Archive of Our Own

Magic is familial. Whatever runs in a family is the type of magic that gets handed down. If earth magic runs in a family, then it’s earth magic that gets handed down.It’s why Kuzy’s entire family is so good with plants, or why Alex is so good with animals he’s basically Snow White.

But magic doesn’t run in Nicke’s family. When other kids were coming into their magic as teenagers - at puberty, when most people come into their magic - Nicke didn’t get anything, and his parents had to sit him down and explain that neither side of the family had any kind of magic that they knew of.

It’s fine, Nicke thinks. Some people just don’t have magic, and that’s fine. And no, not having magic is different from being a null. Not having magic literally just means that Nicke has no magic. Being a null means that the user can grab hold of anyone else who has magic and completely nullify the other person’s magic.

Nicke doesn’t even realize that some of the guys on the team think that he’s a null rather than someone without magic until they’re all at a party at Alex’s. They’re in the back yard, by the fire pit, and Alex has coaxed one of the deer out of the woods and up to him.

“See, if I were a null, I could grab your arm and that deer would realize that you’re really fucking scary and run off,” Nicke says, gesturing with his beer. “I just don’t have magic at all. I can’t do anything.”

“No, come on, everyone have magic,” Alex says. Nicke reaches over and puts his hand on Alex’s arm. The deer blinks at him, but continues eating out of Alex’s hand.

“See?” Nicke says.

“These deer just used to me,” Alex says.

Someone reaches out and rests a hand on Alex’s other arm. The deer immediately spooks and takes off running into the woods. Alex looks stunned - like that’s never happened to him before. That’s how Nicke finally convinces them all that he doesn’t have any magic at all. It’s also how they all find out that Jojo is a null.

Nicke is well past the age that someone’s magic would manifest when he starts to get the inkling that something is up.

When Andre joined them, he was up front about the fact that his family had siren magic. And over time, they’ve all gotten used to Andre using his magic to pull guys to him.. Traditional siren magic uses song to draw victims in to kill them. Through the years, whatever version of it Andre has inherited is in his smile and his voice, and instead of killing men, he literally feeds off of the attention - Nicke’s seen how cranky and unhappy he gets when he’s not getting enough.

And sure, sometimes Andre can be annoying, or overwhelming, but he’s Andre and they love him regardless. He curls around Alex, wrestles with Jojo, gets basically adopted by the Carlsons. He comes over to Nicke’s house and falls asleep curled up in Nicke’s bed, heavy and warm against Nicke’s side.

Nicke is used to the way things are, the swirl of everyone’s magic around him, a different type of eye at the center of the storm than Jojo’s nullification magic. He’s used to the way animals walk up to Alex, or the way Andre is always making someone pay attention to him. He likes how Kuzy always has fresh flowers because he can make them grow or bring them back to life, or the way everyone thinks Holtby’s thing with the water bottle is weird but the team all know that he can manipulate water. It would be better if he could manipulate ice, but once it’s frozen everyone’s shit out of luck. Magic is an easy part of his life, even if it’s not part of him.

What Nicke doesn’t expect is to have Andre genuinely coming onto him, all of a sudden.

Andre plops into the seat next to Nicke on the plane, which is normal. Except then he reaches out and strokes his fingers through the curls at the back of Nicke’s neck, which is weird and different and something Nicke doesn’t exactly think he likes, coming from Andre.

“You should come to my room, when we check into the hotel,” Andre says. And yeah, no, that’s weird, and Nicke doesn’t like it. He loves Andre, truly, but like a little brother, or maybe even a son, someone he wants to snuggle and protect and not at all hook up with.

“What?” Nicke asks, confused. He keeps his voice low, and speaks in Swedish. At least if he keeps it in their language, there are fewer people to hear and figure out whatever weird thing Andre is trying to do right now.

Nicke futilely tries to remember if he’s done anything to suggest to Andre that he wants this. He’s trying to figure out the best way to put Andre off without embarrassing him, or alienating him.

“I thought you wanted to?” Andre asks. “Like you wanted to - “ Andre drops his voice even quieter, until Nicke’s basically reading his lips. “Fuck me.”

“I don’t think - “ Nicke says. “I don’t know what I did to make you think that, but I don’t think we should do that.”

Andre pouts at him.

“Another time, then?” Andre asks. Nicke thinks it’s kind of weird that he just gives up that easily, but Nicke is grateful when Andre gets up from the seat and moves on to snuggle up to someone else.

Andre is the first person who does it, but he’s not the last. Nicke starts to think something is really wrong around the time Tom starts flirting with him. Nicke’s seen Tom pick up in bars, and Tom is definitely pulling out all the stops on Nicke. Since Tom definitely doesn’t have siren magic and doesn’t feed off of attention the way Andre does, Nicke’s not sure how this could even be happening.

Nicke can think of a lot of times his interactions with Andre could be misconstrued - they all have those moments, it’s the way Andre’s magic works - but Tom is an empath and Nicke has never come on to Tom in his life. In fact, Tom should be able to tell that Nicke isn’t interested, and that above all else, he’s confused. Tom is still hitting on him and Nicke is starting to panic (which Tom should be able to feel!) and look around for Jojo to rescue him, but Jojo’s nowhere to be seen.

Instead, he tugs away from Tom.

“Dude, no,” he says, and starts to make a beeline for Alex. “I don’t know what’s up, but I’m not interested!”

“What aren’t you interested in?” Alex asks, locking his phone and shoving it into his pocket. He and Dima are sitting at one of the tables the team had commandeered.

“Tom is hitting on me,” Nicke says. Alex snorts.

“Would you rather I hit on you instead?” Dima asks, and he has a weird look on his face, like he might actually do it.

Alex swivels to look at him, bewildered. Nicke has to get out of this bar.

“I’m going home!” he yells, then beats feet toward the door. Has his entire team lost their minds?

He’s standing outside the bar waiting for an Uber when a guy walks up to him, very intent and earnest in hitting on him. He has a glassy-eyed, drunk look, and it’s very different when he reaches out a hand to rest on Nicke’s hip. When Tom did it, Nicke didn’t punch him because he knows Tom. This guy, Nicke doesn’t know, and Nicke shoves him back.

