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There is a bomb. It was supposed to be a simple weapons cache, but what they find is a mound of explosives, wired to blow. It is more than enough to destroy the surrounding block, and with it any hope of a lasting ceasefire. Nile and Booker stay behind to try to disarm the detonator, while Nicky and Joe take off to clear the rest of the building.
They've just turned a corner, Nicky a few steps ahead of him, when the doors at the end of the hallway fly open and there is a burst of gunfire. Nicky falls to the ground and Joe's heart begins to pound, but he focuses on taking out the shooter—one lone guard watching the exit. Joe checks to make sure there aren’t any others, then drops to his knees at Nicky’s side and waits for him to wake up.
He waits and waits and waits.
There is the crackle of static and then a voice. It takes Joe a minute to realize that it's Booker, talking over the radio.
"—disarmed the bomb, but we need to move. Nile will meet us with the car at the loading dock. Nicky? Joe? Can you hear me?"
Joe feels like he’s moving through molasses as he taps his earpiece. "I need help," he says. His voice comes out so broken sounding that he barely recognizes it.
Booker pauses. "Where are you?"
"North entrance, near the double doors."
"I'm coming to you. Stay there."
Where else would I go? he thinks, a little hysterical.
Minutes later—or hours, maybe a lifetime, he can't tell anymore—Booker rounds the corner and finds him kneeling beside Nicky's body. Joe hears his sharp intake of breath as he skids to a halt.
"Jesus." Joe doesn't say anything, just lets Booker crouch down and examine Nicky, gently tilting his head to the side to find the exit wound.
"How long has it been?" Booker asks.
Joe tries to collect his thoughts and place himself in time. He works backwards and comes up with, "At least five minutes."
Booker doesn't say it, but it's clear he's thinking the same thing as Joe: It's been too long. A simple gunshot shouldn't be this slow to heal.
"Nile," Booker says shakily over the radio, "can you get to the alley by the north entrance?"
To Joe he says, "I'll take his feet."
They make their way awkwardly down the hall, carrying Nicky's body between them. Joe keeps his gaze forward, counting the ceiling tiles passing overhead to stop himself from looking down and having to see Nicky's lifeless eyes staring back.
When they get outside, Nile is waiting beside the car. She makes a muffled little shout when she sees them, slapping her hands over her mouth to stop its escape.
The drive back to the safe house is silent. Nile’s knuckles are tight on the wheel and Booker is turned around in the passenger seat, like he’s worried Joe will throw himself out of the car if he doesn't keep his eyes on him. Joe ignores them both. He cradles Nicky’s head in his lap, stroking his hair over and over, trying to smooth down the cowlick at the back that never quite lies flat.
They lay his body out in the living room. "Nothing happens until tomorrow," Joe says. "Just...just in case." Even as he says it though, he reaches down to close Nicky's eyes, and he knows he's really gone. Joe sinks to the floor and lets his mind go mercifully blank.
Sometime around midnight, Booker puts a hand on his shoulder. "Come on, Joe. You need to get some sleep. Nile and I will stay with him."
Distantly, Joe feels himself get up, his body moving seemingly without his input. He staggers into the bedroom. The thought of trying to sleep, knowing Nicky won't be there when he wakes up, makes him feel sick. He doesn't bother changing out of his clothes, just lies down on top of the covers and stares for a long time at swirling patterns in the dark.
Joe doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when he jolts awake with a start it is morning, sunlight streaming through the window. Yesterday’s events come rushing back to him and he curls in on himself, overcome by waves of grief.
There is a sound from the ensuite bathroom, and Nicky steps out, toweling off his hair.
For a moment, Joe thinks he is hallucinating, but then he is on his feet and barreling towards Nicky. He wraps his arms around him, and he is solid and real and alive.
"How—" Joe cuts himself off, instead running his hands over Nicky’s head, checking for signs of the gunshot wound.
"Bad dream?" Nicky asks mildly.
"You died," he says, and Nicky’s smile wavers for a moment.
