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In the cracked, dry mud outskirts of Ostia Antica, in the long garden behind the tall house at the end of a dusty lane, Nicolo di Genova lies on a hammock. One hand rests on his belly, which is a little queasy this morning. The other trails over the side of his hanging crib, his fingers brushing lazily through the tallest blades of grass.
The sun is in a vengeful mood today; barely risen and already Nicky feels near uncomfortably hot. The bees and the crickets complain loudly, and he feels attuned to their melodies of indignation. He is sheltered by the leaves of the lemon trees, their scent a familiar balm.
“You are awake, then,” an equally familiar voice, the most familiar voice, says.
Nicky smiles, and opens his eyes just in time to see Yusuf step into his line of vision. He turns his head to enjoy Yusuf’s summer-kissed grin. He’s wearing light linen and a horrible green cap that barely controls his curls, which are just about long enough to spill over his ears now.
“How did you know?” Nicky asks, tilting his head when Yusuf reaches out a hand so he can press his cool palm to his jaw.
“You were humming,” Yusuf replies, the words balancing on the edge of laughter.
Nicky frowns, and pushes himself up with his hands. The hammock swings a little too far, and Yusuf catches the edge with both hands to hold him steady, his movements swift and sure.
“I was?” Nicky asks. “What was I humming?”
“Oh,” Yusuf sighs, pulling Nicky’s hammock as close as he can, and then hums a faint tune that prickles in the back of Nicky’s fondest memories, displaced yet lovely. “Something old and beautiful, from a bar in Berlin.”
A long forgotten face swims thin and foggy in Nicky’s mind - a cabaret host, so brave and daring, a vibrant soul that sang defiantly through the encroaching darkness of the 1930s, a nightingale in a hurricane.
“Ah,” he smiles, and puts his hand on Yusuf’s knuckles, then wraps it around to feel his pulse through his wrist. “I was humming her song?”
“You were, my love.”
Yusuf leans over carefully, and kisses his crown.
“I did not realise.”
“Well, I would welcome it again anytime,” Yusuf says, pulling lightly at the hammock so it rocks in rhythm. “I did not think I remembered it, until I heard you.”
Nicky lies back, enjoying the whoosh of the hammock’s heartbeat swing, and tries to bask happily in Yusuf’s joyful remembrance. It had been a wonderful song, an almost entirely wonderful night - but for those uniformed men prowling the shadows, voicing their vile grievances to all they passed.
They had danced in the gardens that night, beneath the canopy of the stars. They had loved defiantly, delighted by themselves, and all the brilliant creatures that crossed their paths old and new.
He had not meant to hum her song just now, and in fact had not known he was doing it at all. Once it would have been a simple absent-minded distraction, and Yusuf would tease him, and he would laugh at himself easily. But it was a disrupting thing to know he had not heard his own voice, had not felt the vibrations in his throat, nor noticed it leaving his lips.
It had become natural, during the years of his absence, of his captivity. Forty-five years without anybody to share long lost melodies from a cabaret in Berlin with, to recognise those half-forgotten lyrics and correct him with loving mockery, had turned his voice into a final act of rebellion. And when they deemed they had no choice but to muzzle him, he could only hum them in his chest, to remember the old songs were still there. To know they were living between his ribs and in his lungs and around his heart; to be assured they could not be cut out of him, like every other piece that was coveted so greedily.
“My heart,” Yusuf says, touching his arm, and Nicky blinks. His eyes feel dry and gritty, so he rubs them. “You are far away. Return to me.”
“I am with you,” Nicky promises, and holds Yusuf’s wrists with one hand while the other swipes at his tear ducts.
The great blessing of their gift, to be unblemished by scars of their second life, is still a perplexing and often ugly thing, over nine hundred years on. So many years they scratched away at his eyes, but over and over they healed, so be scratched away again. He wonders occasionally if the colours he sees now are still as they were half a century ago.
“Return to me, moonlight,” Yusuf urges again, taking a firm grasp of Nicky’s hands and pulling them forcefully away from his face. “You will hurt yourself.”
“I will heal,” Nicky mutters obstinately, and feels foolishly cruel when he opens his eyes to see a secret anguish flicker across Yusuf’s face. He tries to take it back, but the words coat his mouth in ashy regret. So he allows Yusuf to pull his hands to his midriff, where he is warm and solid.
Drawn into him, his love and his ardour, as faithful as the ever returning tide, Nicky leans into him. Soon, he rolls over far enough in his hammock that it sways precariously, and Yusuf staggers a little, so Nicky rolls further until he is half falling out and Yusuf is forced to catch him.
