Chapter Text
Moving should have been easy, Nicky muses, hauling another box of belongings up the stairs to Joe’s flat.
(Their flat, he corrects himself.)
He’d counted on having relatively few things to pack and on hiring people to take Joe’s bed away and set his own in its place. He’d known Joe would make room for him—clear shelves and drawers and wall space and coat pegs so that the place became something of both of theirs, not merely Joe’s with Nicky’s things squashed in.
What he hadn’t realized was that Joe’s level of distraction would increase with every passing moment.
Nicky sets his box down in the kitchen, and wanders to where Joe is sitting, cross legged, on the floor of the living room. He’s emptied half a shelf of books, and there are piles on the floor—things to keep, perhaps, and others to give away.
“Photos!” crows Joe as Nicky comes closer. “I’d forgotten I had these,” and lifts a heavy-looking album out of his lap so that Nicky can see.
Nicky smiles at him—he can’t help the rush of warmth he feels at Joe’s delight—and sits down beside him. The album in Joe’s hands is the old-fashioned sort, with sticky, cardboard pages and clear film pulled tight over Polaroids and fading family snaps. “From home?” he asks as Joe flips back to the album’s beginning.
“Mmhmm,” Joe says, tapping one photo with a finger. “Here I am. Brand new, scrunch-faced, and bawling.”
Nicky leans against Joe’s side to get a better look at as a newborn baby with a tiny old man’s face. “You’re better looking now.”
“Ha!” Joe laughs, turning the page to a double spread of toddler photos. There’s Joe on all fours, looking with wide-eyed wonder at a cat, and Joe thrusting a grape directly at whomever was taking the photograph. There are photos of Joe laughing, and looking adoringly up at Noor, who has his hand in hers. In another, Joe sports a pair of bright blue dungarees with a train on the bib, and then there’s a photo of him in a lurid striped shirt in shades of mustard, orange, and brown.
“Fashion forward,” Joe says sagely, and Nicky chuckles.
There are boxes at Nicky’s old flat that still need to make the journey from one street to the next, but Nicky’s content to sit and listen to Joe tell him story after story, to watch Joe grow from a scowling three-year-old in a sulk to a five-year-old kicking a football in the street with his cousins. He’s introduced, page-by-page, to aunts and uncles, friends of the family, to Joe’s sisters and parents again and again. He watches Joe turn his face to the sun in Tunisia, and crookedly hold up a certificate he won for his drawing, watches his hair grow long and be cropped short, his limbs grow awkward and gangly. Always, always, Joe wears the same impish smile.
“We should put this somewhere that’s easy to reach,” Nicky says as Joe tilts the album to get a better look at a shot of Noor and Gmar on camels.
Joe turns his head and smiles warmly. “We need a matching set—one for you.”
Nicky feels a dull pang, but smiles back. “I don’t have any.”
“None?” Joe asks. He shifts to see Nicky better. “You don’t have any photographs of you as a child?”
Nicky offers a shrug. “It wasn’t something I could ask for when I left,” he says simply. “And there are so few things I would like to remember so vividly.”
Joe sighs, frowning, and looks at the album in his lap before looking back at Nicky’s face. “I hate to think of you unhappy.”
Nicky leans in and steals a kiss, just long enough to make Joe hum, pleased. “I am happier than I have ever been,” he murmurs as he pulls back, reaching up to yank gently at the curl falling over Joe’s forehead, an escapee from his backwards baseball cap. “I will not waste it by thinking of what was not to be.”
Joe offers a wry smile. “Fair.” His smile shifts. “I make you happier than you have ever been?”
Nicky laughs. “You know so. Stop fishing.” But he goes willingly when Joe hooks a hand around the back of his neck and pulls him in to kiss him again.
*
By nightfall Nicky’s jeans and sweaters are stowed in one half of the chest-of-drawers, and his shirts and two suits hang in the wardrobe. His books are mixed with Joe’s, his casserole pot nestled in a cupboard, his trainers left by the front door. The three turquoise bowls from his coffee table are now on Joe’s, and the book he’s been reading is on the bedside table, dogeared and familiar. It makes him happy to see it.
