![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charybdisWritten for Round 1 team submission at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
goblinmarket_sw
Title: Thirteen Words (a Blackbird's First Primer)
Pairing: Alan/Nick
Summary: Demons have no words. Nick has a few. PG, 2,050 words
Care
Alan wakes up to pain, sharp and serrated. There's a moment of disorienting agony before he remembers ten solid hours of driving to this new safehouse, preceded by twenty minutes of mad packing, interrupted at minute seventeen by a magician and a possessed collie. Insults were exchanged, bullets fired. Alan vaguely recalls leaving one of his throwing knives quivering in the dog's throat and he frowns. Those blades are not expendable.
Eventually he summons enough resolve to stumble out of bed, performing his morning ablutions and thinking through the fog of misery that there's nothing for breakfast; he'll have to go to the market today.
He passes Nick -- already awake and silent as ever -- on the way to the kitchen and out the door. Alan doesn't bother to search his expression for some sign of concern -- he has no desire to face any more pain this morning.
But the kitchen is full of light, and there’s scrambled eggs and toast on the table beside a glass of orange juice and, polished, oiled and glitteringly sharp, Alan’s entire set of knives. Including the one he thought he left behind.
“I cleaned and sharpened all of them,” comes Nick’s rough voice from the threshold. “You need them to protect yourself.”
Brother
Nick doesn’t get the big deal about love. It’s just another stupid word, a sound without an anchor, and no one can even agree on what it means. Love is stupid.
But when the teacher asks Nick, “Do you love your brother?” she doesn’t seem to think that “No” is an appropriate answer. Which Nick thinks is weird, because it’s true.
Nick understands ‘brother’, though.
‘Brother’ means Alan’s voice, slippery and smart, Alan’s smile, soft and deceiving, means Alan lying for all he’s worth to stop Children’s Services from taking Nick away, means Alan’s hands tight around his as he shows Nick the best angle for sharpening his knives.
‘Brother’ is Nick’s sword cutting the spinal cord of a possessed corpse, Nick’s eyes following Alan everywhere, Nick’s hands learning how to stitch up the small, deep cut on the back of Alan’s shoulder.
So at least Nick isn’t confused when the teacher finally gets over her shock and asks, “But your brother takes care of you, surely? And you take care of him?”
“Yes.”
Gamble
They’re facing a messenger, all enthusiastically oscillating earrings and wide smile, and Alan doesn’t even have to try to fake the irritation on his face.
“Get out of this city. We don’t want trouble, but we will do what we have to.”
The Circle in this city is small -- small enough that they’d rather send a messenger to chase them out with verbal threats rather than risk a couple of magicians by sending actual threats.
That’s just background thinking.
What Alan sees most is the way Nick is standing, hands always an inch away from a weapon, orienting himself towards Alan, as though he knew exactly what he is -- and is not -- prepared to risk.
Danger
Alan’s hands are a dead giveaway. Nick has no idea why no one else seems to notice it. How the curling of his fingers around the wide spine of a book is the same shape as his hand around a gun. How his hands are familiar and far too easy with knives when he makes dinner. The way they are calloused from holding weapons and always practicing, wrapped around knife hilts and pistol grips sometimes even in his sleep.
Nick doesn’t understand how anyone can believe Alan’s ‘harmless’ act, when his hands scream of so much danger.
Affection
“Susan Moore slapped me.”
“What for?” Alan puts his book down sharply on the kitchen table and looks at Nick.
“I don’t know. I didn’t do anything to her, just asked if she had a ride home. Then she slapped me and ran back inside.”
Alan recalls the girl that met Nick outside of the library, wonders how many girls wear string tops and tight jeans when helping classmates with English homework. Nick waits in silence, as though he expects Alan to explain the mystery of girls’ behavior.
“I suppose she wanted a kiss? It was kind of like a date, even if you two were only studying in the library.”
“Why would she want a kiss from me?”
“Because she likes you,” Alan grins. “Well, she did. And a kiss would mean you liked her too.”
