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I've done all the work I can on my presentation, so I'm just going to post this and collapse, yes? Actual slash, this time. Sort of.
Title: Dust From Their Shoes
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters/Pairing: Nikola, Nigel, mentions of the Five and Westinghouse. Nikola/Nigel
Summary: In the aftermath of WWI, on a steamship in 1919, Nikola and Nigel have a little adventure
Wordcount: 4342
Notes: Can be seen as a prequel to New Worlds
Warnings: Violence
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Dust From Their Shoes
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters/Pairing: Nikola, Nigel, mentions of the Five and Westinghouse. Nikola/Nigel
Summary: In the aftermath of WWI, on a steamship in 1919, Nikola and Nigel have a little adventure
Wordcount: 4342
Notes: Can be seen as a prequel to New Worlds
Warnings: Violence
Disclaimer: Not mine
Dust From Their Shoes
Nikola stood on deck to watch as they pulled away from the London docks, despite the encroaching darkness as evening fell. Not to wave goodbye, since both Helen and James were far too busy to come see him off at the moment. And he certainly wasn't standing here out of any great sense of sentimentality, watching England slip away behind him with the dirty water of the Thames. No.
No. He stood on deck in search of ... a sense of completion. Of relief. Of perhaps some small, bitter sense of triumph.
He was done here. For now, at least, though never fully, not with Helen resting still on British soil. But done for now. Done being at the beck and call of yet another government, done doing his bit for the war effort. The armistice had held, the Treaty of Versailles had been signed in June, and the British Government could finally go take a run off a cliff for itself. He was heading back to America, and having done.
It was possible, of course, that he was more than a little bitter. It was possible that he'd been a little bitter for the past decade, ever since a few well placed threats had first brought him to heel over Worth. It was possible that being at the beck and call of a government that held your secrets and your nationality over your head, the threat of deportation, had grated on him, just a little. Possible, too, that the strain of being Serbian in Britain, considering the war, and events in Sarajevo back in '14, and all the lovely little whispering behind his back while he slaved away on their bloody government's behalf ... Well. It was possible that he was feeling more than a little resentment, and more than a little relief just to finally be shot of the lot of them.
Not that there was much waiting for him back in New York either, of course. Not at this stage. The legacy of Wardenclyffe, not to mention Edison, Morgan and Marconi, was still very much a cloud over his (more or less non-existent) financial status, and with the war having effectively ended any funding from his European patents ... It was a cold welcome waiting for him in America, to be sure.
But a better welcome than the one he was leaving in England ...
With an exasperated grunt, he pulled himself up off the railing, turning away from the fading lights of London. He would go back to his cabin, he decided. Shake off the malaise. Really, there was only so much brooding a man could allow himself. Even if one was a vampire, and perhaps, he had to admit, perhaps he shouldn't have read quite so many of Helen's collection of gothic novels before departing. Even aside from the wear and tear of war, and service enforced with a word in the right ear, reading that claptrap would be enough to put anyone in a gloomy mood.
Moving quickly and absently along deck, he wondered if he hadn't, accidentally of course, happened to bring a few of them with him. Well, it was going to be a long voyage, after all ...
And then, outside the door to his cabin, with his hand resting on the handle, Nikola stopped. Paused, very carefully, and stood very, very still, very quiet. Listening, as he had been for the past length of deck, to someone moving about his room with all the shuffling, muffled care of someone either too new, too tired, or too uncaring to attempt real stealth. Nikola waited, with all the patience of a cat, for an idea of which was the case, and then ... then his uninvited visitor sighed, heavy and tired and familiar, and Nikola found himself opening the door with an unconscious smile.
There was no-one in the room, not a thing to be seen. Naturally. Nikola zeroed in on the soft sound of someone doing their best to hold their breath, and the dent in the bedspread from some invisible weight, and closed the door behind him with a wicked smile and a raised eyebrow pointed right at the person that wasn't there.
"You know, given London in November, you really should put some clothes on, Nigel."
"Sod off," his old friend shot back, with his usual grump, but tiredly. With no real force, no real strength, and as Nigel faded back into view, as a naked man materialised on his bed, Nikola saw why.
Nigel, huddled in a ball on the bed, was pale, almost grey, and shaking. Short, repeated tremors, made only more obvious by the fact that, in the couple of years since Nikola had last seen him, Nigel had lost a great deal of weight, enough that for the first time in their acquaintance, he looked like the ghost people sometimes called him. He looked a pale shadow of the man who'd left for mainland Europe some years ago to play his part for England. A shivering copy, etched here and there with the white splashes of new scars, and his eyes as he looked up at Nikola were fever-bright, and so exhausted Nikola felt like collapsing just looking at him.
"What the hell happened to you?" Nikola managed, very quietly, coming forward, hand coming up as if to touch that quivering shoulder, hesitating at the last moment. Nigel grinned up at him, glassy and dangerous, and there was mockery in those tired eyes as they watched the hand, a bitter laughter until Nikola took hold with more force than he'd originally intended, and then Nigel closed his eyes. Closed them with a quiver of what might have been relief, and leaned into the harshness of Nikola's touch.
"There's been a war on," he answered, hard and tired, with a savage little curl of his lip. "Didn't nobody tell you?"
"The war's over," Nikola returned, gently, fishing for the bedspread with his other hand, and draping it clumsily over his friend's shoulders. Nigel barely reacted. "Well. Mostly, anyway. Enough for us, at least." Enough for him, definitely, or he wouldn't be on this ship. And for Nigel ... if ever a man looked like he been through enough, it was Nigel, this minute ...
