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It took Nicky a moment to realize what the light tap on the bathroom door meant. It’d been a long time since privacy or modesty had meant anything to any of them. But with Nile in the mix they’d fallen back on the sort of formalities they’d all but abandoned centuries ago. Spending literal lifetimes together had forged an intense familiarity, and along with the ever-shifting mores of place and time, they often didn’t bother with keeping up any sort of propriety when it was just them. Besides, a bare ass seemed inconsequential when compared to the profound intimacy of a slashed throat, a tumble of guts, a bright shatter of bone glistening through the ragged edges of a blown-off limb. Nicky had actually been naked and halfway into the tub before he remembered that he ought to shut the bathroom door before he bathed.
But now he was decent again, dressed in a worn t-shirt and soft pair of plaid pajama bottoms.
“Yes?” he called out without stepping away from the sink or looking up from where he was squeezing a dab of toothpaste onto the bristles.
The door opened and Joe slipped inside, eyes sweeping over Nicky to take in his damp hair, the spots of water seeping through the breast of his worn t-shirt where he hadn’t quite dried himself properly before putting it on. Normally if he came upon a freshly-bathed Nicky who’d already gotten dressed again, he’d make a comment about being sorry he was too late, but tonight Joe stayed quiet.
He still had that dejected look that he’d been hauling around since they’d arrived here yesterday, a quiet, subdued air about him that Nicky hated—at least as much as he could possibly hate anything about Joe. He’d always felt everything so deeply, his highs and lows equally intense. But this was like Joe had taken all of his feelings and stuffed them down into a jar and screwed the lid on tight so as to avoid dealing with any of it. Nicky wanted to take that jar and smash it. Giving Booker the silent treatment was one thing; Joe keeping himself bottled up around Nicky was entirely another, and a flare of misplaced anger sizzled through him as the silence went on.
“I broke one of our teacups,” Nicky said, and stuck the toothbrush into his mouth to begin scrubbing his teeth.
Nicky had wanted a reaction out of Joe, and that certainly got it. Joe’s expression turned pained and his hand went to his collar, not unlike the motion he usually made when he’d just been stabbed. “Not the blue—”
“Mm,” Nicky confirmed, still brushing.
The pained look intensified, Joe’s eyes going big and sad in what Andy called his Disney-princess expression. She’d teased him about it once decades ago, and Nicky had never been able to unsee it. “Nicky,” Joe groaned. “That was one of our Wedgwood set.”
“The world is full of teacups, Yusuf,” Nicky said, words a little garbled around the toothbrush.
“Yes, but that was our teacup. I love that set.”
“We have seven more cups just like it. That’s still more than enough for all of us to use.” Nicky studied him for a moment, then took the toothbrush out of his mouth and spat into the sink. “Are you truly upset? I’ll find you a replacement, if it means that much to you.”
“No, no,” he said tiredly, waving a hand as if to shoo away the very suggestion of Nicky going even a little out of his way to appease Joe. “You’re right. It’s just a teacup and we do have more.” Then his eyes narrowed a little. “What were you doing with it? I didn’t hear the kettle.”
Nicky had wanted a reaction from Joe; he didn’t actually want a reaction as big as admitting he’d been using it for an ashtray would get him. He was still exhausted after all they'd been through, and his conversation on the veranda had left him even more drained. He didn’t have it in him to go twelve rounds with Joe about whether his use of the teacup was appropriate or not. “Using it,” he said.
The suspicious look on Joe’s face increased. “Using it for what?”
“Trust me,” said Nicky, putting the toothbrush back in his mouth to finish up. “You’ll be happier if I don’t tell you.”
“I don’t think I will,” Joe said. “Because I’m sure that I already know.”
“Then why are you asking?”
Joe sighed a little, pressing two fingers to the bridge of his nose just between his eyes, as if he could feel a headache blooming. “Madre di Dio, I have no idea. Truly no idea why.” Evidently he, too, didn’t have it in him to fight about teacups.
“Mm,” Nicky said again, and kept on brushing, gratefully letting it be. He’d been half-expecting Joe to argue, to seize on Nicky’s misuse of the teacup as a convenient place to vent his greater frustrations. The echo of Joe’s shouting in the lab still rattled around the back of Nicky’s brain. Joe didn’t lose his temper often. Nicky managed to push him that far only about once a century, and it was always horrible for both of them. Given tonight’s heavy conversation with Booker, and the events of the previous few days, and the fury inside him that was only tenuously kept from boiling over by a heavy blanket of deep exhaustion, Nicky didn’t think he could handle a shouting match with Joe on top of everything else. He’d fall to pieces, and then where would they be?