Nick considers this. “If I like someone, I should kiss them so they know. And that’s better than just telling them ‘I like you’.”
“Infinitely better.” Alan pauses, then -- because he has a good idea that most girls won’t take well to a ‘let’s be friends’ peck on the cheek -- he cautions, “Although a kiss on the cheek or hand might not be as well received as a kiss on the mouth.”
Three minutes later, Nick has a split lip and is trying to explain to Alan, at the top of his lungs, why he should’ve been more clear about the whole kissing thing, while Alan tries to forget that his first reaction was to kiss back.
Commitment
When Alan is sixteen, his compulsory schooling is over and Nick wonders what the hell comes next.
A doting teacher sent Alan home with an armful of shiny brochures over the hols, and Nick caught him flipping idly through one of them. It was covered in pictures of stone buildings and books and smiling young people.
“What’s that?” Nick saw words on the front, stared until they made sense. College.
The noise that came out of his throat was like choking to death, and he turned on his heel.
Alan liked school and books and people who smiled all the time. He probably liked stone buildings, too.
“Nick.” Alan’s voice turned him back before he got through the door.
Alan had a knife in one hand and the glossy college brochure in the other.
Deliberately, never taking his eyes off Nick, he sliced it into neat ribbons, then squares, letting the pieces flutter all around, until the floor was covered in colorful confetti.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Nick took in the picture of his brother, knife in hand, surrounded by scraps of college information, and he nodded.
He was almost surprised that he could still find any words. “Okay. You should sharpen that knife. Paper is bad for the edge.”
And Alan smiled.
Selfishness
Alan hates lying to Nick.
Not that it’s hard. Nick will believe what Alan tells him, no matter how sloppily Alan lies, because Nick doesn’t read tone of voice, shape of shoulders, or expression. Even after the debacle with Black Arthur, he accepts what his brother tells him.
Which makes Nick’s unwavering belief the greatest statement of trust that Alan can imagine.
What keeps Alan awake nights is the thought of every lie he’s ever told his brother. Do they accumulate in his mind, drifts upon drifts of contradictory realities, slowly bearing down on conscious thought? Or do they erase each other, each new lie creating a new universe, changing the world over and over again, nothing ever constant?
And yet.
Alan would be lying (again) if he said the thought of being Nick’s only constant didn’t seem absolutely right.
Comfort
Nick wakes up, and the bed smells like Alan. He doesn’t say anything about it because he’d said something before about knowing his brother’s scent and Alan had gone still, like he did when he was upset or thinking very hard.
But this morning Nick gets up and his bed smells like Alan, which means that Alan was in it since last night, and he didn’t wake Nick.
This morning, Nick lies in and tries to work out what his brother’s trying to tell him.
Truth
Nick is still furious, but the storm is gone. The argument is over -- you cannot make them love, they are not things, this is not alright -- and the sun shines yellow and warm on Alan's wind-chilled skin while Nick rants.
"I thought you wanted people to love you! You told me you wanted someone to love you! What is the problem?"
The problem, Alan thinks, is that as much as he wants love, he wants his brother more. The problem is that he looked into their eyes, dead and empty, saw the marks, livid and deep, and he was more horrified by thoughts of Nick did this than they were my family.
If Alan's honest with himself, -- and if he isn't honest with himself, he'll never be honest with anyone -- he knows the problem is that they aren't his family. They were blood, but they were never his. Not like Nick, who is his family, his brother, protector, responsibility, his everything.
Really, Alan has myriad problems.
"I take it back." He doesn't know how to say, I wanted that -- but not if it means giving you up, so that Nick will understand.
Nick looks so perturbed, so confused and frustrated, and Alan can't not touch. He reaches out, quick and efficient, grasps his brother's sword arm just above the wrist, and speaks low and conciliatory.
"Nick. I take it back." He can be honest with his brother. "Nick. I just want you."
Intimacy
She shakes when Nick runs his fingers over the mark, tracing the shape of it -- door, death, eye. It would let him into the human head, if only for a little while, if only at a distance. If he got into her head, he might be able to see what made her normal, what made her like the rest of the people in the world. Nick didn’t do it, though -- he didn’t want to.
