“Booker” Nicky’s voice comes from Booker’s left, but Booker ignores him, resolutely keeping his eyes on where To Catch a Thief is playing on the screen as he answers just as resolutely.
“Non”
“Booker, mon frère, please”
“We’re not discussing this again, Nicky. I’ll call Andy in here, I really will” He threatens without heat. It’s like the night before Christmas, the excitement they’re all feeling, just as it was when Andy and Quynh got married.
“Andy would let me”
“No,” Booker laughs at the cute petulance creeping into Nicky’s tone in his frustration, finally looking over at the sweet Italian “She wouldn’t. She’s with Joe and she’d skin me alive if I revealed their location. Look, it’s t-minus 10 and a half hours, most of which you will be sleeping and getting ready. Near mission success and then no-one will ever try to keep you two apart ever again. Why don’t you try and get some sleep?”
“I can’t yet. It is too much” Nicky waves his hand around in front of his chest and Booker can’t help but smile at his clear excitement.
“Well, I’ll call room service and get us some hot chocolate.” Booker tries distracting him “Why don’t you sit and read your book while we wait for you to get tired and I’ll finish the movie, eh?”
“I want to see Joe,” Nicky says bluntly.
Booker rolls his eyes to the ceiling, wishing Nile were here. She would be able to get Nicky to understand. But she’d gone down to the bar to get more drinks for them and had texted a little while ago to say she’d be a while. A popular hotel in the middle of July, it wasn’t surprising there was a wait at the all-night bar, even this late.
“I know mon cheri but you can’t”
“But why?” Nicky asks again, leaning close to Booker, those ocean-like eyes growing choppy, “it is an anarchical concept from the time when marriage was a pre-arranged loveless business transaction!”
“It’s tradition”
A moment’s blissful silence of potential acceptance where Booker is not a failure as Nicky digests this.
Then, “none of us even like a tradition”. A fair and accurate assessment. Still, no dice.
“It’s bad luck”
Nicky inhales sharply and Booker curses his moronic, careless choice of reasoning. If this keeps up he’ll have to text Quynh a Hail Mary.
“How could anything, anything that lets me and Yusuf be together be considered bad luck?! The concept does not exist. What we have is unshakeable and beyond the touch of antiquated superstitions”
“Then why won’t you walk under ladders, hmm?” he teases. Nicky really is adorable.
Nicky huffs in frustration and shakes off the hand Booker has laid on his arm. Instead, Nicky leans back in his chair and glowers at the tv screen unseeingly, looking for all the world like a kitten that just got doused with a spray bottle.
“It’s romantic” Booker tries again, appealing to Nicky’s more obvious sensibilities, really hoping he doesn’t have to go into metaphors about sweetening the moment of reunion and heightening the sensation of seeing each other again. He’s not the poet in the family and Joe not being here is the whole point.
Nicky just scoffed.
“It keeps me away from the man I love, I will be cold and I will not sleep without him because I will spend the night wondering where he is! How could that ever be deemed romantic?”
Booker takes a deep breath. In through his nose. Out through his mouth, just like his therapist taught him. He has three sons. He can do discipline. He will not crack to the sight of Nicky, blue eyes big and round as he stares beseechingly at Booker from his chair in front of the tv, describing with utter horror the prospect of spending one night away from Joe.
He won’t.
He doesn’t even know why he’s on Nicky duty, because while he loves Nicky, he is also Joe’s best man and needs to quadruple check to make sure the rings are definitely, unmistakeably in the breast pocket of his suit before the ceremony tomorrow and sleep himself at some point in the expensive bed they had decided to splash out on.
“Nicky,” he says gently, dragging his chair closer and flopping down into it, taking Nicky’s hand in his own this time, “It is a five-star, luxury hotel. We can make sure you are extra nice and toasty before you go to bed because you need to sleep before tomorrow and Joe is sitting on the roof terrace safe and sound watching the stars before he goes to bed”
“Oh,” Nicky deflates a little, though he doesn’t let go of Booker’s hand. Sweet boy, Booker thinks. They sit there for a moment, and Booker just luxuriates in the love he feels for his family, and the way the universe lets people find each other.