A regular person, Nicke thinks, even drunk, would be upset at this. This guy just comes back, still talking, “please, baby,” on his lips. Nicke is backing toward the doors, telling the guy to fuck off when the bar doors open and Jojo and Kuzy come out. Nicke’s so close to the doors that Jojo physically runs into him, making Nicke stumble. Jojo and Kuzy both grab at him to stop him from falling, and Jojo’s hand wraps around his bare wrist.

The guy trying to assault him blinks, looking confused. The glassy, drunk look is still in his eyes, but he suddenly doesn’t look like he remembers what he was doing, or why. “‘Scuse me,” he says, and bumps past the three of them and into the bar.

“Oh no,” Nicke says.

They all share an Uber back to Nicke’s house, mostly because Nicke is suddenly unwilling to go anywhere without Jojo touching him. He’s never wanted to hold onto someone’s hand so badly before in his life, but at least Jojo seems okay with not letting go, even if he and Kuzy seem to be having a conversation with their eyebrows in the car’s rear view mirror that they possibly think Nicke can’t see.

They pile out at Nicke’s and Nicke makes himself a drink while his laptop boots up. He was trying to search on his phone in the car, but it was too complicated. He needs an actual browser and a real search engine, and possibly many tabs. He finds a notepad and pen somewhere.

“Okay,” Nicke says, and downs his drink in one gulp.

“What do we know,” Jojo says.

They’re sitting in Nicke’s kitchen, Nicke with his laptop and Jojo with the pen and paper. Kuzy is turning a water bottle in his hands. It’s good that he’s there, because at the very least he has some other kind of magic that they can experiment with, while they’re trying to figure out whatever the hell is going on with Nicke.

“Whatever I’m doing is making people come onto me like crazy,” Nicke says. “Literally, you guys stopped that guy from - well, I don’t know what he was gonna do, but he’d definitely already put his hands on me and I’d shoved him away once, and - “

“Jesus Christ, Nicke,” Jojo says, frowning. Kuzy accidentally squeezes his water bottle and it overflows, spilling over his hands and the countertop. He swears and grabs paper towels to wipe it up.

“It started with Andre, so it was weird but I thought I’d - you know, his magic is kind of like this, anyway,” Nicke says. “So I thought I’d just - you know, given him the wrong signal or something.”

“Sure,” Jojo says, writing - well, he’s not actually writing anything. He’s kind of doodling, because all of them know what Andre’s magic is like, and probably all of them only thought it was a matter of time before someone got the wrong idea. Andre’s magic doesn’t even work on Jojo, and Jojo feeds into it.

“Then in the bar, Tom started coming onto me,” Nicke says. “And Tom should be able to tell that I’m not interested. So whatever this is - “ he gestures to himself “ - it short-circuits Tom.”

“Then the guy outside the bar,” Jojo says. Nicke is pretty sure he’s gritting his teeth.

“The guy left me alone when you touched me,” Nicke says, looking at Jojo. “Whatever I’m doing, when you touched me, it turned off.”

“So it’s magic,” Jojo says.

“I’m almost thirty years old,” Nicke says. “I don’t have any magic.”

“Obviously not true,” Kuzy says. Nicke makes a strangled noise.

“So start looking up late onset magic,” Jojo says.

So they Google.

Nicke learns that the latest recorded onset of magical power at the current time is 67 years old, so significantly older than Nicke is now. He learns that it’s very uncommon, but not unheard of. And one sentence catches his eye - late onset is more common with magics that deal with sex and romance, such as siren or succubus magics.

“Succubus magic?” Jojo asks, raising his eyebrows.

“Like you’re a sex demon?” Kuzy asks.

Nicke feels his entire face on fire, and he wishes that he didn’t feel like he needed to have Jojo there, or that he didn’t need a second person who had actual magic, not just null magic. He wishes Alex were there, instead.

“But here’s the thing - it worked on Burky and Tom and Dima, but it doesn’t work on either of you,” Nicke says.

“Obviously it wouldn’t work on me,” Jojo says.

“But it doesn’t work on Kuzy, either, and you’re not touching him or me right now,” Nicke points out.

Kuzy and Jojo look at each other, and Kuzy makes a face. They’re sitting next to each other, and Nicke’s right - they’re not touching each other, at least not skin to skin, and for Jojo’s magic to work, he has to have skin contact. That’s why Nicke held his hand in the car on the way home.

“So why doesn’t it work on us,” Jojo says. “Or Kuzy. Why doesn’t it work on Kuzy? Because it should, right? I’m not touching him. Do you have to be touching him?”

“No, because I didn’t touch the guy outside the bar,” Nicke says. “And I didn’t touch Tom before he touched me, either, and there was a whole table between me and Dima. Oh - it didn’t work on Ovi. I was talking to him before it got Dima, and I decided to leave.”

“Okay,” Jojo says. “You don’t have to be touching people, and it doesn’t work on Kuzy or Ovi, but it does work on Dima, Tom, and Burky.”

“Right,” Nicke says.

“So you’re like, late onset sex demon,” Kuzy says. “But only to some people. So why only to some people? How do you even Google that?”

“Siri, why does my late on-set sex demon magic work on some people but not others,” Jojo says absently, twirling his pen across his paper.

Nicke’s laptop makes a noise, the Siri function engaging.

“No!” Jojo says. “Oh my God, I was kidding!” He thumps his forehead down onto the counter. Kuzy is about to fall off his stool he’s laughing so hard. Nicke is frowning at both of them.

“This is serious, you know,” he says.

“You can’t see how this is funny, just a little bit?” Jojo asks him, leaning his head against his hand. Kuzy is still laughing, but it’s mostly tired snickering now. It’s late. Both of them are going to end up sleeping at Nicke’s and eating all his breakfast food in the morning. He’s probably going to have to cook for them.

“You can laugh because you aren’t making everyone want to fuck you when you don’t want to fuck them, apparently,” Nicke says, suddenly feeling irritable. Maybe he needs another drink.

“Look, just read up on succubus powers,” Kuzy says. “Surely something will make it make sense. Why it works on some and not others, and how to curb it and make it so that you don’t have random people trying to… “

“Assault you,” Jojo finishes for him. Nicke hates that that’s true, that if they hadn’t come out of the bar when they did, Nicke was in for a bad time.

“Fine,” Nicke says. Siri didn’t actually know the answer to the question, but she has helpfully suggested some websites with information on the type of magic Nicke apparently has, or is manifesting. “Are you two staying here tonight?”

