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After their run-in with Merrick and Bookers exile, the rest of the group had decided to lay low. Their temporary house was one the had purchased before Booker had died the first time and they never had visited with him, so the family was reasonable sure, their wayward brother hadn't been able to give that location up.
It was almost summer now and Andy and Nile spent the evenings on the small patio while most of the time Nicky was cooking and sometimes Joe was keeping him company, sometimes he was sitting on the patio with Andy and Nile, sketching or reading a book, sometimes Nicky was teaching Nile a new dish.
Tonight, Joe was keeping Nicky company in the kitchen. And Nile took the opportunity to ask something that had started to bother her a bit during the last few weeks.
“Is Nicky always doing what Joe tells him?”
Andy looked up from her sudoku, pencil in her mouth. She put it behind her ear and set the notebook down on the table between them. She liked them, saying they were better than crosswords because she was old and didn't care to remember who had wrote which book or shot or directed which movie. And she didn't always get all the figures of speeches that crosswords had.
“Only, when he wants to. After more than a thousand years, Joe is pretty good at predicting what Nicky wants. Nicky seldom utters his wants or needs.”, she answered, taking a sip from her cocktail.
“Why?”
“Because of how they met. Nicky was a thrall.”
Nile knew she must look confused because she had heard the term thrall before but she didn't know what exactly it described. But before she had time to ask what a thrall was, Andy continued talking and explaining: “Nicky was a monk in 10th century England and was captured by Northmen..., what you would call Vikings and kept as a thrall, a slave.” Nile gasped sharply, slavery was difficult topic for her. “Joe was a Fatimid warrior fighting in Al-Andalus at the time. He dreamt of a Christian monk dying over and over again and thought it a sign from Allah, so he left his brothers and went to search for him, to try and make sense of his own immortality. After months of looking for him, he finally found him and panic bought him.”
“And then he set him free?”, Nile wanted to know. Because she could see how Joe was charmed by Nickys looks and how Nicky would fall in love with his rescuer. But she knew she was wrong when Andy started to laugh.
“No, Joe kept him as his thrall until Nicky had enough money to buy himself free,”, Andy answered still laughing. The boys had been so prideful when they had first met them. Her wife had insisted that they respect the local customs and not sneak Nicky gold or precious gems in order to speed up the process. The first time she had tried, Nicky had simply let the ruby fall to the floor and then bended down to pick it up, giving it back with the words: “You dropped something, ερωμένη Andromache.” He had done something like that, staying unfailingly polite until she had stopped after a few months and had let the boys sort themselves out.
“What? How could he? Owning another human is wrong, evil.” But before Nile could go on a rant about the evils and wrongness of slavery and how her own family, her ancestors had had suffered, how her own family name carried the legacy of it, Andy answered her questions.
“Different times, Nile. And Nicky wouldn't have let Joe just free him. There wasn't a lot of trust between them back then. They fought, but they fought different battles. Nicky tried to convert Joe to Christianity for some five or so years and Joe had demons haunting him from what happened on the battlefields during the conquest of what is now known as Spain. It wasn't easy for them, Nile.”
“Then why...?”
“Why is Nicky letting Joe decide stuff? Because there is love and trust between them now and when Joe is saying Nicky is cooking lunch, it's more like Nicky is using Joes mouth to speak. What happened with Merrick and Kozak has shaken them both pretty bad and Booker... it certainly didn't help that we were betrayed by Sébastien. Nicky is stress cooking and stress baking and Joe is creating when he is stressed, painting, sculpting, sometimes even knitting.”
“So, they... never fight, what happens when they have different opinions?”, Nile asked. Her parents had fought regularly but she had always known they loved each other, because after a fight, they still respected each other and showed their affections, they would still dance together to the music on the radio in the living room, still kiss each other hello and good bye. Her dad would bring her mum flowers and she would let him win at game night. Even she and both her brothers fought but even if they hated each other in the heated moments of the fight, they never ratted each other out when their parents were trying to find the guilty one. She couldn't really imagine a relationship with absolutely no fights, no heated discussions or loud arguments.
“Oh, they fight. Nicky isn't a doormat or a mouse, just letting Joe decide, as if he hasn't an opinion or a voice, if that's what you're afraid of.” Andy said with emphasis. “He makes his opinions and arguments known if and when he deems it important enough. You heard him and Joe discuss Bookers fate with us.” Andy said and of course, Nile remembered.
