Joe was out for hours, well into the small hours of the night before he returned home, bringing the smell of the cold and his own distress back in with him.

He stepped into the living area to find Andy concentrating on the pile of bladed weapons she was in the process of sharpening – they tended to keep their safe houses stocked with weapons, partially for security reasons but mostly because they needed somewhere to leave all their stuff; a lifespan of millennia inevitably caused a hoarding problem.

“Good walk?” she asked, carefully not looking up at him.

He made an uncharacteristic noise in response, neither a yes, no or invitation for further conversation. He wandered into the kitchen looking lost, flicking the kettle on and waiting for the water to boil so he could get a cup of tea.

The silence between them lay, not comfortable but spacious enough that it didn’t feel uncomfortable either. The kettle bubbled and Joe made his tea, moving over and leaning up against the wall between the kitchen and living room doorway, silently watching Andy’s slow, smooth, expert motions over the blade in her hand.

After Joe had finished his tea and retreated to wash his cup out, he came back to the living room and stood, looking lost. He looked towards the hallway where the bedrooms branched off as if he’d see Nicky come round the corner.

“Nile and Nicky went to bed.” Andy told him, checking the edge of the blade, shaking her head and then putting it to the stone again.

Joe didn’t know if Andy had waited up for him on purpose or if this was just one of the many nights their boss spent struggling with insomnia since she’d become mortal. He knew he didn’t want to talk.

“Boss…” he began pre-emptively, his tone weary and warning.

“I’m not going to say anything.” Andy said, heading him off at the pass. She finally looked up at him. “But you should probably talk to Nicky.”

Joe could see that she’d caught the pain he’d failed to keep from flickering over his face, and she seemed to tense just a little as though she could tell this wasn’t like one of their very few previous arguments. She still didn’t say anything though; she might have if it was Nicky, who tended to fall deep into introspective silence when something was bothering him.

Nicky would need to be coaxed to talk about it, but Joe had never been backwards about coming forwards. It was why he hovered for a moment more, why she seemed to pause in her work as though she was waiting for Joe to start speaking. Joe’s secret lay on his tongue like a hot coal and he had to swallow it back.

“Goodnight.” He said, with a wave of one hand.

“Sleep well.” Andy answered, watching as Joe disappeared into the hallway towards the room he shared with Nicky. She sighed and stretched a little, cursing the mortal pains like muscle ache that didn’t just melt away almost before they could be felt, and set about finishing the blade she had on her lap before going to bed herself.



Joe approached the room he shared with Nicky on cat’s feet, silent the way hundreds of years of practise had given him. The door to their room was ajar, that half-open entry a gesture of welcome when Joe wasn’t sure he deserved one. It made him ache for how it spoke of Nicky’s hope that Joe would come back home that night; leaving the door open made it easier for him to come in without disturbing Nicky.

He toed his shoes off outside the bedroom door and stripped his top up and over his head before walking into the room with his shirt in his hand, bare-chested in his sweatpants, just the way he’d been when he’d left earlier that day.

There wasn’t a lot of light coming in from the window, but between that and the light from the living room that bounced it’s way over, Joe could see the outline of Nicky’s body asleep on the bed.

He was possibly the only person who was able to walk up to Nicky while he slept and not be greeted with a gun to the face. They were so attuned to the sounds of each other moving that Nicky’s subconscious knew those particular footsteps meant safety. The trust in Nicky’s unmoving form against the backdrop of the memories of his dream threatened to bring Joe to his knees.

Nicky was lying in his usual space, closest to the door, and Joe caught sight of his longsword propped against the bedpost, the dark shape of Nicky’s gun perched on the pillow, unusual as it was usually tucked down the side of the bed frame.

Nicky had curled up, knees pulled up in a way that Joe only distantly remembered from the time before they’d become close, how Nicky would curl up like that and how Joe would watch the shadows the fire made of his body behind him. Since Joe had started sleeping spooned up behind Nicky, holding him close, Nicky’s body had let go of the need to wind up defensively in his sleep.

Looking at Nicky and seeing it now stung the crack Joe had in his heart since he’d woken that morning. He could see his scimitar lying on the bed behind Nicky where he’d usually sleep and that sting was enflamed into a fierce, burning ache.

He stood and watched Nicky in slumber, saw the soft frown still on his face and the way he’d move a little restlessly now and again, another tic that was usually quashed with Joe’s presence against Nicky’s back.

He looked fragile sleeping there, vulnerable in a way that Joe knew he never really was. Nicky was quiet, not weak, all ruthless efficiency and precise violence when he needed to be and a lot of that is what had drawn Joe to him in the first place, even as they faced off against each other on the battlefield.

He’d seen this man cut down enemies with his longsword using such grace that he may as well have been dancing. He’d seen him move, quicksilver and sudden, in hand to hand combat, deadly with or without weapons. He’d seen Nicky take out two men at one time with a single bullet from metres away, and he also knew that Nicky still had a depth of kindness and mercy and empathy in him that even Joe had been unable to fathom; there was a strength in that which Joe didn’t think he’d ever obtain.

