Two months in and Enzo brings it up again. She already knows what she's going to say. That doesn't make it easier for either of them.
pairing: enzo st. john x fay nima (self ship)
been thinking about vampirism a lot lately and i wanted to write a fic about how fayzo deals with the possibility of nima growing old. enzo jumps into things headfirst and i think this is one of those things he jumped into without thinking about what it would mean if she just — said no. anyway. here we are
She smelled like the grill.
This was the part of waitressing that nobody mentioned just the way the smell followed you home and got into your hair and your clothes and sat there. Nima had changed out of her uniform in the back before leaving but it hadn't helped. She still smelled like the grill. She suspected she would smell like the grill for the rest of her natural life.
She dropped her bag by the door and sat down on the couch and did not move.
Enzo was in the kitchen. She could hear him the particular sound of him moving around in there, comfortable in a way that had taken her weeks to stop noticing, because the first time he'd moved through a space like he belonged in it she'd watched him the way she watched everything that felt like it might require a response at some point. He'd made tea without asking if she wanted any and set it in front of her without saying anything about it and she had drunk it.
Two months.
She was still not entirely sure how two months had happened. It felt like a thing that had occurred to her gradually and then all at once, like dark coming in, and by the time she'd noticed it was already done.
He came out of the kitchen and looked at her.
"Bad shift," he said. Not a question.
"Table of eight," Fay said. "Separate checks."
"Barbaric." He grinned
"They tipped four percent." She huffed
"Genuinely evil people."
She closed her eyes. He sat down on the other end of the couch, not close, and she could feel him looking at her in the way he looked at her sometimes like she was something he was still in the process of figuring out and found the process worthwhile. She had told him once, in the flat even voice she used for things she meant seriously, that she didn't like being looked at like that. He had said I know and done it anyway, which was so specifically him that she hadn't had anywhere to go with it.
They sat there. The apartment was quiet.
"You could quit," Enzo said.
Fay opened her eyes "With what money." She asked
"I have money."
"I'm aware of that," she said, "and it's not relevant."
He didn't push it. He knew better than to push that one, which was one of the things she had reluctantly noted about him over two months he learned things. Not always quickly, but he learned them. He knew where the lines were, mostly. He didn't always stop before them, but he knew where they were.
She opened her eyes again and looked at the ceiling.
"You know," he said, after a while, in the particular tone he used when he was about to say something she wasn't going to like, "you wouldn't have to work at all—"
"Enzo."
"—if you weren't—"
"Enzo."
He stopped.
She turned her head and looked at him. He was watching her with the expression he got when he was saying something he'd already thought about from seventeen angles and had decided to say anyway. She knew that expression. She'd been seeing it more lately. "No," she said.
"You haven't let me finish."
"You were going to say if I wasn't human," she said. "And the answer is no."
He looked at her. Not deflated, not backing down just looking at her, steady, in the way that meant this wasn't going to be the short version of this conversation. She had a feeling, sitting there in her grill-scented clothes with her tired feet and her four percent tip, that this was not going to be a short conversation.
"I'm not saying right now," he said. "I'm not saying tomorrow. I'm saying"
"I know what you're saying." Fay said quietly
Enzo paused a moment and then said "Then can you let me say it."
She was quiet. That was as close to yes as she gave, and he knew it.
"You're going to age," he said. He said it simply, "I'm not going to. And I am I am well aware of what that means, I've lived it, I know exactly what it looks like from where I'm standing, and I'm telling you that I don't want that. For us."
"I know you don't," she said.
"So" he asked so quietly so softly fay might think he would break if she didn't know what he was
"I don't want it either," she said. "What's coming. I know what's coming. I'm not I'm not naive about it."
"Then"
"I still don't want to be a vampire."
He stopped. She watched him absorb that, watched the thing move through his face that he was usually too controlled to let move through his face something that wasn't quite frustration and wasn't quite fear but was sitting in the neighborhood of both.
"Nima... " It sounded like a plea coming from Enzo and it almost broke Fays heart
But she couldn't do it. She tried to think about it Fay always tried to envision a life with Enzo forever but she just couldn't do it Enzo isn't the problem it's the scary things, the monster, the fact she would have to live forever "I'm not going to change on this." Fay finally said
"You don't know that."
"I do," she said, and she said it the same way she said everything the weight of something she'd already decided. "I know that."
He stood up. Not storming off, not dramatic about it just stood up, the way people stood up when they needed to be upright, needed the room to be a different size. He went to the window and stood there with his back to her and she looked at his back and waited.
"You could still be you," he said, to the window. "People think it changes you. It doesn't have to."
"You don't know that." Fay countered
"I know plenty of..."
"You know vampires who still seem like themselves," she said. "That's not the same thing." She paused. "I don't trust what I'd be. I don't trust that I'd still be" she stopped. Started again. "I've spent a long time figuring out who I am. I'm not done. I want to keep going. I want to be thirty and forty and whatever comes after that. I want to grow into things. That's always been..." she stopped again.
He turned around.
She hadn't meant to say that much. She was aware she'd said more than she usually said, more than she'd planned on, and she kept her face even because she didn't perform things and she wasn't going to start now, but she'd said it and it was out there and he was looking at her with something in his face that she didn't entirely have a name for.
"That's always been the life I wanted," she said, quieter. "The regular one. Even when the regular one was terrible. I still wanted the whole thing."
Enzo was quiet.
She looked at him. He was looking at her the way he'd looked at her from the beginning like she was something he was figuring out except this time it was different. This time it looked like he'd figured something out and didn't know what to do with it.
"I'm not asking you to like it," she said.
"I know."
Fay held his gaze her eyes soft and wet with tears "I'm not going to change my mind."