Joe climbs into bed beside him, switches off the lamp and lies down on his back. Nicky has the blankets pulled up to his chin, and though he’s exhausted, he can’t close his eyes, can’t stop staring at the web of paint cracks that run across their bedroom ceiling. There’s barely enough light to see by, but it’s enough.
Joe yawns. “You’re far too awake.”
“Hmm.” Nicky shifts onto his side and looks at Joe in profile. “There’s a lot to think about.”
“There is?” asks Joe, turning onto his side too.
“I’m going to wake up here tomorrow.”
“You’ve done that before.”
“And all the days after that.”
Joe grins. “Yessss,” he says, and Nicky laughs softly. Joe reaches for his hand and pulls it to his lips, kisses his knuckles once, twice, before he lets go. “Is it very strange?”
“No,” says Nicky, rubbing his cheek against the pillow. “Maybe that’s what’s strange.”
“Philosophy at this hour,” Joe says and yawns again. His eyelids flutter closed. “Wake me if you figure it out,” he mumbles, and Nicky nods, lets his body grow heavy beside him, watches the lines on Joe’s forehead smooth as he falls asleep. He relishes the warmth of their bodies together, the faint scent of soap on Joe’s skin, the whisper of the curtains lifting and falling in the breeze. The world feels snug around him, and Nicky feels safe and full of something it's hard for him to name. He shifts a little, bends a knee, settles comfortably, and when he opens his eyes, it’s day.
*
It’s cloudy on Monday morning, so when Nicky pulls a stool to his workbench he flips on a lamp, and angles the bulb to cast a bright wash of light over the tabletop humidor that needs his attention. It shows more than a hundred years of wear, its corners stripped of stain, the brass wrapping broken and curled, the inlay warped by water. Still, it’s beautiful, a testament to someone’s patient craftsmanship as much as the variables of sitting behind the bar at the Crown and Arms through two world wars and a spate of football rivalries.
Nicky puts on his glasses and opens up the box, wrinkling his nose at the stale smell of cigars. There’s a chamber for the clay that once provided the humidor with moisture, but the clay itself has long since disappeared. Nicky pokes his fingers around inside the chamber to feel for cracks and fractures. He’s pleased when he doesn’t find any, and picks up the box, tilts it to inspect the Spanish cedar. There’s a tiny gap that’s opened in the upper left corner joint, and Nicky blows out a small sound of dismay as he runs a finger over the space, assessing the need for clamps and glue, wondering if he should replace the lining and begin again. He sets the box down and sits back to consider his choices.
Across the barn, Nile’s chatting with a couple who’ve set a massive, lidded vase on her workbench. There’s a visible crack down the side of the vase, and a chipped lip, a splintered handle. The glaze is stunning, a vibrant green, and Nicky idly wonders how she’ll replicate it once she’s filled and shaped the vase back to new. He smiles when Andy wanders in from outside, streaks of soot on her arm, and crosses to the kitchen, and he glances over to where Joe is thanking a client for leaving him with some new job or other, a painting, most likely, nestled inside the cardboard box in his hands.
Nicky flexes his fingers, and stands to find a putty knife small enough to help him work with the cedar. The conversations around him dull to a low hum. He bends to the work he loves.
*
When he comes up for air, it’s to find Nile and Andy gathered at Joe’s workbench, chatting softly, tilting their heads, all three of them moving something around between them. Nicky blinks for a second, lets his vision clear after such close work, then pushes his glasses up onto the top of his head and wanders over to see what has everyone so absorbed.
Whatever he imagined it might be, it was not a jigsaw puzzle, but that’s clearly what’s scattered over Joe’s workbench. There are three little clusters of fitted pieces making three disconnected pictures, and Joe, Nile, and Andy are working on all three at once.
“Huh,” Nicky says.
Joe looks up. “Came in this morning,” he says. “The picture’s hand-painted. Oil paint under a hundred years of dirt.”
Nicky moves closer and steps in beside him, tilts his head to try and make the pictures into a whole. There’s water—the ocean, perhaps, or a lake—and trees, a blur that seems to be resolving into houses, a spray of something like roses that’s absurdly large compared to everything else. Nicky squints and finds the perspective, sets the flowers in the foreground, the water further away, and hums as he wonders how things will look once the grime on the painting’s surface is removed. “Is there a box?” he asks.
Nile laughs dryly. “That’d be too easy.”
