Chapter Text
It had been almost a year. Almost a year. He reminded himself of it again and again. He went through the days, from his first death in the desert and the shadow of death stretching over him like a blanket of mercy. That death had been Nicky. Nicky. He ran every memory of him through his head again and again, at first to stay sane without sunlight to count the passing of time, and then later, just because he was growing afraid he’d forget something.
How long had it been in the dark? In the ground? In this grave?
How long?
Every time he went through the memories of his year again, he felt once steady ground softening, threatening to shift—to change inside his head.
The thought crept into his mind more than once, that maybe none of it had even happened. Maybe he had died under that first bullet and this was his immortality in the ground, planted like seed that could not grow? He needed water. Nicky had brought him the water. That had happened. His perfect reaper had come for him. His perfect reaper would come for him again.
Wait. Just wait.
Breathe. Just breathe.
He remembered a mission, more than six months in. Nicky had a perch with a sight line to protect the rest of the team entering the facility at the top of an old abandoned building and Joe took up guarding the stairwell—the only way up to Nicky. It was a half hour of gunfire and thunderclap shots from Nicky’s rifle, and shouting and screaming up and down that stairwell.
Joe had let no one through until that last push of enemies. Two soldiers got past him, to the last platform, onto the roof where Nicky was laid out on his chest, focus out the scope on a scene far below—far away. He didn’t even turn when the two enemies shouted at him—didn’t even flinch when a bullet pelted the concrete only a few feet from his side when Joe tackled the man to the ground. He had stayed focused and just trusted that Joe would deal with it. For all the words Joe had, and the poetry he liked to speak and whisper to Nicky to see the way his cheeks colored or his eyes darkened, he had no words for the feeling in his chest then. Nicky trusted him completely and the weight of it was the weight of wings—if it was a burden, it was the burden of flight.
Nicky hadn’t died that night. He hadn’t even been injured once. And when they were finished with the mission, they all broke away in different directions, planning to meet up again in a couple days in Germany.
When they all split up, Nicky and Joe went together and by dawn, they got to their safehouse. They gave it a once over, making sure everything was in order before finally letting down their guard. They had the little loft to themselves.
Joe always had a little thrill in his gut when they were going to be alone for any length of time outside of a mission, even just a night. It wasn’t that they weren’t affectionate even with the family around, but it was different—of course it was different. Nicky was so conscious of others, Joe was convinced he was incapable of being rude in any way. Andy had snorted at him when he said that—certain that Nicky had it in him to be very rude when he wanted to be. Joe still doubted that was ever directed toward the family though.
They still slept in the same bed even when the whole family occupied the same room at night, which was often the case. It was odd at first, but he had to admit, he slept better when they were all together—when he wasn’t dreaming of the drowning woman, that is.
He dropped their bag on a chair near the bed. They had one bag now when they traveled. Joe couldn’t even remember exactly when that had happened. Between one mission and another, when they’d tossed clothes and bought new ones, Nicky had just packed everything into one backpack. It had fit fine. They traveled light. It made sense. Joe loved the romantic shit Nicky did without realizing the implications of it. Like putting their things in one bag—clearly expecting that they would never be hiding out in different safehouses. Like when he’d let Joe leave some of his things at the Malta house, putting his sketchbooks on the shelves among his notebooks.
And then there was the way Nicky talked, the words he used—always eluding to how much time they had, calling him my heart and my love like it was second nature, even in front of the others. Nicky was not ashamed or shy about his feelings, even if he didn’t always know how to put those feelings into words.
Joe stepped out of his boots to change into clean clothes before bed. For once they weren’t bloody or even all that dirty, but it was habit. He pulled his shirt off and tossed it toward the dirty pile, unbuttoning the front of his jeans when he turned and found Nicky watching him. Joe grinned slowly. He had learned what that look meant. Nicky was thinking something sexy. Joe turned fully toward him, slowly, hand still on the front of his pants and hip cocking slowly to the side, loving the way Nicky’s gaze bounced between his hip, his hands, and his mouth. Nicky’s fingers moved, like they were tapping a rhythm at the air, his thoughts moving through his skin and bones without him even realizing it.
“Tell me what you want,” Joe urged, voice low.
