Title: Dark Side Of The Moon
Chapters: 19/19 (
Prologue |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 )
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 so sorry for having kept you hanging like this for almost two months, and this is especially for
rayziz who asked about it every day. We wrote the last few words just a few minutes ago and are not entirely sure if we managed to get across everything we wanted to say, but here's to hoping. We hope you enjoy. :)
Chapter 19
Just a Perfect Day
You made me forget myself
I thought I was someone else
Someone new
It’s such a Perfect Day
I’m glad I spent it with you
Oh such a Perfect Day
You just keep me hanging on
You’re gonna reap just what you sow
~ Scala & Kolacny Brothers ~
***
Her hair was a rich, dark chestnut brown, soft waves falling down almost to her hips, now, in training, braided. Her eyes were a mix of hazelnut brown at the edges and dark blue around the iris. She was small and slender but faster and more agile than any of them, and when she smiled at him - just like she did now - Fernando felt his heart flutter.
He had known Mariella for all their lives, but somehow, this was new. And Fernando thought it was curious that it had taken him seventeen years to develop the first crush of his life.
An elbow digging into his side brought him back to the present of the training hall, the other Potentials around him, the short break his group was taking, Mikel who was smirking next to him.
“Stop staring.”
“I’m not staring,” Fernando defended himself to his friend but already felt how his face heated up and a red blush spread on his skin. “I’m just observing.”
“Yeah, right,” Mikel snorted and grinned even wider. “Her technique or her ass?”
The blush was slowly turning a deep, dark shade of red, and once again, like so often before in his life, Fernando cursed his complexion that made it so ridiculously obvious. “Shut up,” he listlessly told Mikel and tried to look at something other than Mariella.
It worked for maybe a few seconds before his eyes sought her out again, their gazes met and the happy fluttering in his stomach was back.
Her smile was still directed at him and he couldn’t help but return it with one of his own while somewhere at his side he heard Mikel laugh at him, but he didn’t care as long as she kept smiling at him like that.
It was the first time that Fernando wondered if he’d maybe not mind not becoming a Hunter after all. He was seventeen already. Not much longer and he’d be too old to be called, and then he’d have to go his own way, find something new in life. It was what he’d always dreaded. He didn’t know anything but this. Had no idea how to be normal. But maybe… For the very first time Fernando wondered if he’d want to just leave. Not become a coach, not work for the Council, but simply leave. Have a family. Maybe with someone like Mariella.
“Come on,” Mikel said and stood up and Fernando followed, stretching himself. They were up for the next exercise.
Fernando paired up with Mikel for their man-on-man combat and just wanted to start his first attack when he felt a sudden shiver, starting at the base of his neck, running down his spine. Slowly at first, like a soft cold breeze making the small hairs on his body stand.
And then there was pain, in every fibre of his body. He thought he could hear himself scream, but he wasn’t sure because all he felt were those painful aches in his joints and the cramps shaking his body like a puppet.
When it was over Fernando had no idea how long it had lasted, only that it had suddenly, from one second to the next, let go of him. For a moment he just lay where he had fallen and gasped for breath, but the pain was completely gone. And yet he felt… different.
Fernando opened his eyes and saw faces staring down at him, displaying emotions in a multitude too great for him to take in.
His friends. His coaches. Mikel. Mariella.
They stood in a circle around him, but with a distance like an invisible line neither of them seemed to dare cross.
And when Fernando looked at Mariella, her expression somewhere between awe and dread, he realised, something that had never, ever occurred to him: that from now on, it would always be like this.
Because now he was a Hunter. And he’d never be one of them again.
***
There was a voice talking, but it sounded far away like an echo too unclear, too smudged around the edges for him to understand.
“Have to… is waiting… almost… please…”
He heard the words but they didn’t make sense to him, he didn’t know what they wanted to tell him.
Like this he floated from word to word until eventually, finally, he seemed to latch on to one of them, let himself be pulled towards… whatever. And then he stirred, and the voice paused.
“Fernando? Fernando!”
He wanted to open his eyes, to look at the person calling his name, but his lids didn’t cooperate and so he just answered the voice with a broken moan that hurt because his throat felt not just dry and like sandpaper, but bruised and hurt when he swallowed.
“Fernando. Come on, wake up. It’s time.”
This time he recognised the voice talking to him. Isabella.
And for a moment he was confused. Had he just dreamed it? The abandoned underground railway, the fight, how he had… died?
“Isabella?” he asked, voice sounding more like a hoarse whisper as the word left his chapped, dry lips. “Where am I?”
