Nico had forgotten things about the world outside of the Society. The pungency of New York City in the summer, which autumnal foliage temporarily relieved before the cautionary sogginess of winter began. How often he was supposed to get haircuts. How frequently people would ask about his prospects. “Don’t tell me you’re going to waste away in academia,” things like that, though Nico wasn’t entirely sure what the alternative to wasting away in academia was supposed to be. Wasting away in bureaucracy? In heterosexuality? In his brunch khakis?
“What you need to do is find a corner of the industry that’s primed for disruption” was the unsolicited take from Max’s father, the elder Maximilian Wolfe, with whom Nico had been trapped in conversation at the Wolfe second home in the Berkshires. “And remember, a solid valuation is everything. Put in the time, with the right investors, and you can really build a portfolio from there.”
“Did he say that to you, really?” Max asked Nico in the getaway car later, sounding a bit awed by Nico’s retelling of the story (only loosely paraphrased) as they meandered glacially through city traffic with the top down. (It was chilly for such an endeavor, but what was life if not a series of irresponsible choices in pursuit of shrieking joy?) “Just what does he think you’re going to disrupt? The mouse pad industry?”
“I think more along the lines of the economy,” Nico guessed, “which is admittedly a figment of everyone’s imagination.”
“Well, sorry you had to deal with that.” From the driver’s seat, Max slid him a grimace. “But you know the deal.”
“Yes, I do.” Once a year since they’d first met at the NYUMA dorms—Nico’s Society initiation years excepted—Nico had accompanied Max to his family’s country home to perform a spectacular double act involving the pretense of something-something entrepreneurship, thus securing Max another year’s income from the inscrutable elder Max Wolfe. It was ultimately a small price to pay (usually a lot of golf, at which Nico prodigiously cheated, with many Oscar-nominated peals of laughter) but draining all the same.
“Perhaps,” Nico suggested, “next year you might consider abject poverty, as an alternative?”
Beneath Max’s sunglasses was almost certainly the presence of an admonishing glance. “Nicky, I’m not above getting a job, as you well know—”
“Do I?” Nico said doubtfully.
“Fine, I’m barely employable, point taken. But how am I supposed to keep an eye on Gideon, hm? This is merely a brief sabbatical from my full-time calling as our beloved Sandman’s au pair.” Max, still in costume as tremendous go-getter and prodigal son, nudged his Wayfarers down to grimace at Nico. “How is he doing, by the way?”
“This’ll help,” Nico said, referencing the vial Max had procured, which Nico had tucked away in the pocket of the attaboy navy blazer he reserved specifically for these occasions (currently framing the poshest of his kicky cable-knits). “And I think he’s mostly fine. Well, no, he’s almost certainly lying to me about his state of mind,” Nico corrected himself cheerily, deciding not to mention Gideon’s ongoing nightmares about some realm-dwelling accountant—or perhaps they were simply accountancy nightmares; unclear whether Gideon had a thriving stock portfolio, and Nico knew better than to underestimate him—“but he doesn’t seem worse than usual. Just … more reserved.” Nico riffled a hand through his hair. “Have you seen him recently?”
Max nodded. “Slipped me a note by dreamscape carrier pigeon while I was napping the other day. Says he’s fine.”
“Ah yes,” Nico said with a sigh, “I believe I, too, know all the words to that refrain. The hit single off his platinum album, Everything Is Pie—”
“You do know,” Max interjected, “that he’s been in love with you for six years? Just checking that that information has passed between the two of you in recent months.” Again, he paused to face Nico from the driver side of his new car, which was smart enough to know when the light would change and also, somehow, a tax write-off. “Which I say not to express the indignity of an I told you so—”
“You’ve expressed that particular indignity several times this week despite not, in fact, telling me so,” said Nico. “Despite deliberately concealing it from me, in fact—”
“—which I bring up merely to say: don’t rob him of this.” Max wagged a finger. “It’s a mixed bag, I understand that. It’s not ideal and you’re a fusser, et cetera and so on. But he’s happy in whatever way Gideon understands happiness to be despite being held hostage by the Illuminati, so, you know,” Max concluded. “Don’t ruin it.”
