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In Yusuf’s dream, there is the sea.
It is unlike any sea he has seen in a long, long time, but it is not strange to him, this sea could never be strange to him. This is a sea he would recognize anywhere. It was the sea he was born by, that Nicolò was born by. It is their sea.
In his dream, the sea is blue, blue, blue, azure blue, Prussian blue, turquoise blue, blue. Blue as only ever their sea could be. Like no other sea ever was. In his dream he can feel the hot sand under his feet, the jagged rocks under his feet, the smooth stone under his feet, the round pebbles under his feet, the hot sand under his feet as he stands still on the shore, looking out on the sea.
The blue is vast. It is endless. It is a tiny speck, smaller than he can comprehend. It is endless. It is long gone. It is here.
On the sea there is nothing. There is blue. There is a boat. There is nothing. There is Andromache. It is her sea as well. Her face is turned away but she is there, she is there, on a boat, on their sea, on her sea, on the sea.
He is on the shore. He is in the sea. He is in the shallows. He-
“Yusuf.”
He feels something jostle him gently, shake him by the shoulder. He groans at the disruption and burrows deeper into his pillow, tensing, unwilling to let go of sleep just yet. Then a man whose voice he could recognize anywhere laughs quietly, and he instantly relaxes, smiles a little. Slowly he lets go of the dream, like water falling from his palm, and allows himself to wake up.
“Good morning, hayati,” Nicky says from where he is kneeling next to the bed. Joe blinks one eye open to peer at him from behind the duvet, smile widening at the affection and slight exasperation he sees on Nicky’s face, his favorite sight to wake up to by far.
“You’re back already,” Joe mumbles in response, starts yawning halfway through, wide enough to crack something in his jaw. Nicky just hums and brings one hand to gently brush loose curls off of Joe’s forehead.
“Business was finished faster than I had anticipated. I tried to send a message, but your comms were unresponsive,” Nicky says, and if Joe didn’t know him the tone would have sounded casual, amused even. But Joe is so far beyond merely knowing Nicky that he just sighs and catches the hand caressing his forehead. He brings it to his lips for an apologetic kiss on the knuckles.
“I’m sorry for worrying you. I was asleep, and I didn’t wake up to the call sound. Or I might have just left my comms on mute on accident, either one of those is possible.” Nicky just hums again, brushes Joe’s lower lip with his fingers. They are warm and dry against his skin. It feels good. Nicky’s touch always feels good. It always will. It is one of the only certainties in this universe.
“That’s what I thought, but I wanted to come back as soon as I could just to make sure the reason had not been a freak meteor shower instead,” Nicky says, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips like he thinks he knows what Joe is going to say next. He almost certainly does.
“As if you could get rid of me that easily. If the firestorm on Nautilus 5 or the ten-year hunt in the I-o Quadrant did not stop me from coming home to you, a meteor shower – no matter how freakish – has no chance,” Joe declares, only slightly muffled by the pillow. He knows Nicky knows as much already, but it feels good to say it out loud. It clearly feels just as good for Nicky to hear, because he smiles just that much wider and leans in for a kiss. It is a simple press of their lips, one of the many they have shared. It is perfect.
When it is over, Nicky leans back and just smiles again, looks at him for a while. Joe looks back, both of them content simply gazing at each other. Sometimes he wishes that it was possible to somehow find out the exact amount of time they have spent simply looking at each other. If all of the minutes were counted together they surely stack up to last longer than multiple lifetimes by now. Not enough, Joe thinks. Never enough.
“I have something for you,” Nicky says after a while, laughs as that is what finally makes Joe lift his head from the pillow and push himself into a sitting position. Joe smiles back, curious at the way he can already tell from Nicky’s tone that he is excited about whatever it is.
“Oh?” Joe says, and Nicky bites the inside of his cheek, smiling. Whatever it is, it has to be good for Nicky to look like that. Nicky gets up from his knees and looks at him, eyes sparkling with mirth.
“Would you like to have coffee in bed?”
That is not what Joe had expected to be asked, but coffee in bed is not out of the ordinary for them, so he just nods, relaxing back against the headboard. Joe expects Nicky to go for their replicator on the other side of the room in their little kitchen corner. Nicky does not do that. Instead, he goes to his backpack, which he had left by the hatch, and starts pulling out items. Joe’s eyebrows shoot up when he realizes what Nicky is getting out.