“No box,” Joe says with a smile. “It’s a view the client’s mother painted when she was a teen.”
Nicky assesses the painting again. “That’s astonishing.”
Andy lifts a blue jigsaw piece between her fingers and shakes it a little. “Frustrating as fuck, you mean.”
“The client said there were missing pieces,” says Joe as Nicky picks one up to examine it. He flips it over, runs a finger over the fine wood grain.
“Cherry,” he says to himself more than anyone else. Not the usual material for a jigsaw, though he’s heard of wooden puzzles, and certainly it would provide a better base for a painting than cardboard, however thick. He holds the puzzle piece up to the light, notes the texture of the paint, the perfect edges. “She painted this after the pieces were cut.”
“Yeah, I thought so, too,” says Joe, picking up a piece and turning it between his fingers.
“The paint is pristine,” Nicky says. “No breaks or marks from the saw.”
Andy makes a small whoop of jubilation as she slots the blue piece beside one of a paler hue. “That’s right, motherfucker.”
Nile cackles delightedly, and Nicky smiles, joins them for a while in working slowly and carefully to bring the painting back to life. They each take turns drifting back to their workbenches, but the puzzle keeps luring them back, and by day’s end they have every surviving piece in place.
“Seventeen missing pieces,” says Joe as Nicky wanders over, pulling on his jacket. “You think you can make some that would fit?”
It’s a tricky proposition – finding wood that will breathe the way the other pieces will, cutting and sanding them to fit perfectly. “You’ll paint them?” Nicky asks.
“That’s my plan,” Joe says, reaching for his own jacket.
Nicky smiles. “I would like nothing better than to help,” he says. “We should stop by the woodshop on the way home.”
“Home,” says Joe, grinning. “I like that.”
*
There are less than two weeks until Joe’s show opens, and there are to-do lists dotting every surface in the flat.
Take suit to be cleaned
Pick up suit from cleaner
Polish shoes
Order flowers
Trim nails
Buy more beard oil
Confirm Noor’s flight details
Pick up Noor at airport
Check she really booked a hotel
Check again
Write remarks (remarks needed?)
Confirm catering with gallery
Nicky collects the to-do lists like shells washed up on a beach, fixes them to the fridge with magnets and tape and, once or twice, consolidates everything. He leaves the struck-through lists in a little pile on the coffee table and Joe doodles on them while he’s on the phone. Nicky takes each tiny piece of art and fixes it to the fridge door again—another gallery, he thinks, a kaleidoscope show of Joe’s preparation. There’s a cartoon Joe looking exasperated, with lightning bolts shooting from his head, and another where he looks at cartoon Nicky with comically-big hearts in his eyes. There are sketches of Andy, and Quynh, and a cartoon of Nile with her tongue between her teeth, wrestling a giant urn into artistic submission, a paintbrush stuck behind her ear. There are pictures of dogs and cats and a startling likeness of the pigeons that like to sit on their windowsill, and sometimes there are simply words in beautiful script or jagged relief.
It's a source of wonder to watch Joe settle, moment by moment, into ever greater confidence about the show. Now that the first risk of being turned down by every gallery he approached is behind him, Joe seems steadier, as if he’s planted his feet and found his bearings; as if he can lean into the wind of whatever’s next and not be bowled over. When nerves hit, he draws them as cartoonish monsters with pointed claws and wide-open mouths, towering over a tiny Joe who shakes his fist in their faces. Twice Nicky finds himself rendered on a scrap of paper with a sword and shield, Joe behind him, facing down the monsters on his behalf. In both drawings, Joe’s beaming. Recognizing the growing breadth of Joe’s ease makes Nicky feel something hot and tight in his chest—pride, maybe, mixed with the astonishing fact of knowing Joe intimately, and being known intimately in return. It makes him light-headed with happiness, has him backing Joe up against the kitchen counter when they get home from work and kissing him slowly, savoring every little hitch in Joe’s breathing, the span of his warm hands at his waist, the texture of the hair at the back of his neck soft against Nicky’s fingertips.
“Mmmm,” Joe says when they finally break apart, blinking at Nicky, his lips swollen. “What was that for?”
