/
Kadin, surprisingly, does not ask Nika at all about her trip when she gets back.
Usually every trip out of the walls of this house is followed immediately by a full debrief with Kadin upon return, but this time, the closest that Kadin comes to mentioning it is to comment on how lucky it was that the weather stayed clear that morning. The absence of questions is both a relief and aggravating. Nika is about to drive herself out of her own mind with her thoughts.
Unexpectedly, it is Abdel who brings up the topic. It is a full five days later at dinner, which Kadin now insists that Nika eats with them. Nika used to beg off on the basis that she preferred to eat alone, alluding meaningfully to past complications with eating behaviours that Kadin accepted quickly with her usual immediate compassion. She used to feel guilty for taking advantage of this rare gift of kindness; now, Nika knows it was the right decision. Abdel does not appreciate a newcomer at his table with Kadin. It is fucking terrible.
"Slow down," Kadin says, alarmed at the speed with which Nika is inhaling the food on her plate.
Nika takes a moment to concentrate on chewing an overly large bite, catches Abdel's eye on the swallow. He raises his glass to her subtly while Kadin is distracted by the sounds of one of the boys running upstairs. His look is sardonic. For a second they are partners in Nika's transparent goal of getting away from the table as soon as possible.
'You'll have longer to wait if you finish before dessert is ready," Kadin warns, picking up her fork again. Nika stops chewing, dismayed. From the other side of the table, she can hear Abdel taking a deep pull of his drink.
"Perhaps our dear Nika has other matters she has to attend to," he suggests. "Who is looking after our sons again?"
Kadin gives him an unimpressed look. "Driss is watching them," she says. "They spend all day with her, I'm sure they can survive half an hour without her."
"My brave boys," Abdel murmurs. "But I was thinking more of her other, personal matters." He looks at Nika directly, his cool gaze suddenly assessing. Nika swallows her mouthful of food quickly. "Have you decided whether to put ex-Agent 47 out of his misery yet?"
"Ex-Agent?" Kadin says, surprised. Abdel gives an elegant shrug.
"I've asked around," he says. "Word is our Codename 47 has left his employer once again. Apparently, heads have rolled for this - quite literally."
Nika finds her voice. "He left before." It comes out sounding small, unhappy; she clears her throat brusquely and starts again, stronger this time. "He'll go back. It's all he knows."
"You don't have to decide yet if you aren't ready," Kadin says firmly. "There's no rush."
Her husband nods absently, but he's still watching Nika. "I'm not sure he will go back this time. Or if he does, he won't survive it."
Nika's hand spasms around her fork. "Survive it?"
"They won't invest in him again," Abdel says matter-of-factly. "Or if they do, he won't survive any more experiments, I suspect. It took four visits before his nose stopped bleeding every time he asked about you. I'm surprised his brain didn't leak out of his ears when he met you." He takes a sip of his wine, as if he doesn't notice the two women staring at him in horror. "On the other hand, if you do turn him down, he might just go back to the Organisation for nowhere else to go." He raises his glass at Nika, smiling ironically. "To the woman about to bring down one of the greatest assassins of this century: well done."
Sleep does not fucking come that night.
In the morning, Kadin apologises to her. "He will not speak of Codename 47 again," she promises Nika, and then switches the topic smoothly to the new orchids to be repotted, ignoring Nika's clumsy protests that it was fine, nothing to apologise for, she doesn't care. She doesn't, she doesn't . She may have spent all night sleepless again, but that's no different than the past few weeks since the apparition of 47 re-materialised in her life. She wipes the remnants of sticky dates from Emir's face; she plays a hundred clapping games with his brothers in the garden; she teases Kadin for her attempts to sing her baby into a girl; she re-pots the orchids; she puts the boys to bed. Nika is busy; she has no time to agonise; she is fine .
Except of course - at night. Always the deep silence of the night. It makes her thoughts deafening, inescapable; and now there is a new fear, threaded bright and sharp in every memory. He might just go back to the Organisation for nowhere else to go . So what if he does? They lead separate lives now; it shouldn't matter.
