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Adjusting is hard, at the beginning.
After Andy, Quynh and Booker rescue them, they all return to the Echo safehouse in Italy. For the first few weeks, all of them sleep in the living room together, mattresses hauled downstairs from various bedrooms. None of them can really bear sleeping alone after what happened, even though there is not much sleep to be had, with how often one of them wakes the others up with their nightmares.
It is getting better though, steadily.
Andy and Quynh, both immortal again (when exactly Quynh had lost and regained her immortality is beyond Joe, he was busy being frozen to death over and over again), are usually huddled close somewhere, faces serious and voices low, talking about everything.
Nile is putting on a brave face, but Joe knows she is still coming to terms with the fact that Discord tortured her in an attempt to force her to kill her friends. For those reasons, she’s been steering clear of him and Nicky, and Joe understands, even if he’d never blame her for what happened.
Booker, who seems to have also lost his immortality at some point, died, and somehow came back fully immortal as well, not that Joe would have known, is carefully settling in amongst their family. He technically still has ninety-nine years left in his exile, but no one has made an attempt to kick him out yet. Joe doesn’t think anyone will, but Booker still walks around the house as if he’s unsure whether or not he’s welcome.
Joe is doing better, too. The nightmares are getting less and less, and whenever he does have one, the images vanish as soon as he wakes up. He doesn’t try and hold onto them. The ice-cold fear of losing Nicky stays behind anyway.
Which, speaking of, leaves Nicky.
To anyone who doesn’t know him as well as Joe does, Nicky is doing perfectly fine. He works through his trauma by talking about it softly, or violently making pasta dough from scratch.
But the more time passes and the more Nicky recovers from all that Discord has done to them, the more Joe finds him zoned out, staring at nothing at all with a frown on his face. He snaps out of it easily enough when anyone talks to him, but Joe still notices.
And it worries him, because something is clearly bothering Nicky, and yet, he hasn’t come to Joe to talk to him about it.
Joe wakes up with a start, reaching out for his gun, his sword, any weapon at all, but his fingers only find soft fabric and warm skin.
Nicky.
Immediately, Joe relaxes. Just a nightmare, rare as they have become, the details of it already becoming blurry and slipping away from him.
Nicky is safe and alive and blessedly still asleep next to him.
Joe keeps his hand on Nicky’s back, feeling his body rise and fall with his slow breaths, letting the touch ground him while he waits for his own breathing to slow down again. It works wonders, as Nicky’s presence always does. Touching him is the direct antidote to the horrible fear of loss in his chest.
For a moment, Joe contemplates laying back down, pressing his chest against Nicky’s back, and pretending he can go back to sleep. Any attempt will be futile, he knows. Nicky might be the one who wakes up first, but once Joe is awake, he’s awake. No chance of going back to sleep, no matter the time.
Joe looks over at the window of their room. The sky isn’t as dark as he thought it would be. Sunrise must be in less than an hour. He might as well get up, then.
More hesitant than the situation calls for, Joe pulls his hand away from Nicky’s back. Nicky makes a noise in his sleep, but he doesn’t wake up. Good. He deserves as much sleep as he can get.
Joe leans down and kisses Nicky’s shoulder, a silent apology for getting up without him.
He swings his feet out of the bed, making sure to be as quiet as possible as he sneaks out of their bedroom and heads downstairs.
This early in the morning, there is not much to do without waking the rest of his family, so Joe quietly resolves himself to sit outside on the terrace until it’s a reasonable time to start breakfast. Apparently, he’s not the only one who’s had that idea, though, because when he steps outside, someone else is already sitting on one of the plastic lawn chairs.
Booker turns around when he hears the terrace door close behind Joe, and gives him an acknowledging nod.
“Couldn’t sleep either, huh?” he asks.
“Nightmare,” Joe supplies, but doesn’t elaborate. Booker doesn’t ask.
“Mind if I sit?” Joe gestures to the second lawn chair next to Booker’s.
Booker chuckles and waves his hand at the chair with half a flourish.