Nicky’s eyes flared a little, mouth opening a little. Inhale, and then finally those ancient oceans looked back at him. “You,” he answered, a tidal wave of need in that voice.
“Tell me,” Joe pressed.
Nicky’s teeth caught his lip again, thinking, hesitating. He wouldn’t always be forward. Wouldn’t always say what he wanted outright. But it was getting there, more and more every time. The room was dark, the heavy curtains drawn to hold back even the rising sun and keep them safe in that forever night. “Up against the wall,” Nicky whispered. “Turn around.” He said it, but there was a lilt to it, a sort of question because it wasn’t in Nicky to demand or order.
Joe hummed a moan and nodded, turning his back to his lover and taking the two steps to the wall, spread his legs a little and leaned forward, arms to the wall. It was exposing and thrilling, and his skin sang when Nicky’s hands found him. He stripped him down, kissing and touching. Joe was panting and more than ready by the time Nicky took his hands off him and undressed himself. He put his forehead to the wall. The first time Nicky had fucked him, had been slow and soft in a bed in Spain. That had been many times ago. Fingers danced up his spine before holding the back of his neck, grip flexing when he pressed into his body from behind.
They both groaned when Nicky was flush to his back, buried inside him.
“Nicolo,” Joe gasped, pressing back against him, nodding against the wall. As though he heard his thoughts, Nicky started moving, thrusting. Joe shivered, loving the grip Nicky still had on the back of his neck. Nicky had been so careful in the first months of their relationship, and the first times they had sex. He would never have tried even this. One of Nicky’s arms framed Joe’s against the wall, their fingers lacing, locking.
When Joe started panting his name, chanting it, singing it, Nicky release the back of his neck and replaced fingers with lips, his hand finding a new grip around his cock and stroking him in time with his thrusts. They came one after the other, lingered like that for a while, and then Nicky led him to the bathroom and showered with him. Joe remembered it all so clearly. It was routine and he loved that. They went to bed, dressed to go if they had to, Joe’s back to the wall and Nicky facing the door, his back to Joe and his gun on the bedside table. Joe remembered pressed his face into the back of Nicky’s neck and breathing him in—not the Malta soap scent but still Nicky. He wondered if they would smell the same someday. He wondered if he’d be able to tell. And when they were almost asleep, Joe had asked very quietly, “If I asked you, would you marry me?”
He wasn’t sure he’d thought about it before the words came out of his mouth and surprised himself with the way his nerves kicked up. Nicky turned over enough to look up at him, just enough light in the room from that eager daylight outside to see by. His smile was beautiful. “Are you being romantic or serious, my heart?” he asked, sounded charmed either way. “Our passports are all fake and—”
“If we said we were, we would be,” Joe decided then, suddenly very serious. “If you wanted to be, I would make it so.”
Nicky’s smile changed. It didn’t leave but it wasn’t as light. He turned more, facing Joe on their bed and touching his chest thoughtfully, over his heart. He had an unreadable expression, thoughtful and almost sad. “You know that place between alive and dead, my love? That second before you wake up, when you’re not quite either? I think I have been there my whole life until you. I think I have been dying and until I found you in the desert, I had yet to wake up.”
Joe stared at him, wondering then if it was a dream and later if it was something he had made up.
Nicky smiled and kissed him in the dark. “I am yours any way you want me, Yusuf.”
Joe curled his arms around him, holding him tightly.
He thought through the memory again. And again. And again.
He lay there in that box in the dark, in that coffin in the ground, the world bearing down on him with no escape but his own mind.
Nicky was real. Nicky was his. Nicky would find him. He had before. He would again. Joe closed his eyes and hated the tears that escaped. He had had a year with Nicky, a year of a life after his death. And then someone had snatched it away.
Booker washed his face and scrubbed a hand over his features, dragging a deep breath. He had left the country after he nabbed Joe and put him in the ground. It had been too easy. It was their own fault for making it so easy. All he’d had to do was wait for a moment when he was alone and all Booker had ever had was time. A bullet to the back of the head and he had never even seen it coming—never even seen who did it. Not that he would be left wondering. Joe was smart.