While she had barely contributed to the discussion, Andy and Joe had said the most and Nicky; in the end, Nicky had backed Joe. But he hadn't been afraid to voice his disagreement when Joe had wanted to torture Booker as well as his concerns for Joes soul if his husband went through with that plan. The discussion had been heated, mostly because Andy had wanted fewer years than Joe, so she could see her brother again before she died, not that she had said that in the discussion. Andy had told Nile that one evening, after Nile had confessed she had Bookers number and was low key keeping tabs on him with Copleys help.
Nicky had been as passionate and loud in arguing as the other two, Nile remembered and saw that Andy was most likely right. She could see Nicky fight Joe on some point that was important to him with that same energy.
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It was just a few weeks later when Nile got proof of the fact that despite Nickys easy going and agreeable manners, he could and would argue and fight with the best of them, even against Joe, if need be. The fight itself was brought on by the fact that Quynh had escaped her watery prison – though torture chamber was more apt, Nile thought – found them one evening, when they were relaxing after eating dinner, that Nicky had prepared with Joes help and attacked them. The time in the house had been good to them – too good, they had grown complacent. They had taken to leaving their weapons in their bedrooms when not sparring, not even having a dagger on their bodys, though Andy had had one in her boots and one strapped to her thigh. They had started to sleep deeper again, not jumping at each unknown sound from their environment. Quynh had had an easy game, taking them by surprise, first taking out Nicky with a crossbow bolt from the garden. In the ensuing chaos, she had taken out Nile and almost killed Andy. It was only her inexperience with guns – mainly the fact that they were easier and fast to load and that you could shoot more one or two bullets at a time, that had stopped her from killing Andy for good. While her body healed from the bullet to the head courtesy of Joe, Nile had gotten some handcuffs out of Andys bag – she had long gotten used to Andys eccentric accessories – and cuffed the dead woman with her hands in front of her. It would be safer to cuff the hand in back but Andy had asked and injured and mortal or not, she was still the boss.
It was long after midnight when they had gotten the knife out of Andy without her bleeding out and stitching up the wound and then they had secured a shocked Quynh to the radiator.
“I didn't know, Yusuf.”, she had said, her tone pleading. “How can she be dying?”
“She isn't dying, Quynh. Nicky and Nile have it under control, Nile is first aid trained and Nickys last medical degree was done just 20 years ago.”, Joe had said, not especially kind but also not cruel. “She isn't dying.” Nile had heard the hurt and anger in Joes voice.
“Please, Yusuf, can I... can I see her, please I need to see her.”, Quynh had begged.
“Tomorrow.” Nicky had shouted back, having heard her from the other side of the living room. “Andy needs rest now. She is not as indestructible as you knew her, Quynh.”
After that, the captured woman had broken down in tears, then laughter, then she had cried and begged and pleaded. Not that Nile understood any of it, but apparently Nicky did. He sat beside her, petting her hair, holding her close, murmuring that Andy was strong and then he explained the concept of antibiotics and that having a wound like that could be kept clean and didn't mean sepsis and death. He knew, without looking at Joe that his husband didn't agree with him, giving her comfort after she had killed him and Nile and almost... he shuddered, she had almost killed Andy. He knew she wasn't well, wasn't the Quynh they had met all those centuries ago, was the same woman they remembered, but she did deserve some comfort, too. She had suffered so much.
Sleep wasn't coming for a long time that night. Except for Andy who they had drugged to sleep with her permission – a bit coerced but she needed it and they could protect her well enough – so she would sleep calmly to not rip the fresh stitches. Andy woke up to Joe and Nicky arguing loudly and frustrated.
“It's too dangerous, Nicky. We can't take her with us.”
“And abandon her again? I will not do it. She comes with us.”
Both of them were loud and didn't notice her waking up. Otherwise they would never discuss what to do with her wife without her in front of her. When she tried to sit up, it was Nile and Quynh who noticed but since her wife was bound, it was Nile who helped her in a sitting position. That slow mortal healing was truly awful.
“What's going on? What are they arguing about?” she asked. Nile shot Quynh an angry look who looked uncomfortable and avoided her gaze, Andy noticed that she was bound more completely than the night before, making it more difficult for her to free herself.
“Quynh freed herself during the night and attacked us again.” Nile answered her with a dark look at the perpetrator.
“She injured you and Nile again and if we hadn't stopped her, she could have killed Andy! I don't want her near you, hayati.” Joe was getting frustrated, Andy could tell. His gestures were getting more and more fervent and his body language changed to more aggressive. The air between the two of them was getting more tense like before a storm.