Nigel laughed. A harsh, bitter crack, and he huddled into the blanket, canted sideways into the strength of Nikola's hand. "Ought to tell them that, then," he muttered. "Tell the bloody sods to leave me alone."
Nikola frowned. Hard and dangerous. "Tell who?" Nigel quivered, flinched, and Nikola's hand tightened. For a moment, anyway, before he made himself relax, but his eyes had already hardened, had already darkened. "Nigel, what happened to you? What's going on?"
"What are the chances of my successfully stowing away in your cabin for the duration of this little jaunt?" the thief asked eventually, by way of answer, tipping his head sideways to rest it against Nikola's arm and looking sidelong up at him. "I only ask because apparently it's bloody difficult to get passage out of England when half the Secret Service are looking to have a word with you." He smiled, or something like it, watching as Nikola's eyebrow rose of its own volition. "Who would have thought, hmm?"
Nikola blinked. "You stole naked into my cabin because you wanted to stow away with me?" he asked, and then shook his head. "Never mind. Of course you can stay!" It might be a tight squeeze, logistically, but on the upside, Nikola being a vampire and therefore not eating all that much, meals shouldn't be too much of a problem ...
Nigel slumped in relief. Just a tiny thing, a small release of tension, but Nikola blinked, and stared at him in shock. What had the man thought? That Nikola would kick him, naked and exhausted, back out the door, tell him to sleep in the hold? Get the captain to turn them around and dump him back on the docks, with people hunting him? They were friends. Did Nigel really think Nikola would balk at sharing a cabin? Did he really think ...
"Don't look like that," Nigel said softly. Looking up at him, vaguely sheepish through the tiredness, and with a small, soft smile. "I didn't mean ... Look, I've been bunging around a war zone for the past few years, alright? Not to mention being hounded about by our own Secret bloody Service ... Give me a minute to get used to the idea of having somewhere safe to sleep, would you? Not to mention a bed ..." He grunted in exasperation, and Nikola glared at him for another minute, just for good measure, but then ...
But then he had to smile, no, grin, a slow, wicked thing, and ask: "What makes you think you're getting the bed? It's my cabin, you know ..."
And it was Nigel's turn to stare at him, and do his best to punch Nikola in the stomach with a curse that would've made Helen blink, and look for all of a second like the robust, belligerent man Nikola remembered. Then it was Nigel's turn to grin, and curse, and pretend for a moment that he wasn't naked and exhausted and coming with nothing in his hands to ask for Nikola's help. For a moment, exactly as it should be. And then.
"It might put you in danger," the thief said softly, leaning back to pull the blanket around himself, and forcing himself to meet Nikola's gaze. "I think I lost 'em, most of them, but there might ... They were pretty annoyed, last time I saw 'em. Apparently, governmental types really don't like it when you say 'no'. If any of them followed me onto the ship ..."
Nikola paused, stayed silent for a moment while Nigel blinked warily up at him. Perhaps a little in annoyed vengeance, for Nigel not trusting him. Perhaps to allow himself a moment to hide the instinctive stirring inside him at the thought of a threat, the instinctive darkening of his eyes. Nikola paused for a moment, and looked down at his friend.
"They want you that badly?" he asked, quietly. Not that the British government weren't plenty annoyed with him at the minute, and likely to be only more so once they realised he'd left the country, but ... "Enough to hunt you this far? What did you do to them, Nigel?"
And now the man looked away. Now Nigel looked down, knotting his hands in his lap, and every moment of that aching, shivering exhaustion crept back into his figure, into the tremble of his shoulders.
"There was a war on," he said. Quietly, flatly. "There's lots of things a government might use an invisible man for, with a war on. And I said yes. Because that's what an Englishman does, innit? I said yes. And the last few years ... Well, I've been quite popular. Because Section 6 couldn't get men inside Germany, but I could get in, couldn't I? Get in anywhere, me. And out again, more importantly. Right useful, I was. Right useful."
He stopped, for a minute, leaning back against the wall, and Nikola took the time to retreat. To lean back against the opposite wall of the cabin, and just watch the man. Watch his friend, tired to the bone, and shivering in Nikola's bed.
"Then last year, I got caught. Not by the Germans. Not by any bloody body. But by the bloody influenza. The bloody flu, but there were people ... there were people dropping like flies, Nikola. You wouldn't believe it, if you didn't see, but ... Scared the pants off me. Scared me half to bloody death, and I swear, I swear it was only the Blood that saved me. I swear it was only whatever we did in '86 that spared me, because there were men in their prime dying all around me ... And then I woke up in a hospital in France a few months back, and there were very serious men asking me to pick up where I left off, to do one more run into Germany to see if the armistice was really going to hold ... And I said no. I said no, no bloody more, I wasn't doing it. Not after that, not after the scare I'd had. And they ... didn't like that." He looked up at Nikola, pale and strained. "They really didn't like that."
"And they've been hunting you since," Nikola said softly. Not a question. He didn't need to ask, not with the man shaking and desperate, right there, and Nikola hurriedly tucked his fists under his arms, where Nigel couldn't see the whiteness of the knuckles, and the darkness of the nails. "For months?"
