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All wounds healed.
A paper cut seamed and scabbed, a broken bone set and knit itself back together if given enough time. Burns scarred and torn skin mended, bodies were marked by the understated nature of their resilience and the things that they could live through. Human nature meant that they naturally sought out the things that may harm them. A first responder ran back into a burning building because they felt they needed to, and a mother threw herself into danger to protect her child because she needed to.
Humans had hurt, and humans had grown, through time unfathomable spread out over generations and centuries until their roots became tangled together. They survived things that should have killed them, and on occasion learned enough from their mistakes to continue living.
Through it all, regardless of circumstance or severity, humans found a way to survive.
Falling out of trees, tumbling down the stairs, a car crash.
Taking a grenade to the stomach.
Being shot in the head.
He had switched off with Andy some two hours ago after a silent stalemate where she refused to admit that she was hurt and he refused to let her pretend. He had stared at her for so long that his eyes had begun to burn, and eventually she had heaved a sigh and pulled the car over onto the shoulder in a contained fit of frustration. He had been half way around the car by the time she had gotten out herself, and she had humored him to prod at the seep of her wounds to check on the bleeding.
Now, she had dozed off in the passenger seat with her head against the window, and Joe drove with both hands tight to the wheel.
He couldn't stop himself from glancing back in the mirror every couple of minutes, but it never got easier. It never got better, three people stuffed into the back of a car where their legs were too long and two of them wouldn't fit, but he would be damned if he cared about how Sebastian felt. It hurt like an infection and a raging in his chest, because he loved him and he hated him and Joe breathed slowly through his nose. The man had fallen asleep at some point just like Andy, his head against the window and his body scrunched up on itself where he had tried to give Nile space. The girl hadn't sprawled like he would have expected, curved toward the side with her head on his love's shoulder and her hands loose in her lap.
Nicky's eyes were open, but it was impossible to tell how much he could see. He had been awake when they had all folded themselves into a too small car, and he had been awake since. It ached to look at him and it ached to look away, if his brother was an infection then his husband was like an open wound. A bleeding that he couldn't stop, a gaping in his chest that he couldn't close, something was wrong and Nicky was hurt , and Joe could do nothing. This was no cut he could bandage, this was no burn he could sooth, there was no injury he could fix apart from whatever had almost been ruined within the other man's head, and there was nothing that Joe could do.
He hadn't moved since he had gotten in the car, and Joe had watched him blink far less frequently than he should have. The soft discoloration beneath his eyes was deep, pronounced blooms of purple like iris petals had been laid into his skin, the man wore his exhaustion like a shroud, silent sentinel that he was. There was blood still in his hair, stuck up at odd angles in the back and darker than it should have been. The tendons in his throat stood out in sharp relief with his head turned, the bolt of his jaw exaggerated and strong from the shadows cast by the late hour.
Joe wanted to gather him up in his arms and run, as fast and far as he could.
Another blink, another breath, Nicky stared out the window and Joe had to force himself to look away. Andy was mortal now, they couldn’t afford to go off the road just because his head and his heart hurt. He had been left responsible, had made himself so, and every part of him screamed at the injustice and raged against the thought of having to care when all he wanted was his husband.
Just a seat between them, but Nicky felt further away than he had been in centuries.
He turned his attention to the road instead, eyes burning, shoulders stiff, and kept both hands on the wheel as he drove. He obeyed the traffic laws and followed the posted limit even when he wanted to press the pedal to the floor. Distance wouldn’t fix things, and getting pulled over in their current state would only make things worse. Andy lay bleeding from wounds she refused to talk about, there was glass in Nile’s hair, and Nicky-
Joe made a quiet, wounded noise, and struggled for a moment to breathe.
A choking sound, a muffled gasp, the flashbang rupture of a bullet hitting the chamber, and then it had just-
It had been quiet , in the worst sort of ways, and it clung to him still like blood beneath his nails.
He drove until Andy woke in the passenger seat beside him, the action marked by a sharp inhale as she shifted in place. His hands had turned numb around the wheel, white knuckled and tense, and he half listened to her come back around as he kept the car on the road. The country lanes were winding stretches of pavement, the monotony broken by blips of farms and copses of trees that stood like revenants in the dark. It was like he couldn’t get them far enough from London no matter how long he drove, that gunshot ringing in his ears and the smell of antiseptic clinging to his sinuses.
“Joe.”
He twitched in the driver's seat, hands tightening on the wheel. A glance to the left where Andy watched him with tired blue eyes, and he watched her for as long as he dared. Just a few seconds, long enough to look her in the face and take in how pale she was, the lines of stress on her face and the sallow tinge to her skin. She looked breakable in the dark, and he swallowed against the blades that lined his throat.
Her hand was just as cool as it had always been, a constant where she reached out and gripped his arm, and Joe only realized he was shaking when she touched him like that.
“Where are we?”