“When you found me, I wasn't in a much better condition than she is now.” Nickys voice was hard, determined but calm, subscribing facts: “Suspicious of everything and everyone, taking every realistic opportunity to escape, to get away from whatever or whoever could hurt me; it was better if I could take them out permanently, to avoid recapture. I killed you many times. I killed the men you travelled with. You remember, don't you?”
“How could I forget, ya amar? Those first years were horrible.” said Joe, his voice conveying past regret and sorrow. Quynh and Andy had tried to do what they could to foster trust between them, when they had found the boys but it had taken several years and then even more for them get to the point where they were comfortable enough with each other to confess their feelings for the other.
“The northmen tried to sacrifice me for a mere year – using every method they had – and there were days when they wouldn't try it before you found and bought me. Quynh has been dying over and over again for nearly four centuries non-stop, every few minutes. She hasn't had a chance to cope with anything.” Nicky argued and Nile gasped in shock. While she had known the basics of how Nicky had been a thrall, nobody had said something about him being sacrified over and over. Her mind drew up some pretty horrific stuff from what she knew about the Vikings. Andy had told her that Nicky had died more than a few times with in capture but not how or in what context. From what she knew of the Vikings from stories, books and movies, they were a cruel and bloodthirsty people. She felt Andys hand on her shoulder, a comfortable weight pulling her out of her shock, trying to calm her down.
“It's okay, Nile. We all have stuff like that in our past, we all have been captured more than once. It's mostly dealt with. I told you, sometimes even they fight and it gets ugly because they have no qualms to bring up stuff from the past to prove a point. It's gonna be okay as long as Joe doesn't...”
“I will not allow it, Nicolò.” Joes said with a steely warning and his body was puffed up, towering over Nicky, crowding him, even though they were the same height, clearly expected to be followed. On most other people that kind of body posture would have looked ridiculous but on Joe it just looked dangerous and a bit unhinged, even without any weapons in sight.
The three woman saw that Nicky flinched just a tiny little bit away and Nile had a bad feeling when she heard Quynh gasp: “oh, shit, Joe didn't just...” With a deep sigh, Andy answered: “He did, the idiot.”, which left Nile confused and then horrified when Nicky just bowed his head and said with a calm disaffected voice: “As you wish, Sahib.”
Joe paled, scrambling back as if Nicky had hit him and hard at that. He also held up his hands in surrender and peace. “No, Nicky, I didn't... I'm sorry, habibi.”
Nile knew she was staring, but she couldn't help herself watch as Nicky whole posture changed further from being challenging and argumentative to soft and agreeable, submissive even, except for his eyes. They still held the same furious fire from what she could see. It was kind of hard to believe that Nicky was still the same man when he softly guided Joe around the table they had between them when they had been yelling at each other just minutes before. He then guided him to sit down on the chair next to the sofa and served him coffee, first hovering around Joe, then when it was clear, that Joe didn't need anything at the moment, went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Joe just looked wretched as he watched his husband go to the kitchen.
After a terribly stifled breakfast where Nicky had stayed in the kitchen after serving his husband and Joe hadn't found the courage yet to ask his husband to eat with them, probably knowing he would be rejected, thus casting a dour mood around the table, Nile took her to the backroom where they had put all their medical equipment and checked her wounds and redressed them. Then Andy had insisted that Nile train some more and Quynh had offered – mostly in jest, from what Andy could see, because there was no way they would let her free, give her a weapon and let her hack at the new one. Joe had most vehemently shot that down, taking over the training himself. For him, it was a distraction from the whole situation and it left Nicky and her some opportunity to catch up with Quynh.
After three hours of intense training Joe sent Nile to get them some sandwiches while he cleaned their weapons and checked them for damages. His plan to avoid Nicky didn't work out as Nile was trailed by his husband, carrying a pot of coffee and two mugs as well as sugar and milk. Nile had a tray of sandwiches that she set on the bench.
Nicky avoided his gaze and set to preparing the coffee. Nile didn't know what exactly was going on between the two men but also didn't feel like she could or should ask. She had liked training with Joe, he had shown her moves that she had didn't already know after testing her on what she did already know from the marines. Unlike Andy he didn't expect her to pick up a new move flawlessly after being shown it three times or being able to execute it flawlessly after half and hour. She liked cooking or rather learning to cook with Nicky and she didn't know if that would change now that she had trained with Joe. She just didn't know what to do or how to act. She didn't want to cross any boundaries or be interfering because she knew there was lots of the story between them that she didn't know. But she felt uncomfortably reminded of those times when her parents had fought in front of her and her siblings, she had been young and didn't remember what they exactly had fought about. As the oldest the unspoken task to keep her siblings distracted had fallen to her; it had been a few months of them fighting in the open like that. She also didn't like the comparison her brain made between the two situations.
