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“It’s my new boyfriend.”
Joe only deflects with a joke when he is trying to think of a cover-up story and cannot do so quickly enough, and that sets off an alarm in Nicky’s mind. He sits on the bed as the alcohol begins to wear off, and stares at the phone on the bedside table. It is black, nondescript, much the same as any other phone they have used over the years, but now it seems the size of a skyscraper, taking up the room like a looming presence. Who else do they know, except…?
He reaches, and takes his hand away again, disgusted at himself. To rifle through Joe’s phone like it is a filing cabinet and they are on a mission, trying to uncover evidence of lies and deceit, as if their relationship isn’t as solid as the foundations of the Earth… Pathetic of him. He is a better man than that.
But they have also never set out any rules. They have always shared things equally, their own little commune of two inside the wider one their family makes
(looking back on it, he should have noticed, how tight he was with his things compared to the rest of them)
and phones are no exception. The amount of times they have tossed each other a phone, carelessly, told the other to text on their behalf, always, always known their passwords to everything... He reaches over and picks it up.
He holds it in his hands as he hears Joe singing Ana La Habibi, off-key, as always, muffled by water and wood. He turns it over and over again, as if it might simply reveal its own secrets if he does that enough, like it’s a Rubik’s cube. It won’t, of course: this is an action he must take, and it comes with its own set of consequences. Everything has consequences
(foolish idiot of a brother, to not see that everything has consequences, and deserves them, cause and effect, as if physics do not apply to them somehow)
and Nicky is not sure he wants to face these. He is already feeling the growth of cold dread in the pit of his stomach, bubbling up like Jacob’s Well, sharp like a knife on the way up his oesophagus, lodging itself in his throat. He cannot throw it up or swallow it. Because who else could it be? Who else is there?
He is still holding the dark phone when Joe gets out of the shower. He is gloriously, beautifully naked, half-hard with anticipation, hair loose as he squeezes it with a light blue towel, and it reminds Nicky of early times, and how seeing Joe like that took his breath away. It still takes his breath away, it always will, there is no moment in all of time that Nicky will not be swept away by him. But whatever smouldering tension there might have been fizzles out when he sees Nicky sitting there. Joe looks at the phone. Nicky looks at him.
He holds it up. “I have not looked,” he says, and those words say an awful lot between the lines, just like everything he ever says. He’s never known Joe to not be able to read them.
Joe doesn’t feign illiteracy now. He drops the towel and rubs his hands down his face, making a small noise.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll explain.”
He sits beside Nicky, and takes the phone from him, keying in the passcode Nicky already knew (1105, always, unless it’s a three-digit passcode, and then it’s 498), and he opens his inbox. He hands it back, and Nicky reads.
They are all from a Mme. Giraud, in French, and not in the style Nicky would have expected. They read like Andy’s texts, in truth, which leads Nicky to believe it really is some strange woman. It’s small things: updates, news, some notably more concerned than others.
He raises an eyebrow. Joe has his chin propped up, hand covering his mouth, eyes carrying that usual, lovely dewiness Nicky expects of Joe’s emotion.
“She’s Booker’s neighbour,” Joe says. “Copley got me her number.”
“How long?”
Joe winces. “A month.”
Nicky breathes deeply through his nose. Not as catastrophic as he had thought. They had never, in truth, stipulated this. He knows his Joe, his immense capacity for love and care, knew he would fold sooner than any of them and this is why he said twenty years, not a hundred. Joe does not have it in him to hold a grudge for so long, Nicky himself and what they have is proof of that. But to have hidden it for a month? Joe has been far more subtle than usual. That rankles.
“Have you contacted him at all?” Nicky asks, his voice trying so hard to be light it feels like stone. He has to know. He has to know whether this agony within has any cause to be.
Joe looks at him askance. “I would not, Nicolò. We all made an agreement. I would not.” He rubs a hand down his face again, his intake of breath shaky. “I miss him. I am terrified for him. I worry all the time. But I also could not stand to see him. What he did… it towers over everything.”
Joe’s voice cracks, emotion finally breaking down the dam within. He tilts his head back, staring at the ceiling, blinking rapidly. As soon as the tears will fall, Nicky will wipe them away.
They have never needed to speak of it, for it was the same for both of them, the nightmares and the pain and the knife twist of knowing it was him. The scalpel might have been in that doctor’s hand, but Booker put it there. It hurt too much, the same as talking of Andy’s mortality, and the weight of responsibility looming in the future.
Nicky reaches out, setting a hand on Joe’s thigh, feeling the softness of his leg hair, the warmth of his skin beneath his palm. It grounds Joe enough to keep talking.
“I cannot reconcile it in my head,” he says. “I analyse every memory trying to find the moment where he made this decision, whether I could have stopped it. I keep wondering what we did wrong, how we could have changed to make it better. It is as if they are two different men. Where has my brother gone, who took him away?”
Nicky tilts himself into Joe’s gravitational pull – not difficult, they are a binary star – and sets his head on Joe’s shoulder.
“He took himself somewhere we could not follow,” Nicky says. “We could not have changed anything, Yusuf. We would have had to hide ourselves from him, make ourselves so much smaller than we already did. I could not have borne that.”
Joe reaches for him, takes his hand and squeezes it. “I know. Neither could I.”
