d be able to defend himself…
“Don’t worry, it was just…” he stopped and shrugged helplessly, still avoiding to meet her gaze. “… a vampire,” he finished lamely.
“Don’t lie to me, Fernando,” Catalina shook her head, her heart hurting with every moment she looked at him. “You don’t want to tell me what happened, alright, fair enough. Just… oh God…”
She didn’t know what to say. Fervently the young woman searched for words, anything to express how worried she was, how much seeing Fernando like this scared her for his sake. She took a deep, slightly shaky breath.
“Do you rather want to be alone?”
She saw how Fernando hesitated for a moment, just a few short seconds, before he shrugged again, finally meeting her eyes with his own. They looked tired and raw with emotion, and even though she didn’t know what exactly she saw there it still shocked her.
“Yes. Yes, thank you,” he nodded, his voice sounding desolate, then after a short pause he continued, “and I’ll be okay. Don’t worry.” The smile he forced on his face didn’t quite reach his eyes and it clenched her heart.
Torn Catalina stood there, wanting to do something, anything, to make this better, but not knowing how. So after a silent moment she did the only thing that would occur to her, take a quick step to him, reach up and wrap her arms around him, carefully holding his taller, broader form close almost like a frightened flight animal, hoping that it wouldn’t run away.
Fernando tensed in her arms and she thought he wouldn’t accept her hug, wouldn’t want the comfort she offered him… both of them. But after a moment he relaxed into her embrace and she felt his arms warp around her.
They stood like that in the middle of the streets until Fernando sighted heavily into her neck and took a step away from her. “Thank you,” he told her again, softly, before he turned away and continued his way down the street.
She watched him for another few moments until she couldn’t watch the slump in his shoulders anymore and she turned away, hand over her mouth, taking a few steadying breaths.
This was so, so bad. And Catalina knew that it couldn’t go on like this, and wouldn’t. One way or another.
Right now she just prayed it wouldn’t get as bad as she feared.
***
She almost missed him in the crowd walking past the small café. The sun was just vanishing between the top of the trees across the road, bathing the whole town in a reddish glow. Twilight, she mused. She saw him walking down the street over the shoulder of Luiza, one of her university friends, who was right in the middle of her story about her latest fling.
At first she wasn’t sure if it really was the man she had seen that one time at Fernando’s apartment. Black jeans, long-sleeve shirt, no jacket, unhurried but purposive, a certain pensiveness in his features. His ex.
“… and after all this he didn’t even call me, can you imagine that?” Luiza asked her, exasperatedly throwing her hands into the air. A small guilty part in Catalina came to life because if she was honest she had no idea if her friend was just irritated, angry or even hurt about the guy, because her mind had been entirely elsewhere. For about half a week now, to be exact, pondering, worrying.
It was a matter of seconds in which Catalina made the decision to follow him. “Yeah,” she answered distractedly, her eyes trailing the man as he passed their table. “Hey, Luiza, could you take care of my stuff for just a second? I have to… I’ll be back in a second, alright?”
“Sure,” her friend answered, watching her with visible confusion as Catalina got to her feet, already trying to seek him out again where he was walking down the street.
Hurriedly she shoved past a group of students standing on the sideway before her eyes found the man again. Her breath was starting to come more quickly as she started a fast pace once she saw him round a corner and disappearing from her view. “Fuck,” she muttered under her breath, earning disapproving looks from some bypasses as she picked up a slow jog, but once she rounded the corner he was gone. She slowed down, staring down the road and searching for a sign of the man’s tall frame.
There was another alley a few paces ahead and so Catalina took the few steps, assuming that he could only have gone there, but once she reached it she was greeted by bare stone and no movement. Confused she stopped, her eyes searching the doorways but finding no one. She frowned, for a moment doubting her very sanity.
“Dangerous thing you’re doing there.”
