Chapter Text
For Nigel to exist alongside Adam, as happily as they have for years now - fucking years - it requires a bit of distance. Not from Adam, by most measures, no. Even after three fucking years Adam can hardly cross the room without Nigel reeling him back in and sticking his tongue in his mouth. He hardly lays down in bed before Nigel is laying heavy atop him. And Nigel never once wakes up without seeking Adam for a kiss, even when Nigel’s hangovers make him feel like he’s shoved icepicks in his eyes.
Even when he’s out of the country, he sends him a text when he wakes up.
He’s learned how to make their phones show kissy faces.
But a distance has formed between Adam’s side of their work and Nigel’s own. It isn’t that he doesn’t want to know, it’s that the onslaught of details needs thinning for Nigel to be able to grasp it, examine it, and decide on a direction. If Adam is the faucet through which information flows, Nigel is the valve that brings it to a trickle.
Sometimes.
And sometimes the whole fucking pipe just blows and Adam talks himself hoarse.
Were Nigel feeling therapeutic about the whole fucking thing, he’d call it a healthy distance. Adam works uninterrupted by Nigel’s groping hands and nagging curiosity, and Nigel doesn’t have to worry about the vast majority of Adam’s clicking unless it’s something that needs attention. Though the concept of balancing his work with another is still goddamn unnerving to Nigel, they work well together.
They really fucking do.
And not once has that thought ever waylaid his curiosity about all those goddamn clicks.
Adam is still on the couch when Nigel comes home, same position, down to the turn of his foot against the cushion, headphones on listening to the white noise that Adam claims calms his mind enough to work for longer periods of time than he can without it. There is tea on the table beside him, cold now, most likely made and forgotten hours before, and his hands aren’t moving over the keys.
Not quickly.
They shift in intermittent machine-gun bursts before Adam just waits, does nothing but watch the screen before him.
He isn’t hacking. So Nigel comes up behind him to peel his headphones free and kiss Adam’s cheek. He jerks so hard the laptop nearly upends onto the floor, and with wild eyes Adam seeks behind himself to look at Nigel.
“You scared me,” he says, unnecessarily, and then settles, calm again, back to the couch to accept Nigel’s greeting properly. “What time is it? I thought you said you were going to be out late today.”
His screen blinks beneath a keystroke and switches windows. Nigel squints at it, rows of numbers from this region and that. And not, it seems, what Adam was working on before.
Or just another part of it.
Nigel draws a breath and exhales it against Adam’s hair, rubbing his cheek into freshly-washed curls, clean and unfragranced. Only the scent of Adam, there, when Nigel buries his nose and kisses his head.
“I wanted to surprise you, darling,” he says. “Not scare you.”
Adam’s smile is warm when it comes and he nuzzles back against Nigel. He lifts a hand to close down the screen before reaching behind himself to slip his fingers into Nigel’s hair and gently tug it.
“I’m glad you’re home,” he says, and shifts in increments until he can kiss Nigel properly. There is still that lingering tension in the air - simply from the response to Nigel’s approach, the change of screen and the immediate closing of it - but Adam’s kiss is entirely genuine, enthusiastic, warm.
Just a surprise gone wrong, nothing more.
“We should get take-out for dinner,” Adam mumbles against him.
Nigel blinks at this, and manages a laugh. It dispels a little of the thickness in the air, and a little more parts when their lips do, too, pressed together as Nigel frames Adam’s cheeks with his hands. An upside-down kiss, lingering, before Nigel steps away with a glance to the computer.
“What’s the occasion? You never want fucking take-out,” he says, bending to pull off his shoes and toss them aside.
“Because it takes twenty minutes to get here and I can get you hard in ten,” Adam replies, stretching out on the couch and setting the computer aside, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands before arching his neck back to watch Nigel upside down in their apartment. He’s missed him, quite desperately. Even when Nigel just goes out for a day, not a week or a month - never again, they make sure to plan around things like that - Adam still waits up for him, and when he can’t, still pulls him into bed, warm and sleepy.
“If you like.”
Adam rolls to his stomach, folding his arm to the couch. He sets his chin on it. “I would like,” he says. “Take-out and getting you hard.”