But she keeps replaying Abdel raising his glass at her, his cool eyes and faint smile. Well done. And how 47 had looked at her that morning, intense as a hot light on her skin - except every now and then he would close his eyes like a long blink, shake his head like pushing off a shudder, and the vague look that slipped across in that moment was like filtering the sun briefly. Surely he wouldn't go back, after all what those fucking monsters did to him. He can't.
She gives up on the pretense of sleep. The moon is just a silver sliver tonight, and drifting behind and out of clouds, but Nika has spent so much time in these grounds that she can probably circle the entire massive house blindfolded. She goes around and around the house, like a trapped animal, until her sleep clothes are damp with perspiration. He had a dog once , her memory brings up unhelpfully. One of those guard types, with orange ears; its name was - what was it? Its name was K9-47.
Nika remembers smiling at that then; the edges of it slips out reluctantly, now. Well, I don't own the number, 47 of her memory shrugs, smiling back with only his eyes, as he had done back then. God her stupid fucking heart. An old homesickness rises abruptly, a feeling that hasn't ambushed her since her second year with Kadin and her new life.
I want to go home .
Nika stops walking, winded, and it's only then she registers the telltale scent of rose and tobacco.
It takes a while for her to make out the figure on the open verandah; Abdel is sitting in complete darkness. Even the light under his hookah is shielded somehow, and it takes the sliver of moon emerging overhead again to make out the outline of him, watching her. The vague impression of smoke balloons up lazily above him, dissipating almost immediately into the shadows.
Nika stays frozen for a few beats, panting and watching back. Another impression of smoke appears, fades. Then she makes a decision and makes her way across the grounds, up the stairs.
It's not much easier to see Abdel even three feet from him. Another puff of indolent smoke goes up, the scent much stronger this time. She forces herself not to lose her nerve.
"You think I should see him again," she says without preamble, breathlessly. She hugs herself unthinkingly, her body trying to pull herself away even as she continues, accusing: "That's why you said all, all that - why do you care? Why does it matter if I don't see him?"
The cloud of smoke, again. Rose never smelled so deadly sweet. After an awful pause, Abdel's voice answers from inside the darkness and smoke. "If someone had taken Kadin from me," he muses, "there would be no force on earth that would stop me from getting to her."
Nika flinches. "Not every man is as devoted as you," she says.
"Ah," Abdel's disembodied voice says. "Devotion. Is that what you and Kadin call it when you talk about me?"
Nika takes a step back, unthinking. There is another mushroom of smoke; a soft laugh. "I know what you think of me," says the second most dangerous man Nika has ever known. But he doesn't sound angry. His voice continues, pleasant, "I know what kind of man I am. And I know what I would do, if I was in ex-Agent 47's position. Why do you think I've tripled my men since your boyfriend showed up at my doorstep?"
"What do - you think he might come here? You think the house isn't safe?"
"If I thought my wife was in any danger because of you," Abdel says silkily, "you would no longer be with us. No. The guards are here because Kadin thinks he might come for you. She knows it's what I would have done, after all."
It takes a few seconds for Nika to connect the dots. "You don't think he will come," she says, slowly.
Puff goes the sweet scent of smoky rose. "I think your first conversation did not go as he planned. I think he will wait for a message from you, after that; you were - well. You certainly did not hold back. He has not come back to my gunroom since."
"You were listening? Of course you were," Nika finishes bitterly. "I should have known."
"You should have," Abdel agrees, but there is a sigh at the end of it. "I do not pretend to know what kind of man ex-Agent 47 is. Except that he has more patience than I. And hope," he adds, as an afterthought. "In his position, I would not have let you leave the cemetery without me."
But he is nothing like you, Nika thinks. She feels lightheaded from all the smoke, her breathing still rapid and shallow from her walk. He is nothing like Bellicoff.
He would never force me to be with him.
It is a stupefying realisation, even though it shouldn't be. It's probably because 47 might be the only man she's ever known that could claim that. Abdel continues, oblivious from his position in the shadows, "What I am saying is: if you want to speak to him again, you will have to go to him. Didn't you once tell me - everyone deserves a second chance?"