They look at each other for a moment. Kuzy quirks an eyebrow.

“Look, you might as well. It’s late, you can borrow clothes if you need to, and I’ll feed you breakfast because Ovi would be mad that I sent you out into the world un-fed after taking you home with me,” Nicke says. He points a finger at Jojo. “Plus, I’m not leaving my house without you until we figure this out.”

Jojo sighs dramatically.

“Come on,” Nicke says. “I’ll get you guys something to sleep in.”

The three of them troop upstairs, and Nicke rummages through his drawers and hands out sweatpants and t-shirts to change into, so they don’t have to sleep in their clothes. Both of them have crashed there enough times that they know where the guest rooms and bathrooms are. Nicke leaves them to change and heads back downstairs to clean up in the kitchen and bring his laptop back upstairs so he can keep looking at whatever this magic apparently is.

He stops in the doorway of the room Jojo usually crashes in, and says, “Hey, do you need a -”

He was going to ask if Jojo wanted a phone charger, but what he actually ends up doing is cock-blocking his friends, apparently. Kuzy is still fully dressed, sat on the edge of the bed, but Jojo’s shirt is off and he’s stood next to the bed, leaned down to press his mouth to Kuzy’s.

“Do you knock?” Jojo asks when they break apart after Nicke interrupts them. His blush goes halfway down his bare chest.

“The door was open, idiot,” Nicke tells him. “I was going to ask if you wanted a phone charger, but now I’m not giving you one and if you have sex in my guest room I’m gonna kill you.”

“Hey,” Jojo says. “You can’t even leave your house without me right now, so be nice. I’ll turn you into a hermit.”

“You know what, at this point I might fucking welcome that,” Nicke says. Kuzy fucking laughs, because Kuzy is an asshole. “Don’t have sex in my guest room.”

He turns to leave and hears Kuzy call after him, “define sex!”

Nicke does not dignify that with an answer.

Nicke doesn’t learn exactly what he wants to know from the internet, and why whatever magic he has is affecting some people and not others. He does learn that there is a way to control it, or dampen it, but he can’t find any exact ways that it happens, just a vague “this can be controlled.” Probably it’s something that Jojo - well, his family, who all have null magic - will be able to help him with.

He makes breakfast for the three of them, because he figures that if he’s going to start asking Jojo for favors first thing in the morning, the least he can do is make him breakfast. At the very least, the coffee is already made when Jojo comes into the room, still looking half asleep, his hair a mess.

“I’m pretty sure I said not to have sex in my guest room,” Nicke tells him.

Jojo wrinkles up his nose at Nicke, and doesn’t say anything, shuffling over to the cabinet and pulling down a mug and pouring himself a cup of coffee. Nicke knows that if he’s going to snark at Jojo, he’s going to have to wait until Jojo is properly caffeinated to even respond. Nicke gives him a moment, turning back to the bacon in the pan.

“I didn’t have sex in your guest room,” Jojo finally says, after a few minutes. Nicke turns to look at him, where he’s leaned back against the counter with both hands wrapped around the coffee mug.

“You have sex hair,” Nicke says.

“I… have some hair,” Jojo says. “You don’t know what my sex hair looks like.” He reaches a hand up and runs his hand over his hair. “This is just what my hair looks like in the morning.”

“No,” Nicke says.

“What do you want, Nicklas,” Jojo asks. “There’s not any lube, I didn’t have sex in your guest room, leave me alone.”

Nicke’s not sure he expected Jojo to say that, actually. “Actually, I need you to find out if there’s some way to … suppress whatever this is,” Nicke says. “So that I can, you know, go out in public and be a normal human and you don’t have to hold onto me constantly.”

“So,” Jojo asks, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. “You want me to do you a favor, so you decided to give me shit about hooking up with my boyfriend in your guest room.”

“I mean, I was gonna give you shit about that anyway,” Nicke says. “But I actually need help.”

“Stop being a dick to me before coffee,” Jojo says. “Do you know how much coffee is left in this cup? Most of it, Nicke. Most of it.”

“Fine, fine,” Nicke says. “Do you want eggs? Are you going to wake Kuzy up?”

“Yes, and no,” Marcus says. “Have you called your mom yet?”

“No,” Nicke says, and moves to the fridge to grab the eggs. “I need to, but I think I need to have breakfast first.”

“I mean, what’s the worst that she’s going to say to you? Clearly your immediate family doesn’t know about this, Nicke,” Jojo says, sipping his coffee. “So you’re going to be going to second or third cousins and hoping someone knows about great grandparents or some shit.”

“Don’t throw magic-user logic at me,” Nicke says. “I’m not prepared for this.”

“Nicke, I’m going to make toast,” Jojo says. “And then I’m going to eat it, and then I’m going call my mother.”

Jojo puts his coffee mug down, and proceeds to begin doing those things. While he’s waiting for the toast to pop, he leans against the counter, looking down at his phone. Nicke finishes with both the bacon and the eggs. Jojo keeps making toast, until eventually Kuzy joins them.

They finish breakfast and Nicke tries to put off calling his mother even longer by doing the dishes, but Kuzy bullies him out of the kitchen to do them himself. Nicke sighs dramatically and goes into the living room, leaving Jojo sitting at the counter with his phone and the notepad from the night before and Kuzy at the sink.

Nicke’s mother is stunned to hear what is going on. It’s awkward, explaining how literal strangers are coming up to him to come onto him, and how one of his teammates had to rescue him. She doesn’t know anything about anyone in their family having this sort of magic, but she promises that she’s going to start asking around, and she’ll have his father ask his grandmother.

They chat for a little while longer, and Nicke promises that he’ll be careful, and promises her that he’s trying to work out a way to make it safe for him to have whatever this magic is. She tells him she loves him, and they hang up.

Nicke sits there for a minute, then sighs before going back into the kitchen. The dishes are done and Kuzy is sat next to Jojo at the counter. Nicke is pretty sure that it’s Jojo’s mother he can hear on the speaker, giving instructions while Jojo scribbles them down. Jojo’s handwriting is shitty. Not that Nicke can talk about someone having shitty handwriting. Nicke can follow the conversation, but he doesn’t really understand what Jojo and his mother seem to be talking about. All the words make sense, and Nicke knows them, but he doesn’t understand them in the order they’re being said.