“Doesn’t take ten fucking minutes,” Nigel mutters.
“Not exactly, no. On average.”
“Fucking Adam.” He tugs open a drawer that in any other New York apartment would be filled to bursting with take-out menus, and takes out the one that they’ve bothered to keep. They make a hamburger that’s agreeable to Adam, add cheese, no tomatoes or lettuce but onions are okay. Fries. Strawberry milkshake.
Nigel gets the same just because it’s easier that way.
He pads back barefoot past Adam’s outstretched fingers and pats himself down, before reaching for Adam’s cellphone instead.
1-1-1-0 to unlock it. Part of Nigel’s name in binary, apparently. Adam tried to explain it once - more than fucking once - but he couldn’t agree that zero should be off when it’s clearly fucking on, and one should be off because it’s clearly fucking closed.
Their conversation hadn’t gotten very far, but the code was always the same.
A quick dial to the place and an easy order. The phone vibrates when Nigel hangs up and by muscle memory alone he opens the message. It takes a moment for it to register that it isn’t for him, and that he doesn’t understand what it means at all. There is a series of letters and numbers, a date, a time, and a code with a question mark. Nigel stares a moment longer before locking the phone and setting it aside, shifting to kneel over Adam as he squirms to roll onto his back again.
“You got a text.”
“I’ll check it later,” Adam grins, slipping his hands immediately down to work at Nigel’s belt, knees already drawn up around him and eyes hooded in preemptive pleasure. Despite Adam’s shyness in most things, he seems to have next to no qualms about opening the door to a delivery guy wearing nothing but his underwear and a boner.
God bless Adam fucking Raki.
His belt pulls free and already he’s half-hard. Adam presses his palms between Nigel’s legs and rubs firm as they kiss, Nigel holding himself up with his hands on the arm of the couch, set to either side of Adam’s head. He groans against his little bird’s lips and rocks against him.
It’s just business.
The text and the computer.
It’s just fucking business.
And Adam will make Nigel aware when he needs to do so.
Nigel sets a warm hand against Adam’s throat and turns his head aside. Holding Adam’s earlobe between his teeth he sucks until Adam’s body stiffens towards the ceiling and he whimpers. Cheeks smeared in ruddy scarlet, Adam bites his lip and releases it, breath jerking faster as he palms harder at Nigel’s cock.
“Ten fucking minutes,” Nigel mutters. “Fucking bullshit, Adam.”
Adam just laughs, working Nigel’s pants open next to shove his hand into his underwear and stroke him properly.
“On average.”
“Based on fucking what?”
“Hangovers.”
Nigel laughs, breathing a curse that sounds like worship against Adam’s skin as he moves to work Adam’s pants off too, delighting in the undulating arches up against him, the needy little gasps and sounds and grasping hands. He is beautiful. He is entirely Nigel’s to do with as he pleases and Nigel finds he rarely wants much more than to give Adam anything he asks for.
“I missed you,” Adam breathes against him, ducking his head to watch them both rutting in their underwear like teenagers. “Don’t go anywhere tomorrow.”
Nigel smears a kiss against the corner of his mouth, his chin, turning his gaze down in turn to see their hips curl together, the ridges of their cocks brush stiff. Adam’s wearing blue underpants today, the little Y-front ones that Nigel bought in fucking bulk after the red pair Adam wore for his birthday. The old briefs have increasingly gone missing, strategically tossed to the bin when Nigel does laundry.
“What if I do?” Nigel grins, teasing a finger beneath Adam’s elastic waistband. “Going to tie me to the fucking bed, darling?”
Adam draws a breath as his cock tip is bared, and shudders a moan as Nigel gently snaps the waistband free against his shaft. Bright red, his head glistens moist against his belly, and Nigel drives his own down firmer against it.
“I would just have to miss you more,” Adam tells him. “And touch myself without you.”
A curse is shoved against his throat before Nigel’s lips close to suck a hot bruise against him. He is heavier than Adam, by a fucking lot, but Adam’s body jerks upward enough to move him. Moaning across Nigel’s ear, Adam slides his hands to the back of Nigel’s underwear to shove them down and bare him.