She had. She remembers it well, terrified and on her knees, begging for a chance at life. Abdel had just told her that it looked like his bargain with Agent 47 was broken, and that she was now his problem. His assessing disinterest then not much more different than his cool tone now, despite the jarring content of his words.
"Why do you care?" Nika whispers, bewildered.
Abdel hums. "Perhaps I want to have dinner with Kadin again without an observer," he says. "Perhaps I fear your resistance is setting a bad precedent for my dear, poor wife in her gilded cage." He pauses, and the night darkness seems to deepen the silence. A mushroom of hazy shadows appears, fades. "Or perhaps," he says at last, softer, "I feel sorry for ex-Agent 47. I understand what it's like to have your world entirely held in someone else's much smaller hands."
"He isn't like you," Nika insists. The man in the shadows says nothing. Nika hugs herself tighter, an instinctive reaction. She shouldn't ask, she shouldn't, but - "Do you really think he might go back," she says, wretchedly.
"He has not returned to see me since you met," Abdel reminds her. Fuck, fuck .
"Is it too late," she asks. "Can you send a message. Please. Tell him... tell him he can't go back -"
"Tell him yourself," Abdel says, as if he had been waiting all along. "I know where he is now."
/
It turns out Abdel's entire crew knows exactly where 47 is at all times. For the first time, Nika wonders at his reputation, that it can put a grim line in the mouths of the five men assigned to escort her to the drop off and leave her there. It's not as if they even have to confront 47 - "that won't be necessary," Abdel had told them, "nor wise" - or wait for her to finish.
"Tell ex-Agent 47 to walk you back," Abdel suggests to her, unconcerned. Nika can't tell if he's actually serious. "Or send a message. If you do want to come back."
And now she's standing outside a fucking bar in the early hours of the morning, trying to build the courage to go in and wondering at the perpetual stupidity of her choices when it comes to 47. That goddamn man. Her stupid fucking heart.
What is she even going to say ?
It turns out she doesn't need to agonise long, because the lights lining the roof of the overhang over the bar flicker warningly before they go out. Close down time. Nika stumbles backwards in dazed horror, but the door of the bar is already opening. A couple of businessmen come out together, still talking in slurred voices. They wander off in the opposite direction.
Then a third man comes out, alone.
47 sees her almost immediately, despite her standing off to the side of the bar's door, despite the thin moon and the night so dark that Nika can barely make out the features of his face. He looks at her for a moment, expressionless. He does not seem at all surprised to see her. Then his jaw sets and he turns away. The shock is so great that he is halfway down the street before Nika recovers enough to follow.
When she catches up to him, daring herself to walk by his side, she feels him looking at her from the corner of his eye. She's still a good arm's length away. He is walking at a measured pace, his movements deliberate and careful; he smells strongly of hard drink. If it was any other man, Nika thinks dimly, he would be stumbling. She has never seen 47 drunk before.
Maybe he's an angry drunk, coldly bitter at her rejection. Or maybe he is already over her, over his cursory attempt to ask her back, and he has already made up his mind to go back to his old employer.
It is this thought more than anything else that keeps Nika next to him. Because even if he is a fucking asshole, she still doesn't want him to die . Her heart is doing that aching thing it does again, where it tries to beat fast and slow at once, exultant and furious and sick all at the same time. She wishes he would just look at her properly.
"I didn't know you went to bars like that," she says, and is proud of how light and steady her voice sounds.
47 glances at her, looking briefly surprised, then goes back to looking at the dark street ahead and watching her from the corner of his eye. "They have a good whiskey cellar," he says. His voice is tired and burnt around the edges, alcohol-rough. It makes Nika pause, robs away the sharpest edges of her defensiveness. Under the shifting shadows, he looks like he has barely slept at all too.
"I didn't know you drink like this," Nika admits. "I wouldn't have thought you'd like the lack of control."
There is a soft scoff from the man beside her. "Not much within my control these days," he says. He cuts her a sideways look. "Exhibit number one," he says dryly, and it takes a beat for Nika to realise that he's talking about her.
