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Nicky knows that Joe doesn’t remember their first meeting. Well. That’s not quite true, he may remember it, but he doesn’t know it was their first meeting. It’s not his fault, the specifics of missions are almost always secret, even to the operatives involved, and Nicky was in disguise (the room was also partially on fire, but that was an accident, really).
But that doesn’t mean that Nicky doesn’t remember.
Extricating himself from his previous employers took rather more firepower than Nicky had truly expected, and even though the Company had promised to assist him in defecting, he had absolutely no reason to trust them.
It made it all the more surprising really when rising-star-of-espionage-and-wetwork Joe Al-Kaysani crashed through the ceiling, took one look at the three men holding Nicky at gunpoint, and took them all out with two precise headshots and a lethal case of a knife to the throat.
In the ensuing mayhem, Nicky made his escape, delivered the information he’d scraped together to the waiting agent (Booker had called it his dowry. Booker’s sense of humour even then was lacking), and started his new life in the comparatively-less evil Company. Joe had said nothing more than the pre-agreed code phrase to confirm his identity ('The tie that binds us?’ ‘Is an unbreakable rope.’) but Nicky knew the second he saw him that he was in trouble. He also knew that if they were to work together without incident, he could never let Joe pick another code phrase, but that was a problem for the future.
—
The future came quickly.
Even with the blatant distrust and suspicion from Management prior to his proving his loyalties, Nicky was still a prized asset. His skills and experience were too great to languish in paying his dues again. They got around the risks of using a defected agent by pairing him with known and trusted resources. It was only a matter of time before he was paired with Al-Kaysani, and Nicky had been confident that anything he had felt on that one hectic night was purely the result of fear and adrenaline.
Al-Kaysani wore a backwards baseball cap to the briefing and laughed like he wanted everyone in the room to share the joke with him.
Joe suggested three different lines of poetry as confirmation phrases before the end of the briefing, and Nicky shut him down so firmly that by the end of it Joe’s easy smile had solidified into a stone mask and twitching jaw.
He told himself he did what he had to.
(He didn’t think about how soft Joe had looked, curls poking out of his hat, smiling in the morning light.)
—
It never went away, no matter what Nicky did. He threw himself into his work, took other warm bodies to bed, tried hobby after hobby, and through it all there was Joe. Unreachable. He was well aware that his poor first-impression had ruined any soft feeling Joe might have held for him, might ever have found for him at all, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Something about the man just twisted his words, his meanings, until everything he said sounded cold or trite or mocking.
(Booker laughed at him, on the rare occasions they drank together and Nicky spilled the whole horrid truth of the matter to him. He had always been one to want more than he deserved. Joe was merely the latest in a long line of impossible desires.)
—
Once, when pinned down under enemy fire, Nicky got to see Joe wield a sword and carve his way through to him like an avenging angel.
The memory sits on his tongue like wine when he’s alone.
—
It’s pure greed and jealousy in the end that breaks Nicky.
Mission after mission, briefing after briefing, he kept his distance from Joe, kept him at more than arm’s length and nursed the embers of his crush like a shameful secret.
All of it ruined by the sight of Joe in black tie. The smooth lines of his shoulders, the elegant grip of his long fingers around his champagne flute, the perfect fall of his curls. He’s temptation made manifest, and it takes every ounce of Nicky’s training to ignore him in favour of the vapid woman clutching at his arm.
He should really be listening to her. She might have information relevant to their mission, somewhere in all that gossip and casual cruelty, but he can’t do it. It’s already taking so much of his focus just to keep his eyes from straying to the far side of the ballroom.
It’s a blessing to hear their cue in his earpiece. Joe extricates himself from his partner before Nicky can. The poor man looks shellshocked in Joe’s wake, and Nicky would sympathise if he hadn’t been barely restraining himself from grinding his teeth at the sight of the man’s hand on Joe’s waist; the other held softly in Joe’s own against his chest. He’s never known envy like it, almost a physical weight in his hands, so strong is the desire to pull Joe into his own arms. He tucks the feeling away. He can’t do anything about it.
He finishes his dance. He can’t even recall his partner’s name, but he kisses her softly on the cheek anyway, and melts away into the crowd before she can do more than gasp after him.
—
The mission is an easy one. Nile has all the hard work, and she’s not even on site. All Nicky has to do is leave an envelope behind a statue and provide backup to Joe. He doesn’t even need it, Nicky knows. It’s sheer paranoia on Management’s part, but who is he to argue?
He wishes he had argued when he sees Joe crossing the garden to meet him. The moon paints him in silver, turning the warm gold of his eyes and the bronze of his skin to something otherworldly. He’s barely aware of the words they exchange, pure experience alone leading him to give the correct codes.
