Work Text:
Nile, for all her griping and internal monologuing about the state of the world and its inhabitants, takes her role as the leader of their cadre seriously. So, she thinks that it’s only right when faced with a potentially explosive environment, with the threat of a hostile interrogation, that she prepares her teammate with ample time.
“This is going to be bad.”
She announces, an hour out of Denmark, in a quiet unassuming hotel that does the best breakfast she’s had this decade, hands down.
Booker, who’s looking a little smug, just a smidgen, stretches out on the bed that Nile has only just dragged herself from, and seems to have no intention of leaving anytime soon. “We’ll be fine.”
“We’re outnumbered.” Nile calls out from the bathroom. Tries, and fails, to despair, and instead can’t help but be charmed by the old fashioned tub which she’s in the middle of fiddling with the taps of until the temperature comes out just right.
“You’re making it sound like we’re going to be walking into Hell.”
It’s feels like an age since she’s had the opportunity to take such a simple, unassuming pleasure as this. There’s a selection of bottles along the rim that she peruses, listens for the tell-tale footsteps behind her.
“Okay, maybe not Hell, that’s a little dramatic.” She narrows it down to two options. “Lavender and eucalyptus, or vanilla extract?”
“I have no preference.” He answers honestly and, yeah, there he is, her powerful shadow.
Nile shrugs and goes for the vanilla, solely because it won’t overpower the natural wood ash, salt and smoke scent of his that she refuses to admit to savouring. “We should have a game plan going in either way.”
“We can have whatever you want.” Booker says, and Nile can see in the mirror opposite them that he’s far more transfixed in the small adornments in her braids than taking her point seriously, and she wants to be annoyed but fails miserably. To feel better she lets her fingers trail through the water before flicking them at him.
He winces far too dramatically. “I wasn’t aware that we were trying to recreate the Arctics here, mon coeur.”
He makes the tiniest of faces as he gingerly steps in and Nile’s mouth twitches at the sight as she joins him, settling against his broad chest and thinking not for the first time that it feels like coming home when she’s surrounded so completely by him.
“Nile?”
“Not a chance.” She says. “It’s not that cold.”
And then leans forward anyway to twist the tap and prepares to boil if only that she can’t help but be gentle with him.
---
She tries again, a week later while they’re sailing under a pretty blue sky, to prepare him.
This time it goes south for reasons completely out of her control, and not because she’s distracted by his naked skin pressed against hers.
“Neither of us are going to walk out of this unscathed- Ah, fuck, what is it with the fucking pirates?!”
Which is the only sort of distraction that she deems acceptable these days after they spend the better part of the morning first attempting to outrun, then outmanoeuvre, and then finally conceding that the only eventual conclusion is to let the fucksticks try and hijack their boat.
Nile grunts with exertion as she helps Booker swing the fifth body into what she thinks is still dubbed the Atlantic ocean.
Booker, who’s rolled his sleeves up until they’re folded above his elbows, still flaking bits of quickly drying blood everywhere, takes the last body and hefts it over the edge.
“We’ve dealt with far worst,” he vaults over the side and onto the deck of the small vessel bobbing in the water next to theirs, disappears for a few minutes into the cabin and then returns holding something that looks suspiciously like…
“Fucking drones.” Nile descends into a virulent storm of cursing and ranting about the various punishments she’d like to inflict on the stupid fuck that thought it would be clever to throw a metal disc in the air and designed it to travel great distances to spy on people.
“Actually,” Booker muses cheerfully as he holds it in his hand and scans it for any bugs or remote neural links before he destroys the damned thing that’d lead the raiding idiots straight to them, “I remember these things being a lot more cumbersome when they first came out. I read somewhere that they think they’ll be able to make them the size of a finger soon.”
Pausing in the middle of clearing away the makeshift Molotov she’d made with rather limited supplies, Nile scowls up at the back of his neck from where she crouches and, as he’s in tune with her every heartbeat, Booker senses it soon enough and chuckles when he catches sight of her disapproval.
“I wouldn’t fret on it,” Booker transitions back to their original conversation as if they haven’t spent the morning with a bunch of incompetent fools trying to kill them. “If it makes you feel better I think as long as we provide a united front then we’ll get through it like any other mission.”