"For months," Nigel confirmed softly, slumping back against the headboard, his hands unclenching and falling loose and limp into his lap. "Might be still, if they managed to get aboard when I wasn't looking. If they know I might come to you." He winced, looked down. "I wouldn't have led them to you, to any of you, but ..."
"Shut up," Nikola interrupted. Gently, but with a noticeable lack of patience. He never was very good at that. Nigel blinked up at him, and Nikola stood forward from the wall, stalked back over to the bed to loom over him, to glare at him. "Nigel, if they followed you to me, to any of us ... they're in for a very nasty shock. James has some very interesting ideas about the appropriate use of violence in self-defense, you know. Helen, of course, is not to be trifled with at all. And I ..." He grinned, blackly and with teeth, and curled his hands where the nails wouldn't show. "And I would welcome them to try it."
Nigel blinked at him, slow and wary. "Didn't you promise ...?" he asked, cautiously, and Nikola huffed darkly.
"I promised not to hunt people down and drain their blood. I did not promise not to defend myself, or my friends, from harm!" he growled, wincing as his voice resonated more deeply than intended. Nigel blinked at him, and he sighed in exasperation. "I'm not British, Nigel. I've never been British. And I've just spent the past couple of years working for an entirely unappreciative government who seem to like holding my nationality over my head, and consequently I have absolutely no sympathy for any representative of said government who should happen to threaten me with violence, and meet an unhappy end!"
Or a friend. Anyone who should happen to threaten a friend, and meet an unhappy end. Nikola was not, he liked to think, a violent man, but there were limits, and as people were so fond of telling him lately, there had been a war on ...
"Suddenly, I've an idea what poor old George must have felt," Nigel said, suddenly and quietly, and with a smile. Nikola blinked at him.
"What?"
"Westinghouse," the thief clarified, grinning a little, eyes soft as he looked up at Nikola. "Suddenly I've an idea how he must have felt, that moment in '97 when you tore up his contract out of the bloody blue, just because he asked." Nikola stared at him, nonplussed, and he grinned. "The story made the rounds, you know. Shocking behaviour for a businessman."
Nikola blinked, slowly, tilting his head to look consideringly down at Nigel. "But perfect behaviour for a friend, I thought," he said, curiously, carefully, and watched Nigel flush. Watched a tinge of pink feather though pale, worn cheeks, and Nigel nodded at him.
"That's what I meant," Nigel said softly. "Suddenly, I know how he felt." A small, bright little smile, something wry and amused and grateful, and he inclined his head to Nikola. "As a friend, you're a prince, old mate. Never let anyone tell you different."
And it was Nikola's turn to flush, and look away. Shake his head. "I've changed my mind," he said, gruffly, and tried not to smile at the flicker of wariness in Nigel's eyes. Tried not to let it become something softer, too soft, as he reached out with a vampire's strength to push Nigel down, to lay him down, and try not to think about how thin and tired Nigel was, that even a human could have done it with ease. "I've changed my mind," he said again, pulling a blanket around the man. "You can have the bed after all." A rich, dazzling grin. "A prince ought to be generous, don't you think?"
Nigel shook his head, mouth curling wryly, but he nodded. "Right generous you are," he said, smiling quietly. "Do I get to borrow a pair of pyjamas first?"
Nikola laughed, and waved his hand at the trunk at the base of the bed. "Help yourself," he smiled, wry in his turn, a little pointed, for fun. "What's mine is yours. It usually is. I'm going to do a quick turn around the ship, shake England off my shoes." And have a look around, quietly, and watch to see who was watching back ...
Nigel squinted at him, with a proper spy's suspicion, but only nodded. "Alright then. Budge me up when you get back. There's room enough to share, if barely."
Nikola raised an eyebrow at that, looking at the narrow cabin, and back at Nigel. "If you say so," he said, dubiously, and smiled. "Isn't it lucky the influenza robbed you of a few of those extra pounds ..."
Nigel threw the pillow at his head, and Nikola left the cabin laughing, with Nigel cursing viciously behind him, dropping in volume hurriedly as Nikola opened the door, glaring in mute fury after him. Nikola shot him a jaunty grin, and let the door slip closed behind him over his friend's exhausted fury. And then, he let the smile slip, and something older and colder slip forward in its place.
He really was rather tired of England. And a little bitter. And not at all happy about the threat to a friend.
No. Not at all happy.
---
They came in the small hours of the morning. Nigel's spies, hunting him. Or Nikola, perhaps, since they came to his door. He didn't suppose it mattered very much.
Only one shadow at first, stopping at the cabin door, a muted gleam of dark metal in its hand. A gun, perhaps? Oh, now that wouldn't do. Not at all. Nikola stepped forward, soft and silent from his place beside the life-boats, quiet as only a supernatural predator could be. Or a spy, as it turned out. The man was good. Only shocked for a moment, as Nikola spun him around, only stunned for a second before the gun started to come up. But a second ... a second was all Nikola needed, to press one hand to his mouth, silence him, and twist with the other until the neck snapped with a sound that seemed to echo across the ship. A second, only one, and it was over.
Nikola looked down at the body. Looked down at what was perhaps the first man he'd ever killed, in cold blood. Looked down, and tested the knowledge, tested the feeling in his chest. Fear? Desire? Sickness? Surely something.
But no. Nothing. Not really. Only a vague disgust, and a quiet satisfaction at the elimination of a threat. Perhaps that should worry him. Perhaps he should fear that more than a surge of lust from the vampire, or of madness, like John. Perhaps this calm distaste was something worse.
But Nikola didn't think so.