He tried to open his eyes again. It hurt, felt like bright, blinding stabs to his eyes and head, so he didn’t even try to keep them open and look at his surroundings, just waiting for an answer.
“You’re at our headquarters,” Isabella answered quietly, and even though her voice was gentle and calming, there was audible relief in it. “Doctor Luengo said you’re going to be fine. The rest of the toxic just has to wear off, then you won’t feel as hazy anymore.”
Slowly his brain seemed to catch up with what Isabella was telling him. Fernando didn’t understand how it was possible, didn’t understand how he was still alive, why the Agurauk hadn’t finished him off. Or maybe he was dreaming… no, he was in too much pain for a dream, and he could smell Isabella’s perfume, hear her voice and feel her hand holding his own.
He missed Dan’s scent.
“We’re not sure,” the young woman answered, her voice still gentle. “After you had left, Tonio, Doctor Luengo and Alejandro did as well because… well… we already feared that we’d have to get you. So when your vitals started to ring the alarm they were with you just a minute later.”
Isabella paused there, hesitating, but Fernando didn’t ask why or prompted her to go on, his throat still hurting so that every word spoken was one word too many. And Isabella had just opened her mouth to go on when there was a short, quiet knock on the door before it immediately opened to reveal Tonio.
“You’re awake,” he said after a short moment of taking the situation in, and came closer.
Fernando nodded, or he tried to, but his body still wasn’t fully listening to him. His friend looked relieved and tired at the same time so that for a short moment Fernando felt bad for putting him through something like this, for not being able to do his job and for almost letting himself be killed.
Why wasn’t he dead?
“The Agurauk?” Fernando asked, wincing as his vocal chords protested at being used.
Tonio looked at Isabella then, and a brief, silent conversation must have taken place between them because after a moment Isabella squeezed Fernando’s hand gently and stood up.
“I’ll tell the doctor that you’re awake,” she said and left the room, Tonio taking her place.
For a few moments he just looked at Fernando, his elbows propped up on his knees, hands resting together in front of his chin.
“When we found you, you were unconscious,” he finally said. “Wounded, poisoned, choked. The Agurauk was there as well… with a pretty nasty ribcage wound and a chopped off head.”
“It’s dead?” Fernando asked disbelievingly, relief flooding his body.
It was dead. The Agurauk was dead. He would never have to fight it again.
And then he remembered that it couldn’t have been him who had killed it.
Hundreds of questions tumbled around in his head as he tried to remember anything past the point of his black-out. But there was nothing, only darkness.
“How?” Fernando quietly asked his friend.
Tonio never averted his gaze as he answered.
“There was someone else down there,” he said slowly. “We could barely see him, he was backing away from the light. But I thought he might have seemed a little familiar.”
Dan.
Fernando’s heart skipped a beat at Tonio’s words. He knew it must have been Dan, who else would have come down there, finally kill the Agurauk, save him.
Tonio’s expression didn’t change even as the silence between them lasted a few moments too long. He looked like he waited for Fernando, waited for him to tell him something he was sure Tonio had already guessed or at least suspected, but all he managed was a small, quiet “Oh.” almost lost in the distance between them.
Tonio sighed, and Fernando could guess that there was a lot he wanted to say, or at least a lot that ran through his head. In the end, however, what he said was, “Get well again, alright? It’s over, Fernando. This time it’s really over.”
He gently patted his shoulder and stood up.
A feeling of pure gratitude overcame Fernando in that moment, and he swore to himself that one day he would tell Tonio everything. But for now he just had to come clean with himself, had to heal and think about him and Dan and everything he hadn’t had time for before.
His friend had almost reached the door and left the room when Fernando stopped him.
“Tonio,” he said, waiting until the man was looking at him before continuing. “Thank you.”
His friend shrugged, and there was a hint of his usual smile on his lips as he answered, “What for? I forgot your noodles after all. You’ll get them when it’s time for lunch.”
Fernando had to laugh out loud, regretting it instantly as pain accompanied every motion of his chest and it quickly dissolved into a coughing fit.
“Oh God, sorry,” he heard Tonio, but he only shook his head, smiling at him.
“From that restaurant down the Calle de Altamirano. Nothing can beat them.”
“Count on me,” Tonio nodded and tipped his temple in a goodbye greeting, grinning at him before he left.
But even alone now, and even though it hurt, Fernando simply couldn’t stop. The laughter bubbled up again in his chest, quiet, weak gasps, but he couldn’t stop, and he laughed until his cheeks were bathed in tears.
***
It wasn’t that Fernando had a sudden, life changing revelation after he had almost been killed by the Agurauk. No, it wasn’t like after his fight with the ghost girl where he suddenly had, in almost painful clarity, admitted to himself that he had missed Dan.
