Chapter Text
Nikki’s mind is completely blank as he stares at the empty, open notebook in front of him. The stark purity of the white paper absolutely mocking him without any black markings as he taps his pen against the desk in his makeshift home studio. His bass is propped up against the far wall, the curtains of the huge window open to let in the moonlight that mixes with the warmth of the lamps that are on in his house, and there’s a half empty bottle of Jack sitting precariously close to the edge of the desk, all things that would normally combine to create the perfect atmosphere in which he could write but tonight, there’s just nothing.
A deep growl of frustration leaves his throat completely out of his control as he throws himself to lean back in his chair and slams his pen down, hands coming up to card through his matted black hair. His fingers get stuck in some greasy knots and he makes a mental note to actually take a shower soon, sighing as he grabs the pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the clutter on the desk and lights one up.
The nicotine that fills his lungs has an immediate calming effect as he exhales the smoke, looking around absently at the dark red walls of the room where he spends most of his time when he’s in his new home. He bought the house with his signing bonus after his band signed with Elektra Records, right after buying himself his dream car, and it still shocked him every single time that he was an actual house owner.
It wasn’t crucial for him to write at this exact moment. They had just released their newest album and they were about to start touring in just over a week and Nikki was feeling so validated. Validated because he knew they were good enough, the record sales for Shout at the Devil that were already taking off was proof of that. Those days and nights grinding away, playing the shittiest bars on the strip to measly crowds of people who barely looked up to boo, had been worth it. The heckling, the fist fights, the literal starvation in that old crappy two bedroom apartment he shared with Vince, his lead singer, and Sammy, their drummer, had been worth it. Long nights agonizing over every note and word with Mick as the man constantly changed his guitar pieces were absolutely worth it because they were making it. His baby, his band, was taking off and Nikki was happier than he can ever remember being.
Or maybe, happy wasn’t exactly the word.
Proud, yes. Exhilarated, definitely.
But happiness was an elusive concept for Nikki. He experiences it like the atmosphere experiences lightning; a long static build-up of events and situations, a fast, explosive crack of feeling, followed by a just as quick dissipation back to dispiritedness. Vince had told him once that Nikki was just a morose person, that when he wasn’t drunk or high and therefor crazy, he just naturally tended toward depression.
Nikki doesn’t really believe that’s true, it’s just that his sober mind thinks too much about things that he can’t control or change.
He thinks about his childhood, or more accurately, the lack thereof. He thinks about how selfish and miserable a mother has to be to set her own desires above the actual physical welfare of her child. He thinks about a kid being hit by men meant to be father figures and about how he’s never taking shit like that from anybody ever again. He thinks about the abandonment by an actual father, about how disappointing it was to realize his namesake wanted nothing to do with him, about how he felt burning the last of Frank Feranna Jr. away with his license the day he became Nikki Sixx.
Most of all he thinks about the loneliness. The loneliness of a boy who never had an ounce of affection thrown his way until way too late in his life. That loneliness was a beast inside of Nikki’s heart, gnawing away at the sinew and veins and drinking the blood that was supposed to be pumped through his body, leaving him feeling weak. Nikki didn’t like to feel weak.
He did everything he could to fill that void, to feed that beast, to cling to the brief sparks of happiness that came his way. He drank and did drugs, he did crazy things with Vince and Sammy just to override everything with that rush of adrenaline, he bedded countless groupies, men and women alike, all in an effort to drive away that loneliness and chase away the darkness in his own mind. He turned himself into an animal of the night, prowling the streets of Los Angeles for anything to distract him in the dark. But it was always temporary, just like the flash of a lightning strike, driven away by the morning sun and leaving Nikki tortured by his demons again.
Nikki isn’t one to languish in his misery. He doesn’t want to be sad like Sammy seems to think, and he does try to be happy unlike what Vince seems to think. He supposes Mick understands it best, the weariness that comes with a life that has just beaten you down. The guitarist told him when they last talked about it that Nikki just hadn’t found that thing that lifts him up and makes him want to stay up and until he does, he’s always going to be in this spiral.