With a sigh, soft and quiet, he reached down and searched the body. Touched the gun, cold metal in a cold hand, meant for them. For him or for Nigel, because his friend dared say no to people one shouldn't say no to, because his friend knew things he shouldn't. No, Nikola thought. This vague disgust was not at all unwarranted.
Shaking his head, quiet and sure, he hefted the body. Lifted it with all a vampire's grace and quiet, moved to the side of the ship, and softly, carefully, let it go. Let it fall into the water, let the thunder of waves against the side drown out the splash. He dropped his enemy into the sea, and started to turn.
Only to feel the hot flash in his arm as a blade swept across it. Only to feel the spike of pain and fury as he hissed, and dove to the side, and turned to face the knife in the hands of the second man. A knife, not a gun, and perhaps this one didn't have one, or perhaps he only wanted to be quiet, to not draw attention to this sordid little affair, hunting a tired, sick man across a continent and off it. Perhaps he wanted to be silent.
Good enough. Nikola could be silent with the best of them. And he was fast, so much faster than any knife. So many years ago, the Source Blood had given him these gifts, and this government, this man's government, the same as hunted his friend, thought to use him for it. Or despite it. Or with it. Well. Well then. Let them taste it, too. Let them see.
The second man fell as silently as the first. As bloodlessly, too. Nikola had promised, promised Helen and the others, long years ago. He had promised, and he kept his promises, those that counted. The man fell from a broken neck, the same as his companion, and the only blood spilled was Nikola's own, on the blade of the knife. And that, too, was easily dealt with. That, too, was easily wiped away.
Nigel was waiting for him as he returned. Nigel caught him as he opened the door, seized his arms as he slipped through, pushed him furiously up against the bulkhead. The thief, the spy, the invisible man, pale as death and white with rage. Nikola blinked down at him, and carefully didn't smile.
"What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?" Nigel hissed, or tried to hiss. His voice cracked a little. Strained. "Nikola, what ..." He stopped. Stopped as he realised the warmth beneath his hand, the wetness. Stopped as he squinted in the darkness, and recognised the blackness of blood against his skin. Nikola's blood. Nigel stopped, and flinched, shuddering in the dimness in something like guilt. "Nikola ..."
"It's nothing," Nikola answered, light and cheerful. "I slipped on the deck and cut it against a railing. Don't worry about it."
Nigel stared at him. Blankly, just for a second, and then fury swamped him. Then utter rage swamped his features, and he shoved against Nikola, shoved himself close and spat into Nikola's face. "Don't you lie to me!" he snarled, low and black. "Whatever else you ... whatever else you do, Nikola, don't you ever lie to me! Not about ..."
His voice cracked, broke, but Nikola was already nodding. Nikola was already saying yes, silent and steady, and his hands reached up to clasp Nigel's shoulders. To hold him steady. "I'm sorry," he said, quickly and quietly. "Nigel, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Nigel held against him, held himself taut and furious for another second, another moment, and then ... Then the man slumped against him. Pale and half-dressed, and so very, very tired.
"I didn't want ... It wasn't supposed to ... Your promise ..."
"I kept my promise," Nikola interrupted, immediately, confidently. "I didn't drink. Not a drop was spilled that wasn't mine. It was all very ..." He paused, feeling his mouth curl, feeling the dark curve of it. "It was all very human."
"I don't care if it was bloody fish," Nigel snarled, but quietly. Raggedly, curled against Nikola's chest. "It wasn't supposed ... You shouldn't have had to do that. Not for me. You shouldn't have to risk that ..."
Nikola smiled, then. A soft thing in the darkness, and he pressed the man close. Gently, and Nigel was as breakable in his arms as those men had been outside, Nigel was as fragile, but Nikola was not John. He was not the monster people feared when they heard the word 'vampire'. His strength was his, and controllable, and it harmed only those he wanted it to harm. Harmed only when he saw the need, and no more.
"There was no risk," he said, with a laughing curl of his lip, with a calm confidence. "Not to me, not to you. They didn't want to be heard, and now they never will be. That's all there is to it." They had left England, left Europe, and the war wasn't on anymore. Not for them. Not anymore. America was before them, and that was all there was to it.
Nikola looked down at Nigel, still shaking against him, and then over at the bed. Over at the rucked blankets from Nigel's rush to the door, and the narrow space between the edge and the wall that might, just might, fit two grown men, if they were thin, and worn, and tired enough not to care.
"Still want to share with me?" he asked, very quietly, and grinned a little when Nigel looked incredulously up at him. "It's getting late, you know."
Nigel stared at him, for a long, long second, in the darkness and the cold, on a ship in the Atlantic on a cold November night in 1919. Nigel stared at him, in parts incredulous, furious, desperate and relieved, annoyed, resigned. In parts tired beyond measure, and just too worn to fight. Nigel stared at him, and then he grinned. Then he reached up, pulled Nikola's head to his, and pressed them together, forehead to forehead, mouth almost to mouth.
"You're the most annoying, reckless, contrary, bloody stupid sod I ever met," he growled, so very fondly. "And one of these days you're going to get the both of us killed, you do know that."
Nikola grinned. "It's possible," he allowed. "But you love me anyway, yes?"
"Yes," Nigel said, soft and exasperated and real, and kissed him. Just a touch against his mouth, gruff and brief and almost chaste. "Yes, I love you anyway, you bloody bastard."