“Bien sûr, bien sûr,” he mutters.
Joe sits. For a moment, the two of them share in the silence, just watching the sun slowly crawl its way over the horizon. The dark blue sky gives way to pale lavender and the first beginnings of pink. It’s a beautiful sight. Joe wonders if there are any of his old art supplies somewhere in the house. He feels like painting.
“Do you think he’s forgiven me yet?”
Joe looks up, startled. Booker is pointedly looking down at the ground. Joe doesn’t have to ask who he’s talking about.
“Is that why you’re out here this early?” he asks, instead of answering Booker’s question.
Booker gives a noncommittal shrug. Joe sighs.
It’s true, Nicky is the only one who’s still giving Booker a hard time. Andy has forgiven him, so has Joe, months ago. Nile was never too upset in the first place, and Quynh wasn’t involved at all.
“You know,” Joe says, “Nicky believes in justice. You’ve done wrong, so now you have to atone for it. You can take the man out of the Catholic Church, but you can’t take the Catholic out of the man, I guess.”
Booker huffs a laugh.
“But Nicky believes in forgiveness, too, more than anyone I know. It just doesn’t come easy, with him. You have to earn it. I don’t think Nicky is expecting you to go back to your exile for the next century, but he is expecting you to make it up in some other way, if you want him to forgive you.”
Joe reaches over to clasp Booker’s shoulder.
“And he will forgive you,” he says firmly. “If you’re willing to work for it.”
Booker takes a shaky breath at that and nods quickly, wiping at his eyes.
“Shit,” he says. “Yeah, yeah, of course. Anything.”
Joe smiles sympathetically. He knows from experience what a horrible feeling it is to have Nicky be angry at him.
“Tout ira bien,” he says.
Booker laughs wetly.
“Tout ira bien,” he repeats, like a prayer.
Joe turns back to look at the sky instead, giving Booker a moment to breathe.
“I’m sorry, by the way,” Booker says quietly, after a minute.
In truth, Joe didn’t expect him to say anything else, and he looks back over, surprised. Booker still isn’t looking at him.
“For what?” Joe asks. He’s already forgiven Book, he was the first of them to reach out, and Book knows that.
“You and Nicky,” Booker says hesitantly. “Didn’t mean to be the reason you two start fighting.”
Joe swallows heavily. An ugly splinter in their history of a thousand years. He hates, more than anything, when he and Nicky fight. But it’s his own fault for lying. For going behind Nicky’s back like that, even for Booker’s sake.
“I mean,” Booker continues. “I’m... grateful you checked up on me. I know it didn’t always seem like it at the time, but I really was. I’m just sorry it made Nicky angry at you.”
Joe tries a smile.
“Not your fault,” he says. “That one wasn’t about you. Nicky was angry because I lied to him, not because it was you I was talking to.”
Booker doesn’t look convinced.
“But you’re okay now, right?” he asks.
Joe has already opened his mouth to say of course, of course they are okay. That there is nothing that could ever honestly drive a wedge between him and Nicky. That all has been good again since that night before the nuclear facility, in Tuah’s garden, when Nicky told him his love for Joe was truly immortal.
But something makes him hesitate, because then again, has he followed his own advice and worked for Nicky’s forgiveness? He’s not so sure.
“Yeah. Yeah, we’re okay,” he says, but it sounds hollow to his own ears. Booker doesn’t seem to notice.
“Good,” he says. “It’s not right when you two fight. Makes the air taste like acid.”
Joe almost laughs, because that is exactly in line with the sudden sour taste in his mouth at the thought of Nicky possibly not having forgiven him yet. He stands abruptly.
“I need a coffee,” he says. “Want one, too?”
“Sure, if you’re buyin’,” Booker jokes and lets Joe haul him to his feet.
After half a cup of coffee, Booker already seems much more chipper and awake, and he leaves Joe in the kitchen, claiming he has an idea and will be back later.
It’s a sudden switch of mood, but anything’s better than Booker being drunk and suicidal, so Joe will happily take it, even if it means he is left alone with his thoughts in the kitchen.