“Oh, you sweet innocent soul.” Nile tones the bite of her voice down, has no intention of letting him think for a second that she’s mocking him even whilst she’s grouching. “I promise that you’ll be begging for mercy by the end of it.”
“Undoubtedly, if not for that then I’m sure you can find me something else to plead for.”
Smooth bastard.
Nile concedes and busies herself with restarting their engine and steering them far enough away that when she eventually sets the other boat alight there’s little chance that they’ll get caught out, even if she lets them float for a few minutes as Booker finishes up.
While he does, she starts wiping up the mess that a half-dozen bodies can make in an irritatingly short amount of time that then takes at least thrice that to deal with. It’s mind numbing and too quickly she finishes up, her mood dropping abruptly enough that it unsettles even herself, and it’s easily identifiable.
Nile is agitated.
This in and of itself isn’t surprising, given the life that they lead a great deal of her time is spent in a state of apprehension, with rapid bursts of adrenaline fuelling her body through life and death situations on a sometimes daily basis. But centuries of repetition doesn’t lend itself to unknotting the muscles of her back as she tries to dig out the blood caked around her fingers.
It isn’t a vanity thing, she swears, more that the sensation, the knowledge, that she’s carrying some small part of somebody she’s killed occasionally seems to upend her. Makes the ground feel like it’s pitching and heaving under her feet until she deals with it, and Nile finds herself in that headspace now, hunched over and running the washcloth from her go bag under the half-crescents of her nails bordering on aggressively. Hard enough that it feels like she might abrade the skin in an effort to cleanse it and the thought of her blood mingling with another’s, even when it’s happened too many times to count, has a white noise popping in her ears.
There are techniques to regaining equilibrium, methods self-taught and professionally that Nile has adapted to suit her needs and she tries to recall them now. Ignores the clinical terms for why her chest heaves too rapidly when the call of battle is long gone, and focuses on finding something grounding and sturdy to anchor herself with.
The best and most willing choice waits for her to silently implore him before rushing close so quickly that he has to jerk before he crouches down to sit with her. Booker carefully cups her hands between his when she holds them out, legs bracketing hers where she ends up half sitting in his lap, and Nile focuses on the rhythmic stroke of the cloth over the delicate web of skin between her fingers while he carefully works.
His hairs getting long again, falling across his face where it’s come apart from its slicked back do while they’d been fighting. There’s a few bullet holes scattered across his left side, the remnants of the only good shots made before they’d dealt with their attackers and Nile kisses the one at his shoulder, feels him shiver in return as he finishes.
“We should go.” Nile exhales shakily, tilts forward until her cheek rubs affectionately against Booker’s, and she can’t help but lean heavily into him, accepting those iron arms slipping around her waist, fool heart in her damn throat suddenly. She encircles his wrists, clasping firmly until the whorls of her thumbs are imprinted on his rushing veins and brings them to her chest.
A few minutes more can’t cause any harm.
---
For all of his casual airs, it’s Booker that’s apprehensive when they arrive in Malta. Not visibly so, but in that silent way of his that speaks of a great deal of internal monologuing that Nile is sure she would be fascinated to listen to.
“How bad do you think it’ll be?” He releases his hold on her jacket pockets as they pull up on the drive. A perfectly innocent thing considering they’ve ridden a motorcycle together since the close of the twenty-first century, smart even, to prevent himself from falling.
“It’s going to be a complete and utter shitshow.” Nile swears as she swings a leg to dismount and nervously bounces on her heels.
Nodding, solemn and straight faced, Booker eyes the house in front of them with a great deal of suspicion. “Are you going in first, or do you want me to take point?”
Swearing that she can see a blind twitch, Nile cusses. “I’ll take the lead, cover my six?”
“Always.”
The sincerity of it, the reassuring bulk of him at her back, almost has Nile grinning over her shoulder at him. She doesn’t. Primarily because she can’t afford to get distracted before going into war.
For all of her arrogant proclamations of being prepared, Nile finds herself blindsided by a blurred rush the second she steps inside, feet leaving the ground before she can correct herself, and she’s shrieking a little too high as she’s spun through the air fast enough she’s dizzy, the arms around her thighs tightening reflexively.