The plan for the afternoon was for Nile and Andy to go shopping, getting Quynh some basic clothes, bra and underwear, some hair products and body wash. Nicky had also made a list of things he would need for the kitchen for the next few days. While they were gone, Nicky kept busy cleaning the house, doing some garden work and starting a load of laundry – all their shirts were bloody from the fights the previous evening – and Joe talked to Quynh, who was curious about the new world she found herself in. All those technological advances humans had made while she had been at the bottom of the ocean, trapped. Joe tried to explain how some things worked but he didn't really know how electricity worked, just that it powered most of their appliances. When Nile texted that they were on their way home and that they had found everything except for the specific cheese that Nile horribly misspelled and would be in, in fifteen minutes, she was fascinated by that little device. Joe promised to get Nile to explain how it worked because he just knew how to open and close the apps, send messages, watch videos – and wasn't that another new concept for Quynh – and take and make phone calls.
When they arrived Nicky came out quickly to help them with their purchases and took the groceries inside. Nile helped him, while Andy took the clothes to Quynh. Nicky roped Nile into helping him with the knife work with the promise to teach her to make lasagna. They were enjoying themselves and having fun, Nicky telling her about how he had made a literal mud cake and had served it to the others, trying to convince them that it was edible and something that his mother had made for him before he had left for the church. He described how Joe had been polite, eating it, while Andy had called bullshit pretty quickly. Quynh had been on a mission to get horses because she had lost a bet and didn't get to be there but she would have eaten it and given him a horrible food critic and said that at least one of the ingredients was off. In fact she had done so when he had told her the story amidst laughter from Andy and a frown from Joe.
When Joe entered the kitchen, he went from laughing and joking to still and wary. He turned towards Joe and asked subservient: “Can I help you, Sahib? The kitchen is not an appropriate place for you. If you'd like tea or coffee to wait until dinner is ready, I'll bring it to the living room.”
“No, Nicky, please, I... please don't be like that.”
“How would you like me to be, Sahib?” Nicky asked, politely without any trace of sarcasm that Nile had thought would be there. Joe just looked sad at him and didn't answer it. “Then if you have no immediate need of my services, would you allow me to go back to cooking dinner for you and the rest of the family.”
“Yes, of course. Do as you like, but please habibi, know that I'm sorry for what I did.” Nicky just looked at him, not even acknowledging that he had heard Joe. With tears in his eyes Joe left the kitchen and Nickys behaviour changed again: “I'm sorry you had to see that, Nile. Now for the béchamel sauce, you need flour, butter and milk. The milk needs to be warm so it does incorporate the flour otherwise there will be lumps.”
Nile was just trying to come to grips with the strange situation she had witnessed and how Nicky behaviour had turned so servile, a terrible thought did come to her head when she was trying to make sense of it. Was Nicky afraid of Joe? Had Joe forced him, raped him when he had been a slave? But she couldn't ask Nicky that, if it was true it would just open up old wounds and if it wasn't, Nicky would be rightfully offended and so would Joe. She didn't want to risk both their friendships by asking something like that when she was still so new and didn't know them that much.
Besides, Nicky didn't act as if Joes touch repulsed him, even with all that argument and fighting going on, they both swayed to each other, even if Nicky tried to suppress it. Nicky was still talking and showing her how to cook lasagna and she tried to concentrate on that, maybe she could ask Andy later or even Quynh.
When it came to dinner, they were all seated around the table, Andy had freed Quynh while Joe had frowned unhappily at both women, but he hadn't said anything. Nile brought out the wine and some water while Nicky carried the hot lasagna dish to the table. Then he stood next to Joe and served him like he had done all those years ago when he had been thrall. The movements so in his muscle memoires that he still could think about other stuff, he didn't really need to concentrate what his hands were doing.
“Nicky, please eat with us.”, Joe begged and Nicky was pulled from his thoughts. He just shook his head and answered politely: “It would not be appropriate for me to eat at the same table as you, Sahib.”
Then he went back into the kitchen, sat down on the counter and concentrated on his whirling thoughts, trying to make sense of them and what he was feeling. There had been so much happening in the last few months or rather the last year. Bookers betrayal, the lab, Nile being a new member of their small family, Quynh surfacing again. Joe using 'the Voice' to get him to comply with his wishes. Their group dynamics had been stable for so long before suddenly changing and it was hard to come to grips with it. He felt unmoored in his own family. It was so much, almost to much for him right now. He needed time to make sense of it.