The issue was that Nikki always thought that thing would be his music. Nikki is under no delusions, he knows that music literally saved his life. He wouldn’t be here today without it and he has a love for it that rests deep in his bones, but it’s temporary, just like everything else for him. In those few hours he’s on stage or in the studio, he’s truly Nikki Sixx. Alive, passionate, strong, thriving. The second he’s not playing though, he’s lost, his music unable to sustain him when he doesn’t have a bass in his hands or a notebook in his lap.
For now, he’s okay. They’re busy working on putting together a killer stage for their set, spending copious amounts of time in the studio to perfect their setlist and live versions of the recorded tracks. Nikki is swamped with photoshoots and interviews and record signings. These things occupy him and distract him from that emptiness that consumes him when he’s alone and idle.
He’s already turned to heavy drinking and copious amounts of cocaine to stave off his darker thoughts, he shudders to think about what he might get into when those stop being enough.
For now though, he wanted to write. Nikki knows that once the tour starts, between performances, interviews, and partying, he was going to be too busy and too out of it to get any work done so he wanted to get a head start on their next album but there was just nothing coming out of his pen onto the paper.
He’s uses his foot on the ground to swing himself back and forth in his chair as he smokes, he wants to put some music on, the house far too quiet for his kind of mind to be comfortable in but he doesn’t like listening to other people’s music when he’s trying to write. His eyes move over the pictures, the sound equipment and speakers lazily before they land on a box of books next to his bass. He’d been meaning to get a bookshelf or something to house them but he’d been simultaneously too busy and too lazy to do it yet.
On the top sat a black leather bound book, it was fairly thick, it’s pages worn from age but it was the cover that always caught Nikki’s attention whenever he saw it, silver embossed into the leather in the shape of the pentagram. He had been staring at the cover of this very book when he had decided that this was going to be the symbol for their newest album cover, and with that, came a whole concept. A friend had actually picked it up for him while he was in New Orleans, the fellow musician had thrown it at him when he had gotten back, telling Nikki that he knew the bassist was into freaky shit like this and it had looked cool.
Nikki had laughed at the time, thrown something right back at him but he kept the thing. To date though, he had never opened it.
Suddenly he was moving out of his seat and walking to the box, picking the book up without thinking about it and sitting back down. The leather was soft in his hands and as he sets it on the desk in front of him, he thinks fuck it, he may as well actually look through it, it’s not like he was getting any work done anyway.
Nikki doesn’t believe in God or the Devil, not necessarily. He believes that people can be angels or demons but doesn’t actually think those entities exist but he is extremely interested in the stories surrounding them all. Still, he does feel a peculiar energy wash over him as he flips the book open.
“Superstitious bitch.” Nikki chuckles to himself as he turns the pages.
The writing is in an ink that’s dark red, almost black, but Nikki can see the difference in the color tone and the language is something he’s never seen before. He can’t read it, but it’s beautiful to look at and the symbols are captivating his attention as he continues to turn the pages.
One symbol in particular has him pausing in his page turning, his mind filling with an idea of painting symbols from this book all over their stage for the tour and he grins as he picks up his pen and copies the symbol down in his journal.
From there he flips through the book with more purpose, copying his favorite symbols down to show the rest of the band and choose which ones to use. He’s not sure he’s doing them any justice, but he tries to be as thorough and accurate as possible. Another smile tugs at his lips as he thinks about how incredible it’s going to look and how freaked out the label is going to be when they see it.
The next symbol he copies is more difficult than the others, but when he sees it, he feels drawn to it immediately. He can see it so perfectly in his head, the beautiful circle symbol with it’s flowing script around the edges and intricate shapes in the center will be painted in bright red on their black stage right in the middle of all of them.
He’s just finishing copying the symbol down, making the last mark when he feels a strong rush of wind flow through the room and he looks up in shock at the strength of it, papers from his desk flying around and the pages of the book fluttering and he’s confused when he sees the window is still closed and even more confused when the lights shut off. He strides through the papers in the air to start feeling around the edges of the window but he can’t feel any air flowing through and he’s truly starting to freak out a little bit, heart pounding as his eyes flicker around trying to find the source, when the wind all of a sudden dies down and the lights flicker back on.