"West of Gloucester"
His tongue felt leaden, and he struggled to speak past the grit and the clicking of his throat. A hoarse sound, more of an exhale than anything else, but she still heard him. Her hand flexed on his arm, grip tightening for a moment, and then Andromache sighed. Weighted and weary like she knew, because she did, decades spent together meant she understood him even when he wished she didn't.
"We'll get a hotel."
He must have made some sort of noise, because her hand tightened again.
"I'll deal with it. Pull over."
"Andy-"
Her hand slid to his own, pale and cool where she gripped at his aching knuckles, and Joe shivered.
"Pull over, Joe."
Even after all these centuries, or maybe because of them, it was impossible to ignore her. He pulled the car onto the shoulder because she had told him to, and he sat stiff as she took a phone out of the glovebox before she slowly folded herself out of the car. It took a moment before she opened the door, but she moved out of the car with a fluid motion that clicked the door shut with her hip. She leaned against it, back to the window until he could see her body shift when she breathed, and Joe only looked away when he realized he had been staring.
He looked in the back instead, where Booker still sat hunched against the window and felt the sharp, consuming burn of rage start to swell up once more. He was so tired , and he wanted to comfort the man that was his brother as much as he wanted to strike him. It was like staring at a stranger, like having mistaken someone for a friend, and he felt raw from his own ferocity and hurt.
Nile had shifted in her sleep, head rolled low and loose against Nicky's shoulder. Glass glittered in her hair in the low light like stardust, and it would have been beautiful if the sight of her hadn't been tragic. She was too young for this, fresh to this world and already scarred from it. She had been fearless though, had thrown herself headlong into danger for the sake of them, and there were no words for how grateful he was.
He had made the mistake of looking, and now it was like he couldn't look away.
Nicky hadn't moved, body taunt like a bow where he had folded into the seat. Legs too long and his shoulders too wide for him to look as small as he did. The shadows beneath his eyes had worsened as the dark had set in, broad sweeps of bruising color that made his face look hollow. There was a glazed distance in his eyes from what Joe could see, like Nicky had faded into the space of his own mind during their travel. He was pale as the corpse he should never be in the dark, and Joe sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of him.
There was blood in the back of his hair, and Nicky made no motion to have even heard him.
"Nicolo."
There was no recognition to the sound of his name, no breath or blink, and Joe's hands twisted on the wheel.
All wounds healed, given time.
But heads were particular, brains were finicky, delicate things that fixed themselves in stops and starts over time until everything smoothed itself out. This would take time, his body would heal when it decided it was ready, but Joe wanted nothing more than to chase that empty away from his face.
The door clicked open, and Andy lowered herself back into the seat.
"Copley offered his house."
It was like he couldn't breathe, gas in his lungs and a broken throat. The shuffle of bodies in the debris, a grunt, a muffled gasp.
Andy put her hand on his arm and dug her cold fingers in.
"Joe-"
"We can't trust him."
Andy didn't ask who he meant, and he felt a flush of gratitude. She just sighed instead, tired and ancient, and squeezed his forearm before letting go.
“He owes us and he knows it. We’ve got a safehouse for a few days, where we’re going to rest before we decide anything.”
He didn’t like it and she knew it, sharp eyed and resolute beside him. He hated it, but he knew better than to press the point with her. She was in pain and she was horribly, irrevocably mortal, and Joe didn’t have the energy to deny her anything. He could kill her if he didn’t drive carefully enough, she could succumb to infection from her wounds while he had been taking them in circles for the last few hours. He hadn’t been given a destination, and he didn’t know where to go, didn’t know what was safe.
He didn’t want to take them to the home of the man who had nearly ruined them, who had nearly taken his heart from him. His Nico had been murdered, savagely and intimately, and the trauma from that would resonate with them for days at minimum.
“Sure, Boss.”
"Nicky?"
His name was a question, sleep rough and soft from Nile's mouth, and Joe flinched. His gaze snapped to the rearview mirror where part of the backseat was already empty, Booker stood in the grass some feet away and Andy leaned against the side of the car. Nile had started to climb out herself, but Nicky had yet to move, distant and silent where he still stared out the window, and Joe couldn't breathe.
"I'll get him, Nile."
His voice sounded wrong even to his own ears, strangled, and her head came up to look at him. Her eyes were big and dark, and her concern was innocent and genuine where she looked at him. Only a few hours in each other's company, but it was impossible to miss the way that she cared, the way she wanted to help. Selfless, a bleeding heart just like another that he knew, and Joe wondered how he would survive two of them.
She nodded after a minute, and crawled out of the other side of the car.
His gaze slid to Nicky and he faltered then, only for a moment. Long enough to look, to see the way that things weren't okay, that nothing was right, and then he was up himself. Out of the car and into Copley's drive, the door clicked shut and he pulled Nicky's open in a single motion.
His husband stared past him, glassy eyed and gone somewhere far away. Joe swallowed thickly past the fist in his throat and the burning in his eyes. Gentle hands cupped Nicky's face, one sliding into his stiff hair to curl delicately past the shell of his ear. Soft to tip his head up, to try to bring him back, and Nicky just blinked.
"Rouhi, can you come back to me?"