“You’re a fucking tease, baby,” Nigel whispers, damp lips brushing against his ear. “You’re fucking naughty and you know it, don’t you?”
Adam just laughs, warm and delighted, squirming up against Nigel, kissing him and drawing his nails over his back in pleasure. He knows.
They are both close, panting and dripping by the time the buzzer goes for the takeout and Adam wriggles off the couch to get it, happy to have Nigel watch him get the door with his shirt half off his shoulder and one side of his underwear wedged between his cheeks. The toes of one foot draw up and down against the other leg as he pays and takes their order from the curious and furiously blushing delivery guy.
They eat their burgers cold, sprawled on the floor in front of the television, and go to bed late.
---
“Darling.”
Adam looks up from his book at Nigel sitting before his own computer, checking some of the log pages Adam had shown him how to use.
“Yeah?”
“Denver?”
Adam blinks.
“What do we have in Denver, baby?”
“Nothing?”
“There’s a scheduled pick-up for a private vehicle logged in for next week -”
Adam scrambles off the couch to take a look, and with a sigh reaches to adjust the information. There is a pick-up due, it is due out in a private vehicle but it’s from Dresden. Germany. Nowhere near fucking Denver.
“I was thinking about something else,” Adam shrugs, returning to his book.
Nigel watches him go, bare fucking naked and beautiful, long legs stretching up to a perfectly plump ass that sadly vanishes as Adam drapes himself back onto the couch. He sets his book against his chest again and lets his arm rest behind his head. For a moment, Nigel wonders if Adam realizes how fucking lovely he is, creamy skin highlighted in rosy pinks, bottom lip held pensive between big white teeth. Long lashes and messy hair and cock soft against his pointed hip -
And that’s it, because in the moment after, when Nigel regains his breath again, his thoughts return to Denver.
He turns back to his computer with a sigh and scrolls through the reams of information. Pick-up here, drop-off there. Payment there, delivery here. The profits converted into US dollars bolsters him briefly, especially his small-arms pet projects.
He flicks his finger and lets the screen whizz by, resting his hands behind his head.
“Why the fuck were you thinking about Denver?”
“It isn’t Denver. It’s Dresden. I entered it incorrectly, like when you text me that you want to duck me and that isn’t at all what you mean.”
Nigel grins, but it’s brief. He listens to a page turn and reaches for Adam’s phone set aside on the desk. No new messages.
He glances across his shoulder, and spreads his shoulders a little, folding his arms to the desk. Four silent taps unlock Adam’s phone. Another opens his messages. Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, unknown number.
Unknown fucking number.
Tap.
can’t wait to see you
Nigel’s breath leaves him for a moment and he stares at the message like it’s the Rosetta fucking stone. A quick scroll reveals nothing from Adam, but more messages from the number. Infrequent, once a week or once a month before, enough that they should get the message that this is the wrong fucking number since Adam hasn’t replied.
can’t wait to see you
Adam hasn’t replied on here yet. Nigel is tempted to for him, for just a moment.
Behind him, Adam takes a breath and hums it out. He shifts on the couch so he’s lying prone on it, legs outstretched and toes splaying and curling as he continues reading his book, not a care in the world. Wrist against the couch holding his book, free hand curling his hair over and over a finger before letting it free. He looks like a figure from one of the paintings they’d seen at the Met together, Adonis or Hyacinth or fucking Ganymede.
Who wouldn’t want to see him?
Who in the fucking world wouldn’t want to be near him?
Nigel slides Adam phone away and fishes a cigarette from his pocket. He ignores the grumble of disapproval from the couch and drags so deep he can feel fucking fire in his throat, or what little airway is left with it clenched so tight it’s like there’s a fist around it. Billowing smoke, some scant fucking confirmation that he’s got any air left in him at all, Nigel stands and shuts his computer.
And he goes to the kitchen.
And he pours himself a fucking drink.
Only with whiskey thickening in his mouth, unpleasantly sharp, singeing his voice to roughness, does Nigel ask, “Do you know anyone in Denver?”