He does understand when Jojo wraps up the call with his mom and hangs up.

“So, can she help?” Nicke asks.

“We’re going to try?” Jojo says. “I mean, I can’t promise that I can do this right or it will be as good as if my mom or grandma did it, but I’m going to try.”

“I mean, that’s the best we can hope for, right?” Nicke says. “That you try and it works?”

“Yeah,” Jojo says. “But I gotta go home to do it.”

“No, sure, yeah,” Nicke says. “But I can’t leave my house unless you come back.”

“I will, don’t worry,” Jojo says.

He and Kuzy change back into their clothes from the night before and leave Nicke alone with his thoughts and his laptop. He keeps trying to search for different things that might give him an idea of what’s going on. He still doesn’t know why this affects some people and not others. He still doesn’t know why it’s setting in now. As far as he knows, nothing has changed.

Jojo is gone for hours. It’s really only about four hours, which Nicke guesses is fair because Jojo had mentioned that he was going to shower and change in addition to getting what he needed to make some kind of charm to help Nicke with being able to go out in public without Jojo holding onto him.

When Jojo does come back, he still has Kuzy in tow, who has also showered and changed, and a shopping bag of - well, Nicke’s not sure what’s in the bag. He puts it down on Nicke’s kitchen counter while Kuzy makes himself comfortable on the stool.

“I didn’t expect you also to come back,” Nicke says.

“You need somebody to test on, make sure magic shuts down,” Kuzy says, shrugging. Nicke’s sure that’s totally why, and not at all because they spend most of their off time together.

“Okay,” Jojo says. “First of all, I want you to know that I have never done this before, and it was weird going into a craft store to buy all this shit to do it with.” Nicke frowns, because this doesn’t sound promising. “Second of all, you’re in charge of dinner. And third of all, if this doesn’t work, remember my first of all.”

He grins like he hasn’t just told Nicke that he might not be able to do this.

“Mackan,” Nicke says. “What am I gonna do if this doesn’t work? I can’t go to practice tomorrow.”

“My mom said she’s pretty sure I can do it,” Jojo says. He sounds confident about it, but it doesn’t make Nicke feel any better. “If I can’t, then, well, we’ll find someone here in the states who can overnight the charm to us.”

“Maybe you can buy one on Etsy,” Kuzy says. Jojo laughs.

“Why don’t you look that up, just in case,” he says. Kuzy reaches out and commandeers Nicke’s computer.

“What do you want for dinner?” Nicke asks with a sigh.

Nicke makes dinner while Jojo works, pulling everything out of his shopping bag and spreading it out across the countertop. He’s still got the handwritten instructions that he got from his mom, and Nicke has to hope that this is going to work. Jojo doesn’t even have that much stuff - a spool of leather cord, a lighter, and a needle, which Nicke is afraid to ask the purpose of.

“Hey Nicke, you have scissors?” he asks, and Nicke, reaches out and tugs open a drawer, rummaging for a second before handing Jojo his kitchen scissors.

A better idea might have been to order in, but Nicke figures the least he can do is actually cook dinner if Jojo’s going to do this for him. But it’s distracting, because he’s half trying to cook, and half trying to watch whatever Jojo is doing.

He’s got three lengths of cord cut, and he’s explaining to Nicke that basically, he’s going to braid them together and then Nicke’s going to wear them around his wrist.

“Aww, you’re making me a friendship bracelet?” Nicke says.

“I actually don’t have to do this,” Jojo tells him. “So by all means, keep being a dick about it and I’ll let you become a recluse here in your own house.”

“I’ll order a charm off Etsy,” Nicke says.

“I haven’t found any,” Kuzy says. Nicke sighs.

“Zhenya,” Jojo says, changing the subject. Nicke turns slightly so that he can watch them. Jojo has separated out a lock of his hair. “I need you to cut this and make sure I don’t look like a fool.”

“I’m gonna have to wear your hair in a bracelet?” Nicke asks.

“Mine or a stranger’s, sure,” Jojo says.

“Shouldn’t Nicke be cutting it? It’s to negate his powers,” Kuzy says.

“No,” Jojo says. “I don’t trust him. I trust you because you want to get laid some time in the near future.”

“Fair,” Kuzy says.

Nicke watches as Kuzy cuts a lock of hair from Jojo.. They’re doing literal magic in Nicke’s kitchen, and it involves Nicke, which is bizarre. Nicke has never had anything to do with magic before in his life, but he realizes that Jojo has probably done things like this. His family does this - his mother gave him the instructions on how to make this charm. Maybe it’s passed down from grandmother to mother to son, and now Jojo’s putting it together for Nicke.

He knots the lock of hair with the three strands of cord, and then starts braiding them tightly together. It’s definitely weird, for Nicke, standing there cooking dinner while Kuzy holds the loose ends of the cords and Jojo braids them together. Nicke watches Jojo, the way he chews on his lower lip as he’s concentrating, the way Kuzy watches him and says something, just quiet enough that Nicke can’t hear it, but Jojo looks up from what he’s doing and smiles at him.

Something inside Nicke aches. He wants someone to look at him like that.

Jojo finishes braiding his hair (his fucking hair, Nicke could not be more weirded out by this) in with the leather and ties off the other end. It’s still early enough in the day that he snaps a picture of it with his phone. Nicke watches him texting - and Nicke can only assume that he’s sending it to his mother for her approval. Nicke turns back to the stove.

It’s weirdly quiet in the kitchen while they wait for Jojo’s mother to respond. Nicke’s still nervous about how the needle and lighter are going to come into play, but he’s trying not to think about it. He turns slightly, catches Kuzy leaning forward and kissing Jojo out of the corner of his eye. Nicke sighs and turns back to finishing dinner.

Jojo’s phone pings.

Nicke takes a deep breath and slowly turns around. Jojo has picked up his phone, and is reading whatever his mother has sent back. Then he picks up the lighter.

“What are you gonna do with that?” Nicke asks.

“This is for sterilizing the needle. You don’t happen to have any alcohol pads do you?” Jojo asks.

“Uh,” Nicke says. “No?”

“Whatever,” he says. He flicks the lighter and holds the needle in it.

“Nicke, you got any dead plants you wanna bring back to life?” Kuzy suddenly asks. Nicke looks at him, bewildered. “Semi-rotted fruit?”