It took a long moment with his breath held and his heart hurting, as Nicky blinked and stayed unfocused. A shift then, just as he had started to succumb to the want to cry, something settled in his gaze. He inhaled raggedly, chest rising sharply, and his hands came up quick to clasp at Joe's forearms. His fingers spasmed against bare skin, and Joe bit at his tongue.
His throat worked where he tried to speak, but all that came out was a garbled mash of sound. His brow furrowed, sea glass eyes still too bright where he stared at Joe in confusion.
"I'm right here."
His words were curling and old, a marriage of languages long dead and lost by everyone but the both of them. Private, intimate, the only thing older than their love and he used it now where he desperately needed something familiar and safe. Soothing and shushing where Nicky made a muted, uncertain sound, his smile was watery and strained. Nicky stared up at him with something like fear in his shifting eyes, and Joe put a hand to the back of his throat just to hold him.
Words were beyond him then, something still unsettled in his brain that made it impossible to connect to his mouth. Still, he leaned into Joe's touch readily, trusting. He came forward when Joe carefully guided him out of the car, and he gripped tightly to his forearms when his body swayed. Unsteady, Joe could feel the way that he shook as he stood, and he wrapped an arm around the thin of his waist to keep him upright. Nicky sagged heavily against him, and Joe shut the door with his hip.
The others had already gone inside without them, and he was grateful for the privacy they had been offered. His Nico was a proud man, and the others seeing him like this would have tugged at insecurities that Joe had spent lifetimes soothing. He supported him instead, a solid line of warmth against his side where he walked them through the front door of a jarringly modern house. All sharp lines and glittering glass set against a dense backdrop of green, cold and minimalist, and the door opened easily when he pushed at it.
Nicky faltered just inside, the lights bright overhead and the walls done in a cool, pale grey. He made another low sound, fingers clenching tight to Joe’s back. Head turning, the dark scent of dried blood filled his senses as Nicky shuddered and tucked his face against his throat, desperate to hide from the light. Joe made a soft sound of sympathy, and soothed a hand against the low of his spine as he walked them further inside.
“Andy’s with Copley. He said there’s a room upstairs for you.” Under the white lights the glass in her hair looked like diamonds, a sharp spray of dangerous glitter across her tightly woven braids. She would have looked ethereal if not for the blood that decorated her, some callback to a vision of a woman at war from centuries past. She watched them both where she leaned against the back of a dark, dove grey sofa, curious and quiet. “At the end of the hall.”
Joe nodded, Nicky pressed tight against him and clinging, and he rubbed a hand along his husband’s spine before encouraging him toward the stairs.
“Thank you, Nile.”
She nodded, looking older than her years in the overbright room.
“Hey, Joe?”
He paused with them halfway up the steps, begrudgingly, as Nicky trembled against him. Nile watched them with a furrowed brow and her grip tight on the back of the sofa.
“You’re both gonna be okay, right?”
He couldn’t help the way that he softened at the question, shoulders sagging beneath the crushing weight of the last few days. Nicky gripped tight to him, breath coming quick and shallow.
“We will. Get some sleep, Nile.”
She bobbed her head in another nod, glass glittering sharply as he turned for the stairs once more. It was a trial to get the both of them up to the landing, Nicky unsteady beside him like the man never was. His heart was a vice in his throat, a sticky, fetid cloy of emotion making it hard to swallow.
The ceiling was dotted with slanted panels of glass, skylights that let in the late afternoon sun in warm splashes across the hardwood. Joe wanted to stand there in that golden fall and just forget the last few days, but he wanted to get his husband clean, to get them both to bed. He wanted , but there weren’t enough words in any single language to sum up the multitude of things that he wanted in that moment. He wanted to run, but he needed the both of them to be alright like they wouldn’t be for some time yet.
He desperately wanted his Nicolo to stop his shaking, but this process would happen one agonizing thing at a time.
He could hear movement somewhere on the floor with them, boots on the floor, and rage flushed through him hot and exhausting. It left him feeling hollow as soon as it came, at war with himself over his want to check on his brother and the need to defend his family from the stranger the man had become. He lost himself in it for a moment, unmoored.
Nicky made a quiet, questioning, hurt sound from beside him, and Joe sucked in a deep breath.
“We’re almost there, and then we’re going to get you clean and you can sleep.”
His Nico hummed in response, lilted and trembling where he leaned heavily against Joe’s side.
He ached , and there would be no running from such a thing. He couldn’t hide, not from this, no matter how badly he wanted to. Not when Nicky needed him, but that gave him purpose. Taking care of Nicky would force him to take care of himself, a two sided blade that Andy had ribbed him for through the centuries, but it would be enough for now because it had to be.
The room was done in tones of deep navy, dark wooden accents and a puffed black duvet on the large bed. Windows dominated the northern wall with a long rack of dark drapes half pulled to dim the way the sun lit up the room. A plush rug spread out from beneath the bed, and an open door let into a shadowed en suite. He took a shuddering breath at the sight of it, at the quiet of the room around them, and reached back one handed to slip the lock on the door.