There’s a pause, just a breath, but Nigel’s head spins as Adam answers, “Dresden, Nigel.”
“Fucking Denver, Adam.”
Adam lifts his eyes to his partner, taking in the glass of whiskey, the sour expression, the furrowed brows and tension in his muscles. He looks fit for a fight, far too upset over something so little as a typo. But then, it is Nigel.
Adam just takes a breath and releases it with a nod. “Friends,” is all he says.
“What kind of friends?”
“What kind of friends can someone have, Nigel? Friends. Friends of the family but also my friends. People I know from before. People I know through friends of friends. People.”
Adam doesn’t tell lies. Nor, to be perfectly fucking frank, does Adam make mistakes, clever fucking kid. He is blunt, guileless in his honesty. And though Nigel doesn’t doubt the truth of his words - Friends. People. - Nigel is also keenly fucking aware that the most convincing deceptions aren’t lies at all.
They’re the truth, inarguable and verifiable.
He drags hard enough from his cigarette for it to crackle, filtering it through veins and nerves and spilling smoke and tension into the air. His hand clenches to a fist against the counter and relaxes. Clenches, and relaxes. He tries to slow his heart to match the steady pulse but it won’t be moved.
Adam wouldn’t.
He wouldn’t, not like this, not without some even-toned conversation about why Nigel can’t live here anymore and how he’s met a very nice person and that Nigel smokes too much and swears too much and that Adam is tired of it. Tired of him. Tired of all the shit he’s dragged into Adam’s life.
Surely he wouldn’t. Surely he fucking wouldn’t.
Nigel spans his hand against the counter and sets the empty glass into the sink, stubbing out his cigarette in one of their mismatched, ubiquitous ashtrays as he returns. He makes his way towards the bedroom, but his steps grow heavy beside the couch and he stops. It is hard for even Nigel not to compare his own battered body, scarred and ruined, clad in holey boxers hugging tight to tired muscle, to the beautiful kid laid bare beside him.
Soft fingers curl around his own and squeeze, and Nigel returns the gentle pressure.
“You know I love you, don’t you, darling?”
Adam sets his book aside and turns his head to look at Nigel properly. This smile comes slow and lights up his entire face. It narrows his eyes and pulls wrinkles into the corners, it pushes gentle dimples into his cheeks and he looks entirely radiant. A smile like that cannot be faked. Not by anyone.
“I love you too,” Adam tells him, squeezing his fingers again. “An awful lot.” He watches Nigel a moment more and then lets him go long enough to close his book and bookmark it. “Are you going to bed?”
A second wave of anger pulls Nigel’s pulse thick and his senses swaying, snaring nauseating in his belly. Maybe it is that simple. Adam has friends. Why wouldn’t he have friends? Just because Nigel can’t fucking manage it doesn’t mean that normal people can’t. And he was talking with them, and thinking of Denver.
can’t wait to see you
A video chat, maybe. Or someone visiting the city. Adam’s gentle tug draws Nigel’s attention back and Nigel could break glass and swallow it whole if it would cut away the guilt that sickens him now. Adam wouldn’t, but Nigel would, before. Years before. He did, and he felt like fucking shit about it.
But Adam isn’t Nigel.
Thank fuck for that.
“Going to lay down,” Nigel says. “You should read, sparrow.”
Adam lets him go as Nigel goes, watching after him with a gentle frown before packing himself up and turning off the lights to follow Nigel to the bedroom. Adam falls asleep a few hours later, head against Nigel’s chest and book open by his shoulder.
Nigel doesn’t sleep ‘til the early hours, and only then because Adam mumbles in his sleep that he wants Nigel to come to bed.
---
“I can pick you up.”
Nigel’s greeting freezes in his throat and he listens, pressed against the hallway wall with the door still held open with his shoe. Adam’s pacing, he can hear it, not in a nervous way but in a way that suggests he has too much energy and nowhere to spend it. He wonders how many sodas Adam has had. He wonders what he’s done today.
“No, I haven’t told him yet,” Adam replies, pacing closer to the hallway and away again. “It’s the one time. We’re not that busy right now, he won’t mind.”
