theoldguardkinkmeme | Fills Post

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From: (Anonymous)

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/5194.html?thread=1620554#cmt1620554

*

Obviously this was a dream.

Booker stared at the mirror, from which Nicky's befuddled face stared back. He raised an eyebrow; Nicky raised his. He poked at his stomach; Nicky poked at his.

He had woken up alone in bed - a bed which he only now realized was in a safe house which was familiar to him but was not the one he'd passed out in the night before - and shuffled to the bathroom yawning, only to yelp at the apparition in the mirror. That had been about ten minutes ago, as far as he could tell, and Nicky's face had yet to resolve into his own, or into anything more obviously hallucinatory.

He would wake up any minute now, surely. Splashing cold water on his face hadn’t worked. Pinching himself cruelly - the delicate skin under Nicky’s arm blooming black and blue in a way that did feel nightmarish - hadn't worked.

He could shoot his dream-self in the dream-head to wake up, presumably. He knew without looking that Nicky had a gun on the night table, if he was feeling relaxed, or under his pillow, if he wasn’t. He and Nicky’s face grimaced at each other. Somehow the thought of putting the muzzle to Nicky's temple and pulling the trigger didn't appeal.

He realized he could hear voices, dimly, filtering up from downstairs. Andy and Nile. They texted him occasionally. They called him more rarely, separately or together, and even Joe had called, once, recently, but he hadn't heard their voices in person in one year, two months, one week, and three days. Not that he was counting.

He hadn’t spoken to Nicky since London.

So it was a dream. Fine. And why shouldn't he have a good dream, for fucking once? Wasn’t he due?

Nicky’s face twisted in the mirror, looking peevish and aggrieved. Ah, there I am, Booker thought, and laughed at himself. It would be just like him, he thought, to ruin the first good dream he'd had in years with anger over the good dreams he hadn’t had. On brand, as Nile might say, and in the mirror Nicky's mouth tilted in a rueful smile that almost looked right on his face.

*

Andy and Nile were lazing on the couch in the living room to his left as he came to the bottom of the stairs. There was a movie playing on the TV, something bright and playful. Nile was singing along with one of the characters, and Andy was trying and failing to look severe.

"Good morning," he said.

He couldn’t tell what his voice sounded like. It didn’t sound like him, but it didn’t sound like Nicky, either. But of course he had no idea what Nicky’s voice sounded like, to himself, inside his own head. He blinked and wondered if it was possible to give his dream-self a dream-headache.

"Good morning," Nile said, smiling over her shoulder. She had a wonderful smile. He’d miss it when he woke up, even more than usual. “Coffee’s on.”

"Thanks." He wondered if he should go sit down between them, sink down into the worn cushions and close his eyes and let the warmth of their company cover him like a blanket. He wanted to. But it might put him to sleep, which might wake him up, and he wasn’t ready to leave. “Where's Joe?"

"Went for a run," Andy said, looking back at him with the mildest of questions in her eyes. "Same time as every morning," she added, and he shrugged, smiling, trying to look extra-sleepy to account for any confusion.

She hummed and turned back to the movie. Her feet were resting on the coffee table and her toes were twitching, ever so slightly, to the cheerful music. Booker took a deep breath, memorizing the sight, then turned right and went into the kitchen. Maybe coffee would keep him awake, which would keep him asleep. Dream logic.

He walked through the swinging door, letting it shut behind him, to find that Joe was not on his run anymore, but instead was sitting in one of the chairs at the kitchen table, his shirt damp with sweat, leaning over to untie his running shoes. Booker froze.

Joe looked up and smiled, happy and loving and open, and Booker met his eyes and took a breath.

A single breath.

Then Booker was crashing back through the swinging door, the kinetic energy of Joe's entire body powering him backwards and down, and he couldn’t do anything but fall.

Not a dream, he thought, astonished, as Joe pinned him to the floor.