The bathroom was of a deep heather and freckled marble, lit by a single fixture overhead. Getting Nicky out of his clothes took both hands, and he carefully maneuvered the man to sit on the closed toilet as he quickly shed his clothes. Under the steaming spray with the both of them, and Nicky leaned into his touch with a ragged, wet breath like a sob. He washed away every leftover hint of blood, every shard of bone and clump of tissue from the back of his skull, and didn’t let them linger like he wanted to. Instead, he supported Nicky against the wall with his own weight and scrubbed himself clean before pulling them both back into the now humid room.
They had no fresh clothes, but the locked door offered enough comfort that Joe just dried the both of them off with one of the soft grey towels. He left it on the bathroom floor to deal with later and eased Nicky back into the bedroom once more where the sun cast its light almost to the bed.
“Here we go, habibi.”
He looked like a frail, lost thing, eyes almost glassy and bruised. He went easily into the bed where Joe guided him, duvet pulled down to the crisp cream sheets beneath, trusting even as he looked confused. His hands gripped tight and trembling to Joe’s forearms, ten biting points of pressure as something like fear skittered across his face. His unfocused gaze darted first to the door and then the window, another wordless noise echoing from his throat.
“I’m right here.” A murmur of sound and he pressed his mouth to the other man’s forehead. “ Let me close the windows.”
Nicky watched him when he went, pale eyes almost feverish.
It made Joe’s throat tight to turn away from him long enough to just close the window, like Nicky being out of his sight meant he would be gone. They had almost taken the other man from him. The last few days were spent with so much death between them that he had lost count of just how many times they had died on those hospital beds. It had all blurred together like it would never end, and he stared out into the dark green of the forest beyond the house with his heart screaming in his ears.
Nicky made a small, scared sound from behind him, and Joe snapped the curtains shut.
The room plunged into a soft darkness then, muted light just enough to see by as he hastened back to the bed. Onto the mattress beside the other man and Nicky reached for him instantly, burrowed against him as soon as Joe was close enough like he could press himself beneath his skin if he tried hard enough. Nicky shivered and shook enough to make the bed shake, and Joe pressed him tight against his chest. Pulled the blanket up around them one handed and wrapped his arms around the other man with a wretched, fearful thought that if he let go then he would lose him.
“You’re safe Nico, I’m right here.”
Eventually, the shaking stopped. The catching, whimpering noises died away into soft, even breathing as sleep finally took him. Nicky went heavy and slack against him, safe and trusting and whole , and Joe kept him close.
The room was quiet, tucked far enough back into the rest of the house that it was impossible to hear anything beyond the soft hum of the air conditioning where it whirred through the vents.
Nicky slept , safe in his arms like Joe hadn’t thought he would ever be again, and Joe pressed his mouth to the damp top of his head as he cried and struggled to breathe.
“Yusuf.”
He inhaled sharply, surfacing slowly. It was warm in their bed, Nico half splayed across his chest. They had shifted in the night, an intimate dance across the bed that had ended with him sprawled out on his back. Husband curled solid and familiar against his chest, their legs were tangled together and their chests rose and fell in tandem. Joe hummed softly, turning his face into the pillow and listening to the way that his husband huffed.
Catching immediately the way that he didn’t .
A hand pressed to his shoulder, fingers curled against the cusp of it where Nico held on. His breathing was more stilted than it should have been for their bed, measured. He breathed like he laid in a nest with his rifle braced against his shoulder, like this was a job rather than the safe haven of their well loved bed.
Joe blinked his eyes open, and it all came tumbling down.
The room around them was dark, muted light from curtains pulled shut on the wrong wall, deep blues and blacks where it should have been crisp and golden from the sun. This bed wasn’t theirs, the mattress wasn’t big enough, their intricately carved headboard was missing, and his own breathing started to pick up.
Nicky stared at him from his place on his chest, sharp eyed and quiet in the dark. He was the wrong kind of still, controlled and tightly strung, and Joe reached out for him instantly. Took him by the thin of his waist and ran a hand up until his palm could spread between the blades of wide shoulders, a comfort and a grounding and a plea. He could feel Nicky’s heart thundering against his chest, and he blinked heavily against the dark.
“Where are we?”
Zenizine and Arabic and things long dead, a hint of Tamazight at the edges and Latin in the lower curves of the letters. Nothing recent, full mouthed and rounded in a low spoken husk like a secret to be kept in the dark between just the two of them.
His Nico wasn’t afraid, not quite, but there was something startled and guarded in his pale eyes that left Joe wanting to swear. It would be like that then, things that had been lost to them until they were left with the what ifs and the in betweens. He didn’t know where they were, and Joe didn’t know how much else was missing, what else might have been knocked loose from a bullet that shouldn’t have ever been there to begin with. He felt so despondent he could have cried all over again, but his eyes still burned from the night before in a phantom feeling that he remembered from before that first death and nothing else.