“Miss me, boss?”
Joe beams up at her, radiates with this blinding warmth and affection, the scruff on his cheeks softer than she remembers as Nile throws her arms around his neck, laughter bubbling in her… well everywhere. She’s full of light and this dazzling, powerful love while he swings her around, heart throbbing in recognition that she’s home without it being her house.
“Not as much as you’ve missed me apparently.” She kisses Joe’s beautiful curls, grins at his throaty chuckle.
“He’s been staring out of the window all week.” Nicky appears in her peripherals, grasps Booker’s forearm in greeting, pale eyes dancing with mirth. “I did warn him, it’s most unbecoming.”
“Nothing is unbecoming on my Joe.” Nile twists until she’s almost sat on Joe’s powerful shoulders, balances as if she were a crow perched above them all. “You’re the worst backup I’ve ever had.” She informs Booker while he laughs.
And like that, she’s home.
---
“What is this stuff?”
Nile reclines back on the lounger under a burnished sun setting and thinks that she probably shouldn’t be lying in repose like this when the threat of ambush is still hanging in the air. But she’s losing herself in the comfortable weight of Joe’s arm behind her neck, Nicky’s ankles hooking around her own, they’re all connected once more, as they should be.
Well, except for Quynh who’s taking her sweet time, and Booker who’s currently fetching her yet another bottle of-
“Greco Bianco, or more specifically a… You do not care to know the particulars.” Nicky sighs, audibly, and that’s how Nile knows he’s the farthest thing from exasperated. “One day I will have you engage meaningfully with your palate.”
“Until then I’ll rely on you to steer me straight.”
Joe stirs with a groan. “I’ve being saying the same thing to him for thirteen-hundred-years.”
"Clearly it hasn't worked."
Nicky, if he were that sort of man, would roll his eyes, Nile thinks, instead he leans over and carefully traces his fingertips over Joe’s brow, juggling his wine with the air of someone that could ride a wild steed into the sunset and nary spill a drop. “And yet you’ve been the one guiding me this whole time.”
It’s peculiar to see their interactions through this new lens of hers, now she’s orientated herself around her own personal lodestar, can recognise the quotidian details that make up the fundamentals of every lasting love. It has her empty hand clenching tightly, chest labouring for a beat and then releasing when she feels him behind her, always and forever, this man of hers.
Booker appears from the recesses of the house with the bottle of wine she asked for and he’s got those shirt sleeves rolled up, forearms bare and dusted with hair, and when he turns to her in the last rays of sunlight his eyes are flecked with a golden harvest, with too many colours for her breath not to catch, and-
Nicky and Joe are watching them with these conspiratorial, sly smiles.
They’d agreed, somewhere after the pirates and before they’d pulled up on the drive, that they’d wait until everyone’s together, and Nile has amply plied them all with enough alcohol she might be able to dampen the teasing that she can already feel bubbling up behind Joe’s white teeth as they flash with mirth.
“Don’t start.” She warns.
“Start what?” Nicky enquires softly. Not his gentle softness, the one that echoes over the ringing sound of your eardrums reforming, that drifts over your shattered form as your body recalibrates itself around muscle and bone and sinew knitting itself back together in the wreckage of a car on a quiet London street.
No this is not his kind softness.
This is a shit-eating grin hidden behind that lyrical accent that has Nile scowling. “Not a fucking word.”
“I would not dream of it.”
“I would.” Joe hums, and somewhere in that genius mind of his Nile can see him composing and rewriting a dozen different ways that he might make her blush. “My darling girl and sweet tortured boy.”
“I intensely dislike you.” Nile shoves him and is disheartened when Joe only rolls his shoulders in preparation.
Booker’s appears like he might be considering slinking back inside although he gamely makes his way towards her regardless, and Nile is about to consider pulling rank for the first time when he stops midstride and frowns.
“Book?”
He peers around and Nile feels the men on either side of her sit up in unison, casting their senses out around them to try and hook onto what Booker’s noticed that they haven’t.
“There’s nothing there.” She mutters, confused, and is halfway to kneeling when Booker’s head snaps up, lips curling as something collides into him from above like a shooting star.