He gaped up at Joe, only vaguely aware of Andy and Nile making surprised noises somewhere behind and above his head. The cheap carpet was rough against his hands, the backs of his arms. His shoulders ached from where they'd hit the door and the floor in rapid succession. Joe's familiar hands were steady; his grip inescapable. This is real, he thought, helplessly, his mind spinning, but this has to be a dream, but this isn’t a dream, but this has to be a dream. No sound escaped his lips.

Joe looked straight down into his eyes, Nicky's eyes, the eyes Joe knew best in the world, windows to the soul Joe had loved wholly for almost a thousand years, and said, "Who the fuck are you?"

From: (Anonymous)

Yesss omg! Loving this so far! Glad it’s getting filled!

From: (Anonymous)

!!!!!!!!!!! Amazing!!!!!!!!!

From: (Anonymous)

Brilliant! Can’t wait for mire! Great prompt and what a great beginning. Loved that Joe immediately recognised that this man was not Nicky, of course he would have!

From: (Anonymous)

FUCK YESSSS

From: (Anonymous)

Five minutes later Booker was sitting in an armchair in the living room, staring down at the unmarked skin of his arm, where the dream bruises had been when he’d tried to pinch himself awake. Real bruises. On his real arm. Nicky’s real arm. Fuck.

He wasn’t restrained, which was maybe because they still loved him and trusted him on some level, but probably because once he’d finally managed to shout “I’m Booker!” he’d immediately turned his head to the side, vomited, and begun to hyperventilate as Joe released him in shock. Not his finest hour, perhaps. He looked down at his hands, which were indisputably Nicky’s hands, and thought he could be forgiven for that.

Andy had hauled him to the chair and stared down at him, caught between shock and disbelief, but confirming his identity was trivial. He had looked her directly in the eye, said “Toronto, 1978, the lady wore red,” and her eyes had cleared of doubt, which he expected, then darkened with suspicion, which he deserved.

He looked at the darkened TV and had to swallow a hysterical laugh at the tableau reflected there now. Andy and Joe were staring warily at him from the couch, as Nile paced behind them, calling Booker’s cell over and over and over, and darting worried glances at him. It looked like they were holding an intervention, or deciding on a punishment, for the man in the chair. His mind cheerfully refused to reconcile what he could see - Nicky’s hunched shoulders and dazed expression - with the knowledge that they were his own shoulders, his own expression. Nicky’s in trouble, he thought, sing-song, and breathed slowly so he didn’t giggle.

"It's probably out of power," he said, when he felt steady enough to speak, and all three of them startled. He shrugged, and Joe physically recoiled at the shape of the movement. Booker stilled himself, consciously, and said, “My phone. He’ll have to plug it in. It will take a minute to charge.”

“What did you do?” Joe ground out, not for the first time.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said. Then, “I wouldn’t,” and tried not to react when Andy and Joe flinched. He felt his cheeks heating, though, and he thought about how often he’d teased Nicky for the same thing, and felt them grow even hotter. “I swear I didn’t do this. I don’t know what’s happening.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Andy said. Booker hated that she sounded uncertain. He hated that he didn’t know if that's just how she sounded, now; if mortality had introduced a irreparable crack into their family's foundation. If he had. “We’ll fix it.”

“What if—” Joe choked, still staring at Booker, and the bottom dropped out of Booker’s flimsy control.

He hadn’t thought— he’d just assumed— his breath caught miserably in his throat. He was here, so Nicky must be somewhere else. He was in Nicky’s body, so Nicky must be in his. Fucking dream logic. What if he was here and Nicky wasn’t anywhere? What if he was in Nicky’s body and Booker’s body was lying cold and empty and alone and that was it?

Tears were slipping silently down Joe’s face, and Booker felt his own eyes start to fill.

“Jesus Christ,” Andy sighed. She slapped her hands to her knees and stood, sounding infinitely more like herself. “Okay, what we’re not going to do is—”

“Nicky!” Nile shouted, as the call apparently, finally, connected. “Nicky, are you there? Is that you?” and a torrent of words poured out of the speaker, in a voice that was unmistakably Booker’s and an accent that was unmistakably Nicky’s.