Nigel’s heart fills his head with an echoing thrum and he wishes he could reach into his own chest and squeeze it until it stops. Fucking stops. He can hardly hear his own shaky breath when it passes dry lips, he can hardly hear Adam when he speaks again.
“We’ll have fun. It will be nice, I think. Something different, at least.”
A pause, and Nigel blinks past that darkness tunneling his vision but for sparks of white, blinding.
“Don’t worry about him. It’s fine. Yes, okay. See you then.”
Nigel doesn’t remember hitting the door, but he hears its bang as it collides with the wall. He doesn’t remember stalking into the apartment but he’s standing in it. He doesn’t remember Adam ending the call but there he fucking stands, phone pressed against his chest.
“That was really loud,” Adam says, a laugh carrying his words. He shakes his head as though to shake the adrenaline from himself and pockets his phone, stepping closer. “I was going to surprise you with dinner, but you got home early. And it wouldn’t have been a surprise considering we usually make the same thing, but it would have been a surprise that I made it. I think.”
Adam can feel the tension radiating from Nigel before him and instinctively steps back when Nigel steps closer.
“What’s wrong?”
Nigel runs his hand down his face, as if to clear the haze of anger that all but blinds him. He can hardly see Adam through it, but he can fucking hear him. He can feel him, open and curious, and it’s enough to make Nigel laugh. A startling, ugly sound, that draws in Adam’s brows.
“It wasn’t hard for you at all, was it, darling?”
The word burns to ash on his tongue.
“No,” Nigel answers for him, before Adam can take a breath. And ask him again what’s wrong and laugh again and curve his words to fit just right again Nigel’s idiot heart. “No, of course it wasn’t fucking hard for you. Just telling the truth, right, Adam? Because you’ve not done a fucking thing wrong, have you, Adam!”
His fist connects with the wall hard enough to leave an imprint in cracked plaster, the pain just a louder buzz in Nigel’s ears.
Adam jerks back in surprise and lets his eyes linger on the hole in the wall of their apartment. It has been a long time since Nigel had taken his anger out on the house, or the furniture in it, or the laptops they owned. Usually he hit enough and then stopped, and Adam could tend to his hand and curl around him and calm him down more.
Right now Adam knows for a fact that Nigel has not hit enough things.
“I find a few things hard,” Adam counters softly.
Nigel feels his lungs rupture like burst balloons, with a sudden agony and a rush of air. It could almost be a laugh but even Adam knows that it isn’t one, not that sound, as Nigel’s hands collapse and snare into fists.
“Of course you do, angel. Adam fucking Raki who taps away on his computer and makes money from my business. Adam fucking Raki who can’t be fucking bothered to wash his own fucking dishes or do the laundry. Get me a soda, Nigel. Come to bed. Don’t go out. And I do it all, don’t I? While you -”
He can’t say the words, and the table Nigel upturns doesn’t fill that void.
“While you fucking -”
He can’t say the words, and the lamp that crashes to the floor doesn’t fill that void.
“Nigel -”
“Don’t,” he snarls, teeth bared sharp as glass grinds to dust beneath his shoes. “Don’t ever say my fucking name like that again. Is it just fucking sex, Adam? Are you in love? How many, and no one any the fucking wiser? But they know about me, don’t they, a fucking joke while you get fucked squirming and pleading and laughing at how fucking stupid I’ve been -”
“What are you talking about?” Adam asks, voice too quiet to hear, another step from Nigel has Adam repeating the words louder, pushing his hands into his pockets as he forces himself to stand his ground, to keep his eyes on Nigel though he wants nothing more than to look past him.
Nigel smashes his fist down against the table and Adam jerks again, swallowing but staying where he is, expression one of petulance and confusion, and beneath it all a cool sort of betrayal. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what’s going on and Nigel knows that logically he should accept that for what it is. Nothing. Nothing has happened. Everything has been misunderstood.
But instead he thinks of more.
What other things Adam is hiding.
What other things he has done that Nigel can discover, like peeling a fucking rotting orange apart to see the filthy pieces within.
“The fucking messages,” Nigel lists. “The phone call just now. Fucking Denver, Adam.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Are you fucking serious. Adam.”