Jojo jams the needle into the pad of his thumb. Kuzy flinches, and Nicke’s seen a lot of blood in his career, but this is - this is making him feel pretty squeamish, honestly. He squeezes at his thumb, and all three of them watch a huge bead of blood well up. Nicke’s about to open his mouth to ask what Jojo’s doing when he smears the blood across the braid.

“That’s fucking gross,” Nicke says.

“That’s how you’re going to be able to go out in public,” Jojo says. He sounds weirdly breathless, suddenly, like he’s been bag skated.

“Are you, like, okay?” Nicke asks.

“Sometimes magic is hard, Nicke, stop giving me shit,” Jojo says. “Hand me those bananas.”

Nicke is confused by that, but he reaches out and grabs the bananas sitting on his counter anyway. They’re well beyond ripe - Nicke should probably throw them out, because he’s not even sure anyone would want to make banana bread with them at this point.

Jojo wraps the bracelet around Kuzy’s wrist and ties it loosely.

“Okay, try it,” Jojo says, and pushes the bananas toward Kuzy.

Kuzy picks up one of the bananas and wraps his hand around it. Nicke has seen Kuzy’s magic work before, seen him make flowers grow and rotten fruit come back to being edible. It’s like a weird, vegan version of the kind of magic that Alex has. It’s nice, calming. But this time, nothing happens. Kuzy frowns.

“Fuck yeah,” Jojo says, then reaches out and unties the bracelet from Kuzy’s wrist. “Now do it.”

This time, Kuzy wraps his hand around the banana and the brown, bruised, too ripe skin disappears, like it’s flowing into Kuzy’s hand. And like that, the bananas are edible again. Jojo throws his arms up in victory, then wraps them around Kuzy. Once he lets go, he motions Nicke over, and ties the bracelet around Nicke’s wrist, knotting it tightly.

“I’m wearing your hair and blood,” Nicke says.

“And like, 75% of my energy,” Jojo says. “Is dinner ready? And will you invite Burky over so we can test if this works?”

Nicke grimaces.

Solving Nicke’s problem of not being able to go out in public without people coming onto him doesn’t solve all his problems, but it solves the most immediate one, so he forgets about the rest, like why his magic set in so late, or why it only works on some people and not others. If the magic is nullified, he doesn’t much think it matters. He just has to make sure that he never takes the bracelet off.

It’s weird, and if he thinks about it too often, his stomach starts to twist, so he tries not to.

Everything’s fine and he doesn’t think about it until it comes loose during a game. Of all the things Nicke wants in the world, it’s certainly not for his powers to be fully functional while he’s on the ice, and even less for his powers to be functional on a player on another team in close proximity.

He doesn’t know the bracelet is gone - he’s too busy concentrating. He hears someone yelling his name - later, he finds out that it was Kuzy, on the bench sandwiched between Stick and Jojo, who saw the bracelet hit the ice. There was nothing anyone could have done once the little bit of leather and hair and blood left Nicke’s wrist. No one else on the team even knows, because once Nicke disclosed it to management, he never told the rest of the team. It was taken care of.

There’s no ending where Nicke escapes this unscathed.

He gets slammed into the boards and there are hands on him, but not in a hockey way. He tries not to panic, fighting to get out of a scrum that involves hands trying to make their way under his jersey, a face too close to his. One hard shove and arms cage him in, and it’s Alex, putting his body between Nicke and everyone else.

“What the fuck is going on?” Alex yells, his voice too close to Nicke’s face and too loud, even though he’s trying to be heard above everyone else shouting.

“I had a bracelet,” Nicke says, panicked. “I need to know where it went.”

Kuzy is yelling at Alex in Russian from the bench. Jojo is yelling, too, but it’s mostly swearing. One of the refs finds the bracelet lying on the ice, and gives it back to Nicke, and once it touches his bare skin, everything goes bizarrely calm.

Nicke gets a fine for not disclosing his magic, and a single-game suspension for use of magic on the ice, even if it was unintentional. He also has to disclose to the rest of the team what is happening.

He has late on-set magic. It’s succubus magic - yes, that means weird sex magic, stop laughing, Andre - and it’s nullified by the charm. He promises that he’ll check the knots that make up the charm more often from then on. And he’s sorry. He’s so, so fucking sorry.

After the Incident, everything sort of goes back to normal. More or less, anyway.

Nicke is tired. Exhaustion is starting to settle into his bones, and he wants to chalk it up to just being regular season wear and tear. He’s never felt this tired during the season, ever before. Not even seasons where he’s been concussed or his hips ached constantly.

At first, he thinks he’s getting sick. But nothing ever follows the exhaustion, just a bone deep tired that eventually starts to make it harder to get out of bed in the mornings. He never has a cough, or a sore throat, or anything he would expect to follow. There aren’t any aches.

He seems to feel better on road trips, strangely. He doesn’t understand why he can feel better sleeping in a strange bed in a strange city, and wake up exhausted every day in his own bed in Washington. He’s tried every bed in his house, including the couch, and he still wakes up more refreshed from sleeping in a hotel room bed.

It’s stupid, and it’s irritating.

He goes for dinner with Andre and Jojo one night, on the road, and it’s Andre who starts to slot things into place for him.

“I asked my mom if she knew anything about succubus magic,” Andre says, and wow, great, Nicke’s super glad that Andre did that, he’s definitely never going to be able to to look Andre’s mom in the eye again. “I mean, because it’s kind of like our magic, right? Like, siren-adjacent.”

“Uh huh,” Nicke says, hoping that Andre gets to the point.

“Anyway, she didn’t know anything but she said she’d ask around so she finally came back to me and she said that like, succubus magic really is like siren magic?” Andre says. “But instead of affection, it’s sex. Like sexual energy.”

“Wait, what do you mean?” Nicke asks.

“You know how I’m like. I mean, I know you guys don’t like it when I’m all cranky and being a big baby but I really do need attention,” Andre says. “I don’t know if I’d die without it, but I don’t feel well? Like, sick, without being sick.”

“Tired all the time?” Jojo asks, looking pointedly at Nicke.

“Yeah!” Andre nods enthusiastically. “Like, sirens feed off of attention, affection, that sort of thing. That’s real.”

“That’s why I feel better after we stay in a hotel,” Nicke says suddenly. His face flushes red, all the way to the tips of his ears.

