Written for the DL Shipping challenge, round one is over so should be safe to post now,
based on the prompt :
prompt: "communication" - "They're very intelligent, actually," Alan told him."If you catch them young, you can teach them to talk."
"I don't see what the big deal about that is," Nick said. "I can talk."
"Well, I caught you young too."
Title: Communication
Word Count: 1,289
Pairing : Nick/Alan
Rating PG-13 maybe (hate ratings)
For anyone unsure of what the Demons Lexicon is, it is a book written by a former HP writer, loved her fanfic and love her original series even more :) was going to leave posting this as didn;t know if there were any DL fans on my flist, but
veritas_st talked me into it :)
Nick’s first word was chair. He knows this because Alan always enjoyed telling the story to anyone crazy enough to want to listen.
Over the years many more words followed. Walls, yes, no (he liked that one), kiss, plate, fight, couch, school, work, cars, family, need, want, Alan.
Funnily enough, even though Alan was the driving force behind Nick’s education in words, it had been almost a year before Nick actually said the word Alan.
Part of the reason behind this was because the word had never been needed. Alan knew Nick, and Nick knew Alan; they used a silent method of communication. Where Alan moved, Nick followed; when Nick needed something, Alan obtained it for him. It was one of the reasons that Nick found words so unnecessary to begin with. The only person he had ever been interested in communicating with was Alan, and they didn’t need words.
That had been part of the reason. Part of it, but not all of it. Nick may not have needed to communicate with Alan, but he was smart enough to know that Alan wanted him to. That Alan wanted to hear his name on Nick’s lips, that he needed the confirmation that he meant something to Nick. As the months went on with no “Alan” falling from Nick’s lips, he had seen his brother deflate and he had desperately wanted to fix it. But he couldn’t manage it. He had needed to keep it simple: stick to words with one absolute meaning, not a hundred different meanings and emotions hidden behind four simple letters. As time went on though the word finally came, followed by a million more but once Nick’s vocabulary was complete he begun to realise that learning the words was the easy part.
Taking those words and then using them to communicate ideas, feelings, images, emotions was a much harder lesson to learn and one Nick could never truly master. But now that he was armed with the tools to communicate, Alan had expected him to use them. And so he forced Nick out of the shadows and into a world of people where depending on what they wanted from you, what they needed from you each word could mean something different from what it appeared and each conversation was a test on how well you could manage the intricacies of language and its subtle meanings.
Nick tried to learn to use words the way Alan did, the way his dad did. He learned quickly that words could be tools, and weapons, they could be used to charm or wound, to produce kindness or ward off those who tried to get too close. He learned the value of words, but he never learned to employ them in quite the same way as Alan. Alan wielded words like Nick wielded a sword. Twisting and teasing them until they meant something completely different. He could change their tone, their outline, their meaning and even the truthfulness within them. Alan was a master with words, the teacher where Nick could only ever be an apprentice. That was why Alan always spoke for Nick, and Nick always fought for Alan.
Despite his resistance Alan never stopped trying to get Nick to open up more, to use the words that others could so freely. Nick wasn’t stupid; he understood that there were words that Alan wanted, no needed to hear from Nick, but just like when he was a child trying to form the name of the person he needed the most, the words remained tangled and unable to form on his lips. When he found himself resentful and jealous of the friendship growing between Alan, Mae and Jamie, when he let him down by not reacting in the right way, when he thought he was losing Alan to that girl from Durham, he willed the words to come, but the words could never get past the obstruction in his chest. So he had tried in other ways. Showing his tolerance in playing nice with Alan’s new pet friends, showing his commitment in his desire to destroy and devour those who were stupid enough to brand his brother with the second mark, and showing his need in his desperate desire to tie Alan to him with whatever bonds had been at his disposal.
He knew Alan needed more, but he also knew he would never be able to give it. Finding himself unable to speak the words that he knew would change everything and prevent Alan from leaving him forever, the yearning to use them only increased once Nick learned the truth. Once he understood that there was no blood tie ensuring that Alan would never leave him, no concrete bond tying the one person in the world that Nick needed to his side. In those desperate moments following the discovery of truth, Nick had never wanted to use the words more, never been as desperate to push past the barriers that language created and give Alan what he craved.
But with no ability to form the correct words Nick quickly moved to other methods. First in forcing Alan’s family to accept him, trying to create for Alan, the perfect family he desperately wanted even though watching his brother bond with those people made Nick want to tear something apart in anger and resentment as they gave Alan what Nick never could. But when that fell apart and Nick had to watch Alan’s pain and guilt grow. The answer came in a way that Nick never expected.
The solution had come during the storm, the storm created by Nick in his own anger and confusion as he fought to keep Alan at his side. As they fought, words angry and bitter falling from Nick’s lips as he felt afraid, for the first time that Alan, his Alan might leave him. When the truth, not spoken, as the truth never is, made itself apparent in the most startling way.
Nick had been holding onto Alan’s arms, trying to ignore the rain soaking into his clothes, the roughness of wet denim and soaked cotton seeping into his skin, leaving it icy and as cold as the hole in his chest at the bleak look on Alan tear stained face . Nick had been trying to hold Alan in place, a vain hope in his mind that if he could physically clamp his brother in the one spot then he couldn’t leave him, not now, not ever. When his arms had tightened and pulled Alan into him, the slight expanding of pupils, the small hitch in breathing, as their bodies aligned, had told Nick everything he had needed to know.
It took less than a second for Nick’s lips to cover his brothers. For the briefest of seconds he had wondered if, for the first time in their lives he had read Alan wrong, but before the thought could fully form, Alan’s lips had aligned themselves with Nick’s and they were kissing, hungrily, desperately. The rain pounding down on them was ignored as cold hands dragged at wet clothes. Ripped buttons were forgotten as skin met skin and the hard, cold concrete tearing and bruising Nick’s back was ignored as they moved together urgently.
In the aftermath, they’d held onto each other, felt the world shift slowly back into place, almost the same but not quite. Alan whispered softly about Mae and Jamie, about them needing help, his breath hitching as Nick’s mouth closed around his earlobe, nipping softly. As Alan whispered words of love into the crook of his neck, Nick knew he should try to return the sentiment, so he did. With lips, teeth, fingers and tongue, he carved out his own declaration of love, until the thought of Mae and Jamie, Durham, demons and magicians circles were forgotten, at least temporarily.
And for the first time Nick felt the stirrings of hope; they didn’t need the words, they never had.