"I know that too," he said, and the way he said it was different from how he'd said it before. Before it had been him not accepting it. This time it sounded like him actually knowing it, actually sitting with it, and finding it not good. She didn't expect him to find it good. But finding it real. Landing on it like something solid he hadn't wanted to land on.
He came back and sat down, closer than before, Neither of them said anything.
The apartment held the quiet and she was tired and he was whatever he was and it was enough except for this one thing sitting between them that they had now both looked at directly and named and still had no answer for.
She looked at the ceiling. He looked at the floor.
Outside the window Mystic Falls went on being small and quiet and old and she sat there in the life she'd picked, the regular one, the whole thing, and she didn't take it back.
Fays religion still affects the way she sees the supernatural world, even after everything. She used to be VERY religious growing up, so concepts like demons, spirits, possession, and things existing beyond normal life were never completely unbelievable to her.
So when she ends up in Mystic Falls, she’s not really shocked that supernatural creatures exist. What throws her off is the fact that everybody around her treats it so casually after a while lol. To Nima, a lot of this stuff still feels deeply unsettling because of the way she grew up and the things she was taught growing up.
in which enzo says the wrong thing and is promptly reminded why that was a mistake.
Fay had been having a perfectly good day until Enzo opened his mouth.
She was sitting at her kitchen table with a cup of tea she'd forgotten to drink and a notebook she'd forgotten to write in. Most of the afternoon had been spent doing absolutely nothing productive, which had been the entire point. Enzo had shown up two hours ago, invited himself inside, stolen one of her cookies, and made himself comfortable like he paid rent.
At some point the conversation had drifted from books to Bonnie to some random argument Damon had started the night before. Fay wasn't paying much attention anymore. She was mostly listening to the sound of Enzo's voice while trying to remember what she'd originally planned to do that day.
Then he laughed.
Not loudly. Not enough to be suspicious. Just enough.
Fay glanced up from her notebook.
"What?"
"Nothing."
That answer immediately irritated her.
People who said nothing were almost always hiding something.
Enzo looked entirely too entertained with himself as he leaned back in his chair.
"You've got that look again."
"What look?"
"The one where you're about to be annoyed."
"I'm not annoyed."
"Not yet."
Fay narrowed her eyes. Unfortunately, that only made him smile.
The conversation should have ended there. It probably would have if Enzo had possessed even a single self-preservation instinct.
Instead, he tilted his head. "You know, you're a little sensitive sometimes."
The silence that followed could have frozen a lake.
Fay stared at him. Slowly. Very slowly. Then she set her notebook down.
"A little what?"
"A little sensitive."
The fact that he repeated it so casually made everything worse.
Fay sat back in her chair.
"Interesting."
Immediately, Enzo knew he should have stopped talking
"Very interesting."
"Love."
"No, go on."
"There isn't anything to go on about."
"Apparently there is."
Fay crossed her arms.
"Wow."
"What?"
"You think I'm sensitive."
"I said a little."
"Oh, that's MUCH better."
Enzo rubbed his face. The argument had officially escaped containment.
By the time he left an hour later, Fay had informed him that he was rude, annoying, impossible to live with, impossible to date, and absolutely not welcome back in her apartment.nEnzo had taken this information remarkably well.
Which was also annoying.
The apartment felt much quieter after he left.
Not peaceful.
Fay spent the next hour trying to remain offended.
She made it almost the entire hour.
Then there was a knock at the door.
She already knew who it was.
When she opened it, Enzo was standing there holding a paper bag from her favorite takeout place and another bag filled with enough candy to make a dentist cry.
Fay looked at the food.
Then at Enzo.
Then back at the food.
Her annoyance immediately found itself facing a serious challenge.
"You think this fixes everything?"
"No."
"It absolutely sounds like you think this fixes everything."
"It does have a strong track record."
Fay tried very hard not to laugh. Unfortunately, that only made it worse. A few minutes later she was sitting at her kitchen table eating noodles while Enzo acted as though he hadn't caused the entire situation in the first place.
Honestly, that might have been the most irritating part.The man called her sensitive, got thrown out of her apartment, came back with food, and somehow still ended the day sitting in her kitchen.
Fay took a bite of her dinner. Maybe she was a little sensitive. She immediately decided she hated that thought.
Enzo caught the look on her face and started laughing.
Fay accidentally becoming friends with people she did NOT intend to become friends with is so funny to me because she’ll be like “I do not like any of you” meanwhile she’s sitting in the Salvatore house for the fourth day in a row eating their food and arguing with Damon like she lives there.
Mystic Falls fully irritated her into friendship against her will.
I always think it’s SO funny that literally everybody calls Fay “Nima” because she genuinely hates being called Fay, meanwhile Enzo ONLY calls her Fay. Like he noticed nobody else used it and immediately decided “yeah, that’s what I’m calling her.”
At first she got annoyed EVERY single time he said it too lol. But eventually it became one of those things where it only sounds right coming from him. If anybody else tried it she would probably stare at them in silence until they got uncomfortable enough to stop talking.
I'm working a little fay and Enzo fanfic it's like how they met, I've actually been working on it for a couple of days now but it's getting ready to post soon!!!
I finally finished Fay’s relationship board!!! I LOVE IT
It explains her dynamics with pretty much everyone and helped me organize where she fits into tvds a lot better. She mostly starts showing up around season 5, so a lot of her relationships and connections build from there onward.
Trying to make a relationship board for Fay in The Vampire Diaries universe and realizing how many relationships and dynamics I actually have to think about friendships, enemies, awkward alliances, people she tolerates, people she absolutely does not tolerate… this is taking forever!!!
I was originally trying to fully organize everything, but honestly I might just start posting about the relationships individually because it’s genuinely so fun thinking about how she fits into the TVD universe and how she’d interact with different characters.