“Always someone having sex nearby,” Jojo says. Nicke groans.

“Or jerking off. Same thing,” Andre says. Nicke wants to bang his head against the table, but he feels like that would maybe draw too much attention to him, and both Jojo and Andre looking at him right now is already plenty.

“Does it have to be someone else’s energy?” Nicke asks. He’s pretty sure it does, because it’s not like he doesn’t jerk it on occasion. He’s never felt any better afterward. It hasn’t made the bone deep exhaustion that he feels any less.

“Yes,” Andre says.

“You don’t eat yourself,” Jojo says. He pauses for a second, eyeing Nicke. “Unless -”

“Don’t even say it,” Nicke says. “Just fucking stop, don’t go any further.”

Both Andre and Jojo are laughing at him. “Oh,” Andre says. “There’s one other thing. She said you’re like a dowsing rod for true love. What the fuck is a dowsing rod?”

“You know in cartoons, when they used the forked stick thing to find water?” Jojo says. “That thing.”

“What does that even mean?” Nicke asks.

“Like, if someone is truly in love, you don’t work on them,” Andre says. “That’s what my mom said, anyway. Like, if you wanted to really test someone’s relationship, you could take off your bracelet and see if you affected them.”

There’s a brief scuffle then. “Kick me under the table one more fucking time,” Jojo says. “Nothing works on me, so it doesn’t matter.”

“But Nicke doesn’t work on Kuzy, either,” Andre says, grinning, and then he yelps. Jojo must have kicked him back.

“Kids,” Nicke says, tired and cranky. “I work on you, Burky.”

“I’m a free agent. Unrestricted free agent of love,” Andre says.

“Please never say that shit again, I will kill you,” Jojo says. “I am not kidding you right now, that was the worst thing I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard a lot of fucking dad jokes.”

“Whatever,” Andre says, back to grinning.

“Okay, it didn’t work on Ovi either,” Nicke says. “And he’s not dating anyone.”

“There’s no rule that it’s not unrequited,” Andre says. Jojo makes a face, and Nicke thinks he gets it. Nicke’s magic doesn’t work on Jojo, but Nicke doesn’t think that Jojo needs to second guess his own feelings.

“Well, I guess I have to go out and pick up more often,” Nicke says.

Both Andre and Jojo start laughing at him again.

Knowing how to fix his problems doesn’t make Nicke happy. He doesn’t enjoy picking up. He’s never really enjoyed picking up, even when he was younger and they were all doing it all the time all across DC. Now that he’s older, he definitely doesn’t have an interest in that.

He wants stability, a relationship, someone who will put up with his bullshit and shitty moods and the fact that he apparently has to wear his friend’s hair and blood around his wrist in order to make sure that he doesn’t turn into some kind of sex monster and get assaulted.

He thinks about Alex being in love - true love! - with someone, something that might be unrequited, and he thinks about all the times he’s never allowed himself to think about what he wants, who he wants. All the times Alex’s arms have fenced him in on the ice to protect him, all the times they’ve fallen asleep next to each other on a plane.

Nicke wonders if it’s Sasha Semin, that Alex loves. He remembers being here all that time with both of them, so casually intimate with each other - the way he sees Kuzy and Jojo with each other, the way that makes his stomach twist with jealousy, because he wants someone to look at him that way.

He knows that there’s a quick fix for this, where he doesn’t have to navigate all of his feelings and everyone else’s. He could ask Tom. It’s easy for Tom to read the way someone feels about other people, to pick up on their feelings and emotions. But Nicke also knows that Tom would never, ever read someone’s emotions like that and tell someone else. So that’s out.

Nicke could also just talk to Alex, but that seems like too much.

Because actually talking to Alex feels too overwhelming and terrible, Nicke picks up a girl in a bar to satisfy his magic, and in the morning when he feels better, he texts Jojo and asks him if he told Kuzy what Andre said, about his magic not working on those who are truly in love.

Nicke gets a middle finger emoji back from Jojo, and ten minutes later a block of untranslated Cyrillic from Kuzy, which he then has to copy and paste into a translator. He’s pretty sure it doesn’t come through completely correctly, but he gets the gist.

Basically, Kuzy is telling him to talk to Alex himself, but in far more words. Nicke’s pretty sure he prefers Jojo’s emoji instead.

All of Nicke’s friends are useless. What’s he even going to say to Alex?

He doesn’t say anything to Alex, in the end.

What he does do is bottle all his feelings up and keep them to himself, because he prefers it to making an ass of himself. He’ll pick up a girl occasionally, swipes right on Tinder when he thinks he can get away with it, even if half the people he messages think that he’s not actually Nick Backstrom and just using the pictures to catfish.

(Please, he tells them. If I were going to use a Capitals player to catfish, wouldn’t I use Alex Ovechkin? Or Tom Wilson? This works approximately 80 percent of the time.)

They get out to a bar after one hell of a win, and it’s good to let loose. It’s also nice to be in a bar, where everyone is drinking and horned up and nobody is actually having sex that Nicke knows of, but the energy is there, anyway, and it makes Nicke feel good, awake and alive in a way that he doesn’t feel on regular days between his hookups.

Dima and Kuzy are drunk dancing and laughing. Jojo’s playing darts with Andre, which probably isn’t the greatest idea, since both of them have had a bit to drink, and Andre’s aim is terrible anyway. He’s sitting pretty much by himself with a beer, just watching. He hears Kuzy, laughing and telling Dima that he’s a terrible dancer, and going for Jojo instead.

Jojo is also, objectively, a terrible dancer. But it doesn’t take much in the way of dance skills to let your boyfriend drunkenly grind on you. They’re both cackling and Andre is whining that Kuzy is stealing Jojo’s attention away from him, which to Andre is a grave offense.

Tom slides into the booth next to him and pins him in and there’s no escape. Tom doesn’t normally pin people in, unless he’s there to talk about feelings. The last thing Nicke wants to do is talk about feelings, but unless he crawls under the table, he literally can’t get away from Tom.

“Do you want to talk about why you’re jealous as fuck of those two?” Tom asks him, point blank, and Nicke very seriously considers crawling underneath the table and fleeing. He’ll sacrifice his dignity, but he won’t have to have this conversation. He slumps lower in the seat.

“No,” he tells Tom.

