wildfire

Evie rubbed his side slowly as she stood there, her chin resting on his shoulder as a soft sigh left her lips at his words. “Nik.” She said softly, shaking her head as she lifted his arm and put it around her shoulders, taking the grocery list from his hands as she marked off the peanut butter and the jam from it. “Not here, babe.” She glanced down before looking back up at him. “Later. Let’s just finish gettin’ the groceries and we can talk after I drop Mason off with Wyatt. Is that okay?” She asked, eyes slightly pleading as she looked up at him. If she spoke about Sam in the grocery store she’d surely break down. Something she didn’t really want to do in the middle of the grocery store.

He still hadn’t fully wrapped his mind around the existence of the baby, and as Nik looked down at Mason once more, a happy child who beamed up at him, he had to actively refrain from sighing. This grocery store was the last place he wanted to be, a fact he was realizing more fully the longer he stood here. “How long is that going to take?” 

Gemma opened her mouth, retort dying on her lips as she blinked, momentarily at a loss. Her eyes searched his face and she spoke, curiosity laced through her words, “Wait… you said you’re a founder and you’ve got a heartbeat, which means you must be the other Greyson I haven’t met yet, Nik right?” Of course she’d run into the man who’s house she was currently sharing and show her ass, but whatever, she wasn’t too pressed about it. “I’m Gemma and I’m currently crashing in a spare bedroom in your house, so the town might be able to handle you being a tool, but I don’t know if I can.” She crossed her arms loosely over her chest and gave him the brightest smile she could muster. 

That got her. Good to know his name did actually have some kind of pull around here. “This one’s got a brain,” he said, raising his eyebrows at her. “Dominik. Nice to meet you, Gemma. I’ve never seen you in my sister’s house, actually, so I’m pretty sure the place is big enough for you, me, and my attitude.”

Lips pursed together as she nodded her head. “We failed you,” Sophia said simply as she looked up at him. Sophia wasn’t sure what else she could say at this point. Words would not suffice to quell his anger and a thousand years of loving him completely as he was didn’t seem to mean anything after this betrayal. He had every right to be angry and she wouldn’t take that from him. 

“I’m not asking you to not be angry,” Sophia said shaking her head. “You’re right though, we are your family, and we’ve been here every time you’ve fallen off the face of this godforsaken planet and showed up a decade later as if you’d never left. And will continue to do so now. If you chose to leave that’s your decision but I wanted you to at least know where I stood.” Sophia said as she moved towards the door. “If you want to be angry, that’s okay. I’m still happy your home, I’m still happy to know you aren’t that person, I’m happy you’re okay, and I’m still sorry I let you down.” Clearing her throat she nodded her head. “Is there anything I can get for you, I can make you something else if you want.” She said nodding towards the food she’d brought.

“You sound like you’re asking me not to be angry,” Nik said firmly, eyes fixed on his sister. “You sound like you’re saying it should even out, considering the amount of times I’ve disappeared on you. Silly me, I didn’t realize all of us being immortal meant I had to be glued to your sides the entire time. I guess this is the price of freedom, then, my siblings thinking I would betray them and everything they’ve ever fought for.” 

“I do.” And any other day, it would’ve been a joke, no doubt. But now, everything felt like walking on ice. She wanted to apologize, to hug her older brother, and to say so much more, but had no idea where to begin. “We could get you more than just an apple.” She offered after another moment of silence.

“You do what?” he rolled his eyes. “You do bite or you do have to act as if I’m a bomb ready to go off at any minute? Because you really do not have to do either. When I go off, I promise you it won’t be in a public place.”

Maggie took a deep breath, her body clenching at the sound of Nik’s voice, a voice she had hoped she would never have to hear again. Turning to face him, she couldn’t help the eye roll as she spoke, “Glad to see you’re in good spirits Nik, but if that were the case, we’d never get anything done in this town.”

“Walk me through that thought process...” Nik trailed off, at a loss for her name. “Margie, right?”

Zane loved going to the gym. It wasn’t to maintain any of his muscle mass. It was more so that it helped to release steam. Though the best part of a supernatural town was that there were more weight options. The gym was much better than lifting cars. When he’d headed toward the punching bag, he saw a familiar face. “Funny, I believe this would be the first time that we keep encountering that no chaos is following. I almost want to cause some just for old time’s sake,” he said with a chuckle. The two of them had been in quite the chaos over the centuries. There were so many different stories that they had of general chaos. Sometimes his life read like an action movie and he wasn’t upset about that at all.

@nik-greyson

Here, at least, he could punch things as hard as he wanted to without worrying he’d get some kind of lecture about it, whether it be from a family member, the frowning Blackwell, or some girl who clearly thought she was too beautiful to be annoying. Nik didn’t have to pretend to like Zane, didn’t have to pretend to keep his cool around the other man. They were the way they were, and Zane was right. This was the first time chaos wasn’t following them. “What are you thinking?” Nik asked. He’d initially ducked his head, keeping his arms bent at the elbows with his hands close to his face, but upon sensing the vampire’s presence, he’d reached out to steady the bag. 