"Good," Nikola smiled, and took the invisible man, took the spy, took his friend, to bed.
A/N: There's an Annotated Version and a coda in the form of Close
A/N: I'm thinking of putting this in a timeline with some of my other Nikola & Nigel fics, and just calling it the Nigel/Nikola Series:
1886: Gamesmanship
1906: Old Friends and Enemies
1919: Dust From Their Shoes
1925: Dangerous Games
1929: New Worlds
1959: Old Times
1960: Hollow
Nikola stood on deck to watch as they pulled away from the London docks, despite the encroaching darkness as evening fell. Not to wave goodbye, since both Helen and James were far too busy to come see him off at the moment. And he certainly wasn't standing here out of any great sense of sentimentality, watching England slip away behind him with the dirty water of the Thames. No.
No. He stood on deck in search of ... a sense of completion. Of relief. Of perhaps some small, bitter sense of triumph.
He was done here. For now, at least, though never fully, not with Helen resting still on British soil. But done for now. Done being at the beck and call of yet another government, done doing his bit for the war effort. The armistice had held, the Treaty of Versailles had been signed in June, and the British Government could finally go take a run off a cliff for itself. He was heading back to America, and having done.
It was possible, of course, that he was more than a little bitter. It was possible that he'd been a little bitter for the past decade, ever since a few well placed threats had first brought him to heel over Worth. It was possible that being at the beck and call of a government that held your secrets and your nationality over your head, the threat of deportation, had grated on him, just a little. Possible, too, that the strain of being Serbian in Britain, considering the war, and events in Sarajevo back in '14, and all the lovely little whispering behind his back while he slaved away on their bloody government's behalf ... Well. It was possible that he was feeling more than a little resentment, and more than a little relief just to finally be shot of the lot of them.
Not that there was much waiting for him back in New York either, of course. Not at this stage. The legacy of Wardenclyffe, not to mention Edison, Morgan and Marconi, was still very much a cloud over his (more or less non-existent) financial status, and with the war having effectively ended any funding from his European patents ... It was a cold welcome waiting for him in America, to be sure.
But a better welcome than the one he was leaving in England ...
With an exasperated grunt, he pulled himself up off the railing, turning away from the fading lights of London. He would go back to his cabin, he decided. Shake off the malaise. Really, there was only so much brooding a man could allow himself. Even if one was a vampire, and perhaps, he had to admit, perhaps he shouldn't have read quite so many of Helen's collection of gothic novels before departing. Even aside from the wear and tear of war, and service enforced with a word in the right ear, reading that claptrap would be enough to put anyone in a gloomy mood.
Moving quickly and absently along deck, he wondered if he hadn't, accidentally of course, happened to bring a few of them with him. Well, it was going to be a long voyage, after all ...
And then, outside the door to his cabin, with his hand resting on the handle, Nikola stopped. Paused, very carefully, and stood very, very still, very quiet. Listening, as he had been for the past length of deck, to someone moving about his room with all the shuffling, muffled care of someone either too new, too tired, or too uncaring to attempt real stealth. Nikola waited, with all the patience of a cat, for an idea of which was the case, and then ... then his uninvited visitor sighed, heavy and tired and familiar, and Nikola found himself opening the door with an unconscious smile.
There was no-one in the room, not a thing to be seen. Naturally. Nikola zeroed in on the soft sound of someone doing their best to hold their breath, and the dent in the bedspread from some invisible weight, and closed the door behind him with a wicked smile and a raised eyebrow pointed right at the person that wasn't there.
"You know, given London in November, you really should put some clothes on, Nigel."
"Sod off," his old friend shot back, with his usual grump, but tiredly. With no real force, no real strength, and as Nigel faded back into view, as a naked man materialised on his bed, Nikola saw why.
Nigel, huddled in a ball on the bed, was pale, almost grey, and shaking. Short, repeated tremors, made only more obvious by the fact that, in the couple of years since Nikola had last seen him, Nigel had lost a great deal of weight, enough that for the first time in their acquaintance, he looked like the ghost people sometimes called him. He looked a pale shadow of the man who'd left for mainland Europe some years ago to play his part for England. A shivering copy, etched here and there with the white splashes of new scars, and his eyes as he looked up at Nikola were fever-bright, and so exhausted Nikola felt like collapsing just looking at him.
"What the hell happened to you?" Nikola managed, very quietly, coming forward, hand coming up as if to touch that quivering shoulder, hesitating at the last moment. Nigel grinned up at him, glassy and dangerous, and there was mockery in those tired eyes as they watched the hand, a bitter laughter until Nikola took hold with more force than he'd originally intended, and then Nigel closed his eyes. Closed them with a quiver of what might have been relief, and leaned into the harshness of Nikola's touch.
"There's been a war on," he answered, hard and tired, with a savage little curl of his lip. "Didn't nobody tell you?"
"The war's over," Nikola returned, gently, fishing for the bedspread with his other hand, and draping it clumsily over his friend's shoulders. Nigel barely reacted. "Well. Mostly, anyway. Enough for us, at least." Enough for him, definitely, or he wouldn't be on this ship. And for Nigel ... if ever a man looked like he been through enough, it was Nigel, this minute ...
Nigel laughed. A harsh, bitter crack, and he huddled into the blanket, canted sideways into the strength of Nikola's hand. "Ought to tell them that, then," he muttered. "Tell the bloody sods to leave me alone."