“Not the Illuminati,” said Nico. “Just some pals I happen to know.”
“Whatever. Don’t ruin it for me, either.” Max clapped Nico on the shoulder as they finally reached the passenger bay at Grand Central. “All right. Get the fuck out of here. And try not to think about me while you and Gideon make out,” he advised.
“Not once have I ever thought of you,” Nico said, clambering out of the car, “and yet now I’m decently concerned that I might.”
“Be honest, Nicolás,” Max yelled after him. “Not even once?”
Nico flipped him off over his shoulder and made his way through the station as usual; bypassing the crowd of sleepy passengers and oysters; flummoxing the surveillance wards specifically marking him for ambush; generally performing the song and dance as he had done what now felt like a thousand times before. He felt a routine mix of things throughout this process of leaving the real world and reentering the dimension of the Alexandrian archives. Like walking through a portal to a fantasy world, except it instantly made his lips chap and his muscles ache.
“I’m back,” Nico yelled when he entered the house, making his way through the foyer to the staircase. He heard something in response, a lackluster greeting that probably belonged to Tristan, and raced up the stairs to drop off his bag in his room. It was the same room as it had been over the last two years, except for little details here and there—Gideon’s T-shirt hooked on the bathroom door, pairs of Nico’s socks rolled up neatly in the drawer because they “didn’t belong on the floor all mismatched and lonely, Nicky, it’s sad.” Nico smiled faintly and then made his way down the stairs, colliding with someone unexpectedly on the landing.
“Hello,” said Dalton Ellery stiffly, as Nico blinked. Their former researcher seemed different somehow, not merely because he no longer lived there. Nico found himself a bit startled by something. Perhaps the lack of spectacles, or the addition of a leather jacket that Nico suspected (despite all evidence to the contrary) might have been extremely cool.
“Dalton?” Parisa had texted him that Dalton was coming, but still. “You look—”
“I see that my former room is now occupied. I was just moving my things.” Dalton referenced a bag that was slung over his shoulder.
“Did—” Nico frowned, determining firstly how to ask whether Dalton was alone and secondly whether that answer had the potential to devastate him (for three to five minutes, probably yes). “Did Parisa convince you to come?”
“She told me you were planning to attempt the experiment.”
“Well, sort of.” Assuming they could get Libby on board in reality as well as in theory, which was thus far proving uncertain, though if anyone could manage it, it was likely Parisa. Nico resisted the urge to peer around Dalton’s shoulder. “Did she come with you?”
“It appears she’s lost interest in my scholarly pursuits. As is her nature, she’s busied herself with other things.” Something like impatience flashed in Dalton’s eyes. “So I suppose I’ll just take her former room.”
“Oh … right, yeah.” Nico tried not to mentally draw a diagram of who in the house had occupied which variety of bedrooms. “Right, well. See you around, I suppose.”
Dalton nodded and walked quickly past Nico, a strange new lean to his posture. Was it … swagger? Nico was alarmed to realize it might have been, though he supposed one did not get to be the object of Parisa Kamali’s affections without adopting a sort of strut. (Ah yes, there it was, the momentary pull that was really more asynchronously nostalgic than actually devastated. Other lives, other worlds.)
Nico didn’t think it sounded like the Parisa he knew to suddenly lose interest in anything, much less a scholarly pursuit, but he felt it slightly arrogant to presume he’d ever been allowed to truly know her. He shrugged and continued down the stairs, noticing the light on in the reading room.
He stepped inside warily, uncertain who he might be disturbing, and felt a wave of relief upon sight of its occupancy. A wayward glint of sandy hair rested above a mahogany table, a single lamp illuminating an outstretched arm, the steady motion of slumber. Nico paused in the doorway, framing the moment like a photograph before gingerly creeping forward with intent to shift Gideon from the chair and up to bed.
As he came closer, he noticed something below Gideon’s cheek. A book, he realized with a pang of fondness. So, even the archives could be convinced to let Gideon have a treat. Nico slid away the copy of The Tempest and touched Gideon’s cheek, gently. Gideon bent his head, nuzzling into Nico’s palm in his sleep.