Admirably Booker manages to twist, braces an arm out for the star to swing off of and keeps the wine safe in his other hand. “Trust you to be fashionably late.”
Quynh lands a perfect ten, and remains leaning against his side, “Trust you to be the only that noticed me, shame on the rest of you.”
“You came.” Nile says, stumbling to her feet with a little disorientation because she may have drank a fair bit more than she’d originally anticipated, and for all she loves their oldest, she’s had this tiny sliver of doubt, if only that you can never limit a god with dates and a timescale.
“Not yet,” Quynh says primly, “I had to visit you cretins instead.”
Nile sniggers at the downright awful humour, can’t resist lunging at the small woman, accepts that she has to stoop down to be the small spoon and soaks up every last drop of comfort she can from corded arms of steel.
“I’ve missed you.” She confesses quietly before Joe can reach them and bring a fathomless joy to their gathering.
Quynh strokes the back of her neck, lets her rest her face against the silk of her waistcoat, brash jewels jutting against Nile’s cheekbone and it’s like standing in the eye of a storm, the relief of a downpour on parched lands.
“As I’ve missed you little one.”
And then Joe’s lifting them both up into the air and everything is perfect.
---
A long time ago, when she was a student whose worst worries were whether or not she might be able to finish an essay by its due date, or what time her mom would get home from another double nightshift. Nile can remember falling asleep mid-afternoon and sleeping until the following noon. Whiling away long hours curled up under the covers with nothing more pressing than watching the snow swirl outside of her windows until her little brother would inevitably come wandering in swaddled in a blanket, nose running and mouth sticky from whatever sweets he’d snuck from the jar. She’d peel up her own covers and watch as he toddled over, clambering until his cheeks would press into her collarbone, icy fingers sneaking into the crease of her elbows, her neck, over the knobs of her spine to leach the warmth from her marrow.
Nile wonders whether that’s when she first learnt to take care of someone that seemed to exist in a perpetual state of ice and frost.
It feels like she’ll never remember the simplicity of holding a child in her arms, of reading him a story and pitching the different voices, of re-enacting the monsters and heroes deeds with exaggerated gestures, wind milling her arms around the apartment to simulate flight, and Nile-
Is letting herself spiral into a toxic mood of despair and longing, can smell the anxiety seeding itself in her belly.
Quite frankly she blames it on Nicky.
Nicky who dares her with the flourish of his hand to make a complaint as he shows her to her room, makes no secret that she and Booker are the furthest apart from each other and Nile can’t resist the disdainful look she gives him.
The little shit winks at her.
Nile loves and hates him in equal measure in that second.
It’s a pretty night, heavy with sounds and smells, a crescent moon high in the sky, and her bed feels like one that emperors and conquering rulers might once have claimed.
A far cry from her cheap mattress that she used to sit criss-cross on and shit out half of her final essay for the year the day before it was due with nothing but energy drinks and twizzlers energising her.
No this is luxury.
Once outside of the realm of reality for herself, Nile lies in luxury sheets, thumps a fist into luxury pillows, tosses and turns and realises that she can revoke any right to these delicate comforts, will happily take a place on the bedrock, if only that she has Booker's hand in hers.
Nile is the boss.
She effortlessly commands respect from four elite warriors.
She’s not ruled by her errant body and its newly discovered requirement of one Sebastien Le Livre to feel comforted enough to rest.
She reminds herself of all this as she pads silently down the hallway, perfectly aware of the eyes trained on her back as she passes each of their doors, resists flipping them off in only that the ensuing laughter won’t be worth the satisfaction, and slips into Booker’s room.
He’s waiting for her, because of course he is. Sat upright, leaning against the headboard, staring dully out the window and when he glances towards her Nile shudders at the relief sagging his shoulders. Reminds herself of this also, that Booker listens to her every word as if it were sacrosanct, listens and enacts and no matter how much it splinters through him, he takes her decrees as inviolate, even when it’s a simple plan to hold telling their family until the morning.
Nile loves him so much sometimes that it steals the air from her lungs.
“Need some company?” She offers quietly.
“From you?” He says, rearranges himself in time for her to land squarely in the catch of his arms, “always.”
Booker holds her and Nile settles.
It’s that simple.