Nikola frowned. Hard and dangerous. "Tell who?" Nigel quivered, flinched, and Nikola's hand tightened. For a moment, anyway, before he made himself relax, but his eyes had already hardened, had already darkened. "Nigel, what happened to you? What's going on?"
"What are the chances of my successfully stowing away in your cabin for the duration of this little jaunt?" the thief asked eventually, by way of answer, tipping his head sideways to rest it against Nikola's arm and looking sidelong up at him. "I only ask because apparently it's bloody difficult to get passage out of England when half the Secret Service are looking to have a word with you." He smiled, or something like it, watching as Nikola's eyebrow rose of its own volition. "Who would have thought, hmm?"
Nikola blinked. "You stole naked into my cabin because you wanted to stow away with me?" he asked, and then shook his head. "Never mind. Of course you can stay!" It might be a tight squeeze, logistically, but on the upside, Nikola being a vampire and therefore not eating all that much, meals shouldn't be too much of a problem ...
Nigel slumped in relief. Just a tiny thing, a small release of tension, but Nikola blinked, and stared at him in shock. What had the man thought? That Nikola would kick him, naked and exhausted, back out the door, tell him to sleep in the hold? Get the captain to turn them around and dump him back on the docks, with people hunting him? They were friends. Did Nigel really think Nikola would balk at sharing a cabin? Did he really think ...
"Don't look like that," Nigel said softly. Looking up at him, vaguely sheepish through the tiredness, and with a small, soft smile. "I didn't mean ... Look, I've been bunging around a war zone for the past few years, alright? Not to mention being hounded about by our own Secret bloody Service ... Give me a minute to get used to the idea of having somewhere safe to sleep, would you? Not to mention a bed ..." He grunted in exasperation, and Nikola glared at him for another minute, just for good measure, but then ...
But then he had to smile, no, grin, a slow, wicked thing, and ask: "What makes you think you're getting the bed? It's my cabin, you know ..."
And it was Nigel's turn to stare at him, and do his best to punch Nikola in the stomach with a curse that would've made Helen blink, and look for all of a second like the robust, belligerent man Nikola remembered. Then it was Nigel's turn to grin, and curse, and pretend for a moment that he wasn't naked and exhausted and coming with nothing in his hands to ask for Nikola's help. For a moment, exactly as it should be. And then.
"It might put you in danger," the thief said softly, leaning back to pull the blanket around himself, and forcing himself to meet Nikola's gaze. "I think I lost 'em, most of them, but there might ... They were pretty annoyed, last time I saw 'em. Apparently, governmental types really don't like it when you say 'no'. If any of them followed me onto the ship ..."
Nikola paused, stayed silent for a moment while Nigel blinked warily up at him. Perhaps a little in annoyed vengeance, for Nigel not trusting him. Perhaps to allow himself a moment to hide the instinctive stirring inside him at the thought of a threat, the instinctive darkening of his eyes. Nikola paused for a moment, and looked down at his friend.
"They want you that badly?" he asked, quietly. Not that the British government weren't plenty annoyed with him at the minute, and likely to be only more so once they realised he'd left the country, but ... "Enough to hunt you this far? What did you do to them, Nigel?"
And now the man looked away. Now Nigel looked down, knotting his hands in his lap, and every moment of that aching, shivering exhaustion crept back into his figure, into the tremble of his shoulders.
"There was a war on," he said. Quietly, flatly. "There's lots of things a government might use an invisible man for, with a war on. And I said yes. Because that's what an Englishman does, innit? I said yes. And the last few years ... Well, I've been quite popular. Because Section 6 couldn't get men inside Germany, but I could get in, couldn't I? Get in anywhere, me. And out again, more importantly. Right useful, I was. Right useful."
He stopped, for a minute, leaning back against the wall, and Nikola took the time to retreat. To lean back against the opposite wall of the cabin, and just watch the man. Watch his friend, tired to the bone, and shivering in Nikola's bed.
"Then last year, I got caught. Not by the Germans. Not by any bloody body. But by the bloody influenza. The bloody flu, but there were people ... there were people dropping like flies, Nikola. You wouldn't believe it, if you didn't see, but ... Scared the pants off me. Scared me half to bloody death, and I swear, I swear it was only the Blood that saved me. I swear it was only whatever we did in '86 that spared me, because there were men in their prime dying all around me ... And then I woke up in a hospital in France a few months back, and there were very serious men asking me to pick up where I left off, to do one more run into Germany to see if the armistice was really going to hold ... And I said no. I said no, no bloody more, I wasn't doing it. Not after that, not after the scare I'd had. And they ... didn't like that." He looked up at Nikola, pale and strained. "They really didn't like that."
"And they've been hunting you since," Nikola said softly. Not a question. He didn't need to ask, not with the man shaking and desperate, right there, and Nikola hurriedly tucked his fists under his arms, where Nigel couldn't see the whiteness of the knuckles, and the darkness of the nails. "For months?"
"For months," Nigel confirmed softly, slumping back against the headboard, his hands unclenching and falling loose and limp into his lap. "Might be still, if they managed to get aboard when I wasn't looking. If they know I might come to you." He winced, looked down. "I wouldn't have led them to you, to any of you, but ..."
"Shut up," Nikola interrupted. Gently, but with a noticeable lack of patience. He never was very good at that. Nigel blinked up at him, and Nikola stood forward from the wall, stalked back over to the bed to loom over him, to glare at him. "Nigel, if they followed you to me, to any of us ... they're in for a very nasty shock. James has some very interesting ideas about the appropriate use of violence in self-defense, you know. Helen, of course, is not to be trifled with at all. And I ..." He grinned, blackly and with teeth, and curled his hands where the nails wouldn't show. "And I would welcome them to try it."