“Ow!” Yusuf cies out, struggling to pull Nicky up and laughing as he does it with tremorous knees. The sound is as soothing as the hushing of the ocean, as the wind through his lemon trees. Nicky leverages himself in Yusuf’s sturdy grip to swing right out of the hammock altogether, onto his own two feet. Upright again, he extracts himself from the vice of Yusuf’s hands and takes hold of his love’s face, palms over his cheeks, fingers curling around his ears and tufts of hair.
Nicky kisses that lovely smile that is so dear to him, and smiles broadly in return when Yusuf kisses him back. Pulling away, Nicky wrinkles his nose.
“You taste of peanut butter,” he complains, grimacing. “Have you been raiding Nile’s hoard again?”
Yusuf sighs dramatically, licking his lips.
“It’s hardly a hoard.”
“It’s contraband, is what it is,” Nicky retorts. “She comes to Italy, to my country, and demands PBJs and Chicago deep dishes. She’s a disgrace.”
Yusuf is already taking his hand and yanking him towards the house, still chuckling, as sunlight dances golden over his skin through the dappling leaves.
“Italy is not your country, my heart,” Yusuf says, frustratingly prim. “You are much older than Italy.”
Nicky narrows his eyes to stifle his smile, sniffing haughtily as he is pulled to the patio and ushered onto a chair.
“You cannot insist I am obligated to care about Italian football teams when it suits you, and call me older than Italy, Yusuf. What was it Nile said the other day? Pick a lane.”
As Yusuf’s blustering indignation bounces off the walls of Monica’s house, Nicky drags a second chair over with his foot, then props both feet up onto it. The sun has not quite reached her long fingers around this patch of the garden yet. The air is humid, but a little more forgiving here. The metal chairs are still quite cool to sit on. Yusuf picks up Nicky’s feet to slide under them, just as a window opens above their heads with a terrible groan of old wood and hinges.
Nile’s head appears like a curious sparrow peering down at them.
“I don’t know what you were saying exactly,” she squawks in her stubborn English. “But I definitely heard my name. I hope you’re saying nice things.”
“You should come down and defend Chicago’s honour, sister,” Yusuf shouts. “Nicolo is being ever so rude about your cuisine.”
Nile grumbles inaudibly above them as she disappears inside. There’s a brief pause, the banging of a door, and then Nile appears at the back door in record time, her hands on her hips and her eyes sparkling.
“Did you slide down the bannister?” Nicky asks with deepest suspicion.
Nile’s eyes widen with delight.
“No. Can we do that?”
“No!” Nicky yelps, but not soon enough, because Yusuf gets there first.
“Oh yes, sweet innocent Nile!” he crows far too exuberantly. “In fact, Andy very rudely is the reigning champion of the sport. She’s the only one that’s mastered the right turn on the first floor. But I think you have potential.”
“Please can we save the broken spines for later?” Nicky begs, recalling painfully all the blood that had stained the floorboards the last time Sebastien attempted to beat Andromache’s record.
Nile looks momentarily disappointed before shrugging. She takes a seat across the table from Nicky, leaning back against the wall of the house, and stretching her arms until her shoulders crack. She’s wearing a very large t-shirt that seems to have been raided from Sebastien’s closet. It bears an album cover of a band Nicky does not recognise, with tour dates from 1992 on the back.
It should not twinge in his heart so selfishly, but it does all the same. Yusuf squeezes his ankle once without a word, then gets up again, placing Nicky’s feet back on the wrought iron chair with great care, as if worried he will break them. Silly, beautiful man.
“I shall bring you both a breakfast feast,” he announces, clapping his hands together. “Or at the very least, coffee and day-old focaccia.”
“Gee, we feel spoiled,” Nile drawls, and Yusuf tips his imaginary hat at her as he ventures back into the house.
Nicky returns the smile Nile offers him, once they are alone, and mirrors her leaning back against the wall of the house, so they can observe the garden together. He likes their newest sister very much - loves her, already, as naturally as he loves Andromache, and Sebastien, and Quynh. Nevertheless, he does feel a little guarded around her at times. He wishes desperately in his weaker moments that they had met in any other circumstance. It feels so dreadfully wrong, so unfair, that this should be how they come to know one another. He has always tried to temper his own vanity, but he fears what it is Nile sees when she looks at him, sometimes.
Nothing at all similar to the pillars of strength that make up the rest of their family, surely.
It has been many weeks now since he was first sprung from his cage, and he knows as certainly as he has always known, he is not wholly broken. Nonetheless, he does not think he feels whole, either.
