Work Text:
Nick double-checked the photo for the third time since stationing himself beside the dining hall entrance. There had only been a few students similar enough to catch his attention since he’d arrived, but he still worried he’d missed her. He made a quick scan of the trio of freshmen entering the building before returning to his phone. The image they’d given him was a copy of her student ID; Briana standing before a blank, white wall with a small smile wrinkling her face. Her hair was slicked down and pulled back into a curly knot at the base of her head. Her skin, warm and brown, was radiant in the glow of sunlight that must have been filtering in through a window. Her eyes were a patchwork of earth tones in the light. Her smile wasn’t big enough to show teeth, but the happy tilt of her full lips brought attention to a small mole beneath her right cheek.
Nick’s heart stuttered in his chest. She was…well, she was—
The door slammed open. A girl hurried down the walkway so fast he barely had time to identify her. But the short glimpse of her side profile was more than enough. The exhilaration at his contrived plan somehow working gave him the confidence to blurt:
“Briana Irene Matthews!”
The girl froze mid-step, ignoring the odd looks thrown her way from a passing group of girls and slowly turned on her heel to search for where his voice had come from. When her eyes found him, a sting of recognition zipped through his body. Beyond the fact this was one hundred percent his mentee, Nick was startled by the sensation of having already met her. He hadn’t noticed when looking at her student ID, but seeing her in the flesh brought forth a dizzying wave of deja vu.
And then he caught notice of the indignation streaked across her face. If Nick hadn’t been so determined to find her, he would’ve been tempted to tuck his tail between his legs and run. He laughed, more amused than he expected to be. “Now, that’s what you call a murderous expression!”
“Want to help me with the follow-through?” Her response was immediate, almost as if it had been resting on the tip of her tongue, waiting for him to give her a reason to release it.
Nick’s mirth only deepened. She was fun . He pushed away from his spot against the wall and walked closer. “You’re hard to pin down.” Dean McKinnon hadn’t been exactly subtle when he’d insisted he meet with her today. Nick didn’t particularly feel any type of way about the sudden assignment. Sure, it was extra work for him to keep an eye on an EC first-year, but he appreciated the distraction. Onceborns— non-Order members , he corrected himself—were usually good at that. But he certainly hadn’t expected the cat-and-mouse game he’d be forced to play. “And rude , too, leaving me on read all day.”
The gall it took for anyone to continuously ignore texts with their read receipts on sent another wave of ill-timed humor through him. God, he needed more sleep.
She closed her eyes in realization, a heavy sigh leaving her lips. Her lashes were long enough to dust her cheek bones. “You’re the babysitter.”
“Does that mean you’re a baby?” He felt his lips twitch with the urge to smile at his own joke. A joke Briana didn’t seem to find funny because she turned and picked up the brisk pace she’d had before he’d stopped her. He had to jog to catch up. “Briana, wait! I’ll walk you to your dorm.” That would give them enough time to get to know one another.
“It’s Bree, and no thanks.” Her tone offered no room for argument, and Nick’s mind churned into motion as he wrangled for a way to keep her from leaving his side. He had spent the entire day trying to get a hold of her. He wasn’t sure he’d ever see her again if they didn’t depart on an amicable note.
Before he could stop himself, he dug out the charm he usually reserved for Order members. “Bree, short for Briana. I’d be happy to escort you, peer mentor and all that. According to the dean, you have a tendency to get lost at night and accidentally end up in the back of police cruisers?”
She huffed, quickening her pace. But Nick was prepared after the first escape. He caught up with her in two, clean strides. When she glanced over through the corner of her eye and found him still matching pace with her, her face crumpled in an oddly violent mix of shock and disappointment.
“How did you find me?” Bree spat out accusingly.
Nick shrugged. “I asked Dean Mckinnon for your class schedule and campus ID photo.” When she went to say something else, he held up his hand. “Not personal information typically shared with students, but the EC consent forms we all signed waive that right between mentors, orientation assistants, and other assigned guides. I found out when your last class ended. Made a guess as to when you’d hit dinner, then estimated how long it’d take for you to get through the buffet line in Lenoir, find a table, and eat at that hour of the day. All I had to do was show up and wait outside the exit closest to Old East.”
She paused abruptly, and the movement sent her curls flying, the scent of whatever products she used wafting his way. He smiled through the wave of vanilla, shea, and hibiscus. “So, you’re a creep?”
What? Oh no, he’d somehow managed to make his already terrible first impression worse .
Nick held a hand to his chest, playing at mock hurt. “Not a creep, just clever! And operating under Dean McKinnon’s explicit orders to make first contact with you today.” It was a damn good plan, in his mind at least. “Timed it perfectly too. You walked out five minutes after I arrived.”