Joe sagged almost off the couch in shuddering relief, then turned toward the phone Nile was already thrusting into the space between her and him and Andy. “Nicolò, are you safe? Are you hurt? Booker is here, he’s—”

Then they were talking to each other, animated and easy, twisting in and out of languages Booker knew, and languages Booker didn’t know, and languages he had pointedly refused to learn. After a moment Andy joined in, talking with and between them somehow; she had always known how to weave herself into their dance.

He hadn’t known, until Nile jumped in and the languages shifted to accomodate her, that she had learned how to do that, too.

All four of them were talking at once, over and around and between each other in their own peculiar rhythm, apparently coming to some kind of consensus, and though he recognized all the words he somehow couldn’t understand a fucking thing.

Nicky was not a small man, but he was smaller than Booker, and Booker was glad for it as he shrunk back into the armchair as far as he could go.

From: (Anonymous)

Oh no, this is so painful! I love it so much.

From: (Anonymous)

I LOVE Joe instantly knowing it's not Nicky. And the poor thing fearing Nicky might be dead -- so painful. Thank God Nicky picked up!

From: (Anonymous)

Auuuughhghgkjafk;ljdsl;f

this is so good and I need all of it, so much

From: (Anonymous)

I'm goddamn crying already. I love this.

From: (Anonymous)

This is fantastic so far, I love everyone's reactions! can't wait for more

From: (Anonymous)

Oh this is so good! Booker is always so sad, I really hope it’s some sort of weird curse where Nicky and Booker have to reconcile before they swap back

From: (Anonymous)

As luck (or destiny, a voice in Booker’s mind suggested, which he blamed on being trapped in Nicky’s brain) would have it, Andy, Joe, Nile, and Nicky had been only a few hours away from Booker when the switch had occurred. They'd been investigating a blackmail ring; he'd been helping construct a new school.

Their safe house was bigger, nicer, and almost certainly more secure than the shabby one-bedroom cottage Copley had leased for him, but Booker gathered that Joe had put his foot all the way down at the idea of Nicky traveling alone. It was silly, but Andy and Nile had looked at Joe, the way his gaze kept returning to Booker and then skittering away whenever Booker moved or met his eyes, and told Nicky to sit tight.

Now, apparently having marshaled his internal resources, Joe looked squarely at Booker from across the back seat of the rental car, which Andy was hurtling through the countryside at speeds neither safe, legal, nor moral, and said, challengingly, “I’m going to kiss you.”

Booker stared back at him.

"Your body, I mean," Joe said. "The one with Nicky in it." Then, with gritted teeth but what Booker recognized as utter sincerity, “With your permission."

"Oh," Booker said. “Yeah. Yeah, that's fine."

"Thank you," Joe said tightly, and resumed his intense stare at the back of Nile’s headrest.

For her part, Nile had recovered quickly from the shock and, based on the amused gleam in her eye when she met Booker’s gaze in the rearview mirror, had already started to identify humorous possibilities in their situation.

"You don't want to kiss him now, Joe?" she asked brightly, twinkling in response to Booker’s glare. "I would think the muscle memory alone—“

"Ew," Joe said, with a glance of unfeigned disgust at the body about which Booker personally had heard Joe declaim his passion for what must amount to years of Booker's immortal life.

“Right back at you,” Booker said, and Nile laughed.

*

They rolled up the long driveway toward the cottage just after noon. It was a nice location, actually. The building itself was gently dilapidated but it sat on three acres of grass and wildflowers and shaggy hedges, all warming and fragrant now under the midday sun, and there was a small pond tucked at the back of the property. A porch sagged all the way around the cottage, adorned with creaky wicker furniture that Booker knew to be more comfortable than it looked.

“You should go first,” Nile said over her shoulder to Booker, and Joe’s hand stilled on the door handle.

“Why?” Booker and Joe asked simultaneously.