So he knew that Nicky was far from as breakable as he looked in slumber, but in his dream he’d been stripped of that strength. When they’d had that skirmish with Keane at Merrick’s lab, before Nicky had taken a gun in the mouth and lost the back of his head, they’d both been groggy and weak from the gas and the injuries they’d sustained when the wall had exploded.

Sure, Nicky’s area of expertise wasn’t physical strength – he didn’t have the weight or breadth that Joe himself had and certainly wouldn’t have out-bulked Keane – but Joe knew Nicky would have easily subdued the soldier if he’d been in better condition, that he himself would have been able to more effectively fight Keane too.

Maybe that was why Joe had seen Nicky so helpless in his dream. Nicky hadn’t seemed physically able to fight back the way he should have been able to, and that just meant that his rescue had rested entirely in Joe’s hands.

And Joe had chosen to curl them around his dick and get off instead.

He must have made a noise of distress or grief without allowing it then, because Nicky lifted his head, blinking awake with a little less of his usual immediate clarity; his fight or flight response wasn’t pumping adrenaline through his body because his body knew Joe and knew that he was safe.

“Yusuf?” He queried needlessly, his voice thick with sleep and something that Joe didn’t want to identify as sorrow and pain but could.

“Si, tesoro.” Joe said softly, crouching down and reaching his hand out like he wanted to touch Nicky’s face, holding still and then pulling it back at the last second.

Nicky rested his head back down, studying Joe’s face with a quiet worry that made hate for himself burn in Joe’s veins.

“Are you okay?” Nicky finally asked, his voice on the cusp of a whisper, speaking in Arabic the way he did for Joe sometimes, the way he’d done before.

Joe sighed, dropping his head but looking back up a moment later, unwilling to not look back at those beautiful eyes. “I’m sorry.” He said instead.

Nicky accepted the apology without question, but he wasn’t so easily distracted. “That’s not an answer.” He pointed out, reaching a hand out towards Joe with a hesitation that made Joe ache. Nicky was already smoothing out of his tight little curl, his body relaxing just at Joe’s presence, and it made Joe stand and move back because he didn’t deserve that anymore.

“Yusuf, ya hayati, don’t go. Please.” Nicky begged, sitting up in bed, his previously outstretched hand falling against the bedcovers. This wasn’t the desperate plea from before when Nicky had asked for answers; this was something more subdued, almost helpless like Nicky never was. As though Nicky knew he had no power to stop Joe leaving other than this soft request and worse, didn’t expect Joe to agree.

It stopped Joe in his tracks like he’d been nailed to the floor.

“I won’t ask.” Nicky said eventually, voice still hushed like they were in a church. “Please, just, come to bed?”

Joe closed his eyes as though in pain and slid down with his back to the wall near the bed, just out of reach if one of them tried to lean over unless they both did at the same time.

“I can’t, habibi.” He forced out, his voice hitching halfway through the sentiment. He had to swallow thickly suddenly, something caught up in his throat that felt like his heart.

“I won’t touch you.” Nicky offered softly, the confusion and self-reproach and heartache like a shout in that small voice making Joe flinch against the wall, his hands curled into fists.

“It is I that doesn’t deserve your touch, amore mio.” He gritted out between clenched teeth, his heart rate racing in a way it rarely did, not even in battle, just at these times when Nicky was hurt or about to be hurt; Joe couldn’t take it.

“What has happened that you would believe that?” Nicky couldn’t help but ask, sounding broken with grief.

Joe covered his eyes with one hand and couldn’t stop the sob that escaped him, an exhausted wretched thing quickly followed by another. He heard Nicky swing his legs out of bed and stand, heard the sound of his footsteps moving to the bathroom, heard him running the tap while Joe tried not to cry and then heard Nicky’s padding back towards him on the floor.

He breathed hard to stifle his tears, heard the soft sound of a full glass settling on the floor and looked up to see Nicky take a seat on the floor himself, near the bed so he still kept a distance from Joe.

“Grazie, albi.” Joe said in a mix of languages, reaching out and sipping water like it would change anything.

Nicky was quiet, his arms wrapped around his knee and his chin resting on his arms atop them, studying Joe with pained eyes.

“Yusuf…” he said eventually, after a moment in which Joe collected himself a little. “…my life, my soul, love of my heart … how could there be a time where you don’t deserve my fingers on your skin? Or my mouth on yours? Or yours on mine? What could be worse than my people and I ravaging the city of Jerusalem? Yet you have forgiven me for it a thousand times over. How could you do anything that would mean losing my heart beating as yours?”

Nicky’s voice sounded raw as an open wound and Joe closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.

“I saw that soldier, the one from Merrick’s lab, the one who shot you? I saw him in a dream last night.” He started. Nicky held still, listening. “He was… he had pinned you down. I watched him hold you down and you… you were calling out to me. You were calling for help. And I watched. I watched you struggle. And I watched him… touch you.”

Each sentence was being torn from him in agony, like it was scribed into glass and cut him as it came out. Still Nicky watched and listened.

“I watched him hurt you.” He confessed, his voice dry as ashes. “I told him to hurt you. I told him all the ways he should hurt you. I laughed at your pain and your betrayal and I told him to rape you, Nicolo. I told him to rape you and I enjoyed watching as he did.”