Mae was one thing; he liked her, even. But she would never be as important as Alan.
Not that he’d ever mark Alan.
That didn’t stop him thinking about what it would be like, how he’d be able to make out the pulse and flow of plan after plan, following his brother like always, until he understood the mystery that ran through it all, until he understood what it was that made one human.
Patience
It takes Alan a long time -- too long -- to realize that sometimes Nick stays silent because he still can’t find the words. Alan has no excuse for his own obtuseness, though he suspects it’s primarily because he himself is so rarely at a loss for words, and also because Nick -- Nick doesn’t do any of those normal human things, doesn’t open his mouth to speak even before the words are lined up, doesn’t stutter out a few relevant words when he can’t frame a full sentence. As far as Alan knows, Nick can’t tell when words -- even an attempt at them -- are absolutely necessary.
It takes Alan too long, but he comes to understand the tightness in Nick’s hands, itching to go for a blade, to tell Alan what he means in the only language they are both fluent in. Nothing ever shows on Nick’s face.
And the next time Alan says, gentle and habitual, “I love you,” he watches his brother’s knuckles describe the beautiful shapes of devotion as Nick replies, “I know.”
Love
For five minutes, Nick had a brother, a whole one, and they fought together like wolves among sheep, and for those few minutes of bloodshed and violence, Nick felt something rushing and light, something that filled him up with warmth like a bit of the human world that he could carry with him anywhere, even into the howling wasteland of the demon world.
Nick has a five-minute memory of what it means to be truly warm.
Communication
One watching their morning routines might whimsically compare it to a dance -- fridge, sink, table -- Alan’s patterns slower, quiet and definite, whereas Nick’s steps are sharp and sure, interlocking easily with his brother’s.
One well-versed in these things would begin to suspect that there is more to this morning dance than mere routine. Watch Alan’s careful circle, protection and definition around his brother’s branching lines of communication, both of them tracing the unconscious lemniscates of two worlds intersecting over eggs and tea and toast.
goblinmarket_swTitle: Thirteen Words (a Blackbird's First Primer)
Pairing: Alan/Nick
Summary: Demons have no words. Nick has a few. PG, 2,050 words
Care
Alan wakes up to pain, sharp and serrated. There's a moment of disorienting agony before he remembers ten solid hours of driving to this new safehouse, preceded by twenty minutes of mad packing, interrupted at minute seventeen by a magician and a possessed collie. Insults were exchanged, bullets fired. Alan vaguely recalls leaving one of his throwing knives quivering in the dog's throat and he frowns. Those blades are not expendable.
Eventually he summons enough resolve to stumble out of bed, performing his morning ablutions and thinking through the fog of misery that there's nothing for breakfast; he'll have to go to the market today.
He passes Nick -- already awake and silent as ever -- on the way to the kitchen and out the door. Alan doesn't bother to search his expression for some sign of concern -- he has no desire to face any more pain this morning.
But the kitchen is full of light, and there’s scrambled eggs and toast on the table beside a glass of orange juice and, polished, oiled and glitteringly sharp, Alan’s entire set of knives. Including the one he thought he left behind.
“I cleaned and sharpened all of them,” comes Nick’s rough voice from the threshold. “You need them to protect yourself.”
Brother
Nick doesn’t get the big deal about love. It’s just another stupid word, a sound without an anchor, and no one can even agree on what it means. Love is stupid.
But when the teacher asks Nick, “Do you love your brother?” she doesn’t seem to think that “No” is an appropriate answer. Which Nick thinks is weird, because it’s true.
Nick understands ‘brother’, though.
‘Brother’ means Alan’s voice, slippery and smart, Alan’s smile, soft and deceiving, means Alan lying for all he’s worth to stop Children’s Services from taking Nick away, means Alan’s hands tight around his as he shows Nick the best angle for sharpening his knives.
‘Brother’ is Nick’s sword cutting the spinal cord of a possessed corpse, Nick’s eyes following Alan everywhere, Nick’s hands learning how to stitch up the small, deep cut on the back of Alan’s shoulder.