They've reached the end of the street. 47 turns without hesitation, still moving slowly, but with purpose. There are more lights here, from a scattering of dim amber overarching street lamps, though the street and its little alleys are still bare of people. It's a quiet part of town, distant from the main nightlife, and ghostly in its pockets of carelessly parked cars and vans like an abandoned world.
He doesn't seem worried at all about whether she will follow him. This is nothing like their meeting in the cemetery, only a few days ago. The brutal callousness of it is starting to seep like a numb burn under Nika's skin.
"I still can't think of what to say to convince you," 47 says suddenly, into the hush. Nika falters, then hastens to catch up again. "It probably means that I shouldn't," he adds, and there is an unexpected bitterness in his tone.
"Convince me to what," Nika manages, though a wild part of her thinks she can guess. 47 ignores her.
"I could promise that you would never have to help on any assignments again, going forward," the contract killer says. Nika watches, stunned, as he grimaces, closes his eyes briefly and shakes his head. "I should never have made you do it to begin with."
"I didn't mind," Nika offers faintly, as if 47 expressed his regrets freely all the time. She pulls herself together. "I - it wasn't that bad, really. You always told me you'd come for me. I liked being useful."
"I hated it," 47 says. Nika stares. 47 continues, weary, "It was a distraction to know you were there, in the middle of a live contract. It made things - complicated. Unnecessary. I reworked so many plans just because you were involved. It would have been easier if you hadn't been involved."
Complicated . Unnecessary.
"If I hadn't been… you were the one who said you needed my help!"
"I didn't know what else to do," he says nonsensically, and falls silent again.
They've reached the end of this street too. 47 keeps moving into a graffiti streaked side street, without pausing or looking at her, except this time Nika is too distracted to feel the sting of his self-assured indifference. It doesn't match at all with the tone of their conversation.
"I don't understand you," she says. If she sounds miserable, well so fucking be it - she is. There is no way to avoid sounding pathetic when she doesn't have anger as a cover, and it's difficult to hold on to her anger on the face of this tiredly drunk version of 47. "Why did you come back then? You didn't have to, after you remembered. You could have left it the way it was - it would have been uncomplicated."
"It would have been the logical thing to do," 47 agrees, without heat. Nika can't help the hard flinch. 47 glances back at her at the movement, and something odd flickers across the weary calm of his face. It looks - gentle, almost affectionate. It must just be the darkness of this alley, blurring reality to fit her own longings. "I thought we moved past this a while ago," he says, as if they had more history than the last few days and over two goddamn years of abandonment, and it would have sounded like an apology if she didn't know better.
"There is no we ," Nika retorts, off balance. Her frustration builds. "How are you already back to being so - so fucking you ." 47 glances at her again, clearly and infuriatingly not moved by more than mild interest at her despair. "You knew I would come, didn't you. You're not even surprised. Do you think I'm here to beg to come back? Because I'm not."
"I suppose even dreams have a limit," says 47 evenly, the sarcastic bastard. So much for trying to fucking convince her.
They walk in silence for a bit, Nika lagging behind. At least this is familiar, Nika tells herself. The man in the cemetery had been unsettling, dangerous. He had been everything that Nika had only ever seen in secret glimpses in 47 before, condensed and unguarded at once; it had been like staring into the sun. It had blinded her. It had brought back memories of all the times he had been unselfconsciously sweet, or startlingly generous, or kind in that understated way he had, whether in the form of books or vineyards or quiet conversations under bed sheets and open skies.
47's broad back moves ahead steadily in front of her. She should really stop following him.
She should really have known better.
The night sky opens up before them suddenly, the walls of the alley falling away to reveal a broad purple-black horizon propped up by an endless stretch of a low stone wall. There is the steady sound of lapping waves - it's not just the horizon then, but the edge between the sea and sky. A scattering of yellow and white lights lie in a long curve on the far left, condensed like sprinkles across the top of a low hill. The main town, in the distance. He's brought them to the wide waterfront path that circles back into the town, popular during the day with joggers and couples. There is no one now.
Nika pauses, then follows 47 as he continues on until they're standing by the stone wall. She makes sure to keep a good distance between them, to the point where it is probably insulting. 47 doesn't seem to notice or care, just looks out at the black sea, glimmering dully under the pale thin moon, breathing deep. The air is briny and fresh in Nika's lungs. The sea breeze is surprisingly strong, and brisk.