Nigel blinked at him, slow and wary. "Didn't you promise ...?" he asked, cautiously, and Nikola huffed darkly.
"I promised not to hunt people down and drain their blood. I did not promise not to defend myself, or my friends, from harm!" he growled, wincing as his voice resonated more deeply than intended. Nigel blinked at him, and he sighed in exasperation. "I'm not British, Nigel. I've never been British. And I've just spent the past couple of years working for an entirely unappreciative government who seem to like holding my nationality over my head, and consequently I have absolutely no sympathy for any representative of said government who should happen to threaten me with violence, and meet an unhappy end!"
Or a friend. Anyone who should happen to threaten a friend, and meet an unhappy end. Nikola was not, he liked to think, a violent man, but there were limits, and as people were so fond of telling him lately, there had been a war on ...
"Suddenly, I've an idea what poor old George must have felt," Nigel said, suddenly and quietly, and with a smile. Nikola blinked at him.
"What?"
"Westinghouse," the thief clarified, grinning a little, eyes soft as he looked up at Nikola. "Suddenly I've an idea how he must have felt, that moment in '97 when you tore up his contract out of the bloody blue, just because he asked." Nikola stared at him, nonplussed, and he grinned. "The story made the rounds, you know. Shocking behaviour for a businessman."
Nikola blinked, slowly, tilting his head to look consideringly down at Nigel. "But perfect behaviour for a friend, I thought," he said, curiously, carefully, and watched Nigel flush. Watched a tinge of pink feather though pale, worn cheeks, and Nigel nodded at him.
"That's what I meant," Nigel said softly. "Suddenly, I know how he felt." A small, bright little smile, something wry and amused and grateful, and he inclined his head to Nikola. "As a friend, you're a prince, old mate. Never let anyone tell you different."
And it was Nikola's turn to flush, and look away. Shake his head. "I've changed my mind," he said, gruffly, and tried not to smile at the flicker of wariness in Nigel's eyes. Tried not to let it become something softer, too soft, as he reached out with a vampire's strength to push Nigel down, to lay him down, and try not to think about how thin and tired Nigel was, that even a human could have done it with ease. "I've changed my mind," he said again, pulling a blanket around the man. "You can have the bed after all." A rich, dazzling grin. "A prince ought to be generous, don't you think?"
Nigel shook his head, mouth curling wryly, but he nodded. "Right generous you are," he said, smiling quietly. "Do I get to borrow a pair of pyjamas first?"
Nikola laughed, and waved his hand at the trunk at the base of the bed. "Help yourself," he smiled, wry in his turn, a little pointed, for fun. "What's mine is yours. It usually is. I'm going to do a quick turn around the ship, shake England off my shoes." And have a look around, quietly, and watch to see who was watching back ...
Nigel squinted at him, with a proper spy's suspicion, but only nodded. "Alright then. Budge me up when you get back. There's room enough to share, if barely."
Nikola raised an eyebrow at that, looking at the narrow cabin, and back at Nigel. "If you say so," he said, dubiously, and smiled. "Isn't it lucky the influenza robbed you of a few of those extra pounds ..."
Nigel threw the pillow at his head, and Nikola left the cabin laughing, with Nigel cursing viciously behind him, dropping in volume hurriedly as Nikola opened the door, glaring in mute fury after him. Nikola shot him a jaunty grin, and let the door slip closed behind him over his friend's exhausted fury. And then, he let the smile slip, and something older and colder slip forward in its place.
He really was rather tired of England. And a little bitter. And not at all happy about the threat to a friend.
No. Not at all happy.
---
They came in the small hours of the morning. Nigel's spies, hunting him. Or Nikola, perhaps, since they came to his door. He didn't suppose it mattered very much.
Only one shadow at first, stopping at the cabin door, a muted gleam of dark metal in its hand. A gun, perhaps? Oh, now that wouldn't do. Not at all. Nikola stepped forward, soft and silent from his place beside the life-boats, quiet as only a supernatural predator could be. Or a spy, as it turned out. The man was good. Only shocked for a moment, as Nikola spun him around, only stunned for a second before the gun started to come up. But a second ... a second was all Nikola needed, to press one hand to his mouth, silence him, and twist with the other until the neck snapped with a sound that seemed to echo across the ship. A second, only one, and it was over.
Nikola looked down at the body. Looked down at what was perhaps the first man he'd ever killed, in cold blood. Looked down, and tested the knowledge, tested the feeling in his chest. Fear? Desire? Sickness? Surely something.
But no. Nothing. Not really. Only a vague disgust, and a quiet satisfaction at the elimination of a threat. Perhaps that should worry him. Perhaps he should fear that more than a surge of lust from the vampire, or of madness, like John. Perhaps this calm distaste was something worse.
But Nikola didn't think so.
With a sigh, soft and quiet, he reached down and searched the body. Touched the gun, cold metal in a cold hand, meant for them. For him or for Nigel, because his friend dared say no to people one shouldn't say no to, because his friend knew things he shouldn't. No, Nikola thought. This vague disgust was not at all unwarranted.
