Work Text:
“What was it like?”
Joe sighs, his smile far too wistfully kind for his boyishly handsome face. A tell of the years he truly has lived through. “You really want to know?”
Nile stabs her stick into the fire. Andy has reason to believe they’re being followed. Not by anyone who knows anything. Just some collateral damage from the last job. They might come looking for vengeance or they might not; regardless, Nile and Joe will stay awake, will stay prepared. It will be a long night.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
He peers over her shoulder, towards the tents. Andy is sleeping in one, nursing what Nicky diagnosed as just a couple of bruised ribs, Booker squished in beside her. Nicky is passed out in the other, sleeping off the ache of more than a dozen stab wounds to his abdomen. They were meant for Andy. Her ribs got bruised when Nicky pushed her out of the way, unfortunately into the corner of a dumpster. He and Joe were meant to be on watch, but he fell asleep leaning against Joe’s side before Nile, Booker and Andy even finished eating, and Joe couldn’t seem to bring himself to wake him, to ask him to give anything more tonight. Nile volunteered.
“It is fun to tell it glamorously. And with humour. Nicky tells it beautifully, because of his faith.”
Nile stares at the side of his face, looking for tells that aren’t there.
“Truthfully we can’t really remember anymore. A thousand years is a long time. Ten is a long time. I don’t trust what I think I remember. It’s more like memories of memories. It’s a story, more than anything. We carry the facts- we are the facts. The details-” he tilts his head left, and then right. “-might be a bit hit or miss.”
“Opposite sides of a Crusade. That’s one of the facts?”
“Yes.” Joe almost laughs, pulling a hand through his curls. “Funny thing about history is that you don’t know what it is while you’re living through it. I think- Ah-” he shakes his head, as if to brush off the subject. Something she’s noticed about him. He won’t speak on things if he isn’t sure. A distinction from Nicky, from Booker, from Andy. He’ll laugh along to Booker’s misery loves company, will kiss Nicky’s hands when he talks about destiny, will smile at Andy when she talks about the complete and utter lack of a God. But he won’t speak up about those things himself. Because he’s not sure. “We did kill each other a lot. That I know. I know because it’s a story we’ve told so many times.” He shrugs. “But I don't really remember anything before loving him.”
Nile pokes at the fire. “And you’ve loved him this whole time? Him alone?”
Joe’s eyebrow twitches. He turns his head fully towards her, eyes intent. “Yes. In the way I assume you’re implying, yes.”
“Neither of you have ever-”
“No.”
A moment of silence. Nile notices how certain he seems, despite not really remembering by his own admission.
“You haven’t wanted to?”
He takes a deep breath. “We’re from a different time. Hell, he was a priest. We first learned love through religion, as devotion, as worship. We’re both perfectly capable of noticing other men, and being noticed in return. But no. Even when we were young, anytime we’ve fought, or weathered long nights apart- I don’t think we’ve ever truly wanted anything but each other. Very few blessed with true faith are ever inclined to cheat on their gods, after all. Least of all men of the faiths we were raised into. Coming back from death the first time obliterated both of our worldviews, our relationships with Him. I suppose all that love had to go somewhere.”
Nile wonders if Booker has ever seen God in her. She’s never thought to look in him.
“As you know, he eventually healed his faith. It’s different, though. He is not a Christian in a way that would be recognized by any institution. And I will never again believe in anything as much as I believe in him. Whether it’s destiny or not-” His smile softens, grows warmer. “Nicky’s view of it is very romantic. I love the way he sees the world. The way he sees me. Ah-” Again, he peers towards the tents. “And he loves that I see things differently. I don’t think our love is any different than that anyone else experiences, though many don’t gain the wisdom before their time comes to appreciate what they have for what it is, the maturity not to dumb it down. Humanity is a beautiful thing. Art, poetry- the same dozen stories that we all know because we all live them, told over and over again, made newly beautiful by a new perspective. The words of millions who have lived before us, simultaneously, and who will live after describe our love with no detail spared. We’ve just had the good fortune and the good sense to nurture ours for a long time, which is the greatest privilege I think anyone can ever have. Doing what we do, taking it for granted is impossible. Speaking physically, I mean- most of sex appeal is psychological. Take a thousand years of trust, of safety, knowing each other’s humour, and fears, knowing each other’s touch. I want to share every good thing I ever feel with him. Nobody else will ever be able to make me feel a fraction of the depth that he does.” He catches her eye like he’s sharing a secret of great import. “That familiarity is unbearably sexy. People today have strange ideas about pleasure and intimacy. Nothing is as good as being with somebody who loves you enough to spend a lifetime figuring out how to make it feel as pleasurable as possible with you, somebody who will try everything with you and tell you honestly when it works and when it doesn’t. Nevermind being wanted that much by somebody so kind and sweet as he is.” He looks away, and then glances at her out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he’s also tall, and strong, and capable, and quite handsome. And so humble it’s sobering. I might not remember it anymore, but I’m certain in the beginning it was more than enough that he looked like that.”