“Yes!” Adam’s voice rings loud for a moment. Louder than Nigel’s snarl, louder than the silence that rings after. “Yes. I am serious. I’m not fucking anyone, Nigel. Who would I do that with? Why?”
Nigel steps back, hands upraised, because if he fucking doesn’t, he’s going to do something he regrets. The promise is there, singing through his blood, driving him onward in retribution, in vengeance for a betrayal whose depths he can only fucking imagine. He doesn’t want to fucking imagine it. He can’t stop himself. Strange hands against Adam’s velvet cheeks, a thumb against his tongue. The little kitten sounds that Adam makes as he clings to another body, and another, and another, and how wide-eyed he must have fucking been as he cleaned someone else’s fucking come off his legs and sweetly laughed, don’t worry about him.
“Because it isn’t fucking, is it Adam?”
“No!”
“No,” Nigel agrees, his voice lowering. “I see it now. Crystal fucking clear. You’re telling the truth - your fucking bullshit truth -”
“Yes, Nigel,” Adam says, jaw working, hands trembling as he folds his arms.
Nigel doesn’t remember coming close again, but he watches Adam’s eyes widen as he sets a hand against his throat.
“Because you aren’t fucking, are you? You’re making love.”
Adam’s lips part, his brows furrow in surprise and displeasure, and in a motion neither expect he slaps Nigel’s arm away from him and shoves hard against Nigel’s chest.
“You like making up stories, for someone who says he hates fiction,” Adam hisses, he’s trembling, from adrenaline and panic and worry all. He shoves Nigel again, while the man tries to get his bearings that Adam even thought to. “You like making things bigger than they are. You never ask questions - you just like assuming. And the more you assume, the stranger your stories become, but you never think to ask me.”
Adam fists his hands at his sides and storms past Nigel back towards the front door, yanking it open fully from where it had rested against the frame.
“I am not fucking anyone. I am not making love to anyone. Not anyone else who isn’t you, when you want to,” Adam tells him. “I have friends in Denver. Friends who have wanted to meet you for a long time because you are the most important and long-lasting thing in my life since my dad died. And I knew, I knew you would get nervous at the idea of meeting anyone so I wanted it to be a surprise. Something small. Dinner, here, together. You and me and my friend from Denver, but you had to make it this - this -”
Adam shakes now, rocking softly on his heels and to his toes and back again. “Get out,” he says. “Out. I don’t care where. But you will keep hitting things and I will start hitting you and I don’t know how hard I’ll hit if I start, I am really, really angry.”
The words hit like icy water and Nigel draws a sudden breath, lungs filling.
“Adam -”
“Fucking go!”
Nigel is shoved again. He is struck, against his back. He hardly feels it but he feels the weight of the door as Adam slams it shut. Spinning, Nigel throws himself against it as locks snap into place.
“Adam, fucking wait -”
“I’ll call the police. Nigel, I will,” comes Adam’s voice, pressed against the door. Another lock. Another. “I have my phone and they won’t like what they see if they come.”
Nigel turns his cheek against the door, seeking for anything he can say, the strength to rip the door from its hinges or apologize or -
Fucking go.
So he does, and a laugh carries into the cool evening air as Nigel realizes, loathing, how easy it was to find the strength for that.
---
It takes several bouts of deliberate knocking for Nigel to realize it’s knocking at all, and not the pounding in his head from too much liquor and too little sleep.
He’s paid up for the week, and he’s in a high end place, so it shouldn’t be some skeevy asshole come to tell him to vacate the room for a few hours so a whore can make her rent payments for the week. He listens to the knocking, patient and consistent, rounds of five then four then five again, over and over.
“Fuck.” Loud enough that the knocking stops at three before resuming again.
“Nigel, you’re awake. Open the door please.”
Nigel tangles in the sheets in his hurry to stand, the room liquid before his bleary eyes, and he hits the floor with a bang and a curse. Not just hungover. Still fucking drunk. He shoves himself to standing, unsteady, still clothed from the night before and reeking of stale cigarette smoke.
