Chapter Text
Nine months past, and Nick could still hear the crack of the gunshot in his dreams as if it happened only moments ago. Sometimes the sound was so distinct even when he was awake, he was possessed of the urge to check and make sure Gatsby was all right, that it was really all behind them.
There had been excuses for it while Gatsby recovered from the injury, through months of watchful caretaking during which Nick hardly left his bedside. Gatsby had commented once that Nick had worried himself gray over him, pointing out the premature silver now threading his blonde hair which Nick hadn’t yet noticed then; he couldn’t find it in himself to be surprised by its development. New York would never again seem promising to Nick and life would never again be unbroken—but he’d devotedly remained to watch over Gatsby in the once-glittering palace, and the closeness meant they were never lonely even among such sprawling heights.
Gatsby hadn't asked after Daisy until three weeks had gone by since the shooting, a blessing Nick was only too grateful for. By then, he'd figured out what he would say, how he would break the news gently of the Buchanans’ departure from New York, how easily the car accident had slid off their shoulders as they'd moved on. Nick had known it would be a difficult conversation, but he hadn't prepared for the immediate fallout, the hollowness and contagious oppression of Gatsby’s mourning. When he’d been told, he hadn't said a single word in response, and after an hour more of sitting with him Nick had received only a very soft, “Thank you, old sport,” before he'd left him to rest.
His silence had persisted after that, as he’d sunk into a depression which seemed to sap the very light from the room and left a lingering anxiety in Nick’s chest. He’d slept in Gatsby’s room for weeks to follow, fearful of the worst in the face of that awful, empty look on his once-bright countenance. Even once he’d recovered physically enough to be released from bedrest, Nick was remiss to return home and leave Gatsby alone. He’d all but moved in by that time, having brought over the bare essentials as far as clothing and toiletries while he’d been playing nursemaid—though it wasn’t much more than what he owned, in truth—and Gatsby made no protests, so he stayed.
It had taken much longer for his heart to heal than the wound in his abdomen. The husk of a man he’d become scared Nick more than words could illustrate, but he’d made certain that throughout it all Gatsby knew he was never alone. Nick cooked for him, read to him from the piece of his own little library he’d brought over or told stories of his own or simply talked to him without expecting a response; every moment he wasn’t away at work, he’d filled the time and empty space in the silent mansion with warmth to help heal Gatsby’s shattered heart bit by bit. And eventually, with patience and limitless dedication, it’d begun to take.
Six months gone, and it was clear to Nick that Gatsby was far from recovered from Daisy. But he was speaking and eating and taking walks outdoors, finding things to do during the day while Nick worked—he’d even been quite encouraging of Nick’s writing when he’d come across an old manuscript, urging him to take the vocation up again. It was a hard-won battle for Nick not to make grandeur of this slow, incremental progress on Gatsby’s part. Their lives had resumed, and Nick struggled to reign himself back to the level of social distance that had once existed between himself and his neighbour. Still he could hear that gunshot and longed to place a hand over Gatsby’s sleeping chest and remind himself he was alive. Still he breathed a sigh of relief when he returned from work to see Gatsby standing and whole and smiling at him, more tentative and sad than ever before, but present .
The months spent together had given him perhaps too much time to reflect on the summer and where it had all fallen apart, if there had ever been any chance or if they’d been doomed from the beginning. He was a mess of feeling that he chose to swallow and knot into a dense nest in his stomach, of rage and indignation on Gatsby’s behalf, of disgust toward people he’d once considered friends, of sorrow for the lives that had been destroyed.
The police had come to call on Gatsby, once he’d recovered enough to answer their questions. Nick hadn’t been invited into that conversation, though he’d tried to stay in the room on the grounds of remaining Jay’s sole caretaker. He still had no idea what had occurred in that room, beyond the fact that any suspicion or potential charges against Gatsby for the death of Myrtle Wilson had been cleared, that George Wilson would no longer be a threat to them. Nick wondered occasionally whether one of Gatsby’s many powerful friends had done him a favour in parting, but he would never know for certain because he would never ask Gatsby the truth of it.
It was one of many new things Nick had accepted would never be spoken between them. The person Nick had once assumed Gatsby to be, and the person he’d discovered he was throughout the tumultuous summer they’d survived, had surprised Nick to reflect on. Even having once possessed such hope, himself, it astounded him to find someone so genuine, someone who bled such vitality into everything he touched and who lived with such fervour that his very presence inspired others to do the same. Even in the aftermath of the grand joke that had been played on him by the wealth of New York, he carried on, a little more damaged but no less earnest. A man who’d invented his past and present all out of a dream, fuelled by nothing but his desperation and the volume of his love, was more real than anyone Nick felt he’d ever known. He felt seen under Gatsby’s gaze, and just as much unmoored.
When they’d met, Gatsby had carried a plethora of secrets behind his facade, and now that his had all been laid bare to Nick, their roles had been reversed. Nick wasn't entirely comfortable with the multitude of things he felt for Jay Gatsby, but it had become a secret truth he could no longer deny to himself, a burden he must live with. What depressed him was not the reality that Nick could not have him. Jay Gatsby was not a prize to be won, he was not a happy ending. He was a beautiful dream, and what silenced Nick in his heartache was the fear of shattering that fantasy. He would rather suffer a friendship in agony with Gatsby than tip his fragile affection too far.