It had been a week. Only a week. That was nothing. Booker clenched his jaw and told himself again, that he wasn’t wrong. Joe needed some perspective and Nicky needed to wake the fuck up from his fantasy. He wasn’t wrong. They were.
He would disappear for a while. Nicky would either have to hunt him or search for Joe. Booker wasn’t sure which he hoped for, tried not to think about it. He would make them suffer for a while and when everyone had their priorities in order, he’d bring Joe back. Booker wasn’t unreasonable. They just needed to learn a lesson. They just needed to feel the weight of this curse like he did.
He opened his eyes and almost jumped out of his skin when he saw a woman behind him in the mirror. He twisted around, staring at a face that couldn’t be. He knew her. But he didn’t.
Quynh tipped her head to the right, like a bird, ancient eyes unreadable. She did not look like he imagined. She looked perfectly modern in her tailored coat and boots. “You’ve been bad,” she whispered, the corner of her mouth pulling toward a smile that held no amusement. “You hurt my boy.”
His mind raced. “How did you find me?” was the first question to break free. He had disappeared. He wasn’t even expecting Nicky to find him for at least a few months.
Her cruel smile grew and he saw the touch of madness in her eyes. He couldn’t be sure if that was a product of the sea or if it had always been hers. He had never met Quynh outside of his nightmares. “I have watched you for your whole wretched life. I have seen.”
Booker moved fast, pulling the gun he had tucked in the back of his jeans. He got it free but she closed the space between them. He didn’t feel the knife but he lost control of his limbs, knees hitting the floor and his gun falling onto the tiles. He managed a swear just before he blacked out.
They were arguing again. Nicky was in the middle of it, he could hear himself. He had told them that Booker wouldn’t go to any of the safehouses they knew about. He would disappear. Andy glared at him again while Nile paced and listed off possibilities.
They hadn’t understood when he said Booker had taken Joe last week. They hadn’t believed him when he’d come back to the house two days after trying to catch up to Booker and failing. Failing. That’s what he’d been doing every minute of every day since he came back to the house with Nile and found the puddle of blood and drag marks to where Booker’s car had been parked. He had known—had felt the absence of his heart the moment he saw that puddle of red. Nile had gone inside to look for Joe and Booker, but Nicky had gotten in the car and tried to head him off from wherever the fuck he was going.
Andy had thought some enemy had caught up with them and snatched the two. Nile had been ready to do anything to get them back. Nicky had had to explain. He had had to take the time to explain what a complete mess he had made out of their lives when his soul was withering in his chest, his skin on fire with the need to move—to find Joe.
They had both gone still and stared at him like he was lying or joking or just telling the horrific truth.
Nile had tears in her eyes. Nicky had to look away because he didn’t understand that.
Andy stared at him then, like she was staring at him now a week later in another house in another country. She stared at him like he had betrayed her or like she had betrayed him and neither of them had figured it out yet.
“How could you not tell me?” she finally snapped, right in the middle of Nile rolling out their options.
Nicky cringed because he had known it was coming and because he didn’t have the time for it now. He didn’t have the time for anything until he found Joe.
She leaned back against a table, fingers clutching at the sides, knuckles straining and her glare still fixed on him. “More than a hundred years?”
“Andy…” Nicky exhaled, closing his eyes. “It seemed fine at the time.”
“Fine?” she spat but didn’t move from that spot. Maybe she was holding herself there with her grip on the table. “How many times did Booker kill you like that?”
Nicky looked away, dragging a breath, doing everything he could to keep himself in that room. He had built this pyre for himself. He owed them the burning. “It didn’t usually come to that.”
Nile winced and swore under her breath. “Can we just focus—”
“Was it the Catholic guilt, Nicolo?” Andy demanded, tears in her eyes but anger twisting her features. “Still owing pain to your god?”
Nicky glared back at her. He loved her. But he did not belong to her and they had other problems now. “Let it go,” he ground out, suddenly angry. “You did not want to know, so you did not see it. I did not want to tell you, so I dealt with it. How we—"
They all heard someone in the stairwell. Nile pulled a gun from inside her jacket and Nicky turned around to face the door.