So at least Nick isn’t confused when the teacher finally gets over her shock and asks, “But your brother takes care of you, surely? And you take care of him?”
“Yes.”
Gamble
They’re facing a messenger, all enthusiastically oscillating earrings and wide smile, and Alan doesn’t even have to try to fake the irritation on his face.
“Get out of this city. We don’t want trouble, but we will do what we have to.”
The Circle in this city is small -- small enough that they’d rather send a messenger to chase them out with verbal threats rather than risk a couple of magicians by sending actual threats.
That’s just background thinking.
What Alan sees most is the way Nick is standing, hands always an inch away from a weapon, orienting himself towards Alan, as though he knew exactly what he is -- and is not -- prepared to risk.
Danger
Alan’s hands are a dead giveaway. Nick has no idea why no one else seems to notice it. How the curling of his fingers around the wide spine of a book is the same shape as his hand around a gun. How his hands are familiar and far too easy with knives when he makes dinner. The way they are calloused from holding weapons and always practicing, wrapped around knife hilts and pistol grips sometimes even in his sleep.
Nick doesn’t understand how anyone can believe Alan’s ‘harmless’ act, when his hands scream of so much danger.
Affection
“Susan Moore slapped me.”
“What for?” Alan puts his book down sharply on the kitchen table and looks at Nick.
“I don’t know. I didn’t do anything to her, just asked if she had a ride home. Then she slapped me and ran back inside.”
Alan recalls the girl that met Nick outside of the library, wonders how many girls wear string tops and tight jeans when helping classmates with English homework. Nick waits in silence, as though he expects Alan to explain the mystery of girls’ behavior.
“I suppose she wanted a kiss? It was kind of like a date, even if you two were only studying in the library.”
“Why would she want a kiss from me?”
“Because she likes you,” Alan grins. “Well, she did. And a kiss would mean you liked her too.”
Nick considers this. “If I like someone, I should kiss them so they know. And that’s better than just telling them ‘I like you’.”
“Infinitely better.” Alan pauses, then -- because he has a good idea that most girls won’t take well to a ‘let’s be friends’ peck on the cheek -- he cautions, “Although a kiss on the cheek or hand might not be as well received as a kiss on the mouth.”
Three minutes later, Nick has a split lip and is trying to explain to Alan, at the top of his lungs, why he should’ve been more clear about the whole kissing thing, while Alan tries to forget that his first reaction was to kiss back.
Commitment
When Alan is sixteen, his compulsory schooling is over and Nick wonders what the hell comes next.
A doting teacher sent Alan home with an armful of shiny brochures over the hols, and Nick caught him flipping idly through one of them. It was covered in pictures of stone buildings and books and smiling young people.
“What’s that?” Nick saw words on the front, stared until they made sense. College.
The noise that came out of his throat was like choking to death, and he turned on his heel.
Alan liked school and books and people who smiled all the time. He probably liked stone buildings, too.
“Nick.” Alan’s voice turned him back before he got through the door.
Alan had a knife in one hand and the glossy college brochure in the other.
Deliberately, never taking his eyes off Nick, he sliced it into neat ribbons, then squares, letting the pieces flutter all around, until the floor was covered in colorful confetti.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Nick took in the picture of his brother, knife in hand, surrounded by scraps of college information, and he nodded.
He was almost surprised that he could still find any words. “Okay. You should sharpen that knife. Paper is bad for the edge.”
And Alan smiled.
Selfishness
Alan hates lying to Nick.
Not that it’s hard. Nick will believe what Alan tells him, no matter how sloppily Alan lies, because Nick doesn’t read tone of voice, shape of shoulders, or expression. Even after the debacle with Black Arthur, he accepts what his brother tells him.
Which makes Nick’s unwavering belief the greatest statement of trust that Alan can imagine.
What keeps Alan awake nights is the thought of every lie he’s ever told his brother. Do they accumulate in his mind, drifts upon drifts of contradictory realities, slowly bearing down on conscious thought? Or do they erase each other, each new lie creating a new universe, changing the world over and over again, nothing ever constant?