“Safe,” he crooned into the shadowed dim of the room they had been given, hand slipping further to cup at the back of Nicky’s skull. He held the frail curve of bone delicately, palm to the exact place where the back of his skull had been forced open. The bullet had gone straight through and had taken bone with it, a horrendous pooling of too much blood on concrete that had puddled and spread. “We’re safe, Nico, I’m right here.”
His grip would have been a bruise if they were capable of such things, harsh pressure to the front of his shoulder where Nicky held on. His body covered most of Joe’s own, and he recognized the gesture then for what it was. It wasn’t the first time Nicky had used his own body like a shield, and it wouldn’t be the last, but Joe hated it now just like he hated it every other time. There was no danger here, but Nicky didn’t know that, gaps in his memory that stretched farther than Joe could understand at that moment that had left the man rattled, tense.
“We’re outside of London. Andy and Copley arranged for us to lie low in his home for a few days until we move on. Nile is-” Joe faltered, swallowing thickly as he swept his thumb across the back of his skull. Did he remember what had happened to them in that steril tomb? Did he know Nile, what had become of Andy, or what Booker had done? “Nile is here, and Booker is probably hiding in whatever room he was given.”
Did Joe want him to?
His gaze sharpened at that name though, a target found, and all of their decades and centuries together meant his husband was an open book even at the worst of times. He recognized that glacial rage then, the Arctic freeze of it that made his eyes gleam like ice chips. Nicky knew then, and Joe hated himself for his relief that he wasn’t alone in this weighted knowledge. He sighed, pressed up into the way that Nicky lay his weight further across him.
“You can’t kill him.”
Nicky huffed almost silently, indignant and enraged, and Joe couldn’t help the way he smiled. Small and sad at the middle, but he loved this man and he had never hidden from him before, there would be no sense in starting now.
“He doesn’t deserve death.”
So matter of fact, it would have sounded like an admonishment if Joe hadn’t known him so well. Punishment and condemnation lay thick on his tongue, and his Nico wielded his words like a carefully chosen weapon. There was steel within his spine and the waters reflected in his eyes ran deep, a torrent of emotion and intent buried below where only Joe could understand. Like a sacred hymn across his tongue, and he breathed Nicky’s name as he kept him close.
“ Nicolo.”
His love was nothing if not indulgent, head dipping low until he could smear their mouths together. A claiming, branding kind of kiss, pressure and a hint of teeth and a slick tongue that slid across his own. Nicky kissed him like he intended to consume him, and Joe groaned. The hand at his shoulders wandered to grip at the small of his back, body shifting as he tried to spread his legs, anything to give Nicky space to be where he wanted him. This wasn’t their bed and this wasn’t their home, a wall shared with a traitor and their now mortal sister somewhere beyond that door, but Joe wanted fiercely, desperately.
Nicky broke away from him with a low gasp, kisses dragged across his cheekbone and to his throat for a single, stinging bite that had him breathing sharply through his teeth. Another to his gaping mouth, and then the weight of him was gone.
Joe opened eyes he hadn’t realized he had shut to find his husband on the other side of the bed, duvet pushed back and his hands buried in the sheets as he pulled himself to stand beside the bed.
His eyes went impossibly wide as his legs buckled, and Joe jack-knifed off of the bed with a sharp sound as Nicky crumpled to the ground.
“Nicolo!”
“ I’m fine!”
A bark of sound made bright with frustration, but Joe went to his knees beside him anyway. His pale hands shook where his fingers dug into the pale, plush rug, brown hair fallen into his eyes where his head was bowed. There was his pride then, the damned thing that it was that Joe loved all the same.
He touched him without hesitation, hands to his jaw until he could tip his face up for Nicky to look at him. There was a caged look in his eyes that ached like a bruise to see, and Joe leaned in until he could press their foreheads together.
“ No, we’re not.”
Nicky shuddered on a ragged inhale and leaned heavily against him. Wide hands braced on his thighs just for something to hold, and he crowded into Joe’s space like he wanted to crawl under his skin. He wouldn’t have minded, desperate for some kind of reminder that they were free and whole, that this wasn’t a fever dream that would end in pain and agonized screaming as Nicky was carved into again. He had been helpless and it burned like a lance across his spine, the way that he hadn’t been able to stop any of the atrocities that either of them had endured. He would spiral if he lingered on it, he wouldn’t be able to breathe if he let himself dwell on things that couldn’t be changed.
Nicky needed him, and he needed Nicky, and they were safe even if they were jagged at the edges and marked by the things they had bore witness to.
“I’m so sorry I couldn-”
“You have nothing to b-”
“Yusuf.”
Nicky gripped tight to him, their noses nudged together, breaths shared. His eyes were bright and tearfilled where he took up all of Joe’s space, blocking out the rest of the world, and it was his turn to shake then.
Nicky made a low sound in his throat, hands sliding to his hips, his waist, and he held on tight as the other man practically crawled into his lap in a bid to get them closer. Their chests together, legs all tangled and their arms wrapped around one another, it was easier then. This man was his, his to hold and his to soothe and protect just as he was Nicolo’s to be held and cherished and protected by. That couldn’t be taken from them, regardless of what this ever changing world threw at them.
