round three: team mae/nick
Title: stars made for us tonight
Author: kitsunejin
Pairing: Mae/Nick
Rating: R
Warnings: Canon character death
Summary: Everybody's changing.
IMPORTANT MOD NOTE: There was a problem with the wrong file being sent to the mods - this is same story, but some of the formatting was different. Also you can now download the soundtrack. Many apologies to everyone.
story soundtrack (5 songs, ~20MB, .zip)
I
(it’s the same two step, with a little twist)
august
Mae wakes up on Sunday morning, early. The sky’s so blue and bright and empty, cloudless. The air sweet and warm like a child’s dream of summer. After breakfast she goes out and lies down on her back, in the warm grass, feeling the sunlight pressing down against her closed eyelids and the cool soft breeze stroke over her skin.
It’s useless. Beauty is useless. She thinks of nothing, nothing, nothing, while her heart pounds out a rhythm to the words and blood rushes through her head.
Her mother is, of course, still dead.
After a long time she hears a rustling noise in the long grass, footsteps beating time against the dirt. The person walks towards her, stops inches away from her head. Mae keeps her eyes closed tight. Her mark is itching, flaring hot and cold on her skin.
“You need to find a better way to brood,” Nick says. It comes out flat and cold, empty of feeling. All Nick’s jokes are deadpan; she’s learning that often he doesn’t even understand that he’s making them. Mimicking humanity like a parrot, without comprehension.
“Go away,” she says, emotionlessly. Maybe deadpan is contagious.
Nick doesn’t answer; he doesn’t leave. His gaze on her body is more tangible than the sunlight.
“No,” he says finally. She feels a weight, heavy and familiar, drop onto her stomach. Involuntarily her eyes pop open and fix themselves on the long sheathed metal of the sword he gave her.
“If you’re angry, you should use it,” Nick says, with the tiny edge in his voice that means irritation. He pauses. “If you want to save Jamie again, you need to learn this.”
These days that’s a long speech, for him. Mae ought to answer it, explain to him that grief is far more complex than he has ever imagined. That human emotions go beyond a switch with only two settings, flipping endlessly on and off between anger and calm.
She says nothing. She’s so tired.
Instead she picks up the sword.
“It’s like dancing,” he’d told her, weeks ago. “You move your body and you have to know exactly where you are, exactly where your partner’s body is going to be. You have to move together.”
Now, today, she lets his anger strike an answering spark of rage from within her. Sometimes Nick is right. Anger is easier.
She lets it rise up in her, moves her body with his. Fighting like dancing, like fucking.
Yeah, she doesn’t need Nick to work that one out for her. When they move together like this, when Mae’s whole being is focused on the swift predatory movements of his body and all she can see is his sweaty skin and the way his broad strong hands wrap around the sword hilt… it’s hardly shocking, what she feels.
Nick always knows when it’s happened. His face doesn’t change. But the movements of his body do, the way he turns into her and takes her blows. Sometimes it almost seems like he’s smiling.
Mae dances with Nick under the hot sun, moving like nothing else matters. For now it’s enough.
***
II
(change my stride
then i’ll fly)
october
Mae doesn’t look at herself in a mirror very much anymore. And when she does it’s hard to recognise herself in the girl she sees there. That girl’s been on the run for months, sleeping rough wherever she can find. That girl’s learnt that when you’re hungry enough, any food is satisfying; that when you’re tired enough, a cold hard floor is all the bed you need. Mae’s thinner now, wrists thin and fragile, collarbone a sharp jutting line. Her eyes are always tired and shadowed with fear and exhaustion and hopelessness. The two of them alone, out to rescue two brothers, with all the world against them.
Her clothes are a raggedy mess, her hair’s in shambles. She’s weighed down with charms and talismans and knives, a sword slung across her back. Nick glamours them both wherever they go. It’s easier, that way. Means that neither of them have to bother with even the slightest pretence of normality.
The bus stops to let them off right before the crossroads that mark the edge of a circle’s territory. Mae doesn’t ask what sense Nick uses, to find the boundaries and walk them without ever once slipping inside. It hasn’t failed them yet, and that’s all Mae needs to know.
It’s the middle of the afternoon and the bus is crowded with school children. Mae hates to think she was ever this young. She walks past them awkwardly, bumping into schoolbags. She doesn’t know what they’re seeing, when they look at her.
There’s a girl sitting right at the front of the bus, awkward and alone, surrounded by a barrier of empty seats. She’s heavy, acne-spotted, maybe fourteen; Mae takes her in and dismisses her in the same moment.
The girl turns and looks at them both.
“I can see you,” she says, flat and harsh. “I know what you are. I can see you.”