Perhaps it helps sober 47 up a little, because he turns then to look at her directly, properly for the first time tonight. She was wrong: the man from the cemetery is here, after all. It's like being put under a spotlight, a hand tilting up her chin gently, fingers winding into hers. 47 looks at her like he is cataloguing every strand of her hair in the wind, every uncertain tremble of her mouth, and the intimate intensity of his look makes her want to both step towards him and step back. Nika stays frozen, torn.
"You're looking more exquisite than usual," he says. His tone is matter-of-fact, nearly critical, as if this was not the first time he has ever complimented her appearance. 47 leans back against the low wall, his dark eyes nearly black as he watches her. "Is this what I should expect from now on?"
It's breathtaking arrogance from a man she just rejected not even a week ago. But there is no hint of smugness in 47's voice, or even amusement; he is watching her with a sort of calm resignation, as if she had an answer he already knew. Nika hugs herself with crossed arms, her old protective gesture. She doesn't even know her own answer to that.
"I'm only here because I wanted to stop you," she says, defensively. She scrambles to correct herself, "I mean I'm here because I don't think you should go back. To your employers, the Organisation. The fucking crazy psychos who made you or trained you or, whatever; you shouldn't go back. You shouldn't have gone back the first time. But you can't go back now, even more than before, they'll kill you. You must know they will. So… you can't go back," she finishes lamely.
"I know," 47 says, serene. "I'm not planning to. Come here."
Nika takes an instinctive step back. 47 is still watching her with a wordless intensity, but he doesn't rise or move to her. He tilts his head at her slightly, like a question. "This is serious," Nika manages after a beat, rallying back. "You can't - they really will kill you this time. Abdel says that he doesn't think your brain can handle it. There must be other people you can work for. Abdel will have contacts, maybe you can ask him?"
"Stop talking about the Morrocan," 47 says. There is a sudden hard edge in his voice. Nika shrinks back. Then she watches the shadows lining 47's jaw shift as he relaxes again. "I said I wasn't planning to," her man says, peaceable again. "I won't be taking on contracts any more. Come here."
It sounds like an order this time. Luckily, Nika is used to ignoring those from 47. "What do you mean, you won't be taking on contracts any more?" she says, disbelieving. 47 sighs, audible even over the rolling sounds of the waves by them. "For how long? What will you do?"
"I don't know," 47 says easily, as if he wasn't a man whose every waking hour had revolved around where and how to kill people for as long as Nika has known him. It was how they met, for fuck's sake. "But I won't go back to the Organisation or the life they gave me. You were right: I didn't change after Bellicoff. I won't make the same mistakes again. Now come here, please: I want a better look at you."
"You're already looking at me," Nika says distractedly. She can't process what he's said. She hugs herself tighter, bracing against the wind, the steady sound of crashing waves. The man who abandoned her is remaking himself before her with unbelievable words in the same calm, dispassionate tone that she has always associated with the truth from him, whether kind or brutal. It feels surreal. "I don't believe you," she says at last. Her voice comes out small, uncertain, but 47 hears her.
The smile he gives her is faint, and unreadable. "I know you won't," he says. He doesn't seem angry, or even offended. 47 looks like a man more drained than drunk now, pale under the shadowed moonlight. His tie is loose around his collar, looking close to black in the strange half-light. His suit is still perfectly fitted, precisely cut in lean lines of white and darks, but he doesn't look as intimidating now than the 47 built up in her memories. He looks -
Like me , something in Nika whispers. Like the way she looks when she catches herself in the hallway mirrors in Abdel's house these days: exhausted, heartsick.
I want to go home .
He is still looking at her like she is the only real thing in the world. "It's fine," 47 is telling her gently now, as if trying to comfort away the stricken look on her face - "You have no reason to believe me," and god she can't do this anymore. She can't stay angry; she can't pretend not to care.
Something must change in her face because 47 frowns and does that long blink like in the cemetery, shakes his head like wincing from a flared light. When he looks back at her, he looks almost puzzled. "Come here," he says again, and the force in his order is stronger this time.