"It was just a dream. See, I’m here." He steps back and does a little turn, lets Joe inspect him. "You should start getting ready. Nile says we are leaving in an hour."
Joe freezes. "Leaving?" He looks down for the first time and sees that he is no longer in his bloodstained clothes, but rather the T-shirt and pajama pants he woke up in the day before.
"The weapons stockpile. We decided to go today before they try to move it, remember?" He studies Joe closely. "Are you sure you're alright?"
Joe waves him off. "Yes, I'm fine. It was only a bad dream, like you said. Let me just—" He nods at the bathroom, stepping past Nicky and shutting the door.
He stares at himself in the mirror, searching for any evidence that yesterday—today—had really happened, but he doesn’t find any. Maybe it really was a dream. When they dreamt of each other before they met, it had always happened in real time, but who's to say that there couldn't also be premonitions? The rules of their immortality have never been clear; maybe they dream of each other's final deaths as well as their first. There is a nagging voice inside his head reminding him he hadn't dreamt Andy or Quynh's deaths, but he brushes it aside.
The why is not important, he decides. All that matters now is that he has a chance to stop it.
The day unfolds much like it did before. Joe doesn't mention his dream again, too afraid that speaking it out loud will make it come true. They leave the car in a parking structure adjacent to the building where the separatist group is operating. Joe thinks through his plan: everything had gone smoothly until that hallway. All he needs to do is get there first and take out the shooter. Just protect Nicky and get them both home. They can deal with the rest later.
Once again, the room is full of explosives.
"Jesus," Booker says, and for a second Joe flashes back to Nicky dead on the floor.
"This is a lot more than a weapons cache," Nile says. "Booker, can you disarm it?"
"I think so, but I need time."
"I'll cover you. Joe, Nicky—make sure the building's secure and then clear the surrounding areas just in case. No offense, Booker," she adds.
Nicky nods and turns to go, and Joe's pulse starts racing. He steels himself and takes off after him.
They work methodically, checking each room, and this too goes exactly like before. As they come up on a blind corner, Joe knows it leads to the hallway with the double doors that he saw in his dream. He puts a hand on Nicky's shoulder to stop him. "Let me go first."
Nicky looks at him curiously but hangs back. Joe peers around the corner and the way is clear. He runs down the hall, blood rushing in his ears. He's almost to the doors when he hears a gunshot, and then everything goes dark.
Joe wakes up. For one terrifying moment, he thinks the worst has happened: that he got shot before he could save Nicky and he's going to open his eyes and find him dead again. Then he registers the feeling of fabric beneath his hand. He is in bed in the safe house, sun on his face and Nicky stepping out of the bathroom, toweling off his hair.
Nicky says, "Oh good, you're awake," at the same moment Joe blurts out:
"I think I'm in a time loop."
They sit down with Nile and Booker, and Joe tries to explain. Nile is immediately on board, just cracks a Groundhog Day joke and starts talking strategy. Nicky and Booker take a little more convincing.
When Joe gets to the part about Nicky dying—Nicky staying dead—he hesitates. Nicky has always accepted the conditional nature of their immortality more gracefully than Joe. He worries that if Nicky finds out he died, he’ll latch onto it as fate—predestined and immutable. Joe doesn't want to risk giving any fuel to his self-sacrificial streak. Instead, he tells them that he was the one that got shot, and then woke up again in bed. He feels a little guilty for the lie, but if he’s wrong about this it’s not like they’ll remember anyway.
Nicky looks at him when he says it, an inscrutable expression on his face, and Joe has a flash of panic that he has somehow figured out the truth. But that afternoon Nicky still lets Joe go down the hall first. He dies in a hail of gunfire and forgets the moment of doubt.
It continues on like that, until the sixth time Joe wakes up on the same day and he thinks, Enough. Please, no more. He turns over, staring at the wall, and he stays there as Nicky crosses over to him and places a gentle hand on his shoulder.
"Joe? It's time to get up. Nile says we are leaving in an hour."
Joe doesn't reply. He keeps staring at the wall, feeling the mattress dip behind him as Nicky kneels on the bed.