“It’s kind of giving me a headache,” Tom says. “And we all know about your true love thing and I think - and I know I don’t normally do this but in the interest of, like, you not killing my head constantly just with your shitty, shitty vibes, I think if you made a move it wouldn’t go so badly.”

“What?” Nicke asks. It’s dark enough in the bark that Tom can’t see him blushing.

“You know how my magic works, Papa,” Tom says. “I know you’re jealous of Kuzy and Jojo. And I’m saying that’s stupid because you don’t have to be. You could have that.”

“How do you know?” Nicke asks, suspicious.

“Some people have very loud feelings,” Tom says, before sliding out of the booth.

Nicke doesn’t make a move then, because he’s scared. Things drag on, because Nicke stays scared. He continues to feed off of things half-heartedly, because even when he is hooking up, he’s not happy. It’s not fulfilling, the way he suspects it could be if he were feeding his magic and also making himself happy.

He’s only doing one of those things, and he’s not happy.

Alex has a gathering at his place - a get together, he terms it, because calling it a party implies a lot more effort than he puts in. To Alex, a party involves a DJ and more alcohol than any of them should strictly drink. For a gathering, he grills in the backyard and everyone brings beer and snacks and sides to go with the meat. Some of the guys bring their kids, and it’s much more chill than a party at Alex’s would normally be.

It’s half-dark and Nicke is settled in on one of the loungers on Alex’s patio, watching as Holtby and TJ blow bubbles that never pop using soap and water from Alex’s kitchen. It’s weird, Nicke thinks, how two people who are so different can have such similar magic. Lars makes them swirl through the air, and a hoard of little blonde girls runs screaming after them, TJ’s youngest daughter bringing up the rear as fast as her legs will carry her.

Nicke is smiling when Alex drops onto the lounge next to him, his body heavy and half on top of Nicke’s. Nicke grunts and shoves at him, trying to get the bulk of Alex’s weight on the cushions instead of on Nicke’s body.

“You’re fucking heavy,” Nicke says, and Alex laughs, kicking his feet up onto the table in front of the lounge.

“Yeah,” Alex says. It’s not as comfortable as it might have been, a few months ago, before Nicke had magic and before more than one of his friends and teammates strongly implied that Alex had feelings for him.

Lars’s daughter wipes out on the grass and lets out a shriek. It breaks Lars’s concentration and he runs to her, the rest of the bubbles settling to the grass. The other girls run through them, kicking them all over the place before TJ and Holtby let them disappear, popping and leaving soap residue all over Alex’s grass. Lars is sitting on the grass with his daughter, calming her down.

“How’s your magic?” Alex asks him. Nicke guesses that’s fair. They haven’t talked about it at all, him and Alex, and everyone else seems to be playing with theirs, casually. Nicke can’t exactly do that, and wouldn’t even if he wanted to. He doesn’t want to force someone to be attracted to him.

“Weird,” Nicke says. “Boring. How’s yours?”

“Same as always,” Alex tells him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Nicke does not, in fact, want to talk about it. Alex’s eyes are dark in the string lights of his patio and the firelight flickers off of them. Nicke feels the familiar swoop in his stomach, the way he gets when he’s quiet and alone with Alex and lets himself remember the way it feels to just exist in the same space as Alex Ovechkin.

He’s as familiar to Nicke as breathing. There’s no one else he would want to spend so much time around, no one else he would want to have spent months in Russia with. He’s watched Alex’s hair go from dark to grey and his personality temper into the adult that’s still sprawled half on top of Nicke.

They’ve spent ten years together and Nicke has always told himself that it’s something he can’t have. That their dynamic was too good to risk ruining with some kind of romance. He knew all along that Alex would be open to it, at least, because of Alex’s initial relationship with Sasha, but no, Nicke never thought he would move in on it.

Nicke finally sighs. “Not particularly,” he says. “It’s weird, though. To know that I can just. Make someone want to have sex with me whenever I want.” Nicke pitches his voice low, but he doesn’t think any of the kids are paying attention, most of them well entertained by the bubbles, or other things that other guys are able to do.

“But you don’t want to,” Alex says.

“No, I want someone I’m fucking to actually want me,” Nicke says, frowning slightly. Alex leans his head against the back of the lounge, watching Nicke through half closed eyes.

“That’s fair,” Alex says. “Is it weird to know that you can tell if someone is really in love or not? Kuzy said you made Jojo freak out.”

“Jojo’s being an idiot about it,” Nicke says. “Just because it doesn’t work on him doesn’t mean his feelings aren’t real. He knows how he feels.”

“Some people just want the reassurance,” Alex says. “I’d want the reassurance.”

“You don’t need the reassurance,” Nicke says. “Because you already know.”

“I do know,” Alex says. He’s quiet after that. They’re both quiet, sitting there watching everyone else. The bubble game has died down as it’s gotten darker, and TJ’s youngest has curled up in his lap as he sips a beer, sitting in a chair near the fire pit, chatting with Stick. It’s quiet, some people have even drifted away and gone home.

“What would you do?” Nicke finally asks.

“I know you’re not happy,” Alex says. “I’ve known you long enough to know that that’s true, whether you’re feeding the magic the way it wants or not. I know you, not your magic. So I think you need to find a way to make it work for you, so that you’re happy.”

“Stop pretending that you’re wise,” Nicke says. “I remember when you didn’t even believe that I didn’t have magic, and it took Jojo grabbing you to prove what a real null was.”

“We all grow up,” Alex says, and grins at him, flashing the big empty space in his mouth. “We all deserve to be happy, Nicke, even if we have weird sex magic.”

Nicke shoves him hard. “Get off my lounge, asshole,” he says.

“I mean, it’s my house, I own it,” Alex says.

“I’d threaten to go home, but you’re sitting on me and you’re heavy as fuck,” Nicke says. Alex laughs, and shifts even more of his weight onto Nicke, making him groan.

They scuffle, and both of them end up tumbling onto the tile of the patio, grunting. People are watching. Casual bets are being made. Nicke, by the grace of some forgotten god, pins Alex to the patio. Cheers erupt. Money exchanges hands.

Alex probably let him win. Nicke does not tell Alex that he loves him.

Nicke may never tell Alex that he loves him.

The thing is, Nicke really does hate just picking up. He hates knowing that he’s going to hook up with someone, casually, and never see them again when he honestly does want stability, and happiness - Alex.