“Being clever and being creepy are not mutually exclusive.”
“Oh, I agree.” He scratched at his chin. “There’s probably a Venn Diagram or a graph of direct proportionality in there somewhere—”
Bree groaned. “This is, by definition, using your intelligence for evil.”
Something brewed in his belly, the fluttering birth of an infant crush. He knew it, because it didn’t happen often. He didn’t allow it. But the ease in which Bree bickered with him left him breathless. He wanted to bottle up the sensation. Store away this playful anonymity. He burrowed through his words before his mind could settle on the fact. “Correct. On two levels, in fact.” He raised a finger. “Using one’s cleverness to creep and”—a second finger—“using one’s cleverness to diagram the cleverness-to-creepiness relationship.”
Bree gave him a dead-panned stare with her jaw slack before she picked up her walk again. She didn’t try to outrun him this time, however. Nick sidled along beside her like a cat, hoping if he kept quiet she would allow him to walk with her to her dorm. He parsed through the ways he could get her to agree to a second meeting. Dean McKinnon had made it seem like she was a delinquent. So, he’d been partially prepared to face a lot more animosity. But Bree only seemed annoyed that she’d been assigned a mentor at all. And something about her self-assurance told him she wasn’t someone who typically required others to keep watch over her. She was in the early college program. She couldn’t have gotten in without at least some discipline.
So, what caused her to get in trouble?
In his careful assessment, he caught her sneaking a look at him, before whipping her head back around when she realized he was already watching. A smile caught on his mouth.
He let the moment pass before asking, “So, did you jump the cliff? The one at the Quarry?”
“No.”
“Well, aside from landing in the dean’s office on your first day of school—a record, I’m guessing, so well done—it’s not the worst thing to do. Cliff’s not that high, and it’s kinda fun.”
She turned toward him fully, surprise etched across her face. Her eyes lit up in interest, and the sight of it, something that wasn’t apathy or annoyance, wrought forth a flush up Nick’s neck. “ You’ve done it?”
He laughed. “I have.” He’d joined a party of students before classes had begun his first year. A college sophomore had spotted him hovering and insisted he give it a go. Every logical side of him had urged him not to. His mind had already gathered a list of possible injuries: cracked ribs, hematoma, concussion. But as he’d stared down at the water, the desire to feel the cold splash against his skin grew.
And besides, whatever hurt he might’ve felt when he hit the water couldn’t have been worse than what he’d already experienced.
Fortunately for him, he was right. The brief moment he’d been fully submerged, mind silenced by the rush against his ears, the chill of the water stiffening every inch of his body, the weightlessness—was amazing. He’d come up smiling, sending thumbs up at the hoots echoing down from the boys above. He’d felt brave. He’d felt rebellious. He’d felt free .
And then something in his chest had tugged, and he turned to see glowing, amber eyes watching him from the dense woods surrounding the cliff.
“But aren’t you the dean’s golden boy?” Bree’s voice drove him out of the memory.
He shrugged. “I’m great on paper.”
They walked in silence for the next couple of minutes. Nick was pleased to find the tension in Bree’s shoulders had dissipated. But the moment it was gone, it began to build again. Bree’s face went cloudy with thought. He hurried to speak, before the distance he’d managed to cross grew again.
“So, Dean McKinnon said you enrolled with a friend?”
A different sort of surprise captured her. “Alice. She’s always wanted to come here.”
“And you didn’t?” When she didn’t immediately answer, Nick amassed his own understanding. “Then why did you come?”
“I’m a smarty-pants.” Her response was too quick, too formulaic for Nick to believe her.
“Obviously,” he said, “but that’s how you got here, not why. Nobody comes to EC just for the classes.”
Bree snorted. “Tell that to Alice. She’ll be crushed.”
“Not answering the question. I see.” He was assessing her once more before he knew it, even as her brows furrowed from his attention. He’d been trained to find answers, to never leave any stone unturned. There was a lot Bree was omitting, and while it was, obviously, none of his business, he couldn’t help but wonder . “Dean McKinnon asked me to talk to you about your student activity requirement since some campus groups begin recruiting members the first week of school. See any you like?”
She blinked at him, then frowned as she tried to figure out what he’d meant. Nick smothered his amusement with his hand. “Do you even know what a student group is?” he asked.
Bree scrunched her nose at him. Her face was so open . Nick wanted to press more, find all the different ways her face could contort and twist and transform. “I can guess,” she said with a bit more gusto than needed. “Clubs. Professional degree orgs for pre-med kids or pre-law kids. I dunno… fraternities and sororities?”