He could get a cup of coffee up to their bedroom, wake Nicky and air out all of those sudden worries, but something makes him hesitate. Instead of going upstairs, he turns to last night’s dirty dishes, needing something to do with his hands while he sorts out his thoughts.
So he lets the sink fill with hot soapy water and thinks.
What if Nicky truly hasn’t forgiven Joe for his betrayal? What if he’s been angry all that time, having to hide that underneath all else on top, while Joe hadn’t even noticed? It would certainly make sense, with how withdrawn Nicky seems recently.
He still behaves ‘normally’. He smiles and cooks for everyone, he’s purposefully short with Booker, sure, but that’s to be expected. He still kisses Joe and cuddles up to him in bed and reciprocates casual touches all throughout the day.
But he also frowns more, is more hesitant in his replies when Joe says something to him. Sits on the other side of the couch every now and then. Not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough for Joe to feel like something is off.
His thoughts keep circling back to that night in Tuah’s garden. He had been so scared of losing Nicky. He always is, in a way, it’s the only thing that would break him beyond repair. But Nicky had taken his worries in his gentle hands and taken care of them. Had it been stupid of Joe to think that everything had been forgiven after that? Should he have done more, asked for Nicky’s forgiveness properly?
Joe is so lost in thought that he doesn’t notice the soft, barely audible footsteps approaching him.
“Need help with that?”
He startles, nearly dropping the plate he’s been diligently scrubbing.
Quynh looks the slightest bit amused at his fumbling. She looks unreal in the dim light, in this kitchen. Her hair is loose over her shoulders, she’s merely in boxers and a shirt that is too big on her, one that Joe recognises as Andy’s with a pang in his chest.
His throat is suddenly too tight, and he only nods.
“You wash, I dry?” Quynh offers, already reaching for the dishtowel.
They haven’t had a lot of opportunity to talk. Quynh has been spending most of her time with Andy, understandably, and Joe has been busy with recovering from trauma and being glued to Nicky’s side.
There are a million things he wants to tell her, but he’s not sure how to say any of them.
They work in tandem silently for a while. It’s not exactly awkward, but not quite comfortable either. There’s too much still unsaid between them, but Quynh doesn’t seem eager to start the conversation.
“So,” Joe says eventually. He has no idea what he wants to say, but he owes her this, at least.
“So?” Quynh echoes, challenging.
Joe can’t ask her about the coffin, about the ocean. Not yet. Not now.
“You and Andy are doing okay, then?” he settles on.
Quynh halts her movements. It’s clearly not the question she’s expected.
“Five hundred years are a long time,” she says, voice measured. “Andromache and I are beginning to untangle everything. We will not be what we once were for some time to come. There is hurt and anger and despair and guilt that needs to be felt before it is smoothed out by the tides of time.”
Before Joe can say anything, she looks up at him, a smile on her face so honest and brave it shocks him to his core.
“But yes,” she concedes. “We are doing okay.”
Joe swallows heavily around the lump in his throat.
“I’m glad,” he manages. He wants to say so much more, how horribly they’ve all missed her, how long they were looking for her, how relieved he is to have her back by his side. But it won’t change anything, so he keeps his mouth shut. There’ll be time for that later.
Quynh seems to sense what words he’s not saying anyway, and by the look on her face, she’s grateful that they remain unsaid for the moment. She’s not quite ready to have this conversation either.
“I am happy to see you and Nicolò still together,” she says eventually. “To see at least one constant after everything, in this strange, new world.”
Joe hums, smiling.
“You feel that way now, but give it a few more weeks,” he jokes. “I have it on good authority that we’ve gotten even more insufferable about each other in the past centuries.”
Quynh laughs quietly. It’s a sound so rare and precious that Joe feels tears pricking at his eyes. He didn’t think he’d ever get to hear his sister laugh again.
“I find that hard to believe,” she says.
Joe puts down the sponge and scoops her up in a crushing hug, hands still wet and covered in dishsoap.