Nika goes to him, of course. She gets stupid like that, around men named 47. Especially when they keep shattering her heart and rebuilding it and smashing it again. But at least she still has enough pride to stop while still a good arm's length away from him, her head tilted up defiantly.
"It's windy," she says, like it's the only reason she's come closer. "Lend me your jacket."
47's eyebrows go up; he looks startled. But then his lips quirk and he shrugs off his suit jacket obligingly after a beat. He offers the jacket to Nika with the collar hanging off his fingers like coat hooks. "You're going to ruin the illusion," he warns, and there is a hint of amusement in his voice like he's indulging her in a private joke.
Well, whatever. She needs all the pretend dignity she can get. Nika reaches out and takes the suit jacket.
She's suddenly aware of a frozen tension in the man before her.
47 looks at the jacket in her hand.
He looks at his empty outstretched hand.
He looks at her.
He looks at the jacket again.
Before Nika can retreat or push the jacket back at him for whatever offense she's caused, 47 is abruptly before her, towering over her, too close. His hand is hard around her wrist holding the jacket, to the point of pain if Nika wasn't distracted by the way 47 is looking at her hand, her face. If she thought his eyes were intense before, they are wild with a terrible focus now. "You're here," he says, and he sounds bewildered. "You're actually here."
Nika staggers back, or tries too; 47's other hand is hard around her forearm too, gripping her close. " Are you here?" he demands. His desperation is astonishing, and unmistakable.
"I - yes," Nika manages. " Yes . Of course I'm here." The man holding her looks dazed. A vague look passes across 47's face, his eyes un-focusing and going inwards in that disconcerting way like in the cemetery. A panic grips Nika. "I'm here," she insists. She puts her free hand against 47's face, her thumb against his cheekbone, trying to get him to look at her again. 47 blinks and his focus returns to her, though still distant and lost. "Look at me. I'm here."
47 seems to shudder, an imperceptible movement that she only feels because of how close they are. Then whatever he's seeing seems to clear and he is looking straight at her again. She had forgotten how both dark and bright his eyes could be, this close. 47 stares at her and she stares back, and she watches his eyes flicker down to her mouth, and she knows he is going to -
47 lets go of her, abruptly.
Nika sways forward a little before she catches herself. 47 looks pale from the strain of - whatever that was, but controlled again. She watches his throat move as he swallows.
"Nika," he says, and it is a different voice he's been using from before: it's careful, restrained. She would not have noticed if not for the stark contrast from the rest of the night. "What are you doing here?"
What is she doing here? That was his question?
"What the hell was that?" Nika says, appalled. "Where do you think I've been all night?"
47 says nothing. He looks like he's still trying to collect himself, if the tension radiating in his shoulders is saying anything. He is still watching her like before, but there is something sharply awake in his dark gaze now, charged and vibrant. He is so close to her that she has to look up, which just makes her hyper aware of how he hasn't looked away from her eyes, her mouth. Nika doesn't step away.
"Is that - was that one of the side effects," Nika says slowly, trying to think despite the electric weight of 47's eyes. "Have you. Do you hallucinate me?"
"Yes," 47 says after a pause. "What are you doing here at this hour?" He pulls his eyes away from her to raid the row of stumped buildings lining the far side of the path, flicking across the ridges of them as if he could see in the deeply sketched shadows of them. He even cuts a glance behind them, towards the black sea. "Where are the Moroccan's men?"
"They dropped me off and left," Nika says. "Don't change the subject. What else do you see? Have you seen a doctor?"
"They left you alone?" There is an unexpected edge of anger in 47's voice. His mouth is a flat line when he looks back at her. "He should have known better."
"They left me with you ," Nika points out. The man before her doesn't look any more pleased by that. The sheer absurdity of the situation suddenly strikes Nika. She swallows down the hysterical laugh just in time.
"Are you alright though - really alright," she presses on instead. "Does this happen a lot? Have you seen anyone about this?"
"I've seen you," 47 says, as if that is an adequate answer at all. He seems to hesitate, and his expression is guarded again despite the heat of his stare. "Why are you here now?" He sounds uncertain, so different from his relaxed self-assurance of only ten minutes before. "Did something happen?"
