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> Joe crests the rise, and he’s there. Nicky. It’s so much like the first time that Joe’s breath catches – not déjà vu, but a strange out-of-body sensation, as though if he only tilted his head a little, the scene would be playing out in front of him. Crane his neck just a bit, and –
<<< There’s a naked man in the grass. It’s not water in his eyes, or wind-blown trash, it’s real. There’s a man, naked, huddled against the storm, soaking wet and spattered with mud and sand, dark hair plastered to his head. He looks up as Joe approaches, and his eyes light up with what looks like relief –
> Nicky looks up from where he’s lounging in the grass. His face brightens when he sees Joe, but there’s something guarded about him as well. He springs to his feet, brushing wet grass and sand off his legs. His hair is even longer than it was when he left, and it shines slightly in the weak sun.
In the shock of the moment, the only things Joe can think to say are inane. You’re back. You must be cold (Nicky is certainly not cold). This too is familiar, this sense of words clogging his throat, being unable to speak –
<<< Who are you? What are you doing here? Are you all right? What happened? Can I help? Until he’s taken so long figuring out where to even start that the stranger’s forehead creases in concern. What on earth do I do?
> What on earth do I do? Joe remains frozen, unsure of how to respond, and Nicky’s small, hesitant smile slides off his face like a glacier calving.
“I’m sorry, I thought… If you still don’t want me here, I’ll go.”
The utter absurdity of the statement is enough to finally unstick Joe’s tongue. “Still? I have never not wanted you here, what – ”
<<< The man sits at Joe’s small, rickety table, wearing a pair of Joe’s trousers rolled at the hems, big hands cradling one of Joe’s chipped mugs, and though there is something alien about the way he holds himself, the way he looks around… there is also something inescapably familiar about him being there. As though it’s their table, their trousers, their mug. As though Joe was just waiting for him to arrive. Or to return… –
> “You come back after nearly a year, I’ve been worried and confused for almost a whole year, and I’m supposed to believe you thought this was what I wanted?”
Nicky raises his chin, all softness gone from his face. Sometimes his calmness hardens into haughtiness, and in Joe’s experience nothing good ever follows. Joe is slightly taller, and he’s wearing thick-soled boots whereas Nicky is barefoot, but Nicky still gives the impression of looking down at him. “I believe you were very clear. You said you could not bear my remaining with you, that you could not let me stay” and Joe can hear the echoes from a year ago –
<<“Let me? It is not for you to ‘let’ me do anything!”
“Oh come on, it’s not about that, you just said you were going to kill yourself!”
“What?” Nicky physically recoils, and laughs in what Joe will later recognize as discomfort but at the time sounds like derision. “You can’t have heard that, that’s not what I said at all.”
Joe shoves away from the table so forcefully he feels a chair leg come loose. He starts to pace, hands waving in the air like they never did before he met Nicky. “Not right away, but you said centuries. You’ll die centuries earlier if you stay here with me. I don’t – I can’t bear the idea of you giving up so much.”
> “Don’t put fucking words in my mouth,” Joe snarls. “I never told you to go. I sure as hell never told you to sneak away like a coward, without even saying goodbye, so I’d never know if you were coming back or even still alive.”
Nicky flinches, presumably (Joe thinks) at being called a coward. He’d once told Joe that among his people, the seafolk like him who could take human form were seen as heroes for exploring the land and bringing their knowledge and experience back home, and were highly admired and respected. Probably not used to getting called out on his bullshit. Well he’s certainly not getting any special treatment here.
“I know,” Nicky says, “and I’m sorry” (he doesn’t look sorry) “but I did come back and you still won’t listen to me. If I stay you’re unhappy, and if I leave you’re angry, and I don’t know what you expect me to do.” –
<< “You can’t say this is about how much you care for me when you’re also treating me like a child. If either of us lacks wisdom and understanding, it’s you. You won’t even entertain the idea – ”
“I’m not treating you like a child, I’m treating you like a grown man who is about to make the stupidest fucking decision he could make. Of course I won’t entertain the idea of you dying for me!”
> Joe has always felt things very deeply. It’s a trait he rather likes about himself, and he generally considers his feelings a stronger foundation for his actions than cold logic. His mother used to say (despairingly) and Andy still says (affectionately, and a bit sympathetically) that one day his heart would get him into trouble that his head couldn’t get him out of. He’s never really worried about it. The most important thing to him is to be fully and authentically himself. He won’t hold back on any part of who he is.
<<< He sees a stranger, lost and alone, and he reaches out –
<< He is frightened by the magnitude of what his lover is offering him, and pushes him away –
> He meets Nicky’s anger and hurt with his own, he wants to crush him with all the pain of the past year –
The feelings rush through him, into his mouth and his hands and his gut and the vein throbbing in his temple, but –
maybe –
those feelings aren’t all he is.
The tide goes out. The echoes fade, the reflections disappear, and he thinks he’s seeing Nicky clearly at last. He takes a deep breath and holds up a hand.