Quynh yelps in surprise but she doesn’t reach for a kitchen knife to slice his throat open, so he counts that as a massive win. She’s rigid and unmoving in his embrace, but Joe keeps holding her, breathing in a scent he’s nearly forgotten. Then, slowly, her arms come up around his shoulders carefully, returning the hug with the stiff awkwardness of someone who has been removed from compassion for a long, long time.
Joe buries his face in her shoulder.
“My sister,” he says in an ancient language he has not spoken in centuries.
Quynh laughs close to his ear and gently repeats the words, correcting his pronunciation. Joe squeezes her tighter.
Eventually, he lets her go. The air between them feels a little warmer. They are still hurting, all of them, but they’ll get through it.
The two of them quietly resume their task at hand, the silence no longer a barrier between them, until Andy eventually saunters into the kitchen. She looks so much more relaxed and at peace, and, Joe realises startled, happy. It’s a good look on her.
“Mhm, is that coffee I smell?” she asks, reaching for the pot without waiting for an answer. Quynh smiles at her indulgently.
“Coffee is only for people who say ‘good morning’ properly,” she says, and Joe pointedly does not remind her that she didn’t say good morning to him, either.
Andy smiles at her like she’s the first glimpse of sunrise after an age of darkness. Joe is suddenly reminded of what it was like before the witch trials. All the third-wheeling he and Nicky felt like they were doing, no matter that they had been together already by the time they met the two women for the first time.
Andy reaches out and gently cups Quynh’s face with her hand.
“Good morning,” she says. Andy’s never been big on endearments, not like Joe and Nicky are, but she has no need for it, not when her voice sounds like she might as well just have recited her wedding vows. Quynh certainly looks like she has.
She closes her eyes and leans into Andy’s touch, placing a feather-light kiss on her palm, and Andy visibly melts.
Joe takes that as his cue to leave.
“I’ll better get a cup of this to Nicky before it goes cold,” he says, even though it is clear neither of them are listening to him anymore.
Still, he pours himself another cup, and one for Nicky, and makes a gracious exit from the kitchen.
Nicky is awake when Joe enters their bedroom again. The sun has just barely made it up into the sky and the room is shrouded in a sheer cloak of pale yellow, softening Nicky’s face into something out of a painting.
He’s still underneath the blanket, but sitting up against the headboard, a book in his hands. He’s not looking up when Joe closes the door behind himself, so Joe takes a moment to linger and look.
Nicky really is the most beautiful man that has ever walked the earth. His eyes are a more blueish shade of green in this light, but not the less mesmerising for it. His hair, long enough to fall down to his chin again after having cut it since they were rescued, is tied back into a knot at the base of his neck. The beard is gone, but there’s a good bit of stubble back along his jaw.
He’s wearing one of Joe’s tanktops, leaving all of his arms on display, lean and strong and dusted with light hair.
Nicky is so impossibly breathtaking and Joe is helpless to do anything but love him so much he’s afraid he’ll split open at the seams.
“Hai finito di guardarmi?” Nicky asks, still not looking up from his book.
“Never,” Joe says honestly. “How is the book going? Did Clara finally find out that her sister is swindling her out of her inheritance?”
Nicky had been reading it to Joe last night. Some mediocre melodramatic Italian thriller he’d picked up at a yard sale some time ago.
Now, Nicky huffs, annoyed.
“No,” he says, indignantly. “Clearly the author thinks the reader is stupid enough not to figure that out yet. There will be an underwhelmingly ‘grand’ reveal at the end, I’m sure.”
He glances up at Joe, finally.
“You brought coffee?”
Joe hums an affirmation and moves to sit on the bed next to Nicky, handing over one of the mugs.
Nicky takes it without another word, silently sipping and concentrating on his book again. Joe frowns. There it is again, the feeling of something being off.
“You okay?” he asks carefully.
Nicky hums, pointedly neutral.
“I woke up and you weren’t here,” he says. “Needed some time alone again?”
And that’s hardly fair, but it is part of the answer Joe has been looking for, so he ignores the sting in his chest.
