Chapter Text
It starts raining while they're moving in the queue for Passport Control. A little irked, Joe stares out the nearest window distractedly until Nicky touches at his shoulder, which clears his frown almost by magic. He turns and smiles and walks the rest of the line unbothered.
They spend thirty minutes in the taxi from the airport to their hotel in the Bay, during which the downpour intensifies, but Nicky's head is leaning against the window and he's quietly smiling seemingly at nothing but himself. Their fingers are touching on the seat between them, pinkies overlapping like sneaking schoolchildren. Bright sunshine is already starting to peek through the parting clouds, catching on the lighter specks of blue and green in Nicky's eyes.
Undeterred by their driver potentially catching sight of them through the rearview mirror, Joe leans in to briefly smear their mouths together. Genuinely, he would have to dig down for a reason not to. He tastes airport coffee and warmth.
Pulling back out of Nicky's space as easily as he breached it, he licks at his own lips, wishing they were already alone. He loves Andy and is slowly but surely welcoming Nile into his heart, but it's Nicky who is his heart, wholly and unreservedly. He craves time, for them and them alone. It's maybe a selfish sort of love, but it's the only one he's got.
Nicky's left hand covers the back of his right. Joe bites his lip and stares at the fat water drops hitting the windshield for the remainder of their drive.
By the time they reach their guesthouse, the rain's cleared completely, only pale blue skies and yellow sunshine everywhere. Nicky checks them in, speaking smiling rapid-fire Italian at the Villa's owners behind the reception desk. Joe loiters by the lift doors, both their bags by his feet, fingertips vaguely itching by his sides.
"We missed lunch," Nicky informs him as they wait for the doors to open. Joe grunts something out, but, honestly, he himself doesn't know what he quite means to say right now. He's not hungry, but he knows they should eat at some point. He tends to think too much when he goes without food, whether on purpose or not.
Dwelling on Booker and their parting of ways isn't how he wants to spend their much-earned downtime, but doubt frays at the edges of his mind anyway. He decides minibar food is a decent compromise.
Whitewashed walls, sparkling with their whiteness, and deep blue accents greet them. The bed is promisingly large. By the side there's a vanity with a conspicuously high mirror Joe has to admit he has ideas about. He turns to place their bags on one of the seats on the other side of the room, Nicky investigating the bathroom behind him. The glass on the balcony doors is spotless, the metal frames thin and barely noticeable, the view onto the beach about a kilometre away thus unimpeded. Sunshine everywhere, as if the heavy rain from barely an hour ago never existed to begin with.
Arms encircle him from behind, and Joe leans into Nicky's chest, suddenly and desperately grateful for his touch and his very presence. Nicky presses a kiss to the back of his neck before placing his chin on Joe's shoulder, arms tightening around his ribcage, palms folding over each other, fingers starfished with fingertips edging at the place where his heart should be. Joe's often wondered what goes on inside them, what this gift of theirs has changed in the places they can't see.
"Where are you?" Nicky whispers close enough to his ear that his breath brushes the sensitive skin there, shivers crawling down Joe's spine. They've been close since the last time, they're always within reach of each other, but it's been since before Morocco that they've done more. This feels like it's leading towards more.
Grasping at Nicky's arms, Joe says, "Right here with you." And he is.
He means to suggest they appropriate whatever mini-chocolates and tiny bottles of cheap wine and the like they can find, but, somehow, when he finishes turning in Nicky's arms their eyes lock on each other and it locks them into silence. Nicky's cheeks redden faintly and his fingers clutch at the back of Joe's shirt as Joe watches his eyes drag across his face to settle on Joe's mouth.
He doesn't know who leads whom to the bed as such, but they shortly end up on it nonetheless. Perhaps Nicky pulled him along and Joe pushed his way forward, two forces united towards the same goal.
Sprawled between Nicky's legs, arms loosely around Nicky's shoulders, elbows digging into the firm mattress, Joe takes a moment to stare in sudden wonder, but Nicky's own arms grip at him to pull him down into a kiss. He's half-hard in no time at all from sucking on Nicky's tongue, his moans filling Joe's ears and reverberating through their pressed-together chests. He gets his knees beneath him and Nicky kicks his shoes off before he crosses his ankles behind Joe's back, who awkwardly manages to kick his own shoes off without disentangling himself from Nicky. They proceed to wrestle each other on the bed taking their clothes off without never quite breaking the kiss.
They have to part to take their shirts off, though. Immediately, Joe regrets it, but he is rewarded with a naked Nicky lying across clean, cool sheets, so it's admittedly worth every second of distance.
He gets distracted from more kissing by needing to lick his way down Nicky's chest. It's imperative he do so. Nicky doesn't seem to have any objections, sinking his fingers into Joe's hair to guide his head along, although, truth be told, Joe has a definite destination in mind he doesn't need directions to.
He licks and nips his way down down down, barely grazing at Nicky's hip bones, until his mouth is within easy reach should Nicky feel so compelled. Raising his eyes, Joe thinks as hard as he can, do it, use me, hard enough he's sure his mouth will soon speak it without his conscious mind's approval. But Nicky beats him to breaking the silence between them.
"Don't look at me like that," he mutters, his breathing laboured already from nothing at all. Not that Joe's doing much better.
"Like what?" Joe asks, but he knows like what.
Nicky laughs breathlessly. His fingers clench and unclench in Joe's hair. A muscle in his left thigh twitches. Joe is immeasurably fond. Could stare at him all day and into the night. But he has a mission here, after all.
He opens his mouth and leans in to swallow Nicky's cock down until it stretches his throat wide open. He believes Nicky yells out his name, or it could just be a bout of pure nonsense. Joe can't tell for sure with the buzzing in his head as his throat flutters around Nicky, his breaths intentionally slow and measured so he doesn't choke himself just yet. That might come later if Nicky wanted to play that way tonight, after they explored a little outside their room.
Right now, he sucks his way tightly up and down the shaft, settling his weight on his elbows, pressing his palms flat to Nicky's hips to hold him down. With spit running from his open mouth down Nicky's cock into the light thatch of hair near the base, it feels particularly dirty, especially when, every few seconds, Nicky gives another aborted thrust upwards and pulls at Joe's hair hard enough his scalp tingles from it.
He messes around with shallow swallows and sucking on the head for a long time. Nicky gets comfortable, too, although his blush has now crawled down his chest to his midsection, feverish-looking like a sunburn. Even Nicky's nipples are flushed, and that small detail is what makes Joe a little frenzied once more.
Once he gets Nicky's cockhead back to poking down his throat, it only takes for him to pucker his lips obscenely tightly at the root and suck for all he's worth for Nicky to groan several times in a row, hips going ballistic, before he shivers from head to toe and starts coming. Joe pulls midway up his cock to catch his come in his mouth and avoid choking. He manages to swallow competently, and moves off completely to lick at the rest until both his mouth and Nicky's cock are clean.
"Yusuf," Nicky breathes, decidedly Joe's name this time around.
Joe's stomach rumbles before they can move on to more. Nicky pokes his toes at his hip, a warm smile playing at the corners of his lips, but Joe's off the mattress before they can do more.
They end up sitting naked and cross-legged in the middle of the bed, chewing on Snickers and sharing a bottle of refrigerated water.