“No way.”
Nicky doesn’t acknowledge his astonishment, but he does grin proudly as he holds up the coffee grinder and puts it on their little kitchen station. After that, he pulls out a bag of what have to be literal actual coffee beans, along with a flask of water. Joe knows he is gaping but cannot help it. It makes Nicky grin even wider.
“Where did you get those? I wasn’t sure if those even existed anymore.” He practically gasps as Nicky pulls out sugar. Nicky laughs at his expression.
“I confess, I have been gathering supplies for a while,” Nicky says as he gets up, pours the water from the flask into their little kettle. “I had gathered everything else, but the coffee eluded me. I had heard good things about the market here, however, and I had a good feeling this morning, so then finally–” he taps the miraculous bag on the counter meaningfully, “I struck gold.”
Joe watches as his love opens the bag almost reverently, picks up one roasted bean and sniffs it. He then pops it into his mouth and eats it whole. It makes a crunching sound. An unreadable expression passes through Nicky’s face. He stares at the bag for a little while, and then Joe sees tears slowly gather in Nicky’s eyes. His heart aches at the sight.
“I… I had not realized how long it had been.“ Nicky’s voice has a waver in it, and Joe smiles softly in response, taking in Nicky’s expression, nostalgia clearly almost a physical sensation for him. Joe loves him. Nicky sniffles after a while, laughs quietly and wipes his eyes with his sleeve. Holds a bean out for Joe, who takes it and has a very similar response.
“But,“ he says, after he has gotten done with his own sniffles, “you still didn’t explain to me how this is possible.” In the meantime Nicky has managed to get some of the beans into the grinder, is now grinding them, eyeing the consistently intently.
“Ah, yes. The coffee was grown on the planet, actually. Apparently, the weather is perfect for it. The salesperson told me that their long-dead great-great-grandparent was originally from Earth, though whereabouts they could not say. That–they said–is why they had started growing the beans. Apparently coffee is a family tradition of sorts, passed from generation to generation, and these beans are of the heirloom variety. I wager that is more of a neat story to include in a sales pitch than it is the truth, but then again, the beans have to be related to the old earth ones somehow. Maybe they were not lying.”
Joe thinks about the serendipity of meeting someone with ties to earth on a day like this. It seems too good to be true, but then again, destiny has affected them in stranger ways before. He lets Nicky work in quiet concentration, as he slowly prepares the coffee for both of them. He is slightly rusty at the process, but the practice is also very familiar to him, and Joe gets to enjoy the truly rare sight of his man making coffee the ancient way.
When it is finally done, Nicky has two cups in his hand, one with sugar and synthetic cream, and one black. Nicky had apologized for not getting real cream, which was ridiculous, and Joe had told him as much. It is not like Nicky could will cows back into existence. He sits down on the bed next to Joe and carefully hands him the sweet coffee, almost like he is afraid of spilling it at the very last minute. He doesn’t, and he visibly relaxes as Joe takes the cup from him.
Joe looks at the coffee swirling in the cup. It is a sight he sees almost daily, but there is something about the coffee that is also clearly different from the usual replicated stuff. The smell is much stronger. Joe inhales it happily.
“Thank you, my love. You know, it’s funny that you’d do this today of all days,” Joe says, looking up from his cup at Nicky, who raises one eyebrow in question.
“Do you know what day it is today?“ he asks. Nicky shakes his head, and Joe huffs a laugh, looks out of the window of their little spacecraft at the swirling planet surface below. Maybe it really was destiny. “When tomorrow arrives, we will have finally lived away from Earth longer than we ever lived on it,” Joe says slowly, softly, like he is maybe unsure of how to put it into words. He hears Nicky’s intake of breath next to him and turns again to look at his love who is looking back at him.
“Is it really?” Nicky asks, and Joe nods, smiling softly.
“It was something Nile brought up first when the same was true for her. I had not counted before that, but then I could not get it out of my mind. I went back and I counted. That was a long time ago, but I have been counting ever since. From Nile’s perspective, her time on Earth was brief compared to how long she has spent travelling the rest of the galaxy by now. For us, our time on Earth will be officially less than half of our lives tomorrow morning.”