"Joe? Yusuf? Are you alright?" Nicky's worried face appears in view as he feels Joe's forehead, checks his pupils, but Joe keeps staring through him. None of this is real, anyway. Why should he keep reliving it as if it were? Why can't he spend this eternal day in bed with Nicky and let the world outside burn?
Nicky strokes a hand down his cheek and says something Joe doesn't catch before he stands and leaves. There is the sound of more footsteps and speaking in hushed tones.
"Joe?" It’s Nile this time. "Joe, you’re really scaring us. Please, can you tell us what’s the matter?"
Joe drifts, watching specks of dust dancing in the sunbeam coming through the window. Behind him he can hear whispered snippets of conversations.
"—something seriously wrong—can’t leave him here alone—has to happen today—"
That’s enough to jolt him out of it, because if they make him stay here, if Nicky goes down that hallway without him, then Nicky will die, just like the first time, and Joe can’t risk that.
"No!" He shoots upright, startling a gasp out of Nile who is still sitting beside him on the bed. "I’m alright. I’m coming with you. Just give me a couple minutes to get ready."
He doesn’t have time to convince them of the truth, so he tries to explain it away as just a premonition, a bad feeling. He submits to their examinations, lets them check him over for hidden unhealed head injuries, and eventually they acquiesce. Nile watches him in the rearview mirror almost the whole drive to the car park, until Booker says, "Eyes on the road," and she reluctantly looks away.
As they are unloading weapons from the trunk, she passes Joe a handgun. "Stay with the car and be ready for a quick getaway."
"What? No, I need to go inside!" He knows he is not helping his case by sounding so desperate, but he cannot let Nicky go in there without him.
"It wasn’t a suggestion, Joe," Nile snaps. Then more gently she says, "I believe that you think you're fine, but if you're not, and something were to happen…"
She's worried that his freak out this morning is a sign of impending mortality, he realizes, and he wants to laugh at the irony.
"Just, wait here and stay on the comms. We'll call for backup if we need it, I promise."
Booker and Nicky are already jimmying the lock on the door that leads to the stairwell, and Nile takes off after them with one last backwards glance at Joe.
Joe waits until they are out of sight. He prays that his theory is correct as he presses the barrel of the gun beneath his chin and pulls the trigger.
He wakes up in bed and lets out a sigh of relief.
Joe starts playing it fast and loose after that. He spends the equivalent of a week just killing himself as soon as he wakes up, letting the loop reset over and over again. He tries sneaking out first thing in the morning to go dismantle the bomb alone, and he gets hit by a bus for his trouble. Another time he and Nicky avoid the final hallway entirely, heading straight for the stairs instead, only for Joe to trip on the top step. As he tumbles downward, the hard tile floor rising up to meet him, he thinks, you have got to be fucking kidding me.
Slowly, he begins to figure out the rules. The loop resets each time he dies, and saving Nicky always results in his own death. If Joe enters the building where the bomb is, he cannot seem to leave it alive. Except you did leave once, his mind traitorously reminds him, but Joe pushes the thought away.
He is never able to talk the others out of going on the mission, and he refuses to let them go without him. Sometimes he tells them about the loop. He lays out everything he has learned through all these iterations of the day (well, almost everything; he still keeps Nicky's death to himself). On those occasions, they will carefully plan and strategize and account for all the variables, and still Joe dies and wakes up the same morning.
Over and over again it continues. If time were moving normally, he's sure that months would have passed by now. He tries every possible permutation—save for one—but nothing makes it stop.
Joe dies.
He wakes up.
And something in him snaps. He doesn’t think he can take any more of this. He wrenches back the covers and climbs out of bed, still pulling on his clothes as he slips out of the bedroom.
"Joe?" Nicky calls after him, and for one crazy moment Joe entertains the idea of knocking him out and taking him along. But he doesn’t know exactly when in the day Nicky loses his immortality, and he can’t bear the thought of actually hurting him.