Nicky feels his smile widen, and he leans in to press one more kiss to the corner of Joe’s mouth. “No reason,” he says, leaning against Joe, feeling him shift his feet to take his weight. “I just think about kissing you all the time.”
“I’m in favor of you kissing me all the time,” says Joe, reaching up with one hand to brush Nicky’s hair back from his face.
“A little restraint is a good thing,” says Nicky. “It makes it possible for us to eat. Sleep.”
“Overrated,” says Joe. “A waste.”
Nicky laughs softly. “Work. Earn our crust,” he offers.
“We can live on happiness,” Joe suggests.
“Does that pay well?” he asks.
“In all the best ways,” Joe murmurs, and leans into kiss him again.
*
It takes Nicky longer than he’d like to source the exact cut of Spanish cedar he wants in order to repair the humidor’s interior, so he works on the outside of the box while he waits. It takes him the better part of a morning to clean away years of grime and cigarette smoke, trapped in sticky patches of long-since-spilled beer, and examine the inlay, deciding where to cut so that he can peel away strips of damaged wood. He traces the shape of each bared filigree on whisper-thin paper, sorts through his stash of veneers and transfers the pattern, working the fragile wood into exactly the right shape and size. With the first pieces set, he eyes the box critically, and picks up his phone to call Rob at the pub and ask how he feels about mother-of-pearl. When his stomach growls and he realizes he’s once again forgotten to eat, he hangs up and grabs the car keys from Joe instead. There’s still time to catch the end of lunch at the Crown and Arms, to eat a delicious steak pie and ask Rob his thoughts on a new approach to the humidor’s repairs, so he pulls on his jacket and heads out into the drizzle of the afternoon.
The pub hums softly with late-lunch stragglers, and Rob sits him at the end of the bar, the better to chat between pulling pints. It’s a perfect spot to people watch, and Nicky accepts the ale Rob pushes across the bar, takes a sip, and glances around the room. There’s a group of women sitting at a table close to the door, laughing as one of them tells a story, her hand gestures growing larger and larger as she speaks. Near the empty fireplace sits an old man, reading the day’s newspaper, ignoring the football commentary from three men watching an Italian match on the big-screen TV. There’s someone in a suit talking to himself—or perhaps into his Bluetooth, Nicky grants—and a cluster of university students absently eating chips, their heads bent over laptops. Two women sit at the other end of the bar, pointedly ignoring one another, though their matching expressions suggest they’re related; sisters perhaps.
Rob sets a plate down in front of Nicky, and drops a set of cutlery wrapped in a cloth serviette beside his plate. “Mother-of-pearl, you say?”
“For the top of the humidor,” Nicky says, nodding, picking up a chip and using it to draw filigree in the air.
“Go on,” says Rob, wiping down the bar with a damp rag.
In the corner, the football-watching group cheers as someone scores, and Nicky glances over. One of the men looks familiar, although from his angle, Nicky can’t quite place from where. “Regulars?” he asks.
Rob nods. “Friendly rivalry,” he says, gesturing toward where the men are exchanging £5 notes.
Nicky looks back toward the TV, and blinks as one of the men elbows another, laughing, in profile.
Booker—folding up his wallet with a put-upon smile.
Nicky stares for a moment, a chip half-way to his mouth, then mentally shakes himself and looks away. Something about the situation feels jarringly odd, beyond the simple fact that he’s crossing paths with Booker again.
“You’ll catch flies,” Rob offers.
Nicky blows out a breath and grins, nodding. “Distracted by an idea I had for a . . . a puzzle. A jigsaw puzzle.”
Rob arches an eyebrow. “Mother-of-pearl.”
“Right, right.” And Nicky forces himself to focus, and begins to explain.
It takes a while to sketch out the contours of his idea between tackling his pie and giving Rob space to serve his customers. The crowd thins out until it’s just the football group and the students, and then the football group breaks apart, each man in turn approaching the bar to settle his tab. Booker is the last, and Nicky catches him glancing his way as he hands over his card.
“Booker,” he says evenly, with a nod of his head.
Booker chews on his lip for a moment, staring at the bottles behind the bar, then he looks over and nods too. “Never did get your name.”
“Nicky,” he offers.
“Nicky,” Booker repeats as he takes back his card. He tucks it meticulously back into his wallet, looking all the while like there’s something he wants to say but can’t quite judge the wisdom of.