Nicky is silent for a while, looks at his coffee cup contemplatively. Then he looks up at Joe. There is something melancholic about his expression, but there is also amusement glinting in his eyes. Joe knows he is thinking about something funny that happened to them on Earth, can think of many possibilities of what that might be.
“There are so many things I have forgotten at this point, but thankfully not everything. We were so young back then. Could you imagine if we had known what we would see when we left Earth that first time so long ago? Or better yet, could you imagine what we would have thought if we had known we would end up here when we first met? If we had somehow been transported here or had been able to see into the future?” Nicky asks and Joe snorts at the thought. It has been so very long that what he remembers about himself before his first death and right after it are more things he knows were true rather than actual memories. Can kind of imagine what that man would have thought, but cannot be sure.
“I would have thought I had gone mad most likely, but then I thought that a lot those first days,” Joe says, and Nicky laughs, shakes his head softly.
“I am sure I would not have ever believed this to be anything other than hell or purgatory. Some kind of unknowable divine punishment. Ironic, since this is closer to heaven than anything I had known back then, literally and figuratively,” Nicky says, and Joe bumps their shoulders softly, both of them smiling at the ridiculous idea.
“I was already glad I got us this coffee, but now I am even more so,” Nicky says and flashes him a slightly crooked grin, “However, we should probably drink these before they get cold.”
Nicky is right, Joe realizes suddenly. Neither of them have even tasted their drinks yet. They have both been holding onto the cups as if they’re nervous about drinking from them. He finds that he kind of is.
Nevertheless, in this line of work and in this type of life nerves have never stopped him before. He brings the cup to his lips and watches as Nicky does the same, both of them drinking at the same time. The coffee is hot on his tongue, and he lets it linger in his mouth for a while, marvelling at the taste. After a while Nicky puts down his cup, looks at it contemplatively.
“You know, I remember this being better,” he finally says, and Joe laughs at the admission, sips some more of his own drink. He remembers it being better too.
“Never too late to join me on the right side of history and add some sugar and cream,” he says instead, and Nicky makes a face at him, making Joe laugh again. They keep drinking, and Nicky tells him about his morning at the wet market, of the news he heard and the things he saw, both of them gazing out of the window into space. The planet below them is a beautiful riot of viridian and burgundy swirls. Joe feels the age-old urge to paint, record the vision somehow, wishes he had real physical paints for once. He tells Nicky, and Nicky chuckles into his coffee.
“I should have known getting you real coffee was just the start. Don’t worry my love, when we reach the next spaceport I will find you rabbit-skin glue and wood for a canvas frame.”
When their coffees are finished Joe yawns and puts his cup down on the nightstand. Lays back down on their bed. He motions Nicky to join him, and Nicky complies like Joe knew he would. Nicky lays next to him, and Joe curls against his side, head against Nicky’s broad shoulder, hand on Nicky’s soft belly. Nicky sighs happily and pets Joe’s spine with one hand, other hand finding its way into Joe’s curls to play with them like it always does.
“I was dreaming about the sea, about our sea, when you woke me,” Joe says into the silence of their ship after a while. “I was dreaming about Andromache.” Nicky’s hand on his back is warm and sure as it caresses him, and Joe feels suddenly sleepy again, lulled by his love’s steady heartbeat and sure hands.
“How was she?” Nicky asks, and Joe smiles.
“Good. She was sailing. She was going to sail forever. I was going to join her,” he says, and Nicky sighs. Joe knows he misses sailing.
“Yusuf?”
“Hm?”
“If you sail with her, can I join you?” Nicky asks. His voice sounds deeper now, quieter, and Joe knows he is not the only one drifting into sleep. He smiles against Nicky’s shoulder, yawns, feels his whole body relax.
“Of course my love, the sea is yours as well. I would never want to sail it without you,” he says, and then he has to fight another yawn. Nicky just hums happily and pets his hair some more.
Tomorrow they will have to leave this solar system and go meet up with Nile and the others, but for today they still have this. They will always have this.
They fall asleep in each other’s arms as surely as they have for thousands of years. The ship is quiet except for their steady breathing and the sound of the air conditioning unit, which sounds a little bit like waves crashing onto a shore. Their small spaceship keeps to its steady course as its inhabitants dream of a sea long since gone, secure in the love that is eternal like very few things ever are.