“ We aren’t alright, but we will be. In time.” Nicky bumped their noses together once more, and he sighed into the touch, sniffed where his cheeks were slick with tears and his throat tight with emotion. Nicky let him cry, held him through it all and offered comfort just like he needed with strong arms wrapped around him and the steady beat of his heart. A solid, real weight across his lap, naked skin pressed to skin, this was no fever dream bore of pain, this was them. “We have nothing but time, tesoro.”
This was real, and Joe wept.
Someone had left clothes for them outside the door, and they emerged only after they had righted themselves.
Lingering touches as they dressed one another, loving fingers in the way that Nicky righted his curled and twisted them through his fingers until they resembled something more tame. Familiar touches and timeworn motions, a seamless dance that they fell into readily. Simple comforts, anything to make this feel normal, something to remind them. Their days would be full of this for some time yet, heavily painted by the ways that they would hesitate to let one another out of sight, and Joe readied himself for the way that Andy would watch them, ancient and sad. She would blame herself, and there would be no words to change that.
The upper level of the house was bathed in midmorning sunlight, floors warmed underfoot by the beams that fell to bright puddles against the wood.
There were voices on the lower level, and Nicky walked slightly ahead of him on unsteady legs, their fingers laced where he put himself forward like a shield despite everything. He had refused anything else in his own quiet way, and Joe loathed to take this small bit of control from him after the events of the last week.
They found them in a kitchen just as spacious and modern as the rest of the house, all bright lights and sleek lines. A series of windows made up the back wall overlooking a sloping yard and the dense forest beyond. It would have been a beautiful home had it not felt like a minimalist exposé. Cold where a home should have been filled with laughter, and he ached for the gentle crash of waves and the comforts of their own haven.
Conversation cut short when they entered the room, a stilted, sudden hush that scraped like a raw nerve. Nicky’s fingers tightened around his, and Joe held fast. Stepped forward to press himself against the solid of his spine, just to the side and half behind him. Relished in the way that his love leaned back into him.
“Nicky!”
Nile was on her feet in an instant, away from the sleek barstool she had claimed and across the room with loud steps. Her movements were telegraphed, bold as they were, and Joe burned with affection for this new addition to their family as she invaded their space like she had always been there. He felt the way Nicky’s breath caught just before she was on them, and the way that the other man held himself almost stiff when her arms came around his shoulders.
He melted after a moment, unobservable to any that didn’t know him. He let go of Joe’s hand to wrap his arms around her instead, banded around her middle like he had known her for centuries. His head went low to rest against her shoulder, and there was no mistaking the way that he shuddered. Joe pressed forward again, pinned Nicky between the two of them and used his reach to wrap his arms around both of them, savoring the way that Nile laughed quietly, muffled.
“I’m glad you’re okay.”
Her voice was quiet, almost lost against Nicky’s chest.
“Me too.”
Her eyes were bright when she pulled away, and Joe took Nicky’s hand instantly when it came back for his own. Desperate for contact, like one of them would disappear without a handhold on the other.
Andy knew, just like he had known she would, and she watched them both with something wary and timeless in her expression. She looked better than she had the night before, a warm, healthy flush to her cheeks even if there were faint shadows beneath her eyes. There was a dark, angry bruise on her jaw that hadn’t healed, wouldn’t until it faded to green and then yellow with time, and Joe felt the world wobble and threaten to drop out from beneath his feet at the reminder.
She watched them for a long, silent moment, and Joe wondered what she searched for but knew the moment that she found it, her throat working before she spoke.
“When are you leaving?”
“After we decide.”
Nicky’s voice was low in the otherwise quiet room, but there was no mistaking him. His tone left no room for argument, regardless of what Andy wanted or what anyone said. His lover was made of steadfast determination when Joe himself would have faltered at the thought of leaving their family alone, but he trusted the other half of his soul more than he trusted himself some days. Nicolo knew him more than any living being ever would, and such an intimacy came without shame or hesitance between them, an implicit assurance that the man would never steer him wrong.
Andy didn’t like it, made obvious by the set of her mouth and the look in her eyes, but she nodded.
“Alright.”
Copley stood on the other side of the island with a crate of eggs beside him and a waffle iron at the ready, straight backed and nervous only by the pinched look on his face. He looked ready to provide, and it wasn’t enough, but it was a start.
“I didn’t know if you still practiced, but I got things to make food halal just to be safe.”
Joe blinked owlishly at the unexpected admittance, more touched than he cared to dwell upon. Nicky brushed his thumb across the beat of his pulse at his wrist, and Joe twisted their hands so he could lace their fingers tighter.
“Thank you, James.”
It wasn’t enough, not in the face of everything the man had done, but he knew a stride for repentance when he was one, and it was a start.
Breakfast was a companionable affair for all that it should have been tense, Copley practically prostrating himself to cater to their needs. Any demand they had was answered as quickly as he could, any question given whatever honest response the man knew how to find, and it was a start. Nile put three waffles into her belly, famished from the fall and the things her body had had to heal from, and Copley had watched her put away the food with something vaguely horrified in his gaze.