Heart skipping a beat, she couldn’t suppress the startled gasp escaping her as she turned and almost stumbled over her feet as she saw the man she had been following standing right behind her. He looked different than she remembered from that short encounter in Fernando’s living room, darker and somehow more intense in his appearance. Her heart was now beating loudly and so hard her chest almost hurt. “How…?”
“Following a stranger into an abandoned alley,” he continued, nodding slowly to the side at the narrow street they were standing in, gaze holding hers. “What do you want?”
The intensity of the man’s stare was making the hairs on the back of Catalina’s neck stand on end and she took another step backwards before she realised she was as good as trapped in that ally, no one else in sight.
“I just wanted…” she stopped as she saw him taking another step towards her, his gaze never leaving hers. Swallowing nervously she tried to collect her thoughts. “Fernando… I mean…” was the only thing she managed to stutter.
Something flashed in his eyes, something dark on the otherwise clear green-brown. “Spit it out.”
Catalina couldn’t help flinching at the harshness of his voice. Closing her eyes for a second she forced herself to concentrate. “I’m worried about him. Something’s really wrong with him, when I saw him last week he was a wreck. He looked…”
She took a deep breath, trailing off. And when she opened her eyes again he was still there only two steps away, watching her with an unmoving gaze. For a second she forgot what she had wanted to say. Up close he looked like… no man she had ever seen before. Catalina didn’t even know what it was. Of course was attractive, extraordinarily so, his eyes were beyond fascinating, he… she took another deep breath, fresh air and a scent that almost made her dizzy. And even though she wanted to take another step closer the way he looked at her made her want to step back, to get more distance between them, because there was something that intimidated, scared her even.
Dear God, that wasn’t normal.
It was that thought that made her swallow and take that step back, staring at him.
Was he normal?
Dangerous thing you’re doing there…
Somehow she managed to actually put some space between them and without that confusingly infatuating scent it was getting easier to think once again. He wasn’t human. He couldn’t be human. He had to be something else and she could only hope he wasn’t going to hurt her. But for some strange reason he was also Fernando’s ex - so he wouldn’t, right? Except maybe he would. Fernando’d had that obvious bruise on his neck. A fucking love bite.
Before Catalina knew what she was doing it was out, an aggressive hiss.
“What did you do to him?”
He, however, didn’t even blink. “Excuse me?”
“It was your fault he looked like that last week, wasn’t it. It wasn’t a vampire like he said,” she answered, for a moment forgetting her fear.
For a few heartbeats he was silent, then she thought she saw him sigh just a little. “Listen, Lady,” he started, and his voice was still hard but not unfriendly, “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.”
“Did you force him?” The picture of Fernando standing before her was still in her mind, looking so lost and vulnerable, something between anger and fear mixing in her veins. “No normal human could have done anything to him! Did you?!”
“What?! Alright, stop, calm down!”
It was the first time he raised his voice, eyes narrowed, taking another step towards her, and she retreated. She felt her throat getting dry, suddenly reminded again why her heart was hammering in her chest as he stared at her incredulously.
“What, you think I raped him?”
“He sure looked like it,” was out of her mouth before she could even think about it.
There wasn’t much reaction in his features, but the little Catalina could see made her think she could have just as well slapped him.
For a few moments he stared at her silently, then blinked, swallowed and shook his head. “I didn’t. Fuck, no.”
It sounded like the truth, as far as she could tell, and something about the way he had reacted to her accusations just now made her believe him. Still, she was missing something here, that much Catalina was sure of.
“So maybe you didn’t force him, but you must have done something to mess him up really bad,” she insisted, tense as if in preparation to stand her ground. “Did you… break up with him?”
To her surprise he snorted. “If you ask him there was never anything to break up. So no. And even if there was…” He stopped for a moment and it was so damn hard to read him. “It was his decision. Not mine.”
“Then what’s making him look like the walking dead?” Catalina asked, softer now, almost pleading. It wasn’t much he was showing her, but what little she could see made her believe, somehow, that he did care about Fernando. It was in his face, his eyes.