After a while, Nicky squeezes Booker’s fingers and goes to get up. “I think, I think a bath may help, yes?”
“Good idea”
“Only Joe gets to watch me do that though” Nicky teases lightly, with a warm smile. Booker watches him walk towards the bathroom and turns back to the film, shaking his head and laughing softly. He flops back into his armchair and fires off a quick text to Nile to hurry up.
The door slams and for a split second Booker doesn’t register beyond a jolt of surprise at the noise.
And then a thought occurs to him. A terrible, awful thought. Nicky’s never slammed a door in his life. But fire safety doors, like hotel room doors, slam automatically.
“Nicky…” he calls out, drifting from the open lounge space to the hallway. No reply. No sound of the distant thundering of a tap in the bathroom.
He strides towards the bathroom door. The open, empty bathroom.
“Oh, you sneaky bastard” he breathes, taking a moment to congratulate Nicky before giving chase. There’s no sign of Nicky in the hallway. Naturally. But he knows exactly where Nicky’s heading, of course, so he forgoes the nonsense of waiting for the elevator and races up the cool quiet of the staircase to the roof terrace.
He’ll tackle Nicky to the floor and throw him over his shoulder if he has to. Apologise in his speech tomorrow.
He doesn’t make it in time.
“Yusuf!” He does, however, make it to see Nicky sprinting across the terrace towards where Joe, Andy, and Quynh are clustered around a table relaxing in the balmy Florentine night, heads tilted back to the starry heavens as Joe lazily tells stories of the constellations as he always does.
Joe’s head snaps around at the sound of Nicky’s voice and he jumps to his feet. It’s almost comical, the way he avoids Andy and Quynh’s fruitlessly swiping fingers trying to hold him back. They’ve seen each other now, after all.
The two men race across the terrace, and Nicky jumps into Joe’s waiting arms, legs around Joe’s trim waist as he buries his face in Joe’s neck.
“Hello, Beautiful!” Joe croons, rubbing a hand on Nicky’s broad back and leaning back so they can catch each other in a searing kiss.
Why, exactly, any of us thought this would work is beyond me, Booker thinks as he watches them make out passionately like they haven’t seen each other for years, never mind check-in, heart full.
They’re murmuring to each other, the outside world eradicated, ‘habibi’ this and ‘hayati’ that.
So much for Operation Eclipse. Booker just shrugs at Andy’s sharp disappointed glare, because honestly. Instead, he pulls his phone from his pocket and calls Nile.
“Book? Where are you? The room’s deserted”
“Hey, sweetheart” he greets her apologetically, “We uh,” he heaves a sigh, fuck his life but he had one job, “we need to go to plan ‘H’” he tells her as he watches Joe set Nicky down, press kisses to his fiancé’s cheeks and forehead, their hands coming to intertwine. As Booker, Andy and Quynh watch, Nicky and Joe, sway into each other.
There’ll be no separating them tonight. Or ever again, Booker notes with fierce satisfaction. Fuck it.
“Get the blindfolds,” he tells Nile distractedly, although he’d imagined saying that sentence under much different circumstances. Less platonic circumstances.
Anyway, Joe and Nicky can still spend the night together and not see each other. Hence the blindfolds.
Nile’s voice buzzes over the line and Booker jumps, immediately feeling guilty for not paying her enough attention. “Repeat that for me, tesoro? Ye-es they can keep the blindfolds for tomorrow night, why are you asking?”
“We should just get them a bell” Andy threatens casually as she and Quynh walk up to Booker, kissing his cheek.
At least they tried.
Booker cringed, the phone still pressed to his ear. “What they get up to in the privacy of their own bed-“
“Oh, says the man whose fool-proof plan is now fucking blindfolds-“
“It fulfils the requirements”
Quynh artfully frees the phone from Booker’s grip and tells a laughing Nile to hurry up, for the love of mercy.