The toothbrush was the only sound in the bathroom for a long minute, during which Joe appeared to be chewing on his words, testing the weight of them on his tongue before he finally made the decision to speak them aloud. “And how is he?”
He didn’t address the question to Nicky’s face, but rather somewhere in the vicinity of his bellybutton, and there was no question who he meant. Nicky suppressed a sigh, because the topic of Booker wasn’t much of an improvement over the teacups. He took a few more seconds to finish with his teeth before he answered.
“Sorry,” Nicky said, and meant it in every sense of the word. “He’s sorry.”
Joe’s eyes jerked up to meet his. “Sorry,” he repeated incredulously. “He’s sorry? Well he should be, the miserable lying traitor—”
“Yusuf,” Nicky said, and consciously let loose the last of his control. Exhaustion sluiced through him with such force that he wavered on his feet for an instant.
Immediately, Joe reached for him, set hands on his waist. His touch was light enough that it steadied Nicky more in spirit than in body, but really Nicky’s spirit was what was most in need right now. He couldn’t remember a time in his life when he’d ever been so terrified as he’d been when they’d taken him and Joe. The lab had been awful, but Nicky had been able to endure because he had Joe at his side. Yet the specter of Quynh loomed over them all, and Nicky’s fear had ricocheted rapid-fire between him losing Joe, or Joe losing him, his imagination spiraling down dark rabbit holes about which might be worse, threatening to turn him into a useless mess until he’d bundled it all up and stuffed it down deep where it couldn’t touch him. But now, safe, it kept welling up, kept seeping out. Nicky knew he’d have to deal with it eventually, that he wouldn't be able to fully process that he was safe until he let himself feel the full weight of his fear, but not right now. For now, Joe was here. They were here together. They would be all right.
“Are you done in here?” Joe asked as Nicky rinsed his toothbrush and put it back in the chipped mug they used as a holder in this house.
“Nearly,” Nicky said, giving himself a once-over in the mirror. He scratched his fingernails along his jawline. He hadn’t shaved since before the helicopter to South Sudan, and his stubble was beginning to annoy him with how it rasped on everything. He briefly considered growing it out, but decided against it. “I still need to shave.”
“Would you like me to do it?” Joe asked.
Nicky thought it over. It would be faster to do it himself. Joe always took his time, so slow and careful, as if any accidental nick wouldn’t heal almost instantly. Normally Nicky loved it, loved to have Joe’s attention so tightly focused on him, but tonight he really was tired, and this was the last task standing between him and his bed. Although, he considered, looking over at Joe, at the tiredness and sadness in his eyes. He thought that Joe probably needed this.
They probably both needed this, if Nicky was honest with himself. They needed this sort of simple intimacy to recenter themselves. Any other time they’d likely have fulfilled the need with sex without a second thought, but this place was small and sound carried a little too well, and Nile was still so new. And to be perfectly honest with himself, Nicky didn't think he'd be able to handle that sort of physical and emotional vulnerability with Booker nearby. It would be a long time before Nicky felt safe near him again.
“Yes, I think I would,” Nicky said.
Joe retrieved what he needed from the cabinet beneath the sink, handed over the shaving soap and brush. Nicky opened the tin and gave it a sniff to check whether it had gone rancid, and finding that it hadn’t, he set about lathering it up while Joe inspected the straight razor for spots of rust, and, finding none, sharpened it quickly, then waited for Nicky to finish spreading the thick lather over his face.
“How do you want me?” he asked, setting the brush on the edge of the sink.
“Any way I can get you,” Joe replied with a ridiculous wink, and Nicky had to resist the urge to kiss him. He’d only get shaving lather all over Joe’s beard, and then have to do himself up again. “But I think the counter ought to do.”
Nicky hopped up and settled in beside the sink, spread his knees wide for Joe to stand between them. Joe moved in close, his hips nudging Nicky’s thighs wider, and Nicky’s heart thrilled to feel him so near. He reached out, brushed his fingers over Joe’s temple, up and around the shell of his ear, spread his fingers and curled them around the back of Joe’s neck, holding firmly, nudging him closer. Joe leaned carefully in and touched his forehead to Nicky’s, and Nicky’s eyes slipped closed as they breathed together. A last shiver of fear wriggled through the pit of Nicky’s stomach and then stilled. They were here, they were together, they would be all right. Eventually, everything would be all right.