There were no footfalls in the hall outside their door but they all knew someone was there. Nicky walked right up to it and threw it open, because there was a chance it could be Joe. And if there was a chance it could be Joe, he wouldn’t hesitate to pick up a landmine let alone open a fucking door.
He stared at the woman there, maybe he had finally lost his mind. He had to turn and look at Andy to see if he was hallucinating but the tears in her eyes, the way she straightened, let go of the table, and just stared at Quynh told him she was real. At any other time in his life he would have reached for her, would have had a thousand questions, but his heart was a stone and he was closer to dead than he had ever felt in his life. Every breath he took felt like he was suffocating.
Nile spoke her name and Quynh spared the other woman a gentle smile before stepping into the apartment. She moved first to Nicky and he leaned his face down into her hands when she reached for him, the way he had a thousand times before in a life long ago. She had been a friend and a partner and a sister and a mother. He had loved this woman the way he had only ever loved the women in this room. Tears slid down his face that he had been holding in since he found that puddle and felt his life stop again.
Quynh took his face in her hands and brought his forehead down to hers, sighing in relief because it had been lifetimes of death since she last held this boy. He had always been a boy to her. So withdrawn and waiting to come alive. She had so much to say to him, to catch up on, but not quite yet. She let go and pushed a pair of car keys into his hand. “The Frenchman is in the trunk,” she said gently in his old Italian. Light returned to his eyes, just the tiniest shred. “It will be okay. If you can not make him speak, I will.”
Nicholas shuddered out a breath and nodded tightly. She nudged her head toward the door and he bolted.
“Where the fuck—” Andromache started.
Quynh shot her love a glare that shut her up quick.
Nile straightened and took a step back, even with those big tears in her beautiful eyes. “How?” she asked, all of her heartache and joy and confusion right there on the surface.
Quynh came closer. “It finally rusted. Everything breaks apart eventually.” She shrugged like it wasn’t still a nightmare, like she couldn’t still feel the weight and cold of the sea. But she had lost enough time to it.
Andromache stared at her still, stray tears running down her cheeks. “I looked—” she started.
Quynh winced because she could hear the hundreds of years of guilt in her voice that she had felt reverberating through her from the dark of every death. “I know it. I did not doubt it.”
Andromache shuddered out a breath but waited, like a woman damned.
Quynh came closer, closer, until she could almost touch her—almost breathe her in again. But she was too angry to give in just yet. Quynh could fight gravity if she had to. “He told you why this happened?”
“Nicky?”
Nicky. Nicholas. Nicolo. “Yes.”
Andromache nodded tightly, nose wrinkling angrily. Temper. She had always had so much temper. “How did you not see it?” Quynh demanded. She had seen it, in her misery and endless death, she lived off the glimpses of their lives. And she fought harder for every time she saw them suffering. She had seen the Frenchman and her Nicholas. She had seen it sometimes from Nicholas’s eyes and body and pain and other times from the Frenchman’s anger and fists. She knew Nicholas had endured so much worse in his time, but it did not curb her fury.
Andromache just stared at her for a long while and then a smile broke across her face—that beautiful face that Quynh had looked for in her death sleeps for hundreds of years. She laughed with tears. “Are you shitting me? You’ve been…For so long…And the first thing you’re pissed about is this mess?”
Quynh crossed her arms over her chest, glaring. “You were supposed to take care of them,” she snapped, like this had ever been a plan. Like they had discussed what would happen if one of them fell. They had not—but it had been known. If it had been Andromache—Quynh would have protected Nile and Nicholas.
“We didn’t know,” Nile chimed in, eyes still teary.
Quynh softened a fraction when she rolled her head to the side to lay her gaze over the other woman, she reached out and touched her arm and Nile made a choking sound when she clutched at her hand. It was all too much. She had been gone for so long. Maybe that was why Quynh clung so hard to this one thing—this one anger. It helped her hold herself together. “I am not mad at you, little crocodile,” she promised.
Andromache finally moved, taking a big step forward, still smiling with tears. “Just mad at me? For this? Not for…” she choked and the smile fell.
Quynh groaned but reached out with her other arm, grabbing Andromache by the jacket and dragging her into her. Sometimes it was better not to fight gravity. Quynh exhaled when the woman’s arms wrapped around her and she let herself lean in, one hand still in Nile’s hold. “No. I am not mad about the sea. Not mad at you,” she whispered into her hair words she’d wanted to tell her for hundreds of years.