Shaking his head, quiet and sure, he hefted the body. Lifted it with all a vampire's grace and quiet, moved to the side of the ship, and softly, carefully, let it go. Let it fall into the water, let the thunder of waves against the side drown out the splash. He dropped his enemy into the sea, and started to turn.
Only to feel the hot flash in his arm as a blade swept across it. Only to feel the spike of pain and fury as he hissed, and dove to the side, and turned to face the knife in the hands of the second man. A knife, not a gun, and perhaps this one didn't have one, or perhaps he only wanted to be quiet, to not draw attention to this sordid little affair, hunting a tired, sick man across a continent and off it. Perhaps he wanted to be silent.
Good enough. Nikola could be silent with the best of them. And he was fast, so much faster than any knife. So many years ago, the Source Blood had given him these gifts, and this government, this man's government, the same as hunted his friend, thought to use him for it. Or despite it. Or with it. Well. Well then. Let them taste it, too. Let them see.
The second man fell as silently as the first. As bloodlessly, too. Nikola had promised, promised Helen and the others, long years ago. He had promised, and he kept his promises, those that counted. The man fell from a broken neck, the same as his companion, and the only blood spilled was Nikola's own, on the blade of the knife. And that, too, was easily dealt with. That, too, was easily wiped away.
Nigel was waiting for him as he returned. Nigel caught him as he opened the door, seized his arms as he slipped through, pushed him furiously up against the bulkhead. The thief, the spy, the invisible man, pale as death and white with rage. Nikola blinked down at him, and carefully didn't smile.
"What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?" Nigel hissed, or tried to hiss. His voice cracked a little. Strained. "Nikola, what ..." He stopped. Stopped as he realised the warmth beneath his hand, the wetness. Stopped as he squinted in the darkness, and recognised the blackness of blood against his skin. Nikola's blood. Nigel stopped, and flinched, shuddering in the dimness in something like guilt. "Nikola ..."
"It's nothing," Nikola answered, light and cheerful. "I slipped on the deck and cut it against a railing. Don't worry about it."
Nigel stared at him. Blankly, just for a second, and then fury swamped him. Then utter rage swamped his features, and he shoved against Nikola, shoved himself close and spat into Nikola's face. "Don't you lie to me!" he snarled, low and black. "Whatever else you ... whatever else you do, Nikola, don't you ever lie to me! Not about ..."
His voice cracked, broke, but Nikola was already nodding. Nikola was already saying yes, silent and steady, and his hands reached up to clasp Nigel's shoulders. To hold him steady. "I'm sorry," he said, quickly and quietly. "Nigel, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Nigel held against him, held himself taut and furious for another second, another moment, and then ... Then the man slumped against him. Pale and half-dressed, and so very, very tired.
"I didn't want ... It wasn't supposed to ... Your promise ..."
"I kept my promise," Nikola interrupted, immediately, confidently. "I didn't drink. Not a drop was spilled that wasn't mine. It was all very ..." He paused, feeling his mouth curl, feeling the dark curve of it. "It was all very human."
"I don't care if it was bloody fish," Nigel snarled, but quietly. Raggedly, curled against Nikola's chest. "It wasn't supposed ... You shouldn't have had to do that. Not for me. You shouldn't have to risk that ..."
Nikola smiled, then. A soft thing in the darkness, and he pressed the man close. Gently, and Nigel was as breakable in his arms as those men had been outside, Nigel was as fragile, but Nikola was not John. He was not the monster people feared when they heard the word 'vampire'. His strength was his, and controllable, and it harmed only those he wanted it to harm. Harmed only when he saw the need, and no more.
"There was no risk," he said, with a laughing curl of his lip, with a calm confidence. "Not to me, not to you. They didn't want to be heard, and now they never will be. That's all there is to it." They had left England, left Europe, and the war wasn't on anymore. Not for them. Not anymore. America was before them, and that was all there was to it.
Nikola looked down at Nigel, still shaking against him, and then over at the bed. Over at the rucked blankets from Nigel's rush to the door, and the narrow space between the edge and the wall that might, just might, fit two grown men, if they were thin, and worn, and tired enough not to care.
"Still want to share with me?" he asked, very quietly, and grinned a little when Nigel looked incredulously up at him. "It's getting late, you know."
Nigel stared at him, for a long, long second, in the darkness and the cold, on a ship in the Atlantic on a cold November night in 1919. Nigel stared at him, in parts incredulous, furious, desperate and relieved, annoyed, resigned. In parts tired beyond measure, and just too worn to fight. Nigel stared at him, and then he grinned. Then he reached up, pulled Nikola's head to his, and pressed them together, forehead to forehead, mouth almost to mouth.
"You're the most annoying, reckless, contrary, bloody stupid sod I ever met," he growled, so very fondly. "And one of these days you're going to get the both of us killed, you do know that."
Nikola grinned. "It's possible," he allowed. "But you love me anyway, yes?"
"Yes," Nigel said, soft and exasperated and real, and kissed him. Just a touch against his mouth, gruff and brief and almost chaste. "Yes, I love you anyway, you bloody bastard."
"Good," Nikola smiled, and took the invisible man, took the spy, took his friend, to bed.
A/N: There's an Annotated Version and a coda in the form of Close
A/N: I'm thinking of putting this in a timeline with some of my other Nikola & Nigel fics, and just calling it the Nigel/Nikola Series:
1886: Gamesmanship
1906: Old Friends and Enemies
1919: Dust From Their Shoes
1925: Dangerous Games
1929: New Worlds
1959: Old Times
1960: Hollow