The papers fall to the ground and the desk and he watches them in disbelief for a second before he’s tearing out of the room and checking all of the windows in the living room and the kitchen. They’re all closed and he even goes as far to check the air conditioning but it’s shut off and he stands there, arm against the wall as he tries to reason away just what the hell happened.
He shakes his head and tells himself it was just a phantom draft from somewhere in the house. It’s an old house, one of the reasons Nikki bought it was because it had an old world charm to it, it wasn’t a new, perfectly manufactured thing but now he’s starting to see the drawbacks.
He makes his way back to his studio, glances at the book, surprisingly still open to the page of that circular symbol he was copying down and shakes his head as a shiver works its way down his spine. He doesn’t believe in magic and demons and witchcraft, and the book has nothing to do with what just happened. At least, that’s what he tells himself as he closes the book and grabs the bottle of Jack from the edge of the desk and leaves the room, turning the lights out behind him as he makes his way to his bedroom.
Nikki takes a large gulp from the bottle, still trying to calm his rattled nerves and reaches out a hand to flip the switch for the lights in his room but when he does, no light turns on.
Nikki fiddles with the switch and curses the faulty electricity in the old house when another single gust of wind blows through the room and causes Nikki to look up. The lights are off but the moonlight spilling into the rest of the house lets him see okay and even if it were pitch black he would still be able to make out the glowing red eyes staring at him from the direction of the bed.
Nikki drops the bottle of liquor in his hands in surprise at the figure laying across his bed, the bottle bouncing off the floor and soaking the carpet beneath his feet.
“Who the fuck are you?” Nikki calls out angrily. He doesn’t know if it’s some crazed fan with strange contacts or a joke being played on him by Vince and Sammy but he’s not in the mood to be messed with right now.
But all he gets in the face of his anger is a breathy laugh that makes goosebumps pop up along his skin, jumping when the never used fireplace on the wall next to him suddenly roars to life, lighting the room in flickering warm light and Nikki almost audibly gasps when he sees the person draped on his side on his bed.
The figure is most definitely a male, and if Nikki were just looking at the bare mile long legs crossed over each other, Nikki would have no question that they were just human but as his eyes slide up over lean thighs and the short leather shorts that hug the slight curve of the being’s hips, Nikki spots a long thin appendage ending with an arrowhead tip flicking back and forth lazily over his legs and he instinctually knows it’s a tail.
If he had any other doubts that this was some sort of inhuman creature, the clawed hands certainly washed them away. His slender torso was bare and Nikki followed the long lines of the creature’s body to a long neck and a pretty face, full red lips, high cheekbones, straight nose and big brown eyes lined black, all surrounded by long curly black hair. The two small fangs that peek out from under the thing’s lip as he smiles and the two small black horns that are nestled in his hair further confirm that whatever this admittedly beautiful thing is, it certainly wasn’t human.
The being is propping his head up with one arm, his other hand tracing patterns on his own hip as he watches Nikki with a gleam in his eyes that looks like pure sin to Nikki and makes a sudden wave of heat wash through him. The bassist feels confused when a haziness starts to settle over him, his pants feeling tight as he stares at the creature and his own arousal shocks him because who the fuck is confronted with something like this and gets aroused and not scared?
“Who, who the fuck are you?” He repeats the question, trying to sound as angry as the first time but his voice comes out low and husky and it makes the creature on his bed outright giggle at him and Nikki shouldn’t find that sound cute but he does and what the fuck is happening to him right now?
The thing shifts in position, climbing up on his hands and knees facing Nikki before finally speaking, “You should know, you summoned me, didn’t you mortal?”
Confusion hits him again, but Nikki can’t respond because right at that moment, the creature is jumping clear across the space between them and Nikki catches him out of instinct, those long legs wrapping around his waist and clawed hands sinking into his hair to tilt his face up.
“Now, let’s have some fun.”