He stalks across the living room, ignoring Nile and Booker’s questions, just grabbing the keys off the counter and heading for the car. He tears down the driveway and peels out into the street. His phone starts ringing almost immediately, but he digs it from his pocket and tosses it out the window.
He drives and drives and drives. At some point in the afternoon, the pop song on the radio is interrupted by a breaking news bulletin. He flips between stations, but they are all playing the same thing.
"Reports coming in of a massive explosion...city center devastated...hundreds feared dead...peace talks stalled amid scenes of carnage—"
Joe turns off the radio. He drives in silence for hours, and when he gets too tired to drive, he pulls off to the side of the road and starts walking. Finally, he comes to a stop. He slumps against a fence post and stares up at the stars.
Something is poking his shoulder, and Joe turns and sees a jagged nail sticking out of the post. His gaze lingers on it, considering. This is the longest he’s ever stayed alive during a loop. It’s now hours past the time when Nicky was shot, and he wonders if maybe...
He takes a deep breath and swipes his palm hard and fast across the nail. He hisses in pain and turns his hand over to see, but the red, angry line of the cut is already beginning to heal. For the first time since this all began, Joe starts to cry. His body shakes with deep, wracking sobs as he sinks to the ground. He stays like that until between one shuddering breath and the next, he wakes up in bed.
Joe sticks to the script after that. The loops remain the same—Nile and Booker dismantle the bomb, Nicky and Joe clear the building, and Joe makes sure he’s the one who gets shot when they turn down that final hallway. It’s not giving up, or at least that’s what he tells himself, but time begins to blur as he keeps going through the motions and allows a hazy acceptance to settle over him. There is a tiny part of him, the little voice in the back of his head he pretends to ignore, that doesn’t entirely mind. As long as he is trapped here, then he doesn’t have to face the truth of Nicky’s mortality: that even if he figures out how to save Nicky and escape the loop, Joe will still eventually have to watch him die.
He knows what Nicky would say to that, which is why he never tells him.
Joe wakes up, and the nightstand is gone.
There is a moment of panic where he thinks that something has gone wrong, that he has failed and it’s finally tomorrow, but then Nicky steps out of the bathroom.
Throughout the day he notices other small absences. The fruit bowl on the table is missing, along with one of the chairs in the living room, and the broken-down truck that usually sits across the street is gone as well. Maybe this is a sign that he's finally starting to crack. The day's events still play out like usual, though, and he dies in the hallway with Nicky safely behind him.
After that, a creeping uneasiness permeates each loop. At first he could deny it, but now it's becoming clear that with every new reset more and more things have gone missing. And not just simple objects: people, trees, even entire buildings. It's like the world around him is being slowly dismantled and he's the only one who notices.
He knows that time is running out. The rules have changed, or maybe he’s been playing the wrong game all along. He gathers everyone together at the kitchen table and tells them everything—about Nicky dying and the start of the loop, all the ways he’s tried to escape, how now it’s breaking down and the only way out is the one he doesn’t think he’s brave enough to take.
"Please," he begs, "tell me that you see something I don’t. Tell me that I’ve missed something, that there’s another way."
But none of them do. Booker just looks pale, while Nile says, "Oh, Joe," her eyes welling with tears. Nicky, clearly shaken, stands and retreats to the bedroom.
Joe drops his head into his hands. There is some grim satisfaction in the fact that they all reached the same conclusion. That even working together they couldn’t come up with anything else.
Nile goes to check on Nicky. Booker stays at the table with Joe, close but not crowding him. "What are you going to do?" he asks.
Joe leans back and shrugs. He feels empty, spent. "What would you do?"
Booker gives a hollow laugh. "Probably keep looping forever until I destroyed the whole space-time continuum. But you’ve always been a better man than me. Joe," he says gently, "you need to talk to Nicky. If you’re waiting for his permission—or absolution—you have to know he’d willingly give it to you. He would never ask you to stay here like this for him."
"It’s not just for him." Joe pauses. "I still have my immortality," he says softly.
"Well—shit."
"So much for destiny, huh?"