She and Nick turn and look at the same moment. The girl stares at them both, defiant. Mae feels pity, sympathy, helplessness. She wishes she could be so sure about anything. She wishes it was that easy to know herself.
Nick shakes his head slowly, eyes black and cold. “Don’t be stupid,” he says, and turns to leave.
Mae’s the one who looks back. “We’re dangerous,” she says apologetically. “When you see people like us, you hide, you pretend. You run. Don’t ever let them know you know the truth.”
The girl looks away sneering, all adolescent insolence. Mae knows she isn’t going to listen.
Mae wouldn’t.
***
III
(running through, hungry for strays
no invitation
take me away)
december
It’s a wet night, windy, icy cold. Mae’s been sick for days, on and off; just a cough, and tiredness that sank deep into her bones and stayed there. She’s pretty sure she’s been getting better, she’s pretty sure that the feather-and-flower charm Sin gave her is helping. It’s just the cold setting her back, she's sure of it.
Nick’s been giving her odd looks all night, ever since they got off the bus in the fading twilight and headed north to the house Alan had said was safe. It’s another mile or so, Mae thinks. Maybe two. She’s going to make it, she has to make it. But when they turn the corner onto another residential street Nick stops.
“This is stupid,” he says. “You should be inside.” He glances, just once, at the first house they’ve come to, neat and expensive with tidy garden and two cars tucked away inside a spacious garage. Mae feels her stomach sink a little, guilt and worry.
She doesn’t say anything. She follows him inside the gate.
Nick closes his eyes for a second, barely longer than a blink. That’s all. Mae would have missed it if she hadn’t been watching. The front door opens for them invitingly.
The thin black-haired woman inside is wearing worn track pants and slippers and a suit jacket, hair and makeup still neat and professional. There’s a second’s tiny pause and then she smiles widely, face lighting up with it.
“Come inside! We’ve been waiting for you. Jen’s just getting dinner ready now.”
Mae swallows, dryly. But she’s had practise. She manages a thin smile.
“Thank you,” she whispers. Nick says nothing as he steps inside.
Jen’s a little older, blonde. She serves them up pasta, bread, salad on square white plates while the other woman, Mary, fusses over feeding the little boy. His name is Tommy; he’s three years old. Jen and Mary tell them this, tell them everything, surround Nick and Mae in the warmth of this little family. Mae’s eyes prickle, her stomach churns. But there’s food and warmth in here, rest. She and Nick will leave this house strung with charms and good fortune and protection spells, like they always do. She swallows hard, and tells herself it isn’t going to hurt anyone. It's such a small lie.
After they’ve eaten Mae goes upstairs. She can’t luxuriate in her bath without falling asleep, but it’s wonderful anyway. She dries herself off, dresses herself in borrowed pajamas, goes back down to the others. Jen’s promised them all ice-cream and strawberry topping.
Down in the kitchen she finds Tommy in Jen’s arms, crying inconsolably, hiding his face in her chest. Jen and Mary look confused and helpless, soothing him on autopilot.
Nick’s in the corner, silent. His face is blank.
Mae, very carefully, takes him upstairs. There is a long silence and then water noises as he finally starts to run a bath. In the kitchen Tommy’s stopped crying, is laughing and eating ice-cream with his parents like nothing’s happened.
When she comes back to the bathroom Nick’s naked, standing in front of the mirror, staring at his own face. Mae touches his shoulder, very softly.
“Well, you’ve got ‘terrifying small children’ down pat,” she says lightly. “You could try a smile, for once.”
Nick’s face doesn’t change. She smiles and stands on her tiptoes, leaning up to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth.
“You use this,” she adds, and smiles wider when that produces a dissatisfied frown.
He spins around to face her, grabbing her wrists. “Really. Don’t act like I’m stupid, Mae.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Don’t act stupid then. What was the point of that? At least try, Nick. Try not to make these people scared.”
He glances away. “I can fix it. He stopped crying, didn't he? I can fix it.”
“No, Nick,” she answers softly. “You can’t.”
When he pulls her roughly into him she’s not really surprised. His mouth on hers is hot and wet and fierce. Angry sex is so good, with Nick.
She kisses him back, matching his hunger. It’s a good distraction. In a distant corner of her mind, though, Mae’s thinking, Nick doesn’t want me thinking about this. She’s thinking, Nick doesn’t want himself thinking about this.
She’s thinking, guilt. Nick’s feeling guilt.
She’s pretty sure it’s not the first time. She knows it’s not the last.
***
IV
(the bright and hollow sky)
new year
Nick likes to watch her, when they fuck. Mae still calls it that. Even on the nights when he never touches her at all.