“I don’t know, in case you explode when you get close. Like matter and antimatter.” She interlocked her fingers together then pulled them apart, wriggling, and made a whoosh sound with her mouth.

“That’s stupid,” Booker said, at the same time Joe said, “If Nicky explodes I should be there.”

“Go ahead, Book,” Andy said, holding up a hand to forestall Joe’s argument. “Just give them a minute.”

She didn’t elaborate, but Joe released the door handle, and Booker realized that body-swapping aside he had no clue how Nicky was going to react to seeing him again so very many years early.

*

Nicky wasn’t on the porch, and he wasn’t in the cottage. Booker walked all the way through the open first floor, and called up the stairs. Then he exited through the back kitchen door, and saw Nicky walking up from the pond.

Probably feeding the ducks, Booker thought inanely. He didn’t even know if there were ducks, though he was confident that if there were, Nicky would have found them, and fed them.

He waited on the porch and watched Nicky approach. He knew in a heartbeat that he wouldn’t have been able to tell. He supposed you didn’t know the sight of your own body as well as your nearest and dearest did, but he’d seen plenty of surveillance footage of himself over the years and the body walking toward him didn’t look any different. It certainly didn’t look like Nicky. It looked like Booker; it moved like Booker. It was like there was a screen draped in front of him and someone was projecting footage of himself walking across a lawn.

Nicky stopped just short of the stairs leading up to the porch and looked up at Booker with his own eyes.

“Booker,” he said, in Booker’s own voice. His accent was still there, though softened.

“Nicky,” Booker said. He thought of all the things he should say, and instead said, “Nile thought we should meet first, in case we explode when we get close.”

Nicky's mouth quirked. “Okay.” He squinted up at him. “How close?”

Booker shrugged, and stepped down onto the grass, and held out a hand. Nicky shook it.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Booker said.

“Hmm,” Nicky said.

“I hope you know—” Booker started, his voice strained.

“I don’t think you did this,” Nicky said dismissively. “I don't see how you could have.”

Then his gaze flicked over Booker’s shoulder, and—oh.

It was stunning to see that love blazing up in his own eyes. It was like he'd never seen it before, and it felt like an gift, now, to get to see it again.

“Booker says it’s okay if I kiss you,” Joe said, stepping past him, and sweeping Nicky tightly into his arms.

“Thank you, Booker,” Nicky said rapturously, and Booker nodded, and left them to it.

From: (Anonymous)

Joe asking Booker for a permission to kiss his body and not wanting to kiss Nickys body because Booker is in it it’s what kids these days call quality content.

From: (Anonymous)

“If Nicky explodes I should be there.”

I don't know how your Joe is so hilarious and also kind of breaking my heart at the same time. So utterly in love with and so perfectly attuned to Nicky's soul, to the point that Nicky's beloved body is gross without him in it. Carefully respecting Booker's agency/consent re his body and being just the perfect level of righteously mean about it. I just want to hug him. But fortunately Nicky's got that covered.

(Nile! Stop trolling them!)

From: (Anonymous)

Oh this is excellent. Everyone's characterizations are so clever and perfectly them, even the ones not in the main spotlight so to speak, like Nile. The complicated but different feelings Joe and Nicky have towards Booker, Booker's own complicated feelings toward himself, JOE BEING SO PERFECTLY HIMSELF, all of this is genius. Very much looking forward to reading more.

From: (Anonymous)

This is amazing and I love it.

From: (Anonymous)

"If Nicky explodes I should be there.” lmaoooo

From: (Anonymous)

Omg Booker seeing Nicky’s love for Joe on his own face is the most beautiful and heartbreaking thing. Ugh someone give Booker a hug

From: (Anonymous)

I love this! Joe was not convinced for a SECOND! ‘Who is this musty bitch in my husbands body?’ We love to see it!

From: (Anonymous)

Andy and Nile were setting up inside, which mostly meant Nile plugging in various electronics in the living room, and Andy flinging open every cupboard in the kitchen.