Booker gives him a sad smile. "Just—go talk to Nicky, okay?"
Joe sighs, knowing he’s right. He gets up and heads into the bedroom. Nile steps past him as he enters and gives his shoulder a comforting squeeze. Nicky is sitting on the bed, his hands clasped between his knees. He looks up. "Joe, I—"
"No, Nicky, before you say anything—I’m sorry. I know it’s a lot to take in all at once. Let's not decide anything right now. I’ll tell you everything again the next time and we can talk it over. Just, promise me you’ll try to stay alive today."
"I promise," Nicky says.
Joe believes Nicky, he really does, so it’s just a precaution when he throws himself from the car and into oncoming traffic as soon as Nile turns onto the expressway.
They don’t talk about it during the next loop, though, because Joe wakes up and Booker is gone. When he walks out into the living room, Nile is sitting there alone.
"Where's Booker?"
"Who?" Nile asks, her brow furrowed in confusion, and then Joe starts to panic. He searches through the house, but it’s like Booker has been erased. There is no sign anywhere that he ever existed at all.
The mission is still on, and—too shaken to end things early—Joe has no choice but to go along. They manage to stop the bomb and Nicky doesn't die, but it's entirely too close a call. As Joe is choking on his own blood with a large shard of glass in his neck, he has to wonder if this isn't maybe fate trying to force his hand.
He wakes up and the sun is warm on his face. Joe opens his eyes and the room is now completely empty except for the bed. All the furniture is gone, the curtains, the carpet. It's just a plain, white box. Joe sits up as Nicky steps out of the bathroom, and Joe can see through the open door that there is nothing inside. Somehow, he knows that this is it. His last chance.
"You should get dressed. We’re leaving in an hour."
"Nicky—" he starts, but the words catch in his throat.
Nicky crosses over to him, looking worried. "What’s the matter?"
"I need to tell you something," Joe finally chokes out.
Nicky swallows audibly and nods once, like he’s steeling himself. "So do I."
Well. That’s new.
Nicky sits down beside him on the bed. He doesn’t say anything, just takes a deep breath and pulls aside the neck of his shirt. There, just below his collarbone, is a small, purple bruise. Joe inhales sharply. Last night, a lifetime ago, he remembers sucking hard at that spot as Nicky moved inside him.
"I—I haven’t tested it yet. I didn’t want to say anything until I was certain, but then you said—" Nicky falters, looking unsure. "That is what you were going to tell me, right? That it’s stopped for you too?"
Joe would be furious with Nicky for hiding this, for needlessly putting himself in danger, if only his heart weren’t breaking in his chest. He takes Nicky’s hands and starts to explain.
When he finishes, Nicky is staring at him numbly. "How long has it been going on?"
"I don't know anymore. Too long." His vision starts to swirl with tears, but he blinks them away.
“Yusuf," Nicky says, and he wraps his arms around him. "I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with this alone." Joe presses his face into Nicky's shoulder as he continues, "But you can't go on this way. It isn't living, and it isn't what I want for you. Or for myself. If it's my time, you have to let me go."
"I’m not ready," Joe says, the tears now falling freely.
Nicky pulls back to cup his face in his hands. He brushes his thumbs along Joe’s cheeks. "No one ever is. I think it is the one way in which we have always been maddeningly ordinary." He gives Joe a sad smile, and Joe leans in to kiss him.
They kiss for what feels like ages, moving against each other gently—all tenderness, no heat. Joe already knows every inch of Nicky’s body, but he touches him like he’s trying to memorize it again. He needs to remember this moment. When he comes apart in Nicky’s arms, the tears on his face aren’t only his own.
After, they lie pressed against each other, their legs tangled together. Nicky watches him run a finger across the bite mark on his chest. "I wish we could have grown old together," Joe says.
Nicky looks up at him then. "I know it wasn't me, not exactly, but still—I'm sorry I didn’t tell you I’d stopped healing. I’m sorry that I would have left you without saying goodbye."
And maybe he has been wrong about the loop, Joe thinks. Maybe it was supposed to be a gift, not a curse.