With a heavy exhale, Joe stepped back, and Nicky obediently tipped his chin up a little and surrendered himself to Joe’s care. The slow scrape and scratch of the razor was loud in the quiet room, punctuated by little splashes as Joe rinsed it in the sink after each swipe. The rhythm lulled him into a sense of calm, and Nicky let himself go loose and lax, let Joe’s gentle fingers tip his head this way, tilt it that. As always, letting Joe take care of him like this made Nicky’s busy brain slow its ceaseless churning, made something deep inside him go calm and quiet.
It wasn’t until Joe had Nicky’s head tipped back, the razor sliding along the vulnerable column of his throat, that he finally spoke.
“What did you talk to him about?”
“I told him about us,” Nicky said, letting his eyes open again. “Because we hadn’t, I realized when we were out there. We’d never actually told him.”
Joe had no earthly idea what Nicky was talking about, Nicky could see it in the quirk of his brows, the slight pursing of his mouth even half-hidden beneath that beard of his. Nicky leaned in and kissed him slowly, gently. Sometimes, in the quiet moments such as this, Nicky loved Joe with such force that his heart felt swollen with it, bruised and tender, almost painful trapped inside the cage of his ribs with how it longed for Yusuf. Sometimes Nicky imagined that cutting it out of his own chest and handing it over for Joe to carry around with him might be less painful. He’d voiced the ridiculous thought aloud once, a long time ago, and Joe had only regarded him seriously for a long moment before he took Nicky’s hand and pressed it to the center of his own chest and said, “But you don’t need to, don’t you see? Your heart already beats within me.”
“I love you more than I can say,” Nicky said, because it suddenly felt imperative that Joe hear it again in this moment.
The confused furrow between Joe’s brows deepened. “You told him we’re in love? I’m sure he already knew that.”
“No, no, that’s not—” Nicky said, then abandoned English, mentally switched to Italian, Arabic, then back to Italian before continuing. “That’s not what we talked about. I told him how we killed each other.”
The furrow between Joe’s brows eased a little but didn’t disappear. “He already knew that too.”
“The details, I mean. The how. We never talk about it anymore, and why should we? For us it was lifetimes ago. The person who did those terrible things is dead now. The person to whom they were done is likewise. We have not been those men for so long. But I thought it would help him. To know that someone else has hurt the person who means most to him, and found his way back again after.”
For a long moment, Joe appeared to have been left speechless. Nicky let him work through it in his own time, held his tongue and waited. Let Joe tilt his head back again and finish shaving beneath his chin and along his jaw.
“Nico,” Joe said finally. The water swished as Joe rinsed the razor and then set it aside with a quiet click. “I am left in awe of your kindness.”
Now it was Nicky’s turn for confusion, but only briefly because while he himself didn’t see it as kindness, he supposed he could understand that it might be mistaken as such by others. In actuality, his motivations were primarily selfish: he’d needed for Booker to understand just how deeply he’d wounded Joe, how Joe was still being torn apart by his betrayal, and needed Booker to understand that there was still a way back from it, if he were willing to put in the work to better himself. He needed him to repent, to atone, to never do such a stupid thing again.
Because above all—and here was the selfishness—Nicky needed Joe to be okay again.
And for that to happen, he needed Booker’s feet firmly on the path to redemption, without wasting time by taking a years-long detour through the bottom of a bottle as Nicky was still afraid he might do even now. To walk the path was up to him, Nicky knew that, but he could show Booker a map and lead him by the hand to the path’s beginning. He could do that. That was the least he could do.
Nicky sighed. The least he could do didn’t feel like nearly enough. Guilt momentarily swamped him. He’d missed that Booker was hurting so desperately he’d been driven to something of this magnitude. How had Nicky missed it? How had they all missed it?
Joe pulled the stopper from the sink, set it aside and wet a washcloth, which he used to gently blot the last of the shaving lather from Nicky’s face, paying special attention to where a dab always remained behind each of Nicky’s ears. He passed Nicky the face towel while he hung up the washcloth, and Nicky had finished drying himself by the time Joe had done so, and by the time Nicky passed him the face towel, he’d also folded up his worry and guilt and tucked it tightly away for another day.
Joe hung the towel, then leaned in close and brushed his lips against Nicky’s cheek, his beard a tickle against the newly shaved skin. “Perfect,” he declared.
Perfect, Nicky’s mind echoed, losing himself momentarily in Joe’s dark eyes. Lord, he loved this man.
“Bed?” Joe suggested, patting Nicky’s knee.
“Far be it from me to turn down an invitation from a beautiful man,” Nicky said, sliding off the counter as Joe stepped back.
Joe smiled at him, and his hand was warm at the small of Nicky’s back as he guided him gently out of the room.