“Mostly right,” Nick said, “except EC kids can’t join frats or sororities. Minors in environments notorious for partying and drinking? That’s a no-go. What parent would send their precious underage baby to UNC if they thought we were studying organic chem during the day and doing keg stands at night?”
“Well, which one did you join? So I know which one to avoid.” Her eyes sparked with a challenge, like she was waiting for her quip to land—and stun. The only thing it did was make Nick’s chest grow warm.
“A second sidestepped question. Cricket Club.” It was full of some of the most obnoxious people he’d ever met but they entertained him enough.
“Cricket. Club. In basketball and football country?” She tilted her head. Now she was the one checking him over.
Nick shrugged. “I knew it would piss my dad off.” It wasn’t the full truth, but it was close.
For some reason, Bree’s face darkened, and Nick automatically went through everything he’d said in the past minute to see what had ticked her off.
“Oh?” she said. It was phrased like a question, but it didn’t sound like one. It sounded like what Nick was beginning to recognize as one of her accusations.
“My dad’s an alum,” he explained. “A psychology professor here.” The mention of his father, as it always did, made his throat partially close up.
She raised her brows. “And he wants you to do something other than cricket?”
“Yep.” Her gaze was much too aware all of a sudden, so Nick tipped his head back to stare at the branches overhead as they passed beneath them. “Follow in his footsteps.”
She hummed knowingly, like she was telling herself uh huh in her head. “But you’re not going to do that something else?”
Without his permission, a swath of memories flooded his mind. Lying in bed, his entire body aflame with pain. So much that even the smallest twitch sent a flare up his spine. The constant soreness, feeling like his skin was shorn raw every day. Training. Training. Recuperate. Training. A kick to the side powered by a twelve-year-old’s delicately concealed fury. Lecture. Training. Selwyn’s face when he’d renounced his title.
He frowned. “Nope.”
“Why not?” Bree was watching him intently.
He stared back. “Because I don’t do things just because my father wants me to.”
Her face fell. “He just wants a connection.”
Damn right he does.
Nick scoffed. “I’m sure he does, but I don’t care.” Doing anything his father wanted was surrender. And as long as Nick lived, he refused to surrender to his father, or the Order, or anyone who shared their beliefs.
Bree stopped walking. “You should care.”
Nick paused beside her. “Oh?”
“Yes,” she insisted.
Nick could tell without pressing that their light hearted conversation had turned personal. He wasn’t quite sure when the shift had happened, but Bree’s words began to carry more and more weight with them, like she wanted them to sink into the deepest trenches of his mind. She probably had something going on—or had going on with her own parents—and thought he was making a mistake by pushing his father away. He was oddly comforted by the thought a girl he’d just met would have enough heart to encourage him not to make the same mistakes she thought she might’ve. But what she didn’t know, what her non-Order member self couldn’t ever process, was that it really was that serious. In the underground world of demons and monsters (both the ones under the bed and the ones down the hall), an entirely new array of horrors existed. Ones that Briana Matthews would never, ever experience.
It brought him relief she wouldn’t have to.
“You’re pushy,” he said, and smiled.
Bree blinked at him. Once. Twice. Then, she resumed their walk.
After a few more minutes of silence, they came upon Old East. Nick could practically hear Bree thinking beside him. He stole a few sneaky glances her way, and each time her face was scrunched in thought. The sight made him bite his lip to reign in laughter. He’d never met someone who so viscerally felt . Every thought, every emotion was plastered on her face. Now, he didn’t know exactly what prompted her deep contemplation, but he could probably guess.
When the quiet began to dig at him, he began going through his list of topics to bring up. He thought he’d done a good job at getting her to warm up, but he would still fail if she didn’t walk away from him with a smile on her face.
Before he could say anything, though, she turned to him. Her eyes met his for a moment before they flickered over his shoulder—and widened.
“Oh my God…,” she whispered.
“What?” Nick said.
But Bree’s response was to sprint past him. He sputtered, confusion rushing hot through his veins as he whipped around to watch her run. Somehow, even with the scattered activity on the sidewalks and lawn, she had already cleared at least thirty feet.
“Bree!” He ran after her. “What’s wrong?” Several people threw curious looks his way, but he raced past them.
His focus was on not losing Bree. She darted in between couples and parents with their children. A dog barked at her.
“Bree, come on!”
She darted around a corner.
Nick huffed, pumping his arms and speeding up to come around the corner as well. He skidded to a stop, however, when he spotted Bree.
And the partial corp hellhound growling before her.
Shit.