“I missed you.” She repeated, this time softer, her voice filled with guilt as she reached for the strawberry jam on the shelf and put it in the cart next to the peanut butter. “God knows why.” She teased gently after clearing her throat, trying to lighten things up a bit. “What’s next on the list, hon?” She asked him, pushing the cart forward and slipping her arm around his waist as she peered over his shoulder to look at the list in his hand. Now that Evie had Nik back in her life she’d be damned if she let him go again. “I can’t read my own handwriting.” 

Thoughts of Evie, unsurprisingly enough, had come up quite often during his time in the dark. She was the summer sun, she was warm and soft with a spine of steel, and during the worst of it, he’d heard her voice in his head, telling him to sit up straight and live through hell. And he’d done it.

If she’d asked a question, Nik hadn’t heard it, lost in thought as he was. He felt her arm go around his waist, her chin at his shoulder, and he turned to look at her. “Tell me about Sam. I want to hear it again.”

Sophia nodded her head coming further into the room, setting the food down before him. Hearing his next words she nodded her head. “It’s been a rather busy few years,” Sophia said with a shrug of the shoulders as she looked up at him now. There had been more heartbreak and sacrifice in the last two years, Max and now her upcoming nuptials were the only small slivers of happiness she’d managed to find in the chaos of bloodshed that had taken so much from her. Looking down for a moment she tried to find the right words. “I’m sorry Nik, I don’t think I need to tell you that we failed you and I will never forgive myself for that and wouldn’t blame you if you never did but I am so grateful you are home and you are safe now. I understand if you don’t want to stay but I want you to know I would very much like the chance to make it right, no matter how long it takes.” Looking back up at him now, she nodded her head. “I should have protected, I promise I would always do that, and I’m so sorry I let you down.” She expressed with a tearful nod of the head as she stopped waiting for the inevitable explosion she anticipated. 

“What do you mean you don’t need to tell me?” Nik asked, eyes full of confusion as he watched her walk into the room. He was hungry, he hadn’t lied, but he was starving as much in his stomach as he was in his soul. “Of course you need to tell me that you failed me. Just because something is obvious, Sophia, doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be said.”

She had raised him, she and Nate, his brother taking the blows whenever he could, and Sophia always there with soothing words and warm embraces. She was a pillar of strength, a woman who opened her heart and her home to strays and stuck up for them. But if that was supposed to be the reason he was supposed to forgive her so quickly—that she had raised him—then wasn’t the opposite also true? 

She should have known who he was and what he could do because she had raised him. “I didn’t care about this, you know,” Nik said, gesturing around the room. “This town, this safe haven that you all wanted to build and settle with the Blackwells. But I came. I came when you wanted to fight against them, I came when you wanted to fight with them, I came when you called because you are my family. And your guilt does not mean more to me than my anger.”

As Vincent watched Nik eat the apple, he looked to the cashier before handing him a bundle of cash. Realizing he was fidgeting with his hands nervously, when the Original agreed to the fruit bowl, “Say no more. It’s yours. You’re a … growing man, after all.” He added sheepishly. Desperate to change the subject, “So, you may or may not know this but Sophia and I, we – we uh, we’re getting married.” He stated softly, “And I was meaning to ask you a question that I didn’t get to ask because well, fake you was evil and real you was well, y’know.” Vince said frowning slightly realizing that his nerves was making him tense. 

“You would think after a thousand years I’d stop at some point, and yet here I am, devouring fruit bowls.” 

He froze for a moment, a hitch in his breath that would have been barely perceptible to most, but probably not Vince. “I did not know that.” 

Some part of him was happy for his sister, but that didn’t matter as much as the monster roaring to life in his heart. How wonderful for her, for all of them, to get to move on with their lives and fall in love and grow their pack while he’d been held captive, his best friend brutally murdered by his imposter. What a win, for his siblings to come out on top, rational and reasonable and all-knowing, willing to damn their brother to an eternity of pain, body parts strewn throughout the seven seas. Maybe that was an unfair thought, but was he, of all people, supposed to cut them any slack for their pain? 

Was there nothing to be said for loyalty? For family? 

“You want my blessing, Vincent?” Nik said, looking the other man dead in the eye, his tone edged with steel. “This empty formality when we both know that neither you nor Sophia care. What would you do if I said no? Would you go and ask for the ring back? Live another thousand years without her?” 

“That’s not correct. Pay for that. As one of the town founders you should be supporting those who try to settle in your town. Not steal from them. I don’t care what you’ve been through, or who you are it doesn’t give you a right to take things you just want.”