Not yet, anyway.
“How did you sleep, Nile?” he asks. He is hopeful it was a better rest than she has had in the last few days. He did not hear her come out to the garden to shake off her nightmares, as she has done many times before.
“Alright,” Nile replies thoughtfully, as if giving the question true consideration. “I dreamt about Daisy - this, this dog our neighbours owned when I was a kid. She was a rottweiler. Everyone who first saw her thought she was terrifying, but she was the sweetest thing you ever saw. We used to walk her sometimes, when the Wilsons were out of town.”
She wears a gentle smile as she recounts the memory, fiddling with the fraying hem of her t-shirt.
“What was she doing in the dream?” Nicky asks, pleased to know her dreams had not been the plagues of water, of darling suffering Quynh.
“She kept digging holes in the garden,” Nile says with a chuff of bemusement in her voice. “She’d dig, I’d fill the hole back in. She’d dig another. I’d fill it back up. Over and over. She never actually did that, when we looked after her. But in my dream she was determined to dig up the whole garden…”
She tails off, her t-shirt twisted around her fingers. He’s seen her do that a lot, with her headphone wires and towels and pieces of string. A well worn, anxious gesture.
“Looking for something?” Nicky suggests, and Nile shrugs, as if suddenly uncomfortable.
“I guess, yeah,” she agrees, looking between Nicky and Yusuf’s vacated chair.
A thought occurs to Nicky, and he leans back easily against the wall, linking one ankle over the other on Yusuf’s chair.
She’s very young, Nicky realises fondly, and she is wonderful at many things, but not at being deceitful, or subtle. She thinks that a dream of a dog causing a ruckus in a garden might be a little too painfully close to the hundred thousand holes dug in the Sahara Desert for the past forty-five years, and she wants to distance herself from an accidental slip up. Nicky’s heart feels swollen against his ribs, looking at her anxious hands.
It’s sweet and unnecessary and Nicky wants to reassure her, but he doesn’t know how. He does not know her very well yet. For now, he can only continue the conversation as best he can, nudging it sideways a little, and hopes it is enough.
“You know, Booker accidentally adopted a wolf, once.”
Nile scoffs, looking disbelieving - then disconcerted.
“For real?”
She seems suitably perked up by this revelation, and Nicky is pleased. He launches readily into an explanation, and only wishes Sebastien were here to chatter and swear and fail to defend himself.
“He rescued a pup from a house fire. Andromache told him it was a stolen wolf cub and he would be wise to leave it to its fate. He insisted she was - oh, what did he call her?”
At that very moment, Yusuf returns, proudly carrying his tray of coffee and indeed day-old focaccia. He sets it on the table and fusses with the cups.
“Yusuf, what did Sebastien say the wolf was, instead of a wolf?”
For a moment he looks baffled, and then thrilled.
“You mean Dulcinea? He called her a - fiesty friend, I think would be an apt translation.”
“Fiesty?" Nile snickers as she takes a coffee from Yusuf.
“That’s one word. Hand Eater are two better ones,” Nicky says, picking up a salty corner of focaccia and nibbling at it. His stomach rolls, still uncertain every morning even more than a month after arriving at Monica’s House. He pointedly ignores Yusuf’s terrible attempt to covertly watch him eating, and focuses rather on Nile’s horrified expression.
“She ate his hand?”
“He was lucky that was all she ate,” Nicky says mildly. It had been very messy, and Sebastien had complained very loudly about the ordeal for weeks. “Fortunately we arrived home, scaring her, and she bolted before we could grab her. It was for the best. Andromache would have insisted on putting her down, and then Sebastien would have been dreadfully sad.”
“We can regrow hands?” Nile asks, looking down at her own with a sudden wariness, as if worried one might spontaneously fall off.
“Oh, we can regrow just about anything, believe me,” Nicky replies flippantly, and is surprised by a sudden crack, as Yusuf knocks his coffee cup over.
“Fuck, sorry, shit,” Yusuf cries, frustrated and trembling, and Nicky feels the piercing thorn of guilt in his side. Yusuf doesn’t accept his offered touch, too busy trying to rescue the focaccia as the spilled coffee seeps through it.
“Hey, hey, no worries, Joe, it’s fine,” Nile says as she comes running back out of the back door bearing cloths. Nicky hadn’t even noticed her leaving. He takes Yusuf’s shaking hands, dragging them away from the frankly unsalvageable focaccia.