“Where’s the booze?” she said, as Booker came in.

“There isn’t any.”

She turned, with what Booker felt was unnecessarily dramatic slowness, and stared him down.

He shrugged. “I’ve been trying to cut down.”

“Good for you, Booker!” Nile shouted, not looking up from her laptop, while Andy’s stare somehow managed to turn both half-annoyed and half-impressed. "We support you!"

“There’s a store in town,” Booker said, shuffling forward to make room for Joe and Nicky as he heard the door open behind him. “We’ll need more food, too.”

“You could have said that while we driving through town,” Andy said, as if Joe wouldn’t have rolled out of the car and run the rest of the way if she’d tried to stop, but her attention was already shifting to Nicky. “You okay, Nico?”

“In what sense?” Nicky asked flatly, and Andy snorted.

Nile set her computer on the coffee table and walked toward them, pausing in the open archway to the kitchen. She looked between Booker and Nicky. "I can’t tell if it’s more weird or less weird, now.”

“Less weird,” Joe said firmly.

Booker gave him a questioning look, and Joe only smiled back contentedly, even when Booker met and held his gaze. It was as if something had settled in Joe upon seeing Nicky, like some loose sparking wire deep in his brain had been reconnected.

Andy moseyed over to stand shoulder to shoulder with Nile, and when she jerked her chin at Joe, he did, too. The three of them looked Booker and Nicky up and down, as they shifted self-consciously on their feet and looked back.

“Yeah, no,” Andy said after a moment, “I can’t tell the difference.”

Joe looked at her, aghast.

“Me neither,” Nile said, giving Joe a what are ya gonna do? shrug when he swung his look to her. She walked over to Nicky and slung an arm around his waist. “Hey, you.”

Nicky kissed the top of her head. “Any theories, genius?”

Booker glanced warily between them, but based on Nile’s grin, it was a term of endearment.

“Lots,” Nile said cheerfully, “though none based in what you might call—” she screwed up her face as if searching for the word “—reality.”

Andy rubbed her hands together in anticipatory glee and said, “Let’s call Copley.”

*

If Copley found it strange to see them all together on his screen, he wisely kept it to himself. He greeted Nile, his main contact, and Andy, his main person who he creditably feared would murder him under the slightest provocation, and nodded at the rest of them. “What can I help you with?”

“Have you ever come across body swapping in your research?” Nile tapped her pen on the pad she’d placed in front of the laptop. “Between immortals? Or between anyone, really, I guess.”

Copley’s gaze traveled slowly over the five of them. They stared impassively back. He cleared his throat. “Come again?”

“Like people’s minds exchanging bodies?” Nile uncapped her pen and leaned over the pad, like she had every expectation of taking useful notes. “You know, Person A waking up in Body B and vice versa.”

“What,” Copley said after a moment’s silence, “the fuck are you talking about?”

*

By the end of the call Copley obviously still thought they were fucking with him, but he promised to do some digging and get back to them the next day with anything he could find.

“In the meantime,” he said, “I suppose you could construct a timeline for each of the individuals who were—” His eyes squeezed shut a moment. “Body swapped.”

“It was Nicky and Booker,” Nile reminded him, helpfully.

“Okay,” Copley said, despairingly, and ended the call.

Nile tore pages off her legal pad and they covered the kitchen table in two rows of yellow paper. “How far should we go back?”

Andy shrugged. “Back to London?”

It seemed like a lot, but it wasn’t really, since Booker covered the first six months with a dark line labeled Fucked Up In Paris, and Joe and Nicky covered three months with Fucking In Malta, in Nicky’s hand, with Fucking crossed out and replaced with Making Love, in Joe’s hand.

Booker focused on his own timeline, feeling horrifically exposed as he noted various meetings related to sobriety, scattered visits to a therapist, and all the do-gooder shit he’d been signing up for in the six-plus months since he’d surfaced and realized he didn’t actually want to be miserable and alone forever, thanks.