And by now Catalina was so worried that this was enough.
“You know it, don’t you?
“No… look,” he shook his head and suddenly he looked weary. “I don’t know what’s going on in his head. I can’t tell you anything, and you wouldn’t understand…”
“You’re right,” Catalina interrupted him, a sad, helpless laugh on her lips. Realisation slowly dawning on her, like a puzzle slowly coming together. “I don’t understand everything that’s going on. Maybe only half of it. I don’t understand the world he’s part of - you’re part of - and I don’t know how to help him. But what I do know is that even though he might deny it and even think he doesn’t, he needs help. Someone to get through this. And I can’t be that. I’m not a part of his world,” she added, watching how he looked at her, listened. Hoping she was doing the right thing. “What’s happening is torturing him…”
Another snort interrupted her briefly, but this time softer, weaker. “He’s torturing himself.”
“But he’ll come around,” she returned, vividly recalling that beaten look in Fernando’s eyes. “He’s going to realise that and I think… I think that when he does, you’re the one he’ll come to.”
Catalina fell silent, biting her lip, waiting to see if there would be a reply.
There was none.
“I don’t really know what’s going on between you, but I really think he will. And when he does… please don’t turn him away.”
When there was still no reply Catalina took another deep breath and walked a few careful steps into his direction, closing the distance between them, and she thought there might have been a small touch of a nod as he made a step sideways to let her pass.
She held her breath almost until she had reached the main street again, people bustling around in the now rapidly descending darkness, the encounter in the deserted alley feeling a little unreal all of a sudden. In those last few minutes Catalina had barely even thought about what she did or said, but now, when her heart wasn’t beating as hurriedly anymore, she thought that it could have gone much, much worse.
Maybe, in the end, there was something she could do for Fernando after all.
***
Two days later Fernando called her, asking if they could go out. Saying that he needed the distraction, to be among people. And so they did. They went to the cinema, bars, clubs, even the theatre once after Fernando admitted that he had never seen a play in his life. He looked better than he had that morning she had last seen him, healed, stronger, smiling once in a while even though the dark circles around his eyes remained. And Catalina could see how his thoughts drifted off sometimes, a pensiveness in his face and eyes that wasn’t calm but full of nervous energy, expressed in the way his fingers drummed against his knee, his leg twitching as if he could never sit completely still.
They didn’t talk about that morning and she didn’t ask if he was alright, because he might have not been in such a desolate state anymore, but it was clear that he wasn’t. When he spaced out she could practically see the wheels in his head turning, working overtime, and sometimes, especially in clubs, she saw how his gaze was travelling over the faces of the people around them.
Almost two weeks went by until it didn’t return to her eventually but froze somewhere in the crowd, and even though the urge was there Catalina didn’t turn to follow it. Instead she watched how his eyes widened slightly, as if he had never been on the lookout in the first place, how he averted his eyes, but how they returned again only about two heartbeats later.
They were sitting in one of the small, round seating spaces of a club at the edge of the dance floor, music and lights pulsing around them. And just to see that look on Fernando’s face backed every guess she had ever had about these two.
When his gaze finally returned to her he noticed that she had been watching him, calmly, knowingly. A variety of emotions flashed over the Hunter’s face, but before either of them could have said anything they were interrupted by a young woman squeezing past their seats to those right next to them, excitedly shouting over the music to two other girls sitting there, plopping down next to them, “I saw him! Oh my God, finally, look!”
“What?”
“Where? Who?”
“Over there, look! Dark hair, drop-dead gorgeous, the tall one? Dancing with that blonde?”
She couldn’t miss how Fernando tensed at the description of the girl, the frown appearing between his eyes or how his hands tighten around the beer he was holding, and all her suspicions where confirmed when she saw him trying to sneak a glance at the girl behind him.