“It is all fine,” Nicky promises in whispers of Arabic, and Italian, and finally English, remembering too late not to exclude Nile so easily.
Yusuf presses his lips together, and Nicky is startled by the glimmer of tears in his dark eyes.
“I am sorry,” he says needlessly.
“No, forgive me, ” Nicky corrects him. “That was careless of me.”
“I overreacted,” Yusuf dismisses with a shake of his head that won’t do at all.
“I shouldn’t have asked,” Nile says over anything further he tries to add, still dabbing up coffee with hunched shoulders. “I’m sorry, that was a dumb thing to say.”
“How about we all stop apologising, hm?” Nicky suggests, because that is a better thing to do than to shout at them both to shut up. He feels desperately unhappy to see either of them so upset. He hates being the cause of this anguish - but he can do what he can to lighten their burdens, at the very least. That is something he still knows how to do. “It was a surprising moment, but it has passed. And, Yusuf has rescued us from having to eat stale bread for breakfast. Haven’t we all suffered enough?”
Yusuf gives a wet gasp of a laugh, knocking his forehead lightly against Nicky’s in soft forgiving gratitude. Nile chuckles nervously, eyeing them both warily.
Nicky picks up the soggy focaccia and, shredding it with his hands, he tosses it out into the garden in a wide scatter of clumps.
“There,” he says decidedly. “Let the birds and the cats do as they please with it.”
“That is too salty for the birds, Nicolo!” Yusuf cries, his outrage a sufficient distraction as he baulks at the suggestion.
“And it’s so caffeinated,” Nile adds. “Those are gonna be some wired sparrows later.”
Nicky shrugs at them both.
“Let’s clean this up and walk into town,” he suggests instead. “It is Saturday, is the market open?”
“I think so,” Yusuf says. He looks a little spooked still, but that is alright. The walk will be soothing, and at the end of it will be food and drink and, perhaps best of all, people to greet and talk to. Nicolo knows of no greater remedy to coax Yusuf back out of his own shrinking shoulders than new, exciting faces to learn.
As for Nile, she seems to be enjoying her Italian lessons so far, and another breakfast excursion to a local cafe will be good for her pronunciation. She still has too many sharp, distressingly American vowels.
“Then we shall go,” Nicolo says firmly, holding Yusuf’s wrist and nodding at Nile. “Go get ready, sister. We shall meet you outside in ten minutes.”
Nile looks gratefully between them, and at Yusuf’s agreeing wave she takes her leave with loud, scampering feet.
“No bannister slides on the way back down!” Nicky calls teasingly after her, very glad when she hoots back playfully, “No promises!”
“Come, Yusuf,” Nicolo says, gathering the crockery back onto the tray and picking it up. “Let’s not begrudge ourselves a good day, for the sake of a few bumps on the path. No?”
Yusuf is, for a brief moment, very far away even as he looks at Nicky with clear eyes. Nicky often wonders what he sees in such moments. He has never asked, and he never will. He does not think there is a single possible answer that would not break his heart.
He puts the tray down and takes hold of Yusuf’s face.
“Yusuf, return to me,” he murmurs, and slowly Yusuf blinks back to the present. He looks startled, though no longer distressed. “There you are.”
He kisses Yusuf briefly, who then turns his head to first kiss Nicky’s palm, then lick it. Nicky groans and pulls his hands away - they are still wet with coffee, he realises, and salty from the bread. Yusuf’s face is damp too now. He leans in and licks the apple of his cheek.
Yusuf laughs, and rubs his face.
“Let’s wash up, my love,” he says, grabbing the tray before Nicky can.
“I was just doing that,” Nicky grumbles, trudging after Yusuf with a wry grin.
The walls of the house feel very close, the ceiling very low - but it is still welcoming, and Nicky easily forgets the shiver of fear that comes with being inside. He stands close to Yusuf, and quickly dries what is washed one by one, putting them away methodically. He listens out for Nile upstairs, who has put on some sort of dreamy music.
“Can this generation do nothing without music to drown out the sounds of the world?” Nicky asks.
Yusuf nods, and points accusingly up at the ceiling with a soapy finger.
“That one up there told me this was the soundtrack of her life, once.”
Nicky wrinkles his nose.
“Like a film?” he asks.
Yusuf hums in agreement.
“Uh-huh. Like a film.”