"No," Nika says, unsettled. "I mean - yes, I told you. I came to tell you I don't think you should go back. And… that's all."
It sounds like an excuse now that she says it like this, so small and tentative in the dark of the night and 47's stare. But 47 seems to accept it at face value, even if he doesn't look like he fully understands it.
"I won't," he says, frowning slightly. For a moment, he looks like he might say more, but then his frown clears, a careful impassivity taking over, and he falls silent. Nika waits anyway - for any elaboration, some explanation even; anything that continues their conversation from before. But 47 remains silent, only looking at her, until the silence is like a taut living thing between them, breathing in the same hitched rhythm as them, expanding out with the roll of the waves.
It is… familiar.
"God you're still so bad at this," Nika explodes at last. It should be anger making her snap, and part of it might be, but a lot of it also feels bizarrely like the underside of joy, an exultant ache from the sheer familiarity of something she used to hate and yet still miss enough that its return now, here, feels like coming home. She's losing her mind. "How can you still be so bad at this, after - everything?" 47 still says nothing though, Nika thinks hysterically, he is also starting to look a little like a kicked puppy. "Do you need more whiskey to talk? Should we go back to that bar?"
"It's closed," 47 says, and it is such a terrible answer that Nika does laugh, a hiccuping attack of giggles that makes 47 look even more lost, the poor bastard, and Nika laugh harder. The wind picks up, blowing her hair into her face, as if also shaking with the nerves of it all. 47 reaches to pull it away, still looking lost at her laughter, and freezes part way when he seems to realise belatedly what he's doing.
Nika quietens, biting her lip to chase away the last of the hysteria. 47 seems to wait for her to pull away, and when she doesn't, he reaches in slowly to tuck her flyaway hair behind her ears, telegraphing every movement. His fingers are unbearably gentle. Nika catches them under hers, still caught behind her ears, and wonders if 47 can feel her heart pounding through her fingertips.
47 looks about as dazed as she feels: a first. "What do you want me to do?" he asks, low, and it sounds like a prayer. "Just tell me."
She doesn't know. She does. I want to go home , Nika thinks. Perhaps drunkenness is catching.
"Abdel said to ask you for the way back," she manages instead. She sounds breathless. She feels lit from the inside, fireworks and tinder, burning that stupid happiness that is deaf to all logic. 47 can probably see. "I mean - if you don't mind."
47's palm is cupped against her cheek, warm and calloused. "I don't mind," he says after a long beat, as if he wasn't holding her close, as if he wasn't looking at her mouth. Nika tilts her face up, shivering.
Then the spell breaks and 47 is pulling away, reluctant. She thinks she feels his thumb stroke her cheekbone once before he lets her go. Then they're standing apart again, and pretending they aren't pulling the shattered pieces of themselves together.
Well, that's what she's doing, anyway. 47 looks about as inscrutable as ever again, though there is a new light in his eyes when he looks at her.
"I can't go to the Moroccan's residences," he tells her, returning to the calm precision he always had when dealing with logistics. "But I can bring you to his gunroom. Can you contact him from there?"
"Why can't you go to the house?"
"That would be… unwise," 47 says, and Nika is struck by the peculiar deja vu of Abdel saying the same thing about 47, only earlier tonight. "Do you have a way to reach him?"
"No," admits Nika. "I didn't think about it. I never really needed to, before."
47 frowns. "How do you contact him if you're in danger?"
"I don't; I don't really leave the house." 47's frown deepens. Nika offers, quickly, "It's fine; I think I know the way back from the gunroom-"
"No ," 47 says. His tone eases again: "I'll wait with you until the store opens. I don't mind," he adds, seeing the surprise on her face.
It's still a couple of hours until dawn. 47 looks resolutely closed-mouthed again, despite the way he is still looking at her; it doesn't seem like a return to their previous future-altering conversation when he thought she was just a figment of his imagination is possible. God he really is so fucking bad at this, Nika thinks, and is dismayed by the surge of affection that comes with that.