“You’re still... upset about that?” he asks.
“Among other things,” Nicky says, and turns the page.
There it is again, that sour taste in his mouth. He takes another sip of coffee, steeling himself. He hadn’t yet decided if he wanted to have that conversation today when he came back into the room, but apparently, it’s happening now. Perhaps that's for the best.
“I did wonder,” he starts slowly. “About that. I thought you were doing better, after...”
He doesn’t say ‘torture’. That’s behind them now. They’ve talked about that plenty. It’s the things before that they haven’t talked about.
“I was wondering what is on your mind,” he settles on. “You seemed off.”
It’s the wrong thing to say.
“Did I?” Nicky asks, coldly. His grip tightens minimally around the book. He’s glaring down at the pages as if they personally offended him, it’s clear he’s not reading anymore.
Joe bites his tongue. The only downside to having an argument only every other century is that he’s painfully out of practice when it comes to dealing with Nicky when he’s angry at him.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he tries. Nicky rolls his eyes.
“And yet that’s all you seem to be doing, these days,” he mutters under his breath, irritated.
He might as well have stabbed Joe in the heart.
“That’s not true,” Joe says, voice wavering more than he’d like.
Nicky stills. The irritation on his face makes way for exhaustion. He puts down the book, finally, brings up his hands to rub across his face.
“No, it’s not,” he admits. “I’m sorry. I’ve just been so...”
Nicky breaks off, waves his hands in a way that is so deeply Italian that Joe’s heart aches.
“Parla,” he says softly, the same prompt Nicky had given him the night in Tuah’s garden.
Nicky sighs, something deep and long-suffering.
“Porca miseria,” he mutters. “I don’t even know why I’m still upset about this. It shouldn’t matter anymore, not after everything else that has happened.”
“If it bothers you this much, then it does matter,” Joe insists. Without thinking, he reaches out to take Nicky’s hand in his. Thankfully, Nicky doesn’t pull away. If anything, he deflates, fingers twitching around Joe’s.
“I’ve just been so angry,” Nicky says eventually. “And I didn’t know where to put it all, and it just... got bigger.”
“Angry at me?” Joe prompts.
“Yes,” Nicky says. “You, and Booker, and everything.”
Joe swallows heavily.
“Why didn’t you come talk to me?” he asks quietly.
That earns him a sharp look.
“Like you came to talk to me about the fact you were going behind my back to talk to Booker?”
Before Joe can say anything to his own defense, Nicky sighs again. He looks very tired.
“Why didn’t you?” he asks, voice hurt and quiet. “Why didn’t you trust me with this? Why would you pick him over me?”
Joe’s heart shatters in his chest. It’s perhaps stupid, but he feels this is the first time he is really faced with the consequences of what he’s done. He knew lying to Nicky would hurt him, but he’s not anticipated how much.
“I was ashamed,” he admits, softly. “I was so furious when we found out how he’d betrayed us, and I wanted him to hurt for it. And then it didn’t even take me a month to forgive him. I was... afraid you’d be disappointed if you found out.”
Nicky throws his hands up, exasperated, bringing Joe’s hand along with his own where their fingers are still intertwined.
“I know that,” he says. “Yusuf, I know that! I’ve known you for a thousand years, do you really think I don’t know how you are in anger? For you, it burns bright, but quickly. I knew you’d be ready to forgive him before the rest of us. I just thought that, when you did, you’d talk to me about it. But I'd never be disappointed in you for having a heart that loves as fiercely as it does. I just as well might be disappointed in the air for allowing me to breathe.”
It shouldn’t come as a surprise anymore, to be known so well, after all these centuries, and yet.
“I didn’t...” Joe starts and then breaks off, tries again.
“Nicky, I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”
“I know,” Nicky says. “But you did anyway.”
The silence between them is heavy in a way it has rarely ever been. Joe almost feels he will suffocate with it.