The world scorned them for long enough, and looks as though it might do the same again. The thought of having to shrink themselves and play mere friends in front of family? Never touch or kiss or murmur sweet things, small gestures that hold the world, things that even aching, longing Andy never begrudged them openly? No. No, why should they, regardless of the reasons for it?
They are quiet for a moment, Joe pressing the side of his head to Nicky’s.
“I was… I was afraid it was him. That you were talking to him.”
“And go back on my word? No.” Joe chuckles, something small, bitter and mirthless, a pebble in a shoe. “I miss him, but I have not forgiven him. I already felt awful hiding this, talking to a random stranger just to keep an eye on him, sending her money to feed him because I knew he wouldn’t be feeding himself. I should have told you. I wanted to. I was afraid.”
Nicky lifts his head. “Afraid?”
“Of your reaction,” Joe admits. “As if I was a naughty child sneaking behind his father’s back. Absolutely stupid of me.” He laughs again, and wipes at his eyes. “Look at him, driving a wedge between us like this. Getting at least something of what he wanted.”
Nicky wants to protest that that was not the intention, that even Booker would not be that cruel, but the truth is… he cannot say that for certain, and Nicky does not like dealing in speculations and doubts. If he believes something, he will say it, and if he does not, he won’t. And despite knowing there was good, and there was love, he cannot honestly say it was on both sides anymore.
They loved him as a brother, because he was their brother. Did Booker ever see them that way? Were they merely men he happened to know, tolerated within his orbit simply because they came part-and-parcel with Andromache? It makes him feel ill, because he knows if he has thought this, Joe has too. Joe, who climbed mirrors trying to get this man to see life as worth it. Who smiled fondly at every “misery loves company”, because at least it meant he loved their company, did it not? Joe did not deserve this. Joe, who loves more powerfully and forgives more graciously than any man on Earth deserves. Than Nicky deserved, all those centuries ago.
He cannot blame Joe for this, for just… keeping up. Making sure. Unable to entirely let go, taking care of Booker from a distance like some gamekeeper in a wildlife reserve, birdseed left out while armed with binoculars.
And Nicky, stalwart though he is, cannot deny he has looked for the man. In armchairs and lying on sofas, leaning again the counter holding coffee, part of the presences that made home what it was. Joe might have been closer, but Nicky loved him too. Loves him. Did they not buy books together and speak for hours of Zola, Hardy and Deledda? Did Nicky not cook him bouillabaisse exactly to his wife’s recipe and receive a watery smile in return? Did Nicky not sit with him in the depths of night and listen to every story of his sons, and write them on his heart and love them like his own nephews?
Was it even real?
Down that path lies destruction. He has had enough of chasing these cruel thoughts to conclusions he cannot be certain of, of wandering in doubts in the dark of night when nightmares come knocking and he sees Joe under a knife, stuck with needles, bits of him removed and gawked at while they grow back.
He pulls away to cradle Joe’s head and kiss his forehead. His fingers weave into thick curls like ships coming safely into harbour.
“Bed?” he says.
Joe’s hands encircle his wrists, thumbs rubbing on his pulse points. They lean forward together, kiss first softly, and then deeper, slotting together like God made them for it.
“Bed,” Joe replies.
The simmering anticipation from earlier is gone, so Joe merely dons tracksuit bottoms and slides into bed, waiting for Nicky to undress and fit himself where he belongs, in Joe’s arms. Tonight the closeness feels more poignant, as it has every night since the lab. It is as much a statement as a beloved habit: Joe’s nose in the scruff at the back of Nicky’s neck, their legs tangling like vines, chest to back. Nicky could not have felt safer and more loved even in the womb, not a sliver of space between them. As it should be.
At 7:08 am, Joe’s phone vibrates.
Nicky is awake immediately, poised even in comfort, hand halfway towards the pillow when he realises what it was. Joe is slower to wake, grumbling all the while, and he raises himself up with the air of someone deeply annoyed by being disturbed.
They both look at it for a moment, as if surprised by it still existing. Nicky reaches for it, hands it to Joe, and they both lie on their backs, squinting at the screen. Mme. Giraud, of course. Nicky does not know why, but something prickles at the back of his neck, something ominous.
Joe opens the text.
Sébastien n'a pas récupéré ses repas hier ou aujourd'hui. Il ne m'a pas non plus répondu quand j'ai toqué
Nicky goes very still. Joe inhales.
“Has he done this before?” Nicky asks.
“Only if he’s been on a bender,” Joe replies. “But even then… She told me he always takes the food eventually.”
Nicky’s lips grow thin.
“Ask her if the door is open, and if she can go in.”
Joe does, his sleepy thumbs clumsy.
They wait, for a long, agonising moment. It seems to take forever. Nicky times, in his head, the pace of this woman he’s never met, how long it could take for her to head down a stairwell or cross a landing in a Paris tenement. He tells himself Booker is either sleeping off a hangover or recovering from acute liver failure – again – and it is simply taking time. Perhaps he even went somewhere, and did not tell her.
The phone vibrates again.
Oh mon Dieu il y a du sang partout
And Booker obviously not in the middle of it, recovering from his own stupidity.
Joe’s hands tremble around the phone. Nicky takes a deep breath.
“Paris,” he says. They will find him, it will be for something silly, and they will have broken the exile for nothing. But it does not matter. He is their brother, despite it all, and they would wade through Hell itself for him.
Nicky does not wonder whether Booker would, in the end, do the same for them. He does not want to consider any other alternative.