A sudden certainty grips Nika, like madness. Because you know what? She used to be good at this, damnit. "Or," she says, casual, "we could wait at your place. Is it far?"
She might as well have struck 47. "No," he says, after a stunned pause that trembles under Nika's skin. Nika smiles as if her heart isn't suddenly trying to break out of her ribs, as if she could be as confident and indifferent as 47 on any other day.
"Alright," she says. "Let's go."
It takes close to 20 minutes to walk to 47's accommodation. It's enough time for the maniac energy in Nika to settle down into a low burn, until she feels like on the dangerous cusp between exhilaration and a shaking black out. She has no idea how the man next to her is feeling: he still smells strongly of alcohol, and his movements are still on the overly deliberate side, but he doesn't seem that drunk otherwise. They walk in silence, Nika feeling the 47 watching her outright the whole way, so unlike his detachment in their first walk. It's better than words. The low exhaustion in her blood seems to simmer away every time she feels him looking at her.
The place 47 is staying at is a small hotel, unremarkable and hidden in the back of a quiet street, recognisable only as such from a faded sign overhead a steep short flight of stairs that lead into the floors of apartments. It's not at all like the glamorous five star extravaganzas that dominated most of her past stays with 47, in a different life; there are no marble floors or lush curtained cityscape views. Instead, the reception on the first floor is bare, and deserted. There is no elevator. The room, when 47 lets them in, is clean and perfectly tidied with 47's trademark precision, but small: there is a modest double bed by a frosted window, a simple bed stand next to it, the outlines of an in-built wardrobe against a wall, and a half-open door which shows a glimpse of a small bathroom. There is nothing soft or unnecessary.
A familiar black carry-on case sits carefully at the side of the front door, probably stacked with weapons and dormant explosives. A stupid thing to feel nostalgic over.
"I didn't expect company," 47 says. It's a statement, made simply; yet there is a hint of apology in it. Nika wonders if all those over-the-top hotels had been for her, something that she realises now would have been uncharacteristically indulgent for a man like 47. She pushes the improbable thought away, shaken. 47 hesitates, the both of them looking at each other in the quiet room, then says, "You can have the bed." There is literally nothing else in the room for him, that thoughtful idiot.
It bears pointing out, Nika thinks. The exhaustion banked from days of sleep deprivation is making her lightheaded - or perhaps it is just the effect of being in a small space with 47 again. Perhaps it is this that leads her to say, "Don't be an idiot, we've shared before," before shrugging off the suit jacket loose around her shoulders, pushing off her slip-ons. She gets into bed without much grace, equally too drained and too nervous for seduction, and scoots to the edge of the bed, by the window.
She curls up on her side, one arm under the pillow, and watches 47.
47 stands still for a long time, looking back at her. He has that uncharacteristically uncertain, lost look again, except his focus is still razor sharp on her: it is not that terrifying vagueness from before. He is still here, with her. Nika is sure; she is watching him carefully.
He undoes his tie slowly, at last, and drapes it by the bedside table. He slips off his shoes.
The bed dips when he gets into bed. It is not a large bed, which means they are very close; it may be why 47 chooses to sit up instead, leaning against the thin headboard, looking down at her. He folds his hands across his stomach, she notices, carefully away from her.
It is, bizarrely, not unlike all the daydreams she's had of him recently, sitting by her bed in Abdel's house. The nervous electricity running along Nika's sides fades. The deep hush of the night in this small room settles like a thick blanket. After a while, Nika's eyelids fall half mast; it's a struggle to keep them open, to look back into 47's haunted eyes. It could be all just another dream in her room, except there is no unhappy ache pulling her away from sleep, fracturing any chance of oblivion. She'll deal with the fallout of all this indulgent stupidity tomorrow. Tonight, she's home at last.
"Tell me about K9-47," she mumbles, into her pillow. A selfish request: she just wants to hear his voice again.
She dimly registers the surprise of the man beside her; the pause before his voice starts, low gorgeously familiar. The words are just sound, the deep warmth of 47's voice like a hand on her cheek again, and Nika sinks gratefully into sleep without even noticing.
/
A/N: thanks to everyone who left a review :)