After dinner, Nile took over watching Quynh while Andy helped Nicky with the dishes and showed her how the mobile phone worked. Quynh was enthralled and wanted one of her own, she also liked the fact that it could play music and asked Nile to find something from her country, something new so she would know what her people listened too. Nile had little trouble finding something on Spotify for Quynh to enjoy.
Joe looked miserable after Nicky had politely declined his help with the dishes. Instead Nicky allowed Andy to help him and she could hear them talk in a language Nile didn't understand (yet). When she heard both of them laugh something in her chest loosened, if they could laugh like that – simple pure joyous laughter between two friends – that meant Nicky was doing okay. Or mostly okay. But she didn't know how Joe was holding up and so she worried still. She went to the patio to have a smoke, a habit she had started when she had joined them, nobody had judged her. Joe had just asked her to smoke outside and if she needed or wanted something stronger they knew enough people who could get them the good stuff. It wasn't like an overdose would kill them.
From the patio she heard Joe trying to get Nicky to join him in bed and when that failed, join Nicky on the floor in front of the couch Andy had slept on, he would also take some of the watch they had set up to keep an eye on Quynh at all times, a compromise that Andy had reached with Joe.
When Andy joined for a smoke outside, Nile asked in a lowered voice: “What exactly is going on? Why is Nicky so... so...? Is he afraid...?”
“So servile? Eager to get Joe stuff, doing all sorts of things for him?” She nodded when Andy asked for clarification before explaining: “Nicky is pissed at Joe for using the 'Master voice' against him. Nicky has spent their early years dreading and fearing that voice and normally Joe is pretty good at not using it, even when frustrated and or in arguments because he knows what it did and sometimes still does.”
“So what Nicky is doing now is some kind of punishment?” Nile asked sceptically. “Some kind of silent treatment.”
“Yes and no. Nicky is working through some shit that got brought up right now by Joe using that voice. He is pissed and keeping him at a distance because he needs to make sense of his feelings and thoughts. So much has happened in the last year. He also doesn't want to hurt Joe by saying hurtful things or attacking him and probably killing him. They haven't killed each other since they got together. Joe wouldn't defend himself right now against Nicky, thinking it is Nickys right to hurt him back. The fact that it hurts Joe far more not being able to care for his husband than it hurts Nicky to sleep on the floor a few nights or doing both his and Joes share of chores is just some kind of twisted justice or revenge they both agree on.”
Andy paused for a moment to blow a smoke ring into the night air and Nile would have to ask her to teach that to hear because that was seriously cool. When Andy looked back at her, she apparently saw still some insecurity in her face because she continued: “In fact, if you talk to Joe, he will tell you, that he deserves whatever Nicky is doing to him because he fucked up. They will fight it out in a few days, after Nicky has had time to come to terms with whatever is eating at him right now. In the meantime, Nile, just spend time with both of them, separately. They won't mind and they certainly won't begrudge you the chance to get to them. And they would never begrudge each other the chance to get to know you.”
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And again, true to Andys word, she woke up a few days later to a screaming match between Nicky and Joe coming from the kitchen. It had apparently started when Joe had had enough and woken up early enough for breakfast not already done (He had of course set an alarm, not being someone who woke up early if he didn't have to). He had sneaked past Nicky sleeping on the floor in the living room and had started to prepare breakfast. Farka and Chakchouka and of course coffee. When the smell of coffee had woken Nicky, that's when the screaming had started.
Thankfully it ended after half an hour with Nicky asking: “How am I supposed to stay mad at you, tesoro mio, when you make me breakfast and a long time favourite at that?”
“You're not. You are supposed to forgive me, habibi. Please, I'm so very sorry for using that voice. I shouldn't have, I will try to control myself better, even when I'm afraid and frustrated, I promise.”, Joe answered.
For some painfully long minutes, Nicky just looked at Joe before he sighed and said: “You are forgiven, my love.”
After that, he leant towards his husband and kissed him. They quickly ate breakfast together, hands always touching in between bites and sips from the coffee mugs. The rest of their family ate at a more sedate tempo. When they had finished eating and just held hands and looked very much like a couple on their honeymoon, Andy told them to get themselves a nice hotel in the next city for the weekend and not to worry about the rest of them. They were gone soon after.