---
Now she only has to deal with the assholes more than likely snickering at her moonlit travels.
It’ll be easy, she thinks, they’ll broach the subject over brunch, and Nile will be calm about this, will not dwell on the fact that after so many years she finally has the one thing left to help resurrect the twisted muscle in her chest.
It will not be easy.
Nile knows this as soon as they walk downstairs and there’s a hushed shuffling, anticipation coiling in the air as she walks into the open floor kitchen and three sets of eyes focus on her.
Now Nile sees that she wasn’t the only one waiting for Quynh.
“Morning.” She tilts her chin up defiantly and heads straight for the pot of tea, decides that she needs to be well hydrated to deal with their fuckery.
“Sleep well?” Nicky enquires nonchalantly around a mouthful of Ħobż tal-Malti drenched in olive oil.
“Exceptionally so.” Nile settles herself at the table and takes a long drawn out gulp of her drink, lets her foot entangle with Booker’s under the table when he sits beside her. “Yourself?”
“I was disturbed around midnight by a stray cat wandering about.” Joe says the deadpan fucker.
“Strange that you were listening so carefully rather than resting.” Booker accepts the tray of madeleines slid across the table.
“So where have you been this year?” Nile tries for a non sequitur because she’s still got a dry mouth and she suspects sleep in her eye. Give her a minute and she’ll talk to them.
Plus, by the time Quynh finally joined them last night it’d been well into both she and Nicky’s third bottle, and the oldest of them hadn’t hesitated in draining her own glass each round, left them little time to actually dive into the minutiae of each others time apart.
“A little here and there, wherever the wind felt like taking me,” Quynh sighs, and she’s the only one of them that could say such a thing without sounding ridiculous. “I reacquainted myself with a few of the old cities, Argos, Jericho, Faiyum, Lexor. Before travelling across Europe and frequenting a few memorable locations.”
Nile doesn’t have the heart to tell her that half of the places she goes on to mention are no longer what she once knew, the countries starting to divide and fracture with each passing decade, swapping names and borders so frequently it's exhausting. Not when they’re all aware that the last time she passed through so many of them was in the arms of…
Oh, Nile does not have the time to feel melancholy about that, and because of this she misses the spark of mischief exchanged when she latches onto-
“You were in Würzburg?” Nile finishes the last half of her tea with an appreciative sound, grateful to rid herself of the sadness that permeates every waking thought of Andy. “You should have let me know; we could have synced up.”
“I thought you might not enjoy the company.”
"Why would you think that?"
“I assumed that you were too busy riding Booker like an Olympic equestrian.” Quynh says casually, and dunks a biscuit into her steaming mug.
Booker chokes on his coffee.
Nile, giving up on the last pretence that either of them have managed to appear in the least bit innocent, thumps her hand against his back and lets it linger there after he finishes.
Mostly it’s for herself if she’s honest.
A month.
She’s made it three-hundred-years without developing a reliance on the heat of Booker’s touch, and yet now she finds her fingertips tingling if she leaves it too long without him.
A month they’ve been honest with each other and she’s like this.
“-I wouldn’t be offended,” Quynh continues the conversation that Nile momentarily blinked out of, turns to Booker with a wicked smile, “have you not heard of the expression, hung like a-”
Nile palms a dagger from her boot and throws it with enough passion that for once it almost gets past the older woman’s guard. As it is Quynh snatches it out of the air and simply raises a brow, examines the blade, and tucks it into her jacket.
Knowing the rules set out between them, Nile accepts that she’s lost it forever. Quynh might as well have licked it to prove her point.
“Are we all done?” She asks them instead.
“Finished?” Joe cocks his head and considers. “With the news that two of our beautiful family have finally seen sense?”
“It would be remiss of us not to help celebrate your achievement.” Nicky says.
“You’re both all heart.” Nile groans and swipes a hand over her face. Resists groaning at the heat of Booker’s palm settling over her knee with a reassuring squeeze.”
Quynh displays a masterclass in austere distaste. “Do not take me for a sentimental fool, I’m here for the pot.”
“You put money on us?” Booker stares at the clips of money miraculously dumped on the table with a distrusting eye.