“Wait. Stop.” Nicky frowns, and Joe hurriedly adds, “I’m not demanding. I’m asking. Please. Let’s… let’s go inside. I’ll make tea. You can put on some clothes, if you like. And we’ll talk. More than that – I’ll listen.” He lowers his hand and offers it to Nicky. Nicky’s own hand jerks, as if he was about to reach out and changed his mind.
This is real too, Joe tells himself. “I love you, Nicky. I’ve missed you. And I don’t think you came back just so we could yell at each other again. Let’s have tea and talk, like we’re just two men who care about each other.”
Joe has never seen Nicky move between his shapes, but he thinks the transformation could not be as dramatic as the one his face undergoes now, shifting from something ancient and cold to the man Joe fell in love with. He puts his hand in Joe’s and smiles, albeit a little sadly. “I love you too. But it doesn’t fix everything.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
They walk back to the lighthouse hand in hand.
They’re back at the table, tea in hand, Nicky blessedly clothed. (The sight of Nicky naked is not conducive to staying as calm and coherent as he really wants to be right now.) Nicky’s knee is just touching Joe’s, and Joe reminds himself that it might not be intentional, the table is small, Nicky has to relearn how to have legs again… it might not be intentional, but then again it might be, and the uncertainty has him flustered, putting his mug down a little too abruptly, gesturing at Nicky a little too brusquely. “You go first.”
Nicky stares down into his drink for a long minute, and Joe fights to hold still, to not bounce his leg or tap his fingers or otherwise make Nicky think he’s not willing to be patient. When Nicky at last looks up, his eyes are bright, but not hard. “You never asked me what I wanted.”
“I’m sorry?”
“When we talk about this. You just get upset, you act like I’m being foolish. Like you have to save me from myself. I’m hundreds of years old – ”
“Yes, that’s exactly the point – “ Joe catches himself and bites his lip, theatrically mimes locking his mouth shut. He told Nicky he’d listen, and he meant it.
“I know you don’t like it when I act like my age makes us different. And most of the time it doesn’t matter, because I know so much less about life on land than you do. But Joe, it does matter here. You can’t imagine what I’d be giving up to stay here with you, to live out my life as a human. But I know, and I wanted… I still want to. This is not giving up my happiness for yours, or sacrificing myself for you. I am choosing my happiness, my life. I just had one year without you. I don’t want hundreds more.” He takes a long drink and sits back in his chair (which wobbles a little – Joe couldn’t completely fix the leg.)
Joe hardly has time to think before the words spill out, as though they’d been lined up for the past year, just waiting for the chance. “That terrifies me. The magnitude of what you’re talking about. All I can see is how you’d be hurt, and I hate to think of you hurting. What if you regret it? What if you change your mind?”
Nicky shrugs. “Then I’ll change my mind. It frightens me too; that’s one reason I left. But even if we were both of the same kind, we could still never promise each other that we wouldn’t change our minds or grow apart. And I’ve never known anyone, on land or at sea, who was immune to regret.” He reaches across the table and gently touches the back of Joe’s hand. “Joe. It’s not like one of your stories. I am not trading my tail for a pair of legs, never to swim again. I can go back any time. I will go back, now and then, to see my family and friends. None of this is irrevocable.”
Joe shudders at the thought, imagining more years like the one just past. “But you won’t just… just go. Right? Just disappear?”
“No, no that I can promise you. I will never leave, even for a visit, without talking to you first.” Their knees are pressed together, and the tips of their fingers touch, and there is no doubt in Joe’s mind, now. They make more promises to each other: that Joe will stop trying to tell Nicky what he can or should do. That they won’t assume one bad argument is the end. That Joe will tell Andy, Booker, and Nile the truth about Nicky; that one day, Nicky will find a way to introduce Joe to his parents.
They are interrupted by Nicky’s stomach growling, and before they’ve finished laughing about it, Joe’s has joined in as well. Nicky asks Joe for one more concession – that he lift the ban on Nicky cooking, because “if we’re going to do this, I want to be able to take care of you. To provide for you. I would love it if you would teach me.”
Joe reels Nicky into his arms, turns his head to kiss him, and –
>> Joe sits in a perfectly level chair at the spacious, sturdy table that he and Nicky built last year, wearing a hand-knit sweater and listening to Nicky talk as he cooks. All around him, Joe can see the echoes and reflections of all the time they’ve spent in this room – laughing over the stove, embracing in the doorway, talking, and crying, and arguing, and loving. It’s all right there, if he only thinks to look. And listen.
Nicky will be going to visit his family soon. He always gets restless at this time of year, when the minke whales head south. Apparently his people don’t grey as they age; Nicky has been looking forward to showing off the silver at his temples. He says it makes him feel comfortably human. Joe will miss him for the six or eight weeks he’ll be gone, but this too is a regular part of their routine. He’ll be back. Nicky always comes home.