He was, perhaps, too obvious—or possibly he had existed so long in this state of closeness that he no longer knew how to contain the longing he felt in a manner that kept it neatly out of Gatsby’s way. Nick wasn’t certain when he’d noticed it, realised that Gatsby had put the truth together on his own, but there was no mistaking that that was what had happened. He could practically feel Gatsby’s struggle for the right words to say, any that would fit around this massive weight Nick had left between them. He did not want to know what words they would be, when Gatsby finally sorted them out. He didn’t want to see those deeply blue eyes so sad and gentle as they offered a last kindness to a weathered friend.
They sat in the parlour with a quiet afternoon tea. Nick’s heart was a stone, his stomach knotted in roots which climbed up his throat and bloomed forget-me-nots and white hyacinths on his tongue. Gatsby had not ceased fidgeting in his seat since the tea had been poured, and Nick knew he was anxiously searching for the right way to begin the conversation. He set his cup back in its saucer, Gatsby took a breath to speak—
Nick was on his feet in an instant. He did not look at Gatsby, but he could feel his heavy blue gaze upon him. “I think I should leave.”
“...What?” Gatsby asked after a beat, bewildered.
“I need to leave,” Nick repeated, quickly reassembling the tea set on its tray out of habit. “I…I’m sorry, Jay.”
Gatsby looked startled, putting down his cup and saucer and struggling to his feet—still only nine months recovered and not yet entirely past the pain—to follow as Nick fled the sitting room at a hurried pace. He beelined for the study a few doors down, after his jacket, though Gatsby was right behind him. He could send for his things later, but for now he needed only to escape this place before it was too late.
“Nick, old sport, I don’t understand. Where are you going?”
“I’m moving out. I’ve stayed here too long, burdened you too long. You’ve been recovered for months now, and I’ve…I’ve taken advantage of your hospitality too long, I’m sorry, Jay.” He pulled his coat from the back of the chair, but Gatsby blocked him as he turned to leave with hands outstretched like he was approaching an animal.
“Just slow down, now, what do you mean you’re moving out? Where, back to your shack? It’s no trouble at all, Nick, you being here—”
“I can’t stay,” Nick cut him off quickly, sensing the path this conversation was edging toward. “I need— I need to leave New York.”
“ What? ” In his shock, Gatsby allowed Nick to slip past him and out of the study, but he was on his heels as Nick rushed for the grand foyer. “How can you…I don’t— I don’t understand where this is coming from, old sport, things have been fine! They’ve been just fine—”
“They haven’t been fine, nothing has been fine since Daisy.” Nick couldn’t help the bitterness that crept into his voice, but he regretted it all when he saw the way Gatsby flinched at her name. He stopped walking, facing Gatsby as he searched for a way to take it back, to soothe the still-tender wound he’d inadvertently reopened.
“Listen, Nick, I…” Gatsby began again, very softly and with an earnestness that carved Nick open. “I know it hasn’t been easy for you this last year. I know I haven’t been…well, I haven’t been a very good host to you,” He breathed with a little laugh, an attempt at levity which Nick appreciated but couldn’t thank him for. “I’m sorry for all I’ve put you through, I truly…am sorry.”
Nick shook his head a little, swallowing against his constricted throat. “You have nothing to apologise for, Jay. Not to me.” The world owes you more than I could ever give. “I’ve taken enough from you.” A confused, upset little wrinkle formed between Gatsby’s dark brows that was nearly Nick’s undoing. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more of a friend to you.”
He’d said too much, and he knew it the moment the words left his lips. Gatsby’s expression was too complicated for Nick to read any one thing, and he braced for the wreck, accepted his fate that he’d been trying so hard to avoid.
“When I needed a friend, you were always there,” Gatsby said, stepping cautiously forward like he still feared Nick would run. “You’ve stayed by me all this time. I can’t let you leave without making sure you know what it means to me.”
They stood two feet apart, and Nick was rooted to the spot, unable to move. He stared up at Jay and saw a measure of his own anguish reflected there in his eyes.
“You’ll always have a place here. With me. You could stay as long as you like. We could reinvent ourselves, let go of all that awful business in the past and become something new.” Nick shook his head again, certain that Gatsby didn’t know what he was suggesting, that he didn’t mean what Nick wanted him to by the offer. But Gatsby took another step forward and very tentatively reached out to take Nick’s hand in his. “Stay. So long as you stay, we can have anything we want.”
“Anything?” He asked, scarcely above a whisper, too inspired by the hope in Jay’s eyes to back down now.
“Ask and it’s yours,” Gatsby promised.
Nick held his breath. There was only one thing left to do, he knew. To take that leap of faith was the least he could do to prove himself to Gatsby, the least Gatsby deserved. All he had to do was trust him. He advanced one long step forward, into Gatsby’s arms, and they met as one in a time-frozen kiss.
They were the only things alive in the immense manor, but they glowed bright enough to light the entire place like the palace of Versailles.