Invisible hands will undress her, invisible fingers will seek out all her tender spaces. Nick’s learned where she’s softest. He’ll watch her, naked and shameless, while his magic sparks a fire in her veins. Every night she burns for him. Every night she’s caught in a storm and the eye of it is his mark on her back.
Sometimes they do it the other way, skin against skin. Nick likes it best when she rides him. She likes it too, the animal slickness of it, skin and sweat and heat.
When he comes the lights go out and the whole wide world is still.
“I love you,” he tells her at night, his eyes blank and empty as a doll’s. “I love you. You’re mine.”
Even in darkness Mae can’t forget what he is. He wears the shape of a real boy, her demon lover, pretends for her sake and Alan’s. She no longer doubts that he loves her, as much as he is capable of love. But he’ll never be human.
Humans are weak, and vulnerable, and helpless. Humans can’t call down the stars from the sky.
Humans die.
Mae is going to die.
Maybe a sword, like her mother. Maybe a gun, an enchantment, a cancer growing under her skin. Old age, a car crash, a heart too worn to keep beating. Maybe she’ll end her days a blank-faced puppet dancing as Nick pulls her strings.
Maybe she won’t. Humans love. Humans have faith in one another.
Humans make choices. When Mae has no choices left she will remember that she asked for this, open eyed, of her own free will. Even Nick cannot take that choice away from her.
And if she is his, if she bears his mark like a brand on her skin, then he is hers. She’s marked him just as surely, like Alan, like Jamie. Their love has burned him, scarred him, left him changed.
He chose that too.
When Mae dies Nick will grieve in the only way he knows how. She almost pities the one who will cause her death.
And she will die. The knowledge beats in her, with every heartbeat, with every breath she takes. She’s not like Nick. One day Mae is going to die.
But not tonight. Tonight they’ll lie together to drive out the cold. Tonight Mae will breathe in magic and let it settle into every part of her, into bones and blood and beating heart. Tonight Nick loves her, and she loves him too.
It isn’t over.
Not yet.
Tracklisting:
1. Disco Inferno - 50 Cent
2. Makes Me Wanna Die - Tricky feat. Martina Topley-Bird
3. Vanished - Crystal Castles
4. The Passenger - Siouxsie and the Banshees
(Bonus: Harder - PJ Harvey)
Author: kitsunejin
Pairing: Mae/Nick
Rating: R
Warnings: Canon character death
Summary: Everybody's changing.
IMPORTANT MOD NOTE: There was a problem with the wrong file being sent to the mods - this is same story, but some of the formatting was different. Also you can now download the soundtrack. Many apologies to everyone.
story soundtrack (5 songs, ~20MB, .zip)
I
(it’s the same two step, with a little twist)
august
Mae wakes up on Sunday morning, early. The sky’s so blue and bright and empty, cloudless. The air sweet and warm like a child’s dream of summer. After breakfast she goes out and lies down on her back, in the warm grass, feeling the sunlight pressing down against her closed eyelids and the cool soft breeze stroke over her skin.
It’s useless. Beauty is useless. She thinks of nothing, nothing, nothing, while her heart pounds out a rhythm to the words and blood rushes through her head.
Her mother is, of course, still dead.
After a long time she hears a rustling noise in the long grass, footsteps beating time against the dirt. The person walks towards her, stops inches away from her head. Mae keeps her eyes closed tight. Her mark is itching, flaring hot and cold on her skin.
“You need to find a better way to brood,” Nick says. It comes out flat and cold, empty of feeling. All Nick’s jokes are deadpan; she’s learning that often he doesn’t even understand that he’s making them. Mimicking humanity like a parrot, without comprehension.
“Go away,” she says, emotionlessly. Maybe deadpan is contagious.
Nick doesn’t answer; he doesn’t leave. His gaze on her body is more tangible than the sunlight.
“No,” he says finally. She feels a weight, heavy and familiar, drop onto her stomach. Involuntarily her eyes pop open and fix themselves on the long sheathed metal of the sword he gave her.
“If you’re angry, you should use it,” Nick says, with the tiny edge in his voice that means irritation. He pauses. “If you want to save Jamie again, you need to learn this.”
These days that’s a long speech, for him. Mae ought to answer it, explain to him that grief is far more complex than he has ever imagined. That human emotions go beyond a switch with only two settings, flipping endlessly on and off between anger and calm.
She says nothing. She’s so tired.
Instead she picks up the sword.
“It’s like dancing,” he’d told her, weeks ago. “You move your body and you have to know exactly where you are, exactly where your partner’s body is going to be. You have to move together.”