That startles a laugh out of her, and he laughs too. She says, “damn, I guess average ass white boys are your type, huh?”
Joe’s eyebrows jump, his expression cycling through a myriad of things.
Nile kicks herself a bit. Joe’s concept of race is significantly different to her own. It took her more than a little while to wrap her head around it, but it makes sense. He’s not American, first and foremost, and he doesn’t identify as black, or brown, or Muslim. The nature of their life has prevented him from ever engaging in social media culture. He’s a thousand years old.
She knows he’s not in touch with the culture behind what she’s said. Going off of the look on his face, it’s struck him as incomprehensible, maybe a bit mean.
He continues, letting it slide, “maybe it’s the familiarity alone. A thousand years of safety. Or maybe it’s just because I look at him and see all the happiness and love I’ve been blessed to find with him, but I truly believe that anybody on earth would fall to their knees if he looked at them with the full force of his desire. He’s maddening. Temptation is a beast he knows how to tame, save for when he looks at me. That’s gratifying in itself.”
And- yeah. Nicky is objectively gorgeous. He more closely resembles a roman statue or the subject of a renaissance painting than anyone else Nile has ever met. His whole personality clashes with his appearance, though, which is to say nothing of his baffling commitment to always having the worst haircut known to man. He’s a fucking dork. Humility seeps out of every fibre of his being when he’s not working, and maybe Nile just isn’t into that. Neither is she into his specific sort of calculated competence when it comes to violence. She knows the entire team shares Andy’s philosophy on it- you have to feel it. Every life you take, every bit of pain you inflict onto another person. She knows Nicky feels it maybe more deeply than anyone else. Still, a cold, gripping sort of fear is her instinct when she sees him fight, because he does it like a machine. He’s terrifying, and Nile can’t read his tells as well as she can Andy’s, or Booker’s, or Joe’s. She can’t see the exhaustion underneath, the fear, the pain. She supposes Joe probably can. And she supposes he’s right that seeing somebody so selfless overwhelmed with desire would probably be indescribably hot.
“What if he woke up tomorrow and told you he’d slept with somebody else?”
Joe’s brow creases, amused bafflement lighting his eyes. Nile deeply envies his faith. “I know as surely as I know the sun will rise tomorrow that he won’t tell me that.” He turns to her, eyes kind, curious. “And if he did- I suppose I would be heartbroken. Furious, probably. I’m a bit of a hot head. And I’d ask why.”
Nile looks into the fire. Tomorrow she’s going to tell Booker that she slept with a detective named Moose. She will tell him that it was the fourth time. She knows he will not ask why. And that old attraction to Joe wells up, alongside sadness. He loves like an artist, wholly and completely, for the pain as much as the pleasure. Maybe he can’t remember, but knowing him today, she’s certain he never reserved any part of himself from Nicky out of fear they’d hurt each other, or change their minds. Maybe that’s down to their personalities, or maybe Nile has not been gifted as they have, not with anything but time. If Booker ever had the bravery to love without reservation, to love with faith in longevity, he lost it with his wife. Whether or not he’ll regain it, only time will tell. “That’s lucky.”
Joe’s eyes are on the tent, and she knows that while he sits here with her, the core of him, his thoughts, his heart- they are in the tent with Nicky.
Belatedly, he mutters, “yes, I am.”