Nicky waits, patiently sipping the last of his pint.
“I want you know,” Booker says at last, looking in Nicky’s direction, “that I never meant to hurt them.”
And then he turns on his heel and is gone before Nicky can say any of the dozen things crowding his tongue. He stares at the pub door as it closes wondering most of all why Booker would want to explain anything to him.
“Know that guy?” asks Rob.
“Not really,” Nicky says, and offers a smile. “Let me pay and I’ll . . .”
“No way, mate,” Rob says firmly. “On the house. You’re doing me a favor, fixing that old thing up. Put it away,” he says, gesturing as Nicky holds up his wallet.
Nicky nods and tucks the wallet into his back pocket. “That’s very kind.”
“Eh,” says Rob with trademark ease. “Now fuck off and mend something.”
Nicky grins. “I’ll do exactly that.”
_
Seeing Booker puts an itch under Nicky’s skin that makes it hard for him to focus for the rest of the day. By the time he gets back to the flat—Joe’s spending the evening at the gallery—he can think of almost nothing else. He eats a slice of bread, standing in the kitchen, vacantly studying the wall, and then shakes himself out of his stupor and heads to the couch with his laptop. He pulls up a browser and starts to search (Sebastien de Livre; S de livre; de livre biography; de livre early years) and is surprised to find so little about Booker online—no social media accounts that he can see, no mentions in the press beyond his work, no old photographs in a dusty corner of the internet that no-one’s touched since 2004. He changes his tactic and begins to search for the things Booker’s restored instead, and slowly he’s able to map out a sense of the man from tables, chairs, bookcases, and captain’s chests. There are fragments of information tucked into sales catalogues, museum webpages, and bios of Merrick. After trawling the third fawning piece on Merrick’s so-called talents for info, and reading a column in the Financial Times about Merrick’s growing business interests, Nicky shuts the laptop and stares across the room at Joe’s art. Home, he thinks, studying the greens and terracotta swoops of paint, seeing Joe in his mind’s eye and remembering the evening Joe first told him the artwork’s name.
The juxtaposition between Joe’s ability to coax beauty from the canvas, to reveal himself in bold, brilliant lines of paint, and Booker’s attempts to hide, to bend his talents to whatever craven uses Merrick has for them—it makes something inside Nicky ache. He cannot imagine turning his back on the warmth kindled at the barn in every action, every steady hammer’s blow, every scrap of mended silk, every press and push of hand-warmed clay. And he cannot believe that Andy, Nile, and Joe were deceived into seeing good in Booker if none existed to be seen. Whatever made Booker leave and cut ties feels staggering to contemplate, too large a thing to wrap his head around. How much more must that be true for those who had loved Booker like family? How did they mend and repair the damage, wrought by silence instead of use and time?
He looks back at Joe’s painting, at the beauty created by his brush, and remembers the kindnesses of the first few weeks he had worked at the barn. “Amore mio,” he murmurs. What they had risked to welcome him in.
*
Noor arrives on the Thursday before the gallery opening. The resemblance between her and Joe is all the more pronounced in person, and Nicky—hanging back a little as Joe sweeps her up into a bear hug in arrivals, growling happily—finds the situation disarming in a way that makes his palms sweat. He wipes them on his jeans before it’s his turn to say hello.
Noor takes one look at his outstretched hand and raises an eyebrow. “Nicky, please,” she says, and reaches for him, pulling him into a warm, firm hug. “Get the fuck over yourself.”
That shocks a burst of laughter from Nicky, and another from Joe.
When she pulls back, Noor tilts her head to look at him better. “You’re taller than on the phone.”
Nicky nods solemnly. “Some would say I am also more handsome.”
She laughs, delighted, and spins on her heels to look at her brother. “You snagged a live one,” she says impishly.
Joe just smiles at Nicky over her head, eyes twinkling. “I definitely did,” he says, and Nicky feels the back of his neck prickle with heat.