Fernando had definitely needed time to digest what had happened, time to take his own morals, put them on the spot and examine them. Had needed to figure out if the murder he had witnessed, without hesitation or second thoughts, or even regrets, proof of that dark, merciless streak Dan had told him about, would sit forever in the back of his mind like a sharp splinter.
Or if, in the end, it didn’t make a difference about how he felt and what he wanted.
He hadn’t needed a revelation this time. Somehow, in those past few hours that he had spent with his thoughts as his only companion, he had only found calm, certainty, as if all the jagged edges had been smoothed and he could finally see himself for the first time. Despite that last chasm that had gaped between them when they had seen each other, Fernando knew what he owed Dan, with a clarity that made it painful to look back now and see everything he had missed. All the things he should have said, should have done, should have given, but simply never had.
And maybe Dan wouldn’t forgive him anymore, but this was the least he could do. It was the least Dan deserved to hear it from him. And that was okay.
He was okay.
The sun was shining, tinting the leaves that had just started to change their colour in a golden glow and the air was still pleasantly warm as Fernando walked down the street, feeling more settled in himself than he had in a long time. Maybe ever.
After he had woken up in the headquarters his body had only taken a few hours to fight off the rest of the poison. Now the only thing that reminded Fernando of his encounter with the Agurauk was the light bluish dark marks around his neck and the wounds that twinged when he moved too sharply, but only like the shadow of a memory.
His team hadn’t quite wanted him to go out already, but after he had promised that he just wanted take a walk and breathe in some fresh air, strangely Luengo had been the first to agree to let him go. Only Tonio had still looked slightly concerned after that and had taken him aside for a moment, had quietly told him to be careful before Fernando had left the headquarter. The expression on his face had told Fernando once again that his friend probably knew more that he let on.
Somehow, though, that was alright. Nate had taken his secret to the grave with him, and even though he could always be wrong, Fernando trusted Tonio to do the same. Even if the time span would be a lot longer than Nate’s had been.
When Fernando reached the familiar black gate, his hand found the respective key on his key ring as if on instinct, the gate sliding open after a soft click. But when he stood in front of the heavy main door he let the keys slide back into his pocket.
He didn’t have the right anymore to simply walk into that house as if he was always welcome. Maybe he wasn’t anymore.
Fernando took a slow, deep breath and rang the bell, the sound of it echoing through the closed door as he waited for Dan to answer the door.
Of course he could simply be out, running errands, attending a meeting… but maybe that one rift had been one too many and Dan had already left. And even though the thought was like a weight hanging around his heart, Fernando would accept that if this had been his choice.
He sighed a little and reached for the bell again, but in that moment the door was finally pulled open before him and his gaze fell onto a pale, familiar face, startling green eyes he had come to know so well, that couldn’t have looked at him differently had he been a ghost.
For a few breathless moments they stayed like that, gazes locked, until Dan eventually took a shaking breath.
“Hey,” Fernando said quietly, slowly letting his eyes wander over the other man’s form, giving himself a moment to take in his appearance.
Dan looked different. Paler. Even paler than usual, and Fernando thought he could see small, dark circles under his eyes. For a moment he was struck by the memory of how Dan had stood in his door, pale and stiff and bleeding. Fernando lowered his gaze to the ground where he found the now familiar bare feet peeking out underneath dark blue jeans, and his heart clenched painfully in his chest.
A few more seconds ticked away silently, and Fernando could watch how Dan opened and closed his mouth until eventually, one single, wavering word made its way out.
“Fernando.”
Dan’s voice sent a silent shiver down Fernando’s spine that curled at its base, and his mind calmed and everything was clear and in its place again. He wanted this. There was no doubt.
“Did I ever even tell you that I love you?”
The words hung between them for a moment, and Dan stared at him again, green eyes just a little wide. It took another moment until surprise flickered over his face, followed by hurt and longing in rapid succession. He shook his head, just a minute gesture. “Please tell me you know that I shouldn’t forgive you anymore… for both our sakes.”
Of course he knew that Dan was right. That they had never been meant to be together, quite simply by their nature and everything it entailed.
But Fernando wasn’t ready to be the one to give up and walk away. Not this time. Because no matter how dangerous this game was they were playing, Fernando realised that he had faith in them. That as long as they were in this together, they’d be alright.
When he finally spoke again, his voice was even and strong, eyes never leaving Dan’s, in his words so much more meaning than language could ever convey. “I’m so sorry.”
For a short moment Dan’s face seemed to crumble.