He knows he’s in trouble when he starts making inane conversation about canapés of all things. Nicky is very familiar with the expressiveness of Joe’s face, and of the iron control he has during ops. He sees confusion flicker across his expression before he regains control again.
It’s a relief, really, to have the mission go sideways in the form of the target four clearance levels above them making an unexpected appearance.
There are any number of things Nicky could do to mitigate this, not least of which is simply calmly and quietly walking away with Joe. They would be halfway to the door by the time he reached the mouth of the hedge maze, and would look for all the world as two lovers returning from a tryst.
He gives in to the voice in the back of his mind that’s been screaming please just kiss me already at Joe for the past five years, and reels him in by the tie.
It’s better than he ever imagined. He can smell the rich oil Joe’s smoothed through his curls, and he can feel them wrapping around his fingertips where he’s slid his hand around the back of Joe’s neck. Joe opens his mouth with a quiet gasp, and Nicky is lost. He should be focusing on the real and present danger of the target, a man who is never found without at least two bodyguards, but he has his hand on Joe Al-Kaysani’s chest, and he’s trembling and kissing back and it’s the culmination of five years of longing in one terrible, wonderful moment.
When they break apart, Joe hides his face against Nicky’s neck. He can feel the gentle motion of his breath against his collarbone, and, hungrily, he buries his nose in Joe’s curls, shamelessly taking advantage of his one and only chance.
They don’t speak again that night. Joe doesn’t look at him, and Nicky doesn’t make him.
His cheeks burn where Joe’s beard scraped against him, soft as it was.
—
It takes Nicky five hours to return from Sicily. He feels each one crawl past like he’s walking through treacle. You can do a lot to a person in five hours, and Joe has already been missing for an additional five on top of that. His handler had informed him flippantly, almost off-hand, and it had taken everything in Nicky not to put his eyes out.
Andromache meets him at the door when he gets back to HQ. Her eyes promise retribution, even as she hands over all the intel they have. A rescue op is being planned; a three person strike team and a retrieval specialist, but the wheels turn too slowly to be of any use, especially when so much time has already passed.
Nicky takes the packet with a clear-eyed nod. There will be consequences, and he will not like them. (There will be consequences if he doesn’t act. He will like them even less.)
He has no further support from the Company. This mission is not sanctioned. If he fails, the consequences will be dire. If he succeeds, they won’t be much better.
He takes his own car to the site, fully in the knowledge he’ll need to destroy it immediately.
He carries his own weapons. A collection of knives and one extended pistol with no serial number. He’ll take whatever else he needs from the dead.
Joe has been missing for fourteen hours. Nicky starts the timer in his head the second he puts his boot through the door that separates the whimpering remains of a white supremacist terrorist cell from the outside world.
The three guards die quickly and easily. He descends.
—
Nicky cut a bloody swathe through the building, and it doesn’t feel like nearly enough when he finally lays eyes on Joe again.
His eyes are swollen with bruises. His lip has split so badly that blood trails all the way down to his chest. His clothes are torn, and there are dusty footprints visible on his legs. Even through the remains of his jeans, his left knee is a bloody mess.
He still makes a pithy comment when Nicky meets his eyes. Something in Nicky’s chest howls in fury; calls for revenge even as the blood of Joe’s enemies drips from Nicky’s boots.
He wanted to hold Joe again. Wanted to smell him, feel his warmth, touch him gently.
Not like this.
He half carries Joe from the hell he’s been trapped in and doesn’t bother to lift his feet over trailing fingers or akimbo limbs. These dead don’t deserve his respect.
(Joe is a being formed of sunlight. He brightens every room he enters, and Nicky covets his warmth like striving spring flowers seek the sun. That this could be done to him is monstrous; blasphemous. But it has been, and Nicky must see him through.)
Joe is barely conscious when Nicky finally gets him out into the open air. He seems small and frail in the front seat of Nicky’s car, and he can’t resist running his hand through his curls, lifting them away from his face to better see what was done to him in the light.
He already has to burn the evidence. He takes a certain measure of satisfaction in barring the door before he sets the building on fire.
—
He takes his punishment with grace. He does not argue with his suspension, nor with the limitations set on him upon his return. He broke rank and protocol, and he would do it again.
He does chafe at being assigned a spotter for a recon op however. A bit. He’s not a child.
As mission lead (nominally, he knows), he gets to the nest first and establishes his position.
Rifle in place, scope trained on target, he's as comfortable as he can make himself for however long the observation takes. He leaves a begrudging space for his spotter to his left. They’ll have a sightline of their own, but they won’t be in his way.
He doesn’t look up from his scope when his spotter joins him, slipping neatly into the space without a word.
He smells Joe’s hair oil first.
He sees his smile last.