He unlatches the unfamiliar locks as quickly as he can, accidentally locking one again in the process and hissing a curse as that, too, as if he can startle it into opening. Days they’ve not spoken, fucking days and nights, and of course Adam found him here - Adam always fucking finds him - and as Nigel’s hand rests on the knob he prays.
He fucking prays that Adam isn’t standing there with Nigel’s clothes in a bag.
When he jerks the door open hard enough to nearly hit himself, and stands, staggering, and before he can even focus on Adam in front of him he whispers, whiskey-rough, “I’m sorry. I’m fucking sorry, Adam, before you tell me to go fuck myself, baby -”
Adam hushes Nigel gently and presses a cold plastic bottle into his hand before he can say anything else. Then he pushes past, carefully, into the room and lets Nigel close the door behind him.
“You’re really drunk,” Adam states, and it sounds much more fond that it does annoyed. “You’ve cleared out the minibar, and your credit card has receipts on it for a lot of whiskey from the liquor store down the road. A lot. You need to sober up, you’ll be really sick.”
Nigel blinks, tries to, in sync, and gazes down at the bottle in his hand.
Gatorade.
Nigel could never in a thousand fucking lifetimes love anyone more.
He moves slowly, as much to give Adam space as to keep his own nausea at bay. A quiet hiccup gives him away before he uncaps the drink to guzzle it, and as he does, past the bright yellow plastic, he watches Adam. He watches as Adam surveys the destruction that Nigel has laid upon the hapless hotel room. He watches the thin disapproval in his expression and how quickly it eases. He watches how Adam sits, carefully, in an armchair strewn with Nigel’s clothes, bought for cheap two days before.
Nigel closes the door quietly, and follows. Forcing himself to keep distance, remembering all too fucking well the last time he touched Adam, Nigel curls his hands around the bottle instead and holds it between his knees as he sits on the edge of the bed.
“I’ll stay away,” he promises. “I will. You can keep the fucking business or sell it off or nuke it, I can find something else to do. I won’t even go home -” Nigel stops, grimacing as he adjusts. “The apartment. Just toss my things. I swear on my mother, Adam, I won’t.”
Adam blinks at him, waits a moment and then moves to perch on the bed next to Nigel, one leg curled beneath him, hands down against the messy sheets to hold on. He watches Nigel next to him, exhausted and drunk and upset, and swallows.
“Please come home,” Adam whispers. “I did the laundry and the dishes. I cleaned up the lamp from the floor.” Another swallow and Adam sighs, looking out at the room at large again. “It was stupid,” he says.
“What was, baby?”
“Trying to surprise you. With that. You don’t like change, neither of us like change. I didn’t think it through enough, I went from a selfish perspective, that I would want to see my friend, and because of that that you would be excited too. You aren’t. I can’t expect you to be, and it was stupid that I didn’t ask you about it first. I’m sorry.”
Nigel’s muscles ripple, resisting the urge to reach for him, still. He watches Adam’s eyes even as they avoid his own, wide and blue and endless. He squeezes the bottle tighter and remembers the fear and hurt that flashed white when he grabbed him.
“You didn’t do a fucking thing wrong,” Nigel tells him, as serious as he had been when he sputtered apologies, as serious as when he swore that against everything in his heart he would leave him be. “Darling - Adam,” he corrects, and Adam shakes his head.
“I’ve missed you calling me that.”
Nigel closes his eyes as Adam rests his forehead against Nigel’s shoulder. Slowly, he unfurls his fingers, knuckles white, and brings his hand to rest between Adam’s shoulders. Slowly, he turns his head, and nuzzles against Adam’s curls.
“You shouldn’t trust me,” he murmurs. “After this, you shouldn’t, but if you do at all, believe me, darling, when I fucking tell you that I was wrong. Not you. Not you, angel, not anything you did.” His throat jerks as he swallows, sighing warmth against Adam’s hair. “I am so sorry.”
Adam shivers against him, just one motion, and settles closer, entirely relaxed, contented. It’s forgiveness enough, and Nigel wonders what in the hell he has done to earn it, earn Adam at all. Adam moves a hand to rest on Nigel’s thigh and squeezes lightly, reassurance, touch, slow connection again. Years, now, they have lived together. Bought the apartment out, controlled most of the major drug routes, a few of the new weapons ones. Years, they have made love and laughed ‘til they cried and cuddled and read and talked.