Booker woke from what had to be his fourth death in the last few hours, this time sitting in a chair with his wrists cuffed to the sides and a bag over his head.
He knew Nicky had him—had seen him between that third and forth death when the truck was popped open and the little fuck shot him in the face. So, he wasn’t surprised to see him again when the bag was taken off his head.
Booker winced against bright daylight, first looking down at himself to realize he was cuffed to a wheelchair and then around at the nice apartment. This was not one of their safehouses and he couldn’t see Andy or Nile or that damned Quynh anywhere. “What—” he started but Nicky grabbed the back of his chair and turned him, wheeling him up to one of the big windows now open wide.
He had a sniper rifle set up on a table. He grabbed Booker by the back of the hair to lean him forward, to push his face toward the scope. “Look,” Nicky ordered, his voice gravel.
Booker stared through the scope, unimpressed with whatever show this was. He looked at an apartment across the street. This was France—he knew it immediately. How long had he been in that trunk? A man walked into the living room with a cup of coffee and sat down in a large chair, reading the book in his other hand. “What the fuck am I looking at?” Booker ground out.
“That, is one of the last two descendants you have in the world,” Nicky explained, infinitely calm.
Booker went still. “You’re full of shit.”
“Look at him,” Nicky ground out. His voice wasn’t that steady, hollow that had driven Booker mad for centuries. No, it was molten steel, pure fury, like nothing Booker had ever heard before. “Look at him and tell me he doesn’t stand like your son? Look at his eyes and tell me they don’t remind of your wife’s.”
Booker bared his teeth, straining against his bindings. Of course, it was one of his. He had known the moment he first saw him. But why? “You’re bluffing.”
“Tell me where Joe is.” Nicky had not asked until that moment, Booker realized. He had not questioned him while he was in the trunk, or when he dragged him out. He had not pleaded or tried to reason. He had not even let Andy do the asking.
Booker’s heart beat in his throat. “Fuck you, Nick. You’re not going to do shit and it’s good for the kid to get some perspective. Maybe some time alone will get rid—”
Nicky hit him so hard that the chair fell over. Booker was still coughing and spitting blood when Nicky pulled him upright again. He grabbed his face and bent over to look him in the eye. Had Nicky’s eyes always been that pale? That cold? When he spoke again, he did so in French. “Sebastien, if you do not tell me where he is—I will shoot that man.”
Booker stared at him. It was impossible. Nicky would never kill an innocent person. But his gut twisted because there was nothing about him that suggested he was lying. “You wouldn’t,” he said, trying to believe it, trying to remind him of reality.
Nicky had not looked away, staring back at him and letting him search his eyes for any thread of deception. “I have done horrible things, Booker. Letting you lay hands on me was nothing because I have done so much worse. You think I can’t kill this man because he isn’t holding a gun? Tell me where Joe is, or I will go over there, drag him back here, and put a gun in his hand. He’ll raise it against me, who wouldn’t? And I will paint you in his blood.”
Booker shook his head tightly. He wouldn’t. Nicky wouldn’t.
Nicky nodded, like he could hear his thoughts. He straightened and turned for the door.
“Nick!” Booker shouted, struggling against his cuffs. “Fuck. Nick!”
“You wanted to play monsters with me, Booker,” he reminded, not even pausing to look back at him. He grabbed the keys off the counter near the door. “After this one, we’ll go to Sweden. You have a great grand-daughter there.”
Booker thrashed so hard he almost knocked the chair over. “Nicky! The graveyard outside Mende!”
Nicky stopped, the door open but still in hand. He turned to look back at him. “Your graveyard?”
Booker swallowed hard, glaring back at him. He hated himself for giving it up so easily but even if he wasn’t sure that Nicky would pull the trigger, he was afraid he’d really pluck that man from his life and bring him over here—that his own pain would be stained onto another generation of his family. “My grave.”
Nicky swore under his breath and cast his gaze up, nodding slowly. He returned to the room, letting the door swing shut. He wheeled Booker into a bathroom. “I pray you are not lying,” he said coldly before shutting him into the dark room.