Now, today, she lets his anger strike an answering spark of rage from within her. Sometimes Nick is right. Anger is easier.
She lets it rise up in her, moves her body with his. Fighting like dancing, like fucking.
Yeah, she doesn’t need Nick to work that one out for her. When they move together like this, when Mae’s whole being is focused on the swift predatory movements of his body and all she can see is his sweaty skin and the way his broad strong hands wrap around the sword hilt… it’s hardly shocking, what she feels.
Nick always knows when it’s happened. His face doesn’t change. But the movements of his body do, the way he turns into her and takes her blows. Sometimes it almost seems like he’s smiling.
Mae dances with Nick under the hot sun, moving like nothing else matters. For now it’s enough.
***
II
(change my stride
then i’ll fly)
october
Mae doesn’t look at herself in a mirror very much anymore. And when she does it’s hard to recognise herself in the girl she sees there. That girl’s been on the run for months, sleeping rough wherever she can find. That girl’s learnt that when you’re hungry enough, any food is satisfying; that when you’re tired enough, a cold hard floor is all the bed you need. Mae’s thinner now, wrists thin and fragile, collarbone a sharp jutting line. Her eyes are always tired and shadowed with fear and exhaustion and hopelessness. The two of them alone, out to rescue two brothers, with all the world against them.
Her clothes are a raggedy mess, her hair’s in shambles. She’s weighed down with charms and talismans and knives, a sword slung across her back. Nick glamours them both wherever they go. It’s easier, that way. Means that neither of them have to bother with even the slightest pretence of normality.
The bus stops to let them off right before the crossroads that mark the edge of a circle’s territory. Mae doesn’t ask what sense Nick uses, to find the boundaries and walk them without ever once slipping inside. It hasn’t failed them yet, and that’s all Mae needs to know.
It’s the middle of the afternoon and the bus is crowded with school children. Mae hates to think she was ever this young. She walks past them awkwardly, bumping into schoolbags. She doesn’t know what they’re seeing, when they look at her.
There’s a girl sitting right at the front of the bus, awkward and alone, surrounded by a barrier of empty seats. She’s heavy, acne-spotted, maybe fourteen; Mae takes her in and dismisses her in the same moment.
The girl turns and looks at them both.
“I can see you,” she says, flat and harsh. “I know what you are. I can see you.”
She and Nick turn and look at the same moment. The girl stares at them both, defiant. Mae feels pity, sympathy, helplessness. She wishes she could be so sure about anything. She wishes it was that easy to know herself.
Nick shakes his head slowly, eyes black and cold. “Don’t be stupid,” he says, and turns to leave.
Mae’s the one who looks back. “We’re dangerous,” she says apologetically. “When you see people like us, you hide, you pretend. You run. Don’t ever let them know you know the truth.”
The girl looks away sneering, all adolescent insolence. Mae knows she isn’t going to listen.
Mae wouldn’t.
***
III
(running through, hungry for strays
no invitation
take me away)
december
It’s a wet night, windy, icy cold. Mae’s been sick for days, on and off; just a cough, and tiredness that sank deep into her bones and stayed there. She’s pretty sure she’s been getting better, she’s pretty sure that the feather-and-flower charm Sin gave her is helping. It’s just the cold setting her back, she's sure of it.
Nick’s been giving her odd looks all night, ever since they got off the bus in the fading twilight and headed north to the house Alan had said was safe. It’s another mile or so, Mae thinks. Maybe two. She’s going to make it, she has to make it. But when they turn the corner onto another residential street Nick stops.
“This is stupid,” he says. “You should be inside.” He glances, just once, at the first house they’ve come to, neat and expensive with tidy garden and two cars tucked away inside a spacious garage. Mae feels her stomach sink a little, guilt and worry.
She doesn’t say anything. She follows him inside the gate.
Nick closes his eyes for a second, barely longer than a blink. That’s all. Mae would have missed it if she hadn’t been watching. The front door opens for them invitingly.
The thin black-haired woman inside is wearing worn track pants and slippers and a suit jacket, hair and makeup still neat and professional. There’s a second’s tiny pause and then she smiles widely, face lighting up with it.
“Come inside! We’ve been waiting for you. Jen’s just getting dinner ready now.”
Mae swallows, dryly. But she’s had practise. She manages a thin smile.
“Thank you,” she whispers. Nick says nothing as he steps inside.