“A lot of money,” Nile whistles as the pile grows, smirks when Joe’s precious vintage Bimoti keys get tossed into the mix, “you’re all awfully confident in something that you had no idea might happen.”
Snorting, a rare display of human normality, Quynh says, “and that would have made you both the most oblivious pairing that I’ve ever seen in all my years on this planet.”
Booker’s still spluttering at a loss beside her and so Nile takes the lead. “You’re all children.”
Okay, taking the lead may be a tad exaggerative.
“Rightly so,” Quynh smirks, “but it’ll make me a rich child all the same.”
Nicky, the only one entrusted with their bet, because honestly, did they really think that Nile didn’t know about this all along, clears his throat. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
That puts a frown on Quynh’s face. “No, I wagered that Booker would have finally moved on from his desperate longing and they’d have resolved this before the years end, and Yusuf believed he’d still be brooding.”
“That’s not precisely what I said.” Joe winces.
“The intention was the same.” Quynh says and then her pupils narrow in consideration. “So, unless the rules of gambling have miraculously restructured since I last partook, I would like my earnings.”
“There was another participant.” Nicky smirks, and how he must be enjoying this.
“Did you bet on us?” Nile asks curiously, studies her lover with an interested quirk of her brow.
“No, that would be in poor taste.” Booker says indignantly. “And incredibly tacky.”
“Who would have thought that you’d be the one with morals.” Nicky watches them fondly and tosses Joe’s keys across the coffee table.
Nile catches them with her free hand and winks at Booker’s attempts at outrage before turning back to Quynh. “And?”
The petite women scowls, lets out a mournful sounds and then slides the tanto knife, that Nile has spent the better part of a century admiring, towards her. “This is a travesty. Utilising insider knowledge for personal gain.”
“The travesty is in betting against us.” Nile admires the shine on the blade and catches Booker’s amusement, and affectionately rubs her foot against his calf. “Are you complaining?”
“There’s no romance anymore.” He grumbles half-heartedly.
Saving that challenge for a day where she can actually take him apart without a trio of nosy faces tilting towards them, Nile leans against his shoulder and hums in approval as his hand finds the small of her back instantly.
“What was your wager?” Joe asks, smiling at them, genuine pleasure at their comfort radiating from glowing face as he slides her earnings across the table.
“That I’d be the one to get over myself and stop brooding over accepting Booker’s love.”
“That’s a technicality!” Quynh grouses.
“Sourness does not become you.” Nile says sagely, and the tiniest bit smugly.
Booker’s hand is like a glowing ember across the expanse of her back. “Did you invite me along this year solely with the intention of seducing me for money?”
“No, solely to win you a bike that you’ve always marvelled at.”
Booker makes this wounded sound low in his throat, reaches out and kisses her there at the table, large hands framing her face and Nile settles.
Breathes.
Loves him.
---
Immortality has taken and gifted a great deal of things to her, and Nile will never take it for granted, has allowed herself to be both decimated and reborn over and over again until some days she doesn’t recognise herself down to her very cells. Some moments though, for all of her inability to express herself at times, will remain stamped in her heart until it finally ceases beating.
“You’re finally ready.” Quynh says softly as they sit barefoot on the roof of this extortionately expensive home.
Nile doesn’t have to ask what she means, as she listens to the voices drifting up to them, understands intimately.
“I miss her.” She whispers instead.
Quynh stills. “As do I.”
“I’ve never thanked you,” it becomes important to say, here in this quiet space above the world, “for being so present with us, not giving in afterwards. I- I couldn’t have done that, I think.”
“I believe,” Quynh starts and then pauses, watches as their boys laughter reaches a crescendo from within, spills out in these filigree lines of gold that light up in wild arches and curlicues around them. “I believe that we are fused together in atoms and blood, conjoined from birth across the Millenia’s, we’re destined to be with one another. I may require periods of silence, but I’ll always find my way back to you all.”
"Quite right." Nile can only think to say.
Quynh laughs, the sound of it entwining with those from below and it's like hearing finely spun sugar, ambrosia straight from the source, all of her family's sparkling vitality bottled and corked if Nile could ever manage such a thing.
Instead she lets her head loll to the side and rest on Quynh's shoulder and closes her eyes to savour it for as long as it may last.