“I didn’t feel like I was allowed to be angry, after all that happened with Discord,” Nicky says suddenly. “It felt silly to live through something as gruesome as we have, come out of it alive, and then turn around and be upset about the fact that you didn’t say ‘I love you’ back. But the more time I’ve had to recover, the more I have to think about what happened before.”
Joe has to close his eyes. Unfortunately, the hurt little ‘huh, okay’ that Nicky had breathed when Joe had asked him for some time alone is burnt into his brain. Buried beneath the ashes of it is the soft, sad ‘Ti amo’ Nicky had whispered to him when they’d hugged. Joe remembers not saying it back and just walking away. And God, does he hate himself for it.
“Nicky-”
Nicky doesn’t let him interrupt.
“Hearing you say that you wanted some time to yourself, that felt like walking face-first into a wall. I hardly recognised you, then. The man who tells me every day that it hurts him to breathe when I am away from him, that same man couldn’t even say ‘I love you’ back to me.”
“Nicolò-”
“Can you even imagine what that felt like? Over the course of a thousand years together, you have never not said it back. Even when you were angry at me, even when you were distracted, even when you were upset, you always said it back! To be left hanging like that... I felt like the world was breaking apart beneath my feet!”
Joe forces himself to look back at Nicky. His beloved’s eyes are strikingly green, the colour being brought forward by the red around it. He’s close to crying. And knowing that it is because Joe has put the hurt in those beautiful eyes is worse than torture.
He tries to imagine it the other way around. Imagines feeling like Nicky was pulling away from him, imagines telling him how he loved him, and having Nicky just walk away. Even the hypothetical heartbreak is enough to bring tears to his eyes as well.
“My Nicolò,” he says, pleading, hands reaching up to cradle Nicky’s face.
“Oh, my heart, my life, my breath. I love you. So entirely and overwhelmingly. My heart beats in sync with yours, my blood sings your name. There is no gift more precious than your love, no keepsake more dear than your heart, no taste sweeter than your kisses. It breaks my heart to know I’ve made you doubt the ferocity with which I love and adore you.”
Nicky looks back at him. A single tear runs down his cheek. Joe catches it with his thumb.
“Then why?” Nicky demands. “Why didn’t you say it, then?”
“I needed you not to follow me,” Joe says. “I couldn’t think of another way to convince you not to come with me.”
Nicky snorts, humourless.
“And how did that work out for you,” he says, drily.
Joe is so overcome with love for this man that he wouldn’t fault his heart for jumping out of his throat and into Nicky’s hands, where it belongs.
“I never want to be parted from you,” he says, desperately. “You are the moon and my heart is the tides beholden to your call. From the moment I first saw you, I’ve been yours. I wouldn’t be able to live if I lost you.”
Impossibly, Nicky’s eyes soften.
“You won’t lose me,” he says. “Not over this, not over anything else. As angry as I am that you would hurt me like this, I can’t deny my heart.”
It’s a relief to hear. It’s not forgiveness, but Joe hopes it is something close.
“I’m sorry,” he says, because he hasn’t said it enough yet. “Nicky, I’m so sorry.”
Nicky nods. The movement gently jostles Joe’s hands, and he lowers them to take Nicky’s hands again.
“I know,” Nicky says. “It helps.”
They sit like that for a moment, holding onto each other’s hands like a lifeline. Tentative to disturb the fragile peace between them, Joe speaks up again.
“I talked to Booker, earlier this morning.”
Nicky raises an eyebrow.
“He asked me if you’ve forgiven him yet,” Joe adds.
“I haven’t,” Nicky says plainly. Joe nods. He’s expected that answer.
“What about me?” he asks.
Nicky is quiet for longer than Joe would have liked.
“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I want to. I will, eventually. But I can’t quite yet.”
Joe swallows around the lump in his throat.
“I thought,” he says, hesitantly. “I thought maybe, what you said the night I came to talk to you about my fear of losing you, maybe that meant you’d forgiven me.”
Nicky gently shakes his head.
“I love you,” he says. “I meant that, I always have and always will. You are the love of my life, Joe, nothing will ever change that. But I don’t yet forgive you. Those two things can be true at the same time.”