Time is running short and eventually they have to get out of bed. Joe’s clothes vanished in the reset along with everything else, so he gets dressed again in the pajamas he woke up in. As they are about to leave, he turns towards Nicky. "I need to ask you a favor, but I worry that it's selfish."
"Anything," Nicky says. "Between the two of us, mine is going to be the easy part."
Joe takes a deep breath. "I don't think that I can watch it happen. Not again, not knowing it's the end, that you're—"
Nicky cuts him off with a soft sound and a hand on his chest. "You don't have to. I wouldn't want you to. You'll be with me, that's all I need."
When they open the door to the bedroom, it leads directly outside. Nile is nowhere to be found. A single street runs straight from their door to a building rising in the distance, maybe half a mile away. Everything else is gone.
"It’s not usually like this, is it?" Nicky asks, taking in Joe’s stunned expression. All Joe can do is shake his head as they start walking down the street.
When they reach the building it is deserted, and they walk right in through the front door. In the room where normally they would find the bomb, there is just a single block of C4 and a detonator. As they make their way upstairs, all around them parts of the building begin to shift and disappear. Whatever force has trapped him here is breaking down, and Joe wants to dissolve with it, to let it tear him apart into atoms as it implodes. He also knows with a bone-deep certainty that he cannot. That the loop is inherently unstable, and letting it unravel completely would destroy more than just him.
They turn a corner, and up ahead lies the hallway. Nicky pauses for just a moment, looking at Joe and nodding, before he charges forward. It would be so easy to reach out and stop him, grab his arm and pull him back to safety, but Joe forces himself to stay put and let Nicky overtake him. He closes his eyes, preparing for the gunshots that will come when Nicky reaches the doors at the end of the hall.
Except no shots ring out.
He opens his eyes. In front of him the doors are gone, the hallway now a dead end that Nicky is frantically searching for an exit. Joe turns to check behind him—the way they came is disintegrating. The floor and walls are flaking off as the nothingness starts to creep in. He looks down and finds a gun in his hand, and his stomach drops.
"Nicky," Joe says.
Nicky freezes at the sound of his voice and turns to face him. When he sees Joe standing there, holding the gun, he seems to reach the same conclusion. Everything else has fallen away, the sequence of events stripped down to the barest component parts. They are the only players left in the scene, but the ending hasn't changed.
Darkness is closing in from all sides now; there isn't much time. They walk towards each other, meeting in the middle of the last stretch of hallway, seemingly floating in space.
"I don’t suppose I can do it for you?" Nicky asks. He reaches for the gun and his fingers pass through the barrel.
Joe hears himself make a miserable, anguished sound. "I guess it has to be me."
"You must admit, there is a certain symmetry. My first and last deaths both belonging to you." Nicky’s tone is light, but his hand shakes as he wraps it around Joe’s and raises both their arms to press the gun against his own chest. Joe takes ragged, shuddering breaths as Nicky steps forward and brings his free hand up to cup the back of Joe’s head.
"There is not enough time to tell you everything you have meant to me, but you know it all already," Nicky says.
"I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you," Joe chokes out. In his peripheral vision, he can see the advancing emptiness.
"You saved me over a thousand years ago when you first gave me your heart, and every day after that when you let me keep it."
"I love you," Joe says. It sounds too inadequate, not even close to encompassing all that he feels, but he needs Nicky to hear it, one last time.
Nicky smiles at him, radiant. "You've done so well, my love," he whispers, pulling Joe towards him. "Now close your eyes and let me take care of the rest."
Icy tendrils of darkness are curling around their ankles as the floor begins to melt away. He takes one last look at Nicky’s face, then surges forward to kiss him. As their lips touch, Joe feels the steady pressure of Nicky’s finger against his on the trigger. He squeezes his eyes shut and braces for the recoil.
Joe wakes up.
It is nighttime, and he is lying on top of the covers wearing yesterday’s clothes. He stays there, waiting, until the sun comes up and he knows that he’s alone.