Everything was fine, as fine as it could be, with Nicky pressed against his side as they ate, listening as Andy and the man went back and forth about logistics and safehouse arrangements and what Copley’s new role would be. He would work for them if not with them, and the man accepted his lot without a single complaint. Like he craved the chance to show his worth, to earn the right to keep his life, and his readiness to put himself at their mercy was both recognized and appreciated.
“I didn’t think you would believe me.”
“You shot yourself in the foot.”
Incredulous, he stared at Nile even as she shrugged, and Joe listened as Nicky snorted a quiet laugh beside him.
The sound cut short too quickly, mutated into a slick, sickly gurgle with a wet, scraping sound as his throat caught and clicked. He barely had time to turn before Nicky’s weight fell away, and the barstool clattered to the floor as his body went.
“Nicolo!”
His head struck the wood with a rough, resonating sound, and Joe threw himself to the floor beside him as his body began to seize. His saliva turned to pinkened foam where his teeth found his tongue, and bodies joined him on the floor as Joe braced his head. Panic filled him then as the other man gurgled and contorted on the floor, eyes rolling until the precious color of them was lost beneath his lids as he shook.
“Don’t touch him!”
Nile smacked his hands away with a sharp, cracking motion, and he could have screamed at her.
Nicky shuddered violently on the hardwood, and Joe could only watch in horror as the tremors took him. Tears blurred his vision, a vice in his chest, and it was like he had breathed sand as he could do nothing but watch as the love of his life suffered again before him. It dragged, time held no meaning and couldn’t go fast enough, and it was after an impossible amount of it that it just-
It stopped, foam dribbling from his mouth and his face colored with a feverish flush. Joe sobbed and touched him then where Nile didn’t stop him, curled himself over Nicky’s body and cried where he didn’t care who saw. He cried as his grief tried to consume him, hands gathering his Nico close where the man was limp and heavy in his grasp. His head rolled when Joe lifted him, pressed him against his chest where none could touch or take him, and the lull of it was enough to make him choke on a scream.
“ Destati, per favore destati, amore mio.” His chest heaved, breathing ragged and wet, and Joe pressed Nicky’s face to his throat like the viscous, frightened pound of his heart would be enough. “ Destati, Nicolo, destati, destati, destati.”
He started to rock them from side to side at one point, sobbing as he pleaded in the breath-held quiet of the kitchen.
A hand curled weakly in the fabric against his chest, and he could only cry harder.
“So-sono qui.”
He brought forth the prospect of exile, forced time apart, and Nile’s eyes were guileless and dark where she didn’t understand but didn’t question.
Nicky quietly demanded a hundred years, speech faintly slurred and a fine boned quiver in his hands, and Andromache didn’t argue for all that she looked her thousands upon thousands of years.
He could hear the bells of the Sé Catedral de Évora from his studio.
The chiming drifted in through the open windows, soft curtains fluttering in the afternoon breeze. It had been quiet in their thin home, the faint hum of the ceiling fan and the quiet murmur of the music that he had put on after lunch to keep him company. The gentle sounds had blended with the soft curl of voices from the street below until it drifted through the room like an ambient sonata.
Under different circumstances, he would have lost time in his studio. He would have spent hours folded on the floor with an easel spread out before him, slowly accumulating paint on his arms and the front of him until a shower was needed.
He had made progress, but nothing like he should have, nothing like he would have normally.
The house was quiet save for the ringing of the bells, silence from the lower level where the kitchen and the living room were empty. There was nobody in the library across the hall from his studio, no soft footfalls or gentle humming like there should have been. It was a startling kind of silence, his home had never felt like this before, always full of laughter or music or the soft choir of sounds that followed a lived in household.
Brush swirled in his water cup, the pale pink liquid turned a lush orange from a slow bloom of canary yellow from the bottom of the jar. He tapped his brush on the rim of the glass a few times before setting it aside with the rest of them. Hands smeared across his thighs with long drags of color where his cotton shorts had ridden up and Joe climbed to his feet. Left his canvas behind and dipped into the hall for the stairs instead.
It was cooler upstairs, long spills of shade marked by the fan that circled above. The hardwood was cool beneath his bare feet, and Joe walked with silent steps. There had been no movement on the third floor for at least the last two hours, the only other occupant settled for the time being. All was still, punctuated only by the gentle whir of the fans, and he paused just at the door to their bedroom.
The curtains were drawn, casting the room in a muted sepia glow that turned the walls a hazy golden. It was pleasantly cool here despite the afternoon hour, fan above set to its highest setting with a droning hum that tugged at his subconscious until he fought not to yawn. A trail of clothes lead from the door to the bed, a pair of jeans crumpled next to the closet and cotton shirt left abandoned almost in the center of the room. The closet had been left open and a hoodie ill suited for this climate had dripped off of its hanger to the floor like it had almost been lucky enough to be worn.