Years.
“We should talk about it,” Adam says quietly, and the words don’t hold the usual distaste that that combination would, coming from anyone else. “So all the things we didn’t understand we will, for next time.”
Nigel slides his arm around Adam’s waist, just to keep him close, but when Adam lays a hand against his chest, Nigel goes where Adam guides him. They lay back, both aching with tired muscles and tired hearts, tired heads that separate have still found their thoughts circling in search of the other. Nigel lets the bottle rest against his back as he turns to face Adam, their foreheads touching.
“I don’t know what to say,” Nigel admits, an almost-smile tugging at his lips. Adam returns it, a little warmer, and Nigel shivers when Adam’s fingers press against his stubbled cheek.
“You were angry,” Adam asks, and Nigel nods, a joyless laugh leaving him.
“Furious,” he murmurs. His tongue parts his lips and he closes his eyes. “Like my fucking heart stopped beating as soon as I thought -” A sigh shakes free, joined by a tight smile. “That you loved someone else. That I’m not enough. That you didn’t love me.”
He turns his head aside to cough, lungs raw from smoke, and nuzzles closer again when he turns back.
“You can do better than me. I fucking know that.”
Adam just touches him, listens to Nigel speak, really listens. He doesn’t understand why Nigel thinks Adam would leave him, who he would go to. But Nigel’s mind works differently to Adam’s, he thinks differently and reads between lines Adam can't even see. So Adam explains the best way he can, because he hardly understands it either.
"I don't love anyone else,” he says. "Or anyone better. I don't, because I love you, and you make me happy, and you make me angry, and horny and hungry and I miss you when you go away." Adam frowns slightly, but it is more pensive than angry. "I wish I could make you believe you are all the things that make me happy. I'm not easy to live with. I'm selfish and pedantic and stuck in my routines and still you love me. Somehow, you still love me."
Words get tangled, so Adam just presses closer with a sigh, resting his hand against Nigel’s heart as it beats against his fingertips.
"I should tell you I love you more often. I forget, sometimes, that you can’t hear it when I think it. But I do. Many times a day, I promise."
Nigel listens. He trusts. He curls his arms around Adam and brings the kid atop him, happy beneath his weight and his studious gaze and the fingers that span his cheek. Nigel slips a curl of hair behind Adam’s ear and when their mouths meet, wrapping softly together, Nigel’s breath hitches. Just that, no more, but enough.
“I’ll ask,” Nigel says, jaw flexing to keep his eyes dry. “Next time I don’t know, I’ll ask. Even if I’m fucking pissed, because I - I don’t know if I can fight that, I’ll still ask you, I promise.”
“It’s okay to be angry,” Adam tells him, “but I like it more when you’re gentle.”
That the word could ever be applied to Nigel is enough that he laughs, low and full. Whatever they are, however they’ve come together, it’s absurd. Fucking ridiculous. And somehow, somehow, it fucking works. Adam kisses Nigel’s smile, widening when Nigel feels Adam’s own. He rubs his hands along Adam’s back and lifts his chin when Adam tucks his head beneath.
“I love you, darling,” Nigel sighs, before he smiles enough that it makes his head ache. “I can’t believe you did the fucking laundry.”
He feels Adam blink, long lashes against his throat, and squeezes him closer when Adam says, “I was running out of clothes.”
Nigel grins and tucks a finger beneath Adam’s chin, raising their eyes to meet.
“Tell me how to make this up to you, angel.”
“The laundry? It’s already done.”
“Not the fucking laundry, you know I’ll fucking do it,” Nigel murmurs, kissing Adam. Again and again, rolling him to his side and then beneath, so that Nigel can look down at him and take him in, his little sparrow. His angel. “Being a fucking asshole. Touching you like that. Breaking your things. Anything, sweetheart.”
Adam’s smile twitches wider, and his fingers flutter soft as feathers against Nigel’s cheeks.
“Dinner,” he says. “With my friend and me.”