When he looked up he saw that Nicky’s timeline had been filled in more quickly with four of them working on it, and was pretty much what he expected, including Malta, under which label Joe had doodled caricatures of himself and Nicky in sunglasses and vanishingly small swim trunks. There were jobs in international locations, intermittent weeks of downtime, and absolutely no crossover whatsoever, in location, personnel, or area of interest, with Booker’s timeline.

“Well,” Andy said, putting her hands on her hips and looking down at the timelines moving in perfectly separate parallel, “shit.”

From: (Anonymous)

The timeline idea was so good and good on Booker for trying to improve himself. He fucking in Malta/making love bit made me laugh.

From: (Anonymous)

I love how you write everyone. This is such a beautiful story.

Re: Fill: Nicky/Joe + Booker and Nicky Bodyswap 4/?

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2020-10-18 01:08 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Fill: Nicky/Joe + Booker and Nicky Bodyswap 4/?

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2020-10-18 02:44 pm (UTC) - Expand

From: (Anonymous)

thank you all for the kind comments so far! this part is a little shorter, but i have the rest of the story sketched out. hope to finish posting by the end of the week :D

***

They put lunch together from whatever Booker had left in the kitchen then spent the afternoon brainstorming, arranged around the living room with Booker and Andy on the small sofa, Nile in the armchair, and Nicky and Joe sitting shoulder to shoulder on the floor. Between the five of them they came up with plenty of theories and absolutely no useful ideas.

“Are you sure spells aren’t real?” Nile said, sounding far too happy about the possibility that they were. “Because this seems like a spell. Or a curse.”

Booker blinked when Andy and Joe and Nicky looked at him expectantly. “What?”

“Oh,” Joe said, “this is where you usually say something like—” he screwed his face up in a parody of despair and dropped his voice into a passable imitation of Booker’s— “Immortal life is a curse.” Then his eyes lit up, and he elbowed Nicky. “You say it!”

“Immortal life is a curse,” Nicky said obediently, but Joe sighed in disappointment.

“Never mind. You said it wrong.”

“How could he say it wrong?” Booker asked, feeling vaguely offended, though he wasn’t sure in which direction.

“Well he’s not drunk,” Andy said amiably, “and he doesn’t mean it. So, really, how could he say it right?” She stretched, letting her arm fall behind Booker along the back of the sofa. He leaned against it, trying to let himself enjoy the sensation of home, family, good without worrying about how much he’d miss it when they left. “You sure you didn’t do anything weird, Book? Rub an old lamp? Wish on a shooting star?”

“No,” Booker said. He scrubbed a hand through his too-short hair. He wished it were longer; it would be so much more satisfying when he clutched it in frustration. “Maybe we did the same thing at the same time? Thought the same thing at the same time?"

"If that was all it took," Joe said, "Nicky and I would have switched bodies a thousand times."

Booker, who knew these besotted lunatics extremely well, watched without surprise as that idea hit them both. They turned to each other. Their eyes widened. Then they both blushed furiously, leaning together and snickering against each other’s mouths between kisses.

Watching them, Andy said to Booker, appalled, “I didn't know your face could do that.”

"It's not supposed to," Booker hissed, tugging again on his stupid hair. "Come on, everybody, focus. There must be something."

“When we dream about each other,” Nile mused, as Joe and Nicky leaned one inch away from each other, restraining themselves to suggestive glances that were, honestly, worse than the kisses, “that’s a kind of mind sharing. It’s more than seeing the other person. You actually feel what they’re feeling. Maybe this is related, somehow?”

“When I first woke up,” Booker said, before he could think not to, “I did think it was just a good dream.”

Andy patted his shoulder. Nicky gave him a thoughtful look as Nile said, sincerely, “That’s sweet.”

Joe leaned back on his hands and asked, straight-faced, "You dream about being inside Nicky a lot?" and laughed when Booker threw a pillow at him.

Re: Fill: Nicky/Joe + Booker and Nicky Bodyswap 5/?