Joe nods, numbly.
“Can I... can I do anything? To earn your forgiveness?”
Nicky shakes his head again.
“I need time,” he says.
Joe thinks back to what Quynh had told him in the kitchen not an hour ago.
There is hurt and anger and despair and guilt that needs to be felt before it is smoothed out by the tides of time.
He wonders what that time will look like, for him and Nicky. Will they still be close, or will Nicky need some time alone to come to terms with the hurt?
“Of course,” he says. “Do you want me to...”
He doesn’t say ‘leave you alone’, too scared that Nicky will actually take him up on it. He has half a second to imagine a painful future where Nicky and he sleep apart from each other, don’t touch or kiss or talk everyday, before Nicky laughs.
“Ah,” he says. “Don’t be silly now, Yusuf. Try and leave me behind again, see what happens.”
Joe must make quite a confused face at that, because Nicky laughs again, a blessed sound after all this heartbreak.
“What, did you think I was going to make you sleep on the couch for the next decade?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.
Joe shrugs, a little embarrassed that the thought even crossed his mind, even if Nicky would be well in his right to ask for it.
Nicky squeezes his hands gently, fondness creeping back into his eyes.
“I don’t want to put space between us,” he says. “I want you close to me, always. It will take a while to forgive you, I think, but that’s alright. I will just love you in the meantime.”
Joe could cry. He pulls their intertwined hands up to his lips, kisses Nicky’s knuckles reverently.
“I promise I will take better care of your heart,” he says.
“I know you will,” Nicky says.
He leans closer, until their foreheads are touching. Joe yearns for him so strongly he can feel it in his bones. He lets his hands run up and down the length of Nicky’s arms.
“Nicky,” he says quietly, in the shared air between them. “Please, can I kiss you?”
Nicky nudges their noses together.
“Yes,” he says, just as quietly. “Please do.”
Everything in Joe wants to surge forward, to kiss Nicky hard and deep and desperate, but he holds back. Instead, he leans in slowly, waits for Nicky to meet him halfway. When their lips meet, it’s soft and tentative, a mere flutter of a touch. It’s Nicky who presses in further, kissing Joe properly now, slow and tender and sweet.
He tastes like coffee. He tastes like heaven.
Neither of them breaks the kiss fully, they draw back every now and then for a shared breath, but never far and they always drift back into each other.
“I love you,” Joe says against Nicky’s lips. Nicky smiles into the kiss.
They spend the next minutes like that, trading long, sweet kisses, until Nicky’s stomach growls. Joe laughs into the kiss, until his own stomach joins in, and then it’s Nicky’s turn to laugh.
They roll out of bed and make their way downstairs. Joe feels lighter, now that they have talked. He smiles at Nicky and takes his hand. Nicky smiles back and squeezes his fingers lightly.
When they enter the kitchen, the smell of fresh coffee and warm pastries greets them.
Booker is standing in the kitchen, looking at them like a dog that knows it shouldn’t have torn apart the sofa, a full French breakfast spread on the table. Coffee, fresh fruit, pastries, jams, all clearly prepared with a lot of care and thought.
Joe smiles. Nicky stares. Booker clears his throat.
“Uh, mornin’,” he says. “I made breakfast.”
Nicky blinks. He looks down at the table, up at Booker, back down at the table. Then, he sits. Joe slides in next to him. Booker hovers by the table like an over-anxious waiter.
Nicky reaches out to take a croissant out of the basket, then halts his movement when he notices Booker is still just standing there. He looks back up at him, and nods towards the chair on his other side.
“Aren’t you going to eat with us?” he asks.
Joe has to bite down on his lip to surpress the laughter bubbling up in his throat when Booker scrambles to sit down next to Nicky.
There’s still a long way to go, for all of them. That’s okay though, he thinks, watching Nicky pour Booker a cup of coffee while Booker passes Nicky his favourite jam without having to be asked.
Sometimes, the beginnings of forgiveness can look like fresh coffee and apricot jam.
They have time, now, and they’ll just love each other in the meantime.