“Alright,” Nik said, crossing his arms and straightening as she spoke to him. He wanted to be absolutely prepared to absorb the lesson she was gearing up to impart to him. “Tell me what else I should be doing as one of the town founders.”

Gemma‘s eyebrows furrowed together and she couldn’t help the disdain that crossed her features as she listened to the man standing next to her. “If you’re an asshole, then yeah, I can imagine it could work like that. But also, you shouldn’t be a complete tool about it, town founder or no.”

Noah looked at the other Original, studied him even. He could not imagine how it would be if that had been one of his siblings, and he did not want to know what that was like. Nik seemed liked himself for the most part, not that he and Noah had every been particularly close. They had crossed paths over the last thousand years, rarely without some sort of discord or bloodshed. Even someone as resilient as a Greyson would be affected by this sequence of events. He mulled over the man’s words for a moment. “I do not blame you for want to do that, nor would I stand in your way if you went after those responsible.” He said with a stern look to show how much he meant it. “How about you have a drink instead. It might take off the edge at least.”

“Hell may actually freeze over if we drink together,” Nik informed the other man. These were strange times they were living in. He and Noah Blackwell were having a conversation, neither of them seemed to want to try and kill each other yet, and it seemed, for a moment, like there could be some kind of truce. Maybe this was how his siblings had been living for three decades- aggressively pretending it was completely normal and absolutely fine to have a cordial conversation in public with a Blackwell. 

Any Blackwell. 

Though he doubted Dara and Jos would ever be in the same room at the same time. 

“My better instincts are still telling me to correct you,” Jax said, snapping back into reality as the man spoke. His eye had caught a shadowy figure moving into the next aisle, but he didn’t hear footsteps which was disconcerting. These days, it wasn’t uncommon. He looked back to Nik Greyson, whom had been the talk of the town since Jax had resurfaced from beyond the grave. “Think of it this way: you’re supporting local businesses, then the town survives. Yadda yadda. And I don’t have to pull out the cop card.”

He’d done the cost-benefit analysis in seconds, in the amount of time it took the other man to blink three times. The guy was a cop, which meant nothing to Nik except for the fact that he clearly liked being a cop and had already informed Nik that he was arrest happy. And if Nik got arrested, he’d lose the moral highground he had with his siblings, or at least Dara, considering she’d use it against him. 

After all, if he could commit petty thievery and eat an apple without paying for it, then weren’t they right to look an imposter in the eye and believe a confession damning him to hell for a laundry list of sins he’d committed against them?

None of this made it’s way to the cop, however, who instead got Nik narrowing his gaze at him and handing him two dollars. “You must be really fun at parties.”

Noah did a double take as the second youngest Greyson took a seat next to him. He could only imagine that the wolf had quite an experience over the last two years, add on top of that what his family had done, or rather not done, and it couldn’t have been an easy experience to endure. “Well then let me offer my sincerest apologies, Mr. Greyson.” He said with a formal tone. “It’s not everyday that a lunatic cult manages to capture and retain an Original. My interest was piqued to say the least.” A part of him did feel pity for the wolf, even if their families’ alliance was barely steady. His compassion was not his most developed trait, but he did respect the Greyson’s devotion to one another. It was perhaps the sole thing that both families had in common. “How are you?” He questioned sincerely.

He couldn’t tell if he was being mocked or if the Blackwell vampire was actually being serious until Noah asked how he was. None of them had ever done that before, not that Nik had wanted to. And he’d returned the favor, remaining blissfully unaware of their trials and tribulations. In the wise words of himself, who the fuck cared how the bloodsuckers were doing? 

And yet Noah wasn’t speaking to him with pity, just a neutral sort of curiosity, a natural side effect of something interesting happening to a much-hated enemy. A normal reaction, considering he, Nik, was an Original Werewolf who had been kidnapped and held hostage, and if it happened to him, it could happen to any of them. 

“I’d like to kill someone or a few someones, but I’m not allowed to.”

“What if I say that’s not something I’ve heard before? I’m not saying you’re wrong, just maybe not right.” She gave him a small smile. After what Nik had gone through, if he wanted the apple she’d let him take it and cover the cost.

“Do you always smile like that when you’re trying to tell others you’re smarter than them, or am I just special?”

“Not correcting you, but if you truly mean everything in it is yours, that also means people, and I don’t know about you but there are some people I’d want to return to sender,” he said honestly with an easy laugh. “But I’m sure no one’s going to chase you down about an apple.”

“Mmmm, no, just inanimate objects, things I can eat, and real property. Definitely not including people.” He shrugged at the other werewolf, a man he’d known for decades now, though it truly felt like the blink of an eye. When a thousand years had passed, one day felt like a minute. 

Except, of course, the roughly 730 days he’d been held hostage. Those, he felt every excruciating second of. 

“I really don’t know what they’d chase me down for here, but I’ll take your word for it. What’ve you been up to, Ainsworth?”