Booker did not hear the front door when he left but he was sure Nicky had locked it—had left him here in case it was a lie. It wasn’t. He sat there in the dark for another day, maybe two, until someone finally came. He winced when the door opened and light spilled into the bathroom. Nile stood there, the last person he’d expected. There was no amusement or joy on her face and he knew she knew.
He had known everyone would find out what he had done, hadn’t he? There had been no other outcome. Nicky would have had to tell them. Why had he done that? Why had he done any of that?
“You really fucked up,” Nile said grimly.
He huffed a sad laugh but nodded.
She sighed. “You can’t come home, Book. I’m going to take you someplace to get you help. We’ll check in on you—”
He dragged a breath, smiling thinly. “You always were the nice one,” he mumbled.
Nile looked at him strangely and then shook her head. “I wanted to throw you in your grave for a while for what you did. Quynh thought it was too cruel.” She looked away, like looking at him at all was hard now. “We trusted you. I trusted you. I hope you can get better, Booker, but I’m not going to make that mistake again.”
She uncuffed him because without her trust, he wasn’t a threat to her and he was aware of the gun in her jacket and the way her hand was always free and ready to pull it if he moved on her.
Nicky hadn’t called the others—hadn’t even thought to. He’d let them know where Booker was if he found Joe. And if Joe wasn’t in Booker’s old grave, he’d get creative, maybe steal a body from the morgue on his way back to that apartment and make him think he’d really killed his great-grandson.
It was raining by the time he got to the graveyard. He hopped a fence, shovel in hand, and found the plot without trouble. He remembered this spot. Remembered how Booker had haunted his own false grave for a decade, mourning himself. He should have guessed. He should have known. He should never have let it happen to start with.
Nicky was soaked in rain and mud by the time he hit the coffin. It wasn’t very deep but it was a metal monstrosity, the sort wealthy people purchased to keep their rotting bodies from rejoining the soil like everyone else. His hands shook when he cleared the dirt away enough to get his fingers around the lid, pulling violently. If he’d been any sort of calm, he would have dug more, cleared the sides, but he wasn’t calm and he didn’t care if mud sank in to stain the satin lining.
He pulled the upper lid open and the all too familiar exhale of death escaped.
“Yusuf?” Nicky spoke softly, surprised he still had it in him. He had felt like a statue since the other man disappeared only a week ago. Like his old self, only it didn’t feel right anymore—it didn’t feel normal to not smile, to not laugh, to not want. He knelt on the bottom lid, reaching into the cavity of the dark grave. He knew his hands were muddy but he couldn’t stop himself from reaching, just like he knew he didn’t deserve this man, but he couldn’t stop himself from wanting. It just was. His fingers brushed Joe’s cheek, he knew it was his even before his eyes adjusted to the darkness there to make out the shapes of his face.
“Joe, my heart, can you hear me?” he asked gently, endlessly patient now. He could wait here forever. He inhaled when he heard the other man draw a deep breath of clean air, his hand wrapping slowly around Nicky’s wrist.
“You are late,” Joe rasped from his gave and Nicky laughed with tears in his eyes, nodding. “Very late,” Joe went on, quoting himself from the first time they had met in that desert. “Is it normal to make a dead man wait this long?”
Nicky helped him sit up and then to climb out of the grave until they were tangled in the wet grass beside the gaping ground. Nicky felt like it was his grave they had emerged from—like he was the one saved from death again. He cupped Joe’s face in his hands and leaned their foreheads together. “You were hard to find,” he whispered. “But I will always find you.”
Joe’s arms curled around his waist, hugging him close. “Take me home for a while?”
Nicky nodded. “Anywhere you want.”
“Home,” Joe said again and Nicky smiled slowly. He meant the house in Malta. It had been a house before but it had become a home since he first brought Joe there.
“Joe?” Nicky asked, in the dark under the rain.
“Yes, my reaper?” Joe smiled around the words. Nicky could hear it.
“If I asked you to marry me, would you?”
Joe laughed, the sound strained and husky but still so him—so real and warm that it gave Nicky’s soul life. Joe kissed and drank the rain from his skin, nodding. “Any day, anytime, anywhere.”