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2020-10-20 06:43 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Fill: Nicky/Joe + Booker and Nicky Bodyswap 5/?

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2020-10-20 09:42 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Fill: Nicky/Joe + Booker and Nicky Bodyswap 5/?

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2020-10-20 10:34 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Fill: Nicky/Joe + Booker and Nicky Bodyswap 5/?

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2020-10-21 09:21 pm (UTC) - Expand

From: (Anonymous)

okay when i thought i'd finish this in a week i definitely underestimated how stressed i'd be leading up to the election, lol. let's get this show back on the road!

*

The rest of the afternoon passed as they waited for Copley to get back to them. They unpacked the car, then Joe and Andy ran into town for supplies, as Booker, Nile, and Nicky carried assorted backpacks and sleeping bags and weapon cases into the house.

Booker found himself walking in the front door with Joe’s bag as Nicky was coming out for another load. “I’ll put this up in the bedroom.”

Nicky frowned at him. “It’s your room, Booker. We’re fine in the living room with Nile and Andy.”

“It’s no trouble,” Booker said, feeling a strange pang of urgency, but Nicky’s frown only deepened.

“We’d hate to put you out,” he said stiffly, and Booker’s heart sank somewhere into the dirt below the creaking porch.

“You’re not,” he said. He swallowed, and met Nicky’s gaze. You always had each other, he’d said, flinging their intimacy at them like an accusation. Like it was something they’d done to him. It had taken him six months to realize no amount of alcohol could unsay those words; six weeks after that to realize no amount of therapy could. He’d been reluctantly coming around to the idea that he just had to fucking live with having said them. “Nicky. You’re not putting me out. Please.”

Nicky met his look squarely for a long moment, then gave a one-shouldered shrug, either content with what he’d seen in Booker’s eyes, or unwilling to challenge it. “Thank you, then.”

Booker sighed in relief as Nicky stepped past him. It wasn’t much. But it was something.

*

Dinner was…nice. Good food and good company erased some of the sharper edges of the day, and the situation would have had to have been far worse than it was for Booker not to take active joy in the presence of his family at his table.

Afterwards they set up the living room. Andy claimed the couch, and Booker and Nile unfolding two cots and spreading sleeping bags and blankets across them. Booker went upstairs to use the bathroom; he washed his face and brushed his teeth, peering at Nicky’s face in the mirror in a bizarre bookend to the day.

He wondered if they’d wake up in the morning back in their proper places. He wondered how long it was take, if that happened, for them to leave. Nicky’s face creased unhappily, and Booker sighed, reflexively sorry for having put the expression there.

Coming down the stairs, he passed Joe and Nicky heading up. Their fingers were entangled. It was absolutely astonishing how weird it wasn’t, already. Soulmate logic, he thought wryly.

"Good night, Booker," Nicky said politely, but Booker stopped them from passing with an arm across the narrow landing. They blinked at him.

"It's okay if—” he said tightly, directing his eyes at a point on the wall somewhere above Joe’s head. "If you want. I mean. I’m sure you’re—”

Maybe this is Hell, he thought hysterically, as his brain stubbornly refused to supply any additional words. He hadn’t believed in any of that even before his first death, but surely standing on the stairs with your estranged best friends, unable to form a single complete sentence to convey the desired message, which is that it was cool with you if they wanted to fuck each other using your body, would certainly qualify.

“Whatever you need,” he managed. “It’s okay with me.”

Nicky and Joe stared at him for another moment, and Booker was about to squeeze past them, or possibly fling himself back into the bathroom in embarrassment, when Nicky’s arms closed around him, warm and strong. He leaned into the touch. Nicky was a good hugger, he thought, automatically and not for the first time, then frowned because maybe this meant he was a good hugger, too. Or could be.

"We're just going to sleep," Nicky murmured into his shoulder.

"But thank you," Joe said, his voice quiet and sincere, even though his eyes were sparkling with merriment.

“No problem,” he wheezed, and escaped down into the living room.