And yet.
Alan would be lying (again) if he said the thought of being Nick’s only constant didn’t seem absolutely right.
Comfort
Nick wakes up, and the bed smells like Alan. He doesn’t say anything about it because he’d said something before about knowing his brother’s scent and Alan had gone still, like he did when he was upset or thinking very hard.
But this morning Nick gets up and his bed smells like Alan, which means that Alan was in it since last night, and he didn’t wake Nick.
This morning, Nick lies in and tries to work out what his brother’s trying to tell him.
Truth
Nick is still furious, but the storm is gone. The argument is over -- you cannot make them love, they are not things, this is not alright -- and the sun shines yellow and warm on Alan's wind-chilled skin while Nick rants.
"I thought you wanted people to love you! You told me you wanted someone to love you! What is the problem?"
The problem, Alan thinks, is that as much as he wants love, he wants his brother more. The problem is that he looked into their eyes, dead and empty, saw the marks, livid and deep, and he was more horrified by thoughts of Nick did this than they were my family.
If Alan's honest with himself, -- and if he isn't honest with himself, he'll never be honest with anyone -- he knows the problem is that they aren't his family. They were blood, but they were never his. Not like Nick, who is his family, his brother, protector, responsibility, his everything.
Really, Alan has myriad problems.
"I take it back." He doesn't know how to say, I wanted that -- but not if it means giving you up, so that Nick will understand.
Nick looks so perturbed, so confused and frustrated, and Alan can't not touch. He reaches out, quick and efficient, grasps his brother's sword arm just above the wrist, and speaks low and conciliatory.
"Nick. I take it back." He can be honest with his brother. "Nick. I just want you."
Intimacy
She shakes when Nick runs his fingers over the mark, tracing the shape of it -- door, death, eye. It would let him into the human head, if only for a little while, if only at a distance. If he got into her head, he might be able to see what made her normal, what made her like the rest of the people in the world. Nick didn’t do it, though -- he didn’t want to.
Mae was one thing; he liked her, even. But she would never be as important as Alan.
Not that he’d ever mark Alan.
That didn’t stop him thinking about what it would be like, how he’d be able to make out the pulse and flow of plan after plan, following his brother like always, until he understood the mystery that ran through it all, until he understood what it was that made one human.
Patience
It takes Alan a long time -- too long -- to realize that sometimes Nick stays silent because he still can’t find the words. Alan has no excuse for his own obtuseness, though he suspects it’s primarily because he himself is so rarely at a loss for words, and also because Nick -- Nick doesn’t do any of those normal human things, doesn’t open his mouth to speak even before the words are lined up, doesn’t stutter out a few relevant words when he can’t frame a full sentence. As far as Alan knows, Nick can’t tell when words -- even an attempt at them -- are absolutely necessary.
It takes Alan too long, but he comes to understand the tightness in Nick’s hands, itching to go for a blade, to tell Alan what he means in the only language they are both fluent in. Nothing ever shows on Nick’s face.
And the next time Alan says, gentle and habitual, “I love you,” he watches his brother’s knuckles describe the beautiful shapes of devotion as Nick replies, “I know.”
Love
For five minutes, Nick had a brother, a whole one, and they fought together like wolves among sheep, and for those few minutes of bloodshed and violence, Nick felt something rushing and light, something that filled him up with warmth like a bit of the human world that he could carry with him anywhere, even into the howling wasteland of the demon world.
Nick has a five-minute memory of what it means to be truly warm.
Communication
One watching their morning routines might whimsically compare it to a dance -- fridge, sink, table -- Alan’s patterns slower, quiet and definite, whereas Nick’s steps are sharp and sure, interlocking easily with his brother’s.
One well-versed in these things would begin to suspect that there is more to this morning dance than mere routine. Watch Alan’s careful circle, protection and definition around his brother’s branching lines of communication, both of them tracing the unconscious lemniscates of two worlds intersecting over eggs and tea and toast.