He clearly expects something more, perhaps a question, or a judgement. Nicky can feel Yusuf watching his with curiosity, but he knows better than to say anything that comes to mind. His understanding of what was changing about the world around him for the past forty-five years was sporadic and unreliable, for everything except the most obvious of medical science. It took an awfully long time to figure out the little plastic things scientists in the labs had in their ears wasn’t any kind of instructional or communication device, but was playing music - through a little box he eventually figured out was also a phone, and then only after Christophe answered his -
“My love, are you with me?” Yusuf asks, and Nicky starts, realising his throat is achingly dry, and his lungs feel close to bursting. “I think the cup is dry.”
Nicky looks down at his hands, still rubbing the porcelain with a corner of a towel. He puts it back jerkily, feeling warm around the throat. It’s a lot easier to lose track of his thoughts while inside than out in the fresh air.
“I’m here,” he promises truthfully. And then, to dispel the lingering concern in Yusuf’s face, he adds, “I was just thinking. What would our soundtrack be?”
Yusuf’s eyes light up playfully, as he dries his hands and tosses the towel on the counter. Nicky frowns, picking it back up and folding it properly over the handle of the oven where it belongs.
“Oh, my moonlight,” Yusuf sighs in a long laborious sigh. “That is easy. 1784. Vienna. The-”
“Do not, you rascal!” Nicky shouts, and puts his hands over his ears as Yusuf opens his mouth and howls a warbling tenor line from that most dreadful night. “That jumped up git should never had ventured out of Salzburg-”
“Nicolo, my heart,” Yusuf croons, clutching his heart with both hands. “The only man in all of the world to call Mozart a jumped up git.”
Nicky pouts sourly - he has suffered through many an opera for his love for this man, but he shall not stand for the slanderous insinuation that-
“You cannot be serious. Le nozze di Figaro is overstretched tripe-”
“I was going to say,” Yusuf interrupts gleefully, “Your running commentary would be my soundtrack. Honestly, it was a miracle we didn't get kicked out. You were so vocal in your dislike. The poor Marcellina-”
Nicky rolls his eyes and kisses Yusuf hard, and it just about shuts him up for a moment. He shouldn’t be surprised - Yusuf has always adored passion in an artist far more than talent, even that of wobbly voiced sopranos. Yusuf’s hands claps over his waist, and when he pulls away Nicky feels breathless and in love, full to the brim with it. He rubs Yusuf’s shirt, feeling the ticklish line of his ribs beneath the linen.
“I should get dressed,” Nicky says, hesitantly, glancing down at his creased t-shirt and trousers.
“I think you look ravishing,” Yusuf lies splendidly.
“I look like I’ve slept in this for two days,” Nicky retorts. “Because I have.”
Yusuf shrugs, and kisses him again, and Nicky is helpless to resist the grounding warmth of his touch.
“Let’s go,” Yusuf says gently, kissing the words into the shell of Nicky’s ear. He takes Nicky’s hand and pulls him up the stairs, leaving no room for the creeping doubt that prickles over Nicky’s skin, the further away he gets from the door.
Nicky changes quickly, accepting the first things he is handed without paying much attention, eager to be outside again. He does his best not to think about how he’ll definitely need to shower this afternoon when they get back. That is a daunting task - but it is for later. Right now there is Yusuf, and there is Nile, and there is a long walk in the sunshine to enjoy, with breakfast at the end of it. Fresh orange juice perhaps, and new bread with old prosciutto.
Freshly dressed and ready, Nicky leads the way out with Yusuf at his six, but he stops on the last step of the staircase. He spins around to look up at Yusuf who stalls, looking confused as Nile watches them from the open front door.
“Berlin, 1932,” Nicky says, and Yusuf tilts his head. “That is our soundtrack, isn’t it?”
He feels rude, speaking in quick Italian that obviously puzzles Nile, but he wants this just for this moment to be only theirs. He will tell her one day, he is sure, but not yet. Yusuf’s answering smile is a force beyond measure.
“Yes, my heart,” he agrees. “That is ours.”
Songs of love, Nicky remembers, in threads of half hummed memories; songs of heartbreak. Songs of rebellion. Songs of endurance. Dancing under the stars together, in defiance of all who would stop them. Of course that is theirs.
“Do you guys need a minute?” Nile asks, but the question is not asked teasingly the way Sebastien might, or impatiently as Andromache would. It is kindly offered, freely given.
Nicky turns around, taking Yusuf’s hand and then Nile’s, pulling them both out into the sunshine eagerly.
“Not at all, sister,” he promises. “Let’s go, shall we?”
Because they have had so many moments, and there are so many more waiting for them. Those moments they were robbed of deserve to be mourned, all forty-five years of them, but they cannot be dwelled upon. There is time enough for all they wish to do, and say, and feel.
There is time enough.