“Dan?” Fernando asked softly when after a longer pause he still hadn’t said anything in return, and as if the words had brought him back from wherever he had gone, Dan suddenly breathed again. When he finally said something, his voice was rougher than Fernando had ever heard it.
“Your throat…”
For the first time Fernando realised how it must look to Dan. The Agurauk’s claws had left black and blue marks and bloody scratched all over his skin, and when he had left the headquarters he hadn’t bothered to cover them.
“It’ll pass,” he simply said with the calm of absolute certainty.
This time it’s really over.
And Fernando just stood there and waited for Dan to be the one to make the decision this time. Because whatever it would be, he would accept it with a smile and a tear either way. After all this time, after everything that had happened, that he and Dan had done, it was the least he could give him.
Dan breathed again, still shaky, unable to meet his eyes, gaze still fixed on the bruised skin of his throat.
“I thought… I thought I was too late.”
The words broke something in Fernando, his fingers twitching, wanting to reach out, to touch, to reassure, wanting to comfort the other man. But the decision wasn’t his to make.
“You were what I needed you to be. You always were.”
It was when Dan’s eyes closed and his head sank, and somehow simply the expression on his face was enough.
Fernando knew.
It took only the blink of an eye, one step and he could do as he had longed to, wrap the other man up in an embrace, feel his trembling shoulders, the fingers that instantly clenched in his shirt, and finally be what Dan needed him to be.
***
Patterns of sunbeams were painting the forest ground in flecks of light, ever changing with the leaves in the light breeze. Fernando’s feet were finding their way over the old planks of the wooden pathway leading through the forest mostly by instinct while his head was raised and his eyes travelling over everything they were able to take in in almost starved wonder.
No signs of anyone else out here, only soft rustling of leaves, songs of birds, and rich, late summer-laden green, and he felt like he could look forever and not take in enough.
Dan’s presence beside him felt calming, secure and warm. The other man had led him to discover the small wonders of his home country in comfortable silence, something Fernando didn’t know from Madrid. Just holding his hand, now and then drawing his attention to the smallest things, like an old tree stump with bits and pieces of empty hazelnut shells scattered on it, the feast of a squirrel. Fernando felt like everything had slowed down, and for the first time in a while he had time to really breathe, to feel and see what was happening around him. He had never been out of greater Madrid, had never seen the ocean, or mountains, or forests covering the horizons. Not with his own eyes. And now his heart felt like it might burst.
He had sat down with his team the day after he had gone to Dan, had asked them calmly and confidently for a few days to find his feet again, just for once to be able to get away, to see something else but the city that had almost demanded his life so many times already. He had received support from every one of them.
The hand in his own was relaxed and warm, and when Fernando turned his gaze to the man walking with him through the ancient, luminous, enchanted forest, he thought that Dan had never looked more at home.
***
The lake looked like a sheet of glass with crystalline water, unspoiled and wide open lying in the middle of green hills and tall pine trees throwing shadows onto the surface, playing with the afternoon sun. If paradise existed, it would be here, Fernando thought as the cold, cold water crept up his naked calves and thighs the deeper he waded. His skin prickled, the rocky ground sharp beneath his feet, but his fingers glided over the surface of the water easily, smoother than silk. He breathed in the fresh late summer air, let it fill his lungs until he felt dizzy, and then let himself sink into the water.
It was strangely refreshing, feeling the cold water all over his skin, feeling how every cell of his body reacted to the sensation as he let himself drop deeper into the water before he broke the surface again and took a few long strokes, enjoying the light strain in his muscles at the unfamiliar motion. When he was a good distance away from the water’s edge he turned onto his back to let himself float in the water, above him nothing but the Nordic sky.
He should find something, anything, he could bring home with him to Catalina. To apologise for all the heartache and worry he had caused her, and to thank her for her part in saving his life. Because if she hadn’t hurried to Dan, had frantically told him everything she knew, Dan would have never been there and he would have died there in the darkness of that tunnel.
Fernando’s body was cooling in the chilly lake water. A shiver went through him, and he turned to start his way back to the shore, long strokes of his arms and legs parting the water.
He would remember for a very long time the look on Catalina’s face when she had opened the door and had finally learned that he was alive. How she had thrown her arms around him without thinking and he had held her and stroked her hair, whispering calming words.
Maybe he could collect some of the small blue stones he had seen on the shore between gravel and rocks and use them to make a necklace. Not that he knew how to make one, but maybe the man who was waiting for him in the shallow water near the shore had picked it up over the years and could help him.