He wants Alex.

The hotel’s walls are thin tonight and he can hear Kuzy’s laugh even through the wall. He feels gross even having the thought that he could just feed off of someone else’s sexual energy, especially since he knows it’s his teammates next door. He’s frustrated when he gets up off his bed and throws on a hoodie, shoving his feet into his slides and heading down the hallway to Alex’s room.

He knocks, and waits. He’ll probably have to wait for Alex to put pants on, and maybe whatever he’s about to do is stupid and going to fuck everything up, but anything’s better than being able to hear his friends having sex.

Alex doesn’t have on a shirt when he opens the door, which is very Alex, but he’s frowning like he’s confused, too. He gestures for Nicke to come inside, and steps out of the way, letting the door snap shut behind them as he walks back over to the bed, where his phone and laptop are still spread out, where he’s clearly been stretched out since they got back to the hotel after the game.

“It’s you,” Nicke finally says.

“What?” Alex asks, confused.

“When you said I needed to find a way…. A way that I’d be happy - it’s you. You would make me happy. You do make me happy, but I just - “ Nicke rambles on, unsure where he’s really going with all of this. But at least he’s saying words to Alex and finally pulling the cork out of the vintage wine bottle of his feelings. Two thousand seven. Terrible mouth-feel.

“Nicke,” Alex says, trying to stem the tied.

“I know that you love someone - that it’s your true love, or whatever, and I know that might not be me,” Nicke says. “But Tom told me ages ago that I should do something, and it might go better than I think it’s going to go, but I couldn’t because I was scared, and maybe because I’m an idiot.”

“I think this is the most you’ve ever said to me at one time,” Alex says.

“Fuck off,” Nicke says. “It is not. I’m trying to tell you that I’m in love with you and you’re being an asshole to me.”

“But Nicke,” Alex says. “I know. I’ve known.”

“How have you known?” Nicke asks.

“Well, I’m not a big idiot like you, for starters,” Alex says.

“Tom?” Nicke asks.

“No,” Alex says. “But he did admit that he told you that he could feel my feelings about it. So I thought that you’d say something a long time before now.”

“I was scared,” Nicke says.

“Why?” Alex asks.

“Because I didn’t want to be wrong,” Nicke says. “I want to be with you, playing hockey with you, more than I want to be in love with you. And I wouldn’t risk ruining that because I didn’t know if it was me, or if you loved someone else.”

“Who else would it be, Nicke?” Alex asks him, frowning.

“When I first came here, I used to feel jealous of the way you acted with Sasha, the way you and he were just so casually intimate, taking up each other’s space,” Nicke says. “The way I feel when I watch Kuzy and Jojo now. And I wanted that so badly then.”

“Sasha never loved me,” Alex says, shaking his head. “And I didn’t love him. But we cared about each other. It was different. It was… he kept me from being homesick. But it wasn’t going to last, because it wasn’t… real.”

“What is real? What does that mean?” Nicke asks. “How do you know what’s real?”

“I don’t,” Alex says. “But I know what love feels like. And so I keep hoping that one day you’ll decide that you love me, too.”

Nicke opens his mouth to say something else, then snaps it back shut. Alex has just told him he loves him. Alex has said it, and Nicke doesn’t have to wonder about that anymore, if it’s him, if it’s Sasha, if it’s someone else entirely. Alex loves Nicke.

Nicke is terrible at expressing his feelings. He always has been. Alex is sitting on the edge of his bed in his sweatpants, looking up at Nicke, and he’s just laid his entire heart bare for Nicke, and Nicke can’t find the words to even say that he loves Alex in return.

Instead, Nicke leans forward and kisses Alex, soft and closed-lipped. Their noses bump together gently, and when Nicke pulls away, Alex’s eyes are closed. Nicke reaches out one hand, and brushes a thumb across Alex’s lower lip. He’s always wanted to touch.

“Nicke,” Alex says, his lip moving under Nicke’s thumb.

“I’ve loved you since I first came to DC,” Nicke says. “And I never said anything because I never wanted to leave.”

“You won’t,” Alex says.

He reaches out and draws Nicke in, pulling Nicke’s body between his knees as he sits on the bed and wrapping his arms around Nicke’s waist. Nicke goes easily, tipping his head down until their lips meet again.

Waking up in Alex’s bed is different. It’s what Nicke wanted, what he yearned for for years. Maybe it’s not perfect, with Alex’s alarm blaring from his phone, and Alex’s arm thrown around him, warm and heavy, and Alex’s body making him too hot to want to go back to sleep.

Nicke feels… happy. Truly happy - content, even, for the first time in a long time. And he knows that when he gets up and gets out of bed, that feeling of contentment is going to fade, because the energy he collects from sleeping in hotels fades pretty fast. But it doesn’t mean that he isn’t happy.

He rolls over, running a hand across Alex’s hair. Alex doesn’t open his eyes, just smiles and wraps his arms more tightly around Nicke.

Nicke has to go to his own room to brush his teeth and get dressed, and it seems like a minor miracle he doesn’t run into anyone in the hallway as he’s doing his walk of - well, it’s not a walk of shame, really, because he doesn’t feel ashamed of it, but he doesn’t feel like he wants to hear the team chirping him before he’s had coffee.

He gets dressed and brushes his teeth, makes sure his bag is packed up and heads down to breakfast. Alex meets him there, and they slump into chairs next to each other with their coffee. They sit close enough together that their thighs press against each other, and Alex rests his arm across the back of Nicke’s chair.

Tom and Andre make a beeline for them when they come into the dining area, and sit down at the table. Both of them are grinning, big wide, white smiles.

“You love each other,” Tom says. “And you’re happy.”

“You’re not supposed to just read people’s emotions,” Nicke says. “Without permission.”

“Remember when I told you some people have very loud emotions?” Tom says. “You might as well be screaming.”

Alex laughs, and his hand moves off the back of Nicke’s chair to rest against Nicke’s ribcage.

Nicke doesn’t think he’s ever going to be happy he finally has magic.

It’s not a fun magic to have, and it never will be. He’s lucky that he’s able to have a charm that makes it stop, and lucky that he has a boyfriend who loves him, and who knows him.

Being in love makes literally having to have sex to keep his energy up … kind of okay. No, maybe not.

Alex makes everything okay.