Jen’s a little older, blonde. She serves them up pasta, bread, salad on square white plates while the other woman, Mary, fusses over feeding the little boy. His name is Tommy; he’s three years old. Jen and Mary tell them this, tell them everything, surround Nick and Mae in the warmth of this little family. Mae’s eyes prickle, her stomach churns. But there’s food and warmth in here, rest. She and Nick will leave this house strung with charms and good fortune and protection spells, like they always do. She swallows hard, and tells herself it isn’t going to hurt anyone. It's such a small lie.
After they’ve eaten Mae goes upstairs. She can’t luxuriate in her bath without falling asleep, but it’s wonderful anyway. She dries herself off, dresses herself in borrowed pajamas, goes back down to the others. Jen’s promised them all ice-cream and strawberry topping.
Down in the kitchen she finds Tommy in Jen’s arms, crying inconsolably, hiding his face in her chest. Jen and Mary look confused and helpless, soothing him on autopilot.
Nick’s in the corner, silent. His face is blank.
Mae, very carefully, takes him upstairs. There is a long silence and then water noises as he finally starts to run a bath. In the kitchen Tommy’s stopped crying, is laughing and eating ice-cream with his parents like nothing’s happened.
When she comes back to the bathroom Nick’s naked, standing in front of the mirror, staring at his own face. Mae touches his shoulder, very softly.
“Well, you’ve got ‘terrifying small children’ down pat,” she says lightly. “You could try a smile, for once.”
Nick’s face doesn’t change. She smiles and stands on her tiptoes, leaning up to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth.
“You use this,” she adds, and smiles wider when that produces a dissatisfied frown.
He spins around to face her, grabbing her wrists. “Really. Don’t act like I’m stupid, Mae.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Don’t act stupid then. What was the point of that? At least try, Nick. Try not to make these people scared.”
He glances away. “I can fix it. He stopped crying, didn't he? I can fix it.”
“No, Nick,” she answers softly. “You can’t.”
When he pulls her roughly into him she’s not really surprised. His mouth on hers is hot and wet and fierce. Angry sex is so good, with Nick.
She kisses him back, matching his hunger. It’s a good distraction. In a distant corner of her mind, though, Mae’s thinking, Nick doesn’t want me thinking about this. She’s thinking, Nick doesn’t want himself thinking about this.
She’s thinking, guilt. Nick’s feeling guilt.
She’s pretty sure it’s not the first time. She knows it’s not the last.
***
IV
(the bright and hollow sky)
new year
Nick likes to watch her, when they fuck. Mae still calls it that. Even on the nights when he never touches her at all.
Invisible hands will undress her, invisible fingers will seek out all her tender spaces. Nick’s learned where she’s softest. He’ll watch her, naked and shameless, while his magic sparks a fire in her veins. Every night she burns for him. Every night she’s caught in a storm and the eye of it is his mark on her back.
Sometimes they do it the other way, skin against skin. Nick likes it best when she rides him. She likes it too, the animal slickness of it, skin and sweat and heat.
When he comes the lights go out and the whole wide world is still.
“I love you,” he tells her at night, his eyes blank and empty as a doll’s. “I love you. You’re mine.”
Even in darkness Mae can’t forget what he is. He wears the shape of a real boy, her demon lover, pretends for her sake and Alan’s. She no longer doubts that he loves her, as much as he is capable of love. But he’ll never be human.
Humans are weak, and vulnerable, and helpless. Humans can’t call down the stars from the sky.
Humans die.
Mae is going to die.
Maybe a sword, like her mother. Maybe a gun, an enchantment, a cancer growing under her skin. Old age, a car crash, a heart too worn to keep beating. Maybe she’ll end her days a blank-faced puppet dancing as Nick pulls her strings.
Maybe she won’t. Humans love. Humans have faith in one another.
Humans make choices. When Mae has no choices left she will remember that she asked for this, open eyed, of her own free will. Even Nick cannot take that choice away from her.
And if she is his, if she bears his mark like a brand on her skin, then he is hers. She’s marked him just as surely, like Alan, like Jamie. Their love has burned him, scarred him, left him changed.
He chose that too.
When Mae dies Nick will grieve in the only way he knows how. She almost pities the one who will cause her death.
And she will die. The knowledge beats in her, with every heartbeat, with every breath she takes. She’s not like Nick. One day Mae is going to die.
But not tonight. Tonight they’ll lie together to drive out the cold. Tonight Mae will breathe in magic and let it settle into every part of her, into bones and blood and beating heart. Tonight Nick loves her, and she loves him too.
It isn’t over.
Not yet.
Tracklisting:
1. Disco Inferno - 50 Cent
2. Makes Me Wanna Die - Tricky feat. Martina Topley-Bird
3. Vanished - Crystal Castles
4. The Passenger - Siouxsie and the Banshees
(Bonus: Harder - PJ Harvey)