d7 ] Nikolai Beckett \\ done~

After my blood is drowning in alcohol,
No, I just wanna hold ya.
Give a little time to me or burn this out,
We'll play hide and seek to turn this around,
All I want is the taste that your lips allow.

i.

Nick finds the waiting room of the Author & Co. very interesting. But then again, Nick finds most things interesting. Like the waiting room of the Author & Co., which has only got a mirror and an armchair. A purple armchair. And nothing else. He knows what the armchair is for, but the mirror is making him more than a little bit curious. He briefly wonders if he should be staring at himself in the mirror, but he's too shy for that.

He settles for attempting to study the room, but for some reason his eyes keep dragging themselves back to the mirror to meet his own blue, almond-shaped gaze. The corners crinkle suddenly as his undefined pink lips part into a smile and tiny, uneven teeth flash at him with two dimples on either side of his mouth.

Not entirely sure what he's smiling at, Nick drops it. His dark brows fall back close to his eyes.

(He feels the urge to make a face and so he does, squinting down his long, ski-bump nose. He giggles at himself; what a dork.)

Nick settles back into his seat, running his hands through his messy hair, which is such a dark shade of brown that it may as well be black. His hair is as long as his mother will let him grow it, meaning not as long as he'd like. He'd much prefer to grow it all out into an even-length bob, like a girl's (not that he is a girl, just that he thinks it'd be easier to tame that way). But in reality it's just... messy. And short. And messy.

(Mom says he can't, though, because it might get in the way of any woodcutting he does. He's fine with that now, but when he's out of the house...)

Nick rubs a tanned hand over his square jawline. He shaves, too, mostly because the little beard-hairs get kind of itchy, which irritates Nick a whole lot. He's not a huge fan of beards in general.

Wrapping his arms around his lean frame he glances at the door leading to what he hopes is the office and not the actual waiting room of the place. With a sigh, he drops his head back to stare at the ceiling.

Nick isn't all that tall to begin with, but he knows he's taller than some people at 5'10". Yet the ceiling makes him feel so much shorter than he is.

He sighs.

It doesn't feel like so long later that the door creaks open and Nick gets the sense of a silent come hither. He looks at the door, hesitating briefly before going in.

He's not sure what he'll find.

ii.

There is another armchair before the table with the strange entity. A pen is wrapped with grey where he imagines the entity's hand to be, scribbling over what looks like a blank sheet of paper. Maybe the pen has run out of ink.

"You're an observant one," the entity says. "Sit down. I am the Author." It says the words like... well, like a villain expecting everyone to know of its existence. Nick blinks at it then stands a little taller. He won't let the villain get him.

'You'll never get me,' is what he wants to say but the Author simply gives him what feels like a darkly amused look before saying, "Don't be a drama queen and sit down. I just want to talk to you."

'That's what they all say,' Nick thinks to himself stubbornly as he takes a seat. He's read enough fantasy novels to know where this is going. The entity is going to possess him or something equally as horrible. 'And then it'll take the kiss of a true love to bring me back.'

A snort from where the entity sits across from him. He looks up, more than faintly insulted, but the entity waves his insecurities away. "Come on, I thought you weren't vain like that. I don't want to kidnap you or anything. Don't think so highly of yourself. ... Maybe you are vain, secretly..." Nick can only make a sound of protest before the Author laughs. "Vain and shy at the same time, how interesting."

The Author looks down at its pile of notes and frowns. "It says here you're addicted to alcohol." (When Nick peeks, curiously, he sees nothing on the paper.) The word reminds him of the slight twitching in his hands; restlessly, Nick shrugs and pushes his abused bottom lip between his teeth. The Author's pen hits him in the face.

"Ow," he says, glaring at the entity.

"Don't be sensitive. It's just a pen." The pen goes flying back into the Author's hand and the entity scribbles something else down. "So... do you believe in the one?"

Nick's eyes light up at that. 'Yes. A dozen times yes. So many, many times yes.' He can't quite put that excitement into words. 'I might even have found her,' Nick really wants to say but for some reason all he can do is nod his head enthusiastically and bounce in his chair.

The Author gives him what he feels is a skeptical look and says, "Well, good for you."

iii.

He has a loving family waiting back home. Kid siblings - twins, aged four. Nick tries his best to be a good role model for them by hiding the bottles of alcohol in his room, where the twins aren't allowed to enter without his express permission (meaning mostly never, unless Mom asks them to wake him up from whatever stupor he's in).

Nick wasn't always so happy about the twins. Before they were born he got into his first real big fight with his parents. He thought they wanted to replace him because of the company he keeps outside their supervision. He told them as such but they told him it wasn't true.

He ran away, anyway. Ran away and hid in some bushes near the forest for the whole day. Dozed off in the heat, vindictively thinking that Mom and Dad would never find him and would love him best when they realize he's gone for good. Maybe they'd cry over his starved-to-death body.

At a later time he woke up, back stiff, legs cramped, arms like the stiff branches of trees, to sounds of life outside his bush. Peeking out, Nick spotted a small shed and a young boy and girl roughly his age outside. He couldn't quite catch what they were doing because the girl looked up before he could focus.

He'd run away from that, too.

(Dinner awaited him on the table at home with his loving parents, who held him while he cried out his insecurities and anxieties about having a younger siblings to them. They soothed him and told him that they'll always love him.)

The girl never left his mind after that. (He'd noticed everything about her, often sighed and propped his chin on his hand to gaze dreamily after her, to the annoyance of his friends.)

Nick isn't particularly intelligent in school. It's a struggle for him; he can never make heads or tails of the school material, and so he stubbornly refuses to do the work. His friends agree, if only because they can all hang out together in some discreet place and exchange cheap spirits and cheaper brew.

(He doesn't smoke like his friends do, though; the smoke makes him struggle for breath in ways he doesn't like to repeat, and when they start he leaves. They understand. They tell him before they start. He appreciates that.)

He's a good role model, really. But only at home.

Oh this jealous actress has a habit
Of making things sound way too tragic.
You're like a black cat with a black back pack full of fireworks
You're gonna burn the city down right now
Whoa whoa