Fernando got to the area where his feet could reach the ground and he slowly waded through the water towards Dan, small stones moving under his feet as he closed the last distance between them with a smile.
Dan returned the smile and rose from where he had sat perched on one of the rocks in the water, skin gleaming wetly in the slowly sinking sun. He held out his arm and Fernando stepped up to him, melting easily into the other man’s body, a shocking heat against the cold water. Fernando shivered, tucked himself closer and let Dan’s warmth seep back under his skin.
***
The fire was warm against his face and arms as it glowed in the cold night, illuminating only a small halo-like space around it, while tiny sparks flew up and into the dark, clear night, seemingly joining the stars in the sky.
Fernando was fascinated, loved the mixture of cold and warm against his skin, loved the smell of smoke in his clothes and hair and the faint crackle of the burning wood echoing through the air.
He listened to the steady flow of Dan’s voice over the soft cackling of the fire and the chirping of the cicadas in the distance. It told stories, legends, Nordic myths, calmly and without ever faltering, drawing Fernando into times long past, worlds previously unknown to him. And while he listened he held out his wooden stick over the fire, bread dough wrapped around its end, watching how it turned golden in the heat.
He felt like he could sit here forever, just listening to Dan’s voice and enjoying his calm presence while he carefully pulled the hot bread from the stick to eat it.
Fernando was relieved beyond measure that after everything Dan was still able come back with him to Madrid, without having to fear the Council. Two days before they had left Spain for Norway, people from Rome had come to investigate Kalinin’s death. But they had come and went after those two days, taking the body of Kalinin with them because in none of the conversations they had led with Fernando had any of them found even one reason to doubt him.
When they would return to Madrid, life would go on. But for now Fernando knew exactly what he wanted: to stay in their little bubble of otherworldliness, far enough away from civilisation, to listen to Dan’s voice for as long as he was willing to speak, to watch the fire die and then take Dan back into his house on the slope behind them and make love to him.
And have the same day tomorrow all over again.
***
Outside the large front to ceiling windows the moon was casting its faint silver light on the lake lying in quiet, peaceful stillness, the black silhouettes of two, three trees swaying slightly in the barely there breeze. The moonlight fell through the glass into the bedroom as well to paint contours around the only thing moving, the two figures entwined on the bed, a hint of sweat shining on their chests and backs and arms.
Soft, breathless moans escaped Fernando’s throat as he felt Dan’s lips caressing the soft skin over his collarbone, playing Fernando like an instrument, every touch creating a beautiful symphony of passion and pleasure that reached each cell of his body, making it hum.
It was nothing like the first time. Or the one in the park. Not even like those after they had found their way back to each other. There was an equality that had nothing to do with the technicalities, that was new and untried but palpable.
Dan’s lips travelled over Fernando’s jaw, Fernando’s hands over Dan’s hips.
He arched his back to meet the languid thrusts inside him, slow, so slow and steady, the feeling almost too intense for him to bear, and just so perfect at the same time.
He breathed Dan’s name, blinking against the bright light behind his eyes, eyelashes fluttering softly.
Dan cupped his face in his hands and slowed down just to be able to kiss him.
This was where Fernando would contently stay forever.
***
It was a breathtaking view from the large windows of Dan’s bedroom, open, unblocked and wide overlooking the whole lake. Fernando was captivated, standing in the middle of the window front as he watched the darkness of night give way to the warmth of the sun, watched the light painting bright orange and red creases in the sky as the sun peaked over the tree crowns like a glowing orange ball.
It was so quiet out here. A stillness Fernando had never known could even exist in any place, having grown up and lived always with the bustle of people around him. Here it felt like he was the only being on earth.
Or not the only one, Fernando thought as a gentle hand found his bare hip, a pair of lips brushed his shoulder and the body coming up behind his radiated warmth against his skin, arm slipping around his midsection.
They watched the sunrise together, sleepily drunk on beauty and serenity.
It was Dan who finally broke the stillness, quiet words against Fernando’s skin.
“Come back to bed.”
Fernando smiled softly as he sank back into Dan’s embrace, relishing the warmth and affection the other man radiated. And the prospect of going to bed, of getting some sleep didn’t feel like a looming dark threat anymore.
He was content, at peace. Home.
***
Heal the scars from off my back
I don’t need them anymore
You can throw them out or keep them in your mason jars
I’ve come home
All my nightmares escaped my head
Bar the door, please don’t let them in
You were never supposed to leave
Now my head’s splitting at the seams
And I don’t know if I can
Here, beneath my lungs, I feel your thumbs press into my skin again
~ Radical Face ~
~ TBC in the
Epilogue ~