“Oh god, he was the best night of my life, hands down. He did that thing with his fingers…” the girl trailed off in a fit of giggles, her friends joining in. “And I have no idea how he did it, but I came so hard I was seeing stars, literally! God I wish I could have him again. But I don’t think he’s so much for second dates.” She sighed and Catalina could watch how everything in Fernando’s face tensed, crumbled.
The girls all turn their gazes back towards the dance floor and Catalina couldn’t even blame them, knowing from personal experience how enthralling that man could be. “Wow, I could stare at his ass all night and I wouldn’t be bored,” one woman continued, the group dissolving in another fit of laughter.
“But you can’t even see the best thing,” the girl from the beginning threw in, “he has the most beautiful, fascinating eyes I’ve ever seen.”
“Damn it. You think he’s up for more one-night-stands? Just say yes and I’m definitely going to try.”
It was more than either of them had wanted to hear, and Catalina breathed in relief as the girls finally stuck their heads together and their voices were drowned by the music once more. And it took just one glance at Fernando to see the desolation in his face and know that, whatever had happened between them, he was far from over it.
Carefully Catalina slid closer until she sat right next to her friend, gently nudging him. It took a few seconds until he raised his eyes and met hers.
“Why are you doing this to yourself?”
“Doing what?” Fernando asked in return, tilting his head and pretending he didn’t know what Catalina was talking about.
“You know,” she answered as softly as the noise allowed, and his face fell again. “What do you really have to lose?”
She watched a sad smile appear on his face, before turning his head to watch him dance once again. “A whole lot. Maybe too much.”
The words reminded her of the fact that she really only knew so much. That she probably couldn’t even fathom what problems it would bring - a relationship of whichever kind between a Hunter and a supernatural being. That she didn’t even know what he was. That she had no idea if he was actually good for Fernando… but could it really get worse?
“More than you could gain?”
At first she wasn’t sure if Fernando had heard her over the music because he hadn’t moved his gaze yet, still staring at the dance floor. There was a fight going on inside of him, with an intensity that made it visible to her - and then there was a slow, gradual change in his eyes, realisation maybe, admittance, surrender, and it told her that he had.
Her own heart was beating curiously fast in her chest as Fernando gave her a small, maybe grateful smile, put his beer back down on the table, stood up and walked towards the dance floor. She lost sight of him as he squeezed past two or three people and instinctively stood up, seeing how Fernando stopped just next to Daniel, carefully touching his arm. She saw how the tall man tuned his head, freezing when he caught sight of the Hunter. The blond girl looked back and forth between them, an irritated frown on her face, but neither Daniel nor Fernando spared her any glance. And just a short few words towards her from the dark-haired made her turn and stalk away.
A group of guys walked into her line of sight and she cursed under her breath, trying to stand on her toes to see over their heads before they thankfully moved away.
They were still only staring at each other, a silent exchange, and it looked like there was so much to tell, a world of things between them that passed through their locked gazes.
Eventually the dark-haired man raised his hand between them, holding it out for Fernando to take. Catalina held her breath as the Hunter looked down at it. Please, please take it…
And Fernando did. As he raised his eyes again his face was open as she had never seen it before, baring.
If you really still want to, you can have whatever’s left of me.
She watched how finally a flash of emotions played out on the man’s features before he tightened his hand around Fernando’s and pulled him into a silent embrace, smiled when Fernando buried his face in the crook of Daniel’s neck, tentatively wrapping his arms around the tall man. And they just stood there, entwined, wrapped around each other, completely still between the dancing bodies around them. A tiny space that was entirely their own, where for just a moment their worlds became each other.
***
They’re telling me it’s beautiful
I believe them but will I ever know
The world behind my wall?
The sun will shine like never before
One day I will be ready to go
See the world behind my wall
I’m ready to fall
I’m ready to crawl on my knees to know it all
I’m ready to heal, I’m ready to feel
Take me there…
~ Tokio Hotel ~
~ TBC in Chapter 14 ~