They go to dinner from the airport, stopping at an Indian restaurant close to Noor’s hotel. The scent of spices that greets them as they walk inside has Joe and Noor’s stomachs rumbling in unison, and Nicky looks back and forth between them. “This was a terrible mistake,” he says deadpan, and Noor just laughs. There’s a great deal of laughter over dinner. The food is plentiful and delicious and Nicky’s curry hot enough to make his eyes sting. The company, he thinks, sitting back and watching Joe and Noor bicker happily, is perhaps the best he could ask for, and buoyed by affection and beer he takes Joe’s hand and squeezes it. Joe squeezes his hand back, a gesture Noor sees, and she looks over at Nicky and winks and he feels suddenly and achingly seen.
Noor leans. “You’re good for him,” she says, nodding her head toward Joe. “I hope he’s good for you.”
Nicky nods back. “I have known what it is to be without him,” he says, simply. “I do not miss that life.”
It takes ten minutes to find parking after they drop Noor at the hotel; another ten minutes to get inside and shake the rain from their hair. Joe crowds Nicky up against the inside of their front door before either can shrug out of their jackets, cupping his jaw with one hand, and rubbing the pad of his thumb across Nicky’s bottom lip. “Thank you,” he says, and kisses Nicky so thoroughly that all thoughts of asking ‘what for’ fly out of Nicky’s head. When they break apart, breathing hard, Nicky hooks a finger inside the belt loop of Joe’s jeans.
“Bed,” he says, and it’s not a question. Joe nods and lets himself be led.
There are days when they fuck—when Nicky wants to be taken, to feel sensation ripping from tip of his cock to the back of his throat. But tonight he feels so warm with affection that he wants to linger, wants to map Joe out with his hands and his mouth and kiss him until they’re muddled and intoxicated, burrowing close. When he opens Joe up it’s so slowly that eventually Joe pushes down desperately against his hand, as though that might make him hurry, cursing him one minute and begging softly the next. Nicky feels every shiver and twist of Joe’s body deep in his own gut, kisses Joe again and again until Joe’s arching up against him, wordless and clumsy. It’s only then that Nicky slowly presses inside him, rocking his hips, dragging sounds from Joe that shoot straight to his cock. Nicky closes his own eyes against the heat and pressure. “So good, tesoro,” he murmurs, and Joe moans quietly. “So good, so good . . .”
It's impossible, on nights like these, for Nicky to separate want and feeling. The pleasure that sparks beneath his skin is bright with need and turns him inside out with loving Joe beyond the words that will come to his lips. Desire skitters down his spine and lights him up, affection rolling in its wake, and when he comes it’s with Joe beneath him, around him, the scent of him, the taste of him obliterating thought. It’s instinct that has him fumble a hand between them, coaxing Joe to come too, sticky and sweet and sharp and quick; instinct that has him press open-mouthed kisses to Joe’s shoulder as they shudder and come to a rest.
“Oh god,” says Joe, sounding wrecked, and Nicky smiles as he pulls out, gentling Joe as he winces. The sheets are damp with sweat and come and they need a shower before they should think of sleeping. But “Nuh-uh,” Joe protests as Nicky rolls onto his back, and he follows, sprawling across Nicky’s body. “Just a minute.” His vowels are long and lazy.
Nicky slips his fingers through the messy curls at the back of Joe’s head. “I would count the second,” he whispers, “but my brain is . . .” He makes a helpless noise.
“Good,” Joe mumbles against his chest. “Mine too.”
Nicky laughs quietly, and lets out a long, happy breath. “Benedetto sia ’l giorno,” he murmurs, as much to himself as to Joe. “E ’l mese, e l’anno, e la stagione, e ’l tempo, e l’ora, e ’l punto, e ’l bel paese, e ’l loco ov’io fui giunto, da’ duo begli occhi che legato m’hanno.”
Joe lifts his head very slowly and blinks in Nicky’s direction. “Hmm?”
Nicky slowly runs a finger up and down his spine. “Blessed be the day and the month and the year, and the season and the time and the hour and the precise moment, and the beautiful country and the place where I was caught by the two beautiful eyes that bound me.”
“Romance,” Joe says, smiling lopsidedly. “And on a Thursday too.”
“Shocking,” Nicky agrees.
Joe presses a kiss to Nicky’s skin. “I would like to shower with you,” a kiss, “and change the sheets,” another, “and come back here,” one more, “and fall asleep with you.”
“That is romance, too,” Nicky whispers.
“Nothing but the best,” says Joe, and his expression is alight with happiness.