Rich sage sheet pulled up and rumpled around one shoulder, Nicky slept sprawled on his stomach. One arm was stretched out toward the window, and from where he stood Joe could see the way that the diluted light cast a smokey beam of sunlight onto his hand. His head turned away from the door, Joe didn’t need to see his husband’s face to know that his mouth would have been slack, that his eyelids would have fluttered in a dream depending on how long he had been under. Nicky slept deeply for what felt like the first time in weeks, and Joe had loathed to disturb him since the other man had begged off going to the market for a nap instead.
The bed dipped faintly beneath his weight when he planted one hand on the bed, but the way that Nicky’s back rose and fell was rhythmic and bone deep.
He slept an exhausted kind of sleep, blissfully unconscious from the way that his body had desperately tried to finish healing. Nicky had seized again in the kitchen just that previous morning, had answered Joe’s laughing question with a clicking, guttural gurgling sound, and Joe had made it into the room just in time to watch as his legs gave out. His head had cracked against the counter with a slick bloom of blood from just behind his temple, another bruise that had faded just as quickly as it had come, but its absence had done nothing to make it less terrifying. This one had been shorter, less violent, no pinkened froth to his lips and no choked off noises where his body tried to scream. Less than thirty seconds, he had counted every one, and had bitten back sobs at the way that Nicky had whimpered and reached for him when it was over, kittenish and weak.
That had been then though, and this was now, his husband sleep soft and pliant against him.
He leaned forward again, and watched the way that his body rolled toward the dip in the mattress, ribs brushing against Joe’s knuckles.
His face was peaceful, a soft flush from the heat to his cheeks. Hair dusted across his temples where it either needed to be cut or left alone to grow as it pleased, there was no scrape or scar or blood to be seen. Perfectly unblemished skin, a rasp of stubble across his jaw where he hadn’t shaved in a few days that made his jaw sharper, his face roguish. Nicky was beautiful here in their bed, in their home, and Joe’s chest burned.
He curled over the other man until he could tip their foreheads together, and just tried to breathe.
A rustle, long fingers sank into his curls, and he opened his eyes to find the waters of the Mediterranean staring back at him.
“ Ciao, bello .”
He couldn’t help the way he laughed, low and caught in his chest as it was. Nicky just smiled at him, cheek creased from the pillow and his eyes still clouded from sleep. He was soft here and just as beautiful as he ever was, and Joe shuffled closer. Planted his hands on either side of his husband's head and watched the way that he shifted and arched up beneath him to get comfortable.
“Ya amar.”
Nicky preened beneath him, a soft sweep of innocent color across his cheeks from such a simple thing where affection always affected him so.
He dipped low to press a kiss to his husbands mouth, and Nicky hummed, lax and low.
“How do you feel?”
His brow furrowed, frustrated by the distance between their mouths but thoughtful. Such simple expressions that meant everything, the complexity of his Nicolo’s emotions were carefully kept things, pressed beneath still waters and a calm composure. His gentle nature was as much a gift as it was a weapon, a blessing made double edged by the way that it drove him to sharp focused vengeance when the situation called for it. There was no fight here though, there was no threat, and Nicky was loose limbed and warm beneath him.
“Better.” The word was little more than a murmur, softly spoken into the hush between them like too much would ruin their good fortune. He rolled his head a little against the pillow, his shoulders, and stretched beneath the cage of Joe’s body where he belonged. “It feels less- wrong. Whole.”
His relief was like a blade where it cut through him, took his strength until he went to his forearms on the bed. Their chests pressed together and he could feel the way that Nicky breathed, every rise and fall of his ribs and the dip of his waist. Food would soften him, time spent in leisure and in bed would pad his edges until his skin dimpled beneath Joe’s touch, but there would be time for that. He was here, now, without pain or fear, and Joe tasted a prayer on his tongue that was whispered into the space between them.
“Omri, amore mio.” Nicky sighed, arm coming up to loop low beneath his shoulders and pull Joe down against him. He nuzzled into the contact, pressed close and relished in being held as only Nicky ever could. “My love is a fretful man.”
“Your love has every reason to fret.”
One of them sighed, the both of them, but Nicky didn’t correct him. He let the silence carry them long enough that the sun began to shift, that a twinge took his back and left in the same breath.
“I do feel better, I think.”
Joe hummed, face tucked into Nicky’s throat, and slid one hand beneath his head to tenderly cup the back of his skull.
“What can I do to make it better?”
The arm around him tightened, and he went easily where Nicky pulled. Let his weight be rolled across the other man’s body and to the bed instead, pressed into the mattress where Nicky tangled their legs together and cuddled close. An arm at his chest where he reached out without hesitation, tangled their hands together against his stomach like an anchor to keep him here in this moment. Nicky’s head knocked gently against his and he laughed again, a rumbling sound in the hush that otherwise held them, and Joe watched the way his husband smiled, sweet and smitten.
“Just this. Just you.”
He could do that, could do anything if it made his Nicolo happy, if it kept his husband content.
“I think I can do that.”