“Ah, I was just coming to wake him.” Nico turned to find Tristan in the doorway. He noticed the empty glass in Tristan’s hand, the book under his arm. Tristan was on his phone, typing something quickly before looking up.
A mix of guilt and worry skittered across Nico’s chest at the implication that waking Gideon might have become part of Tristan’s nightly routine. “Does this happen often?”
Tristan gave him a sympathetic look. “Rhodes told me about the narcolepsy.”
Something in Tristan’s voice suggested he had used that word to avoid awakening something more vulnerable in Nico.
“Thanks,” Nico said, which felt appropriate for the significance of the offering, if not the specifics of their conversation. He lifted Gideon off the ground, tilting him slightly. “Hey,” he added tangentially to Tristan, “did you know Dalton’s here?”
Tristan nodded. “I suppose we’re meant to gather that it’s Parisa’s attempt at being helpful? Explaining herself would obviously be a step too far.”
Nico eased his shoulder carefully under Gideon’s arm, then glanced back at Tristan. “She’s a nice person, Caine. But obviously don’t tell her I said that or she’ll kill me.” Tristan laughed, and Nico felt a small wave of something. Contentment, he supposed. “Heading upstairs, then?”
Tristan nodded, lingering in the door frame until Nico joined him. “Did you notice anything weird about him?” Nico asked, shouldering Gideon’s weight more comfortably as they walked.
“Who, Gideon?” Tristan asked with a glance. “He’s been in there all afternoon. Only dozed off a bit ago, maybe an hour or so before you arrived.”
“No, Dalton.” Tristan looked over at Nico with a distracted frown, like his mind was elsewhere. “Never mind. How’s—” Nico hesitated. “How’s Rhodes?” To Tristan’s arched brow, he clarified, “I, uh. I don’t think she’s too happy with me at the moment.” She hadn’t been, anyway, the last time they spoke.
“Is she ever?” Tristan asked dryly.
“Valid. Unhelpful, but valid.” They walked in silence for a few moments up the stairs.
“No change since you left last,” Tristan remarked without elaboration, which Nico took to mean several things—that she still hadn’t budged on the sinister plot and she still wasn’t completely looking Tristan in the eye since he’d sided with Nico and admitted his intentions to do it. Neither of which felt worth mentioning.
They parted ways on the landing, Tristan still mentally elsewhere. Nico brought Gideon into their room, toying a bit with gravity to soften the landing.
“Hey, Mr. Sandman,” Nico sang under his breath. “Bring me a dream, make him the dumbest that I’ve ever seen—”
No motion. Gideon was fully out. Nico laughed quietly, then paused, touching his thumb softly to Gideon’s forehead with one word forming idly in his mind.
Precioso.
Nico wasn’t quite tired himself, what with the time zone change, so he decided against climbing into bed and instead faced the door with a sigh, contemplating his alternatives. He supposed there was still a conversation to be had.
When he made his way to the painted room, Libby was tucked into the corner of the sofa. She was frowning into the flames of the hearth, gripping what Nico realized with surprise was a glass of wine. “Are you drinking?” Not that she never did, but he’d only seen it in a social context. Drinking alone was something Nico associated most closely with Callum.
The glare she turned on him was so familiar he nearly whooped with relief.
“I’ve recently been advised to relax,” said Libby dryly.
“Oh. Right.” That had been him just before he’d left, which was over a week ago now, though it wasn’t in her nature to forget. She was like an elephant, but specifically for the ways that he had personally wronged her.
He’d been trying to coax her into something, a game. A reminder, some form of combustion that could conceivably, who could say, make new worlds and such. It was strange doing magic with her now. Her magical signature was different, like she’d switched hands or learned a few new words in a different language, or something. It was hard to explain. Or maybe it felt like when you sleep with someone new and then the old kiss, it’s not the same. She kept pulling back, cutting him off too quickly. It was throwing them both off balance until finally he’d let her carry the brunt of the error, shoving the pain away instead of sharing it equally between them, just enough so that she’d feel it—not a dangerous amount of pain, of course. Nothing lethal. More like her leg had fallen asleep, or like he’d kicked her hard in the thigh.
He sought her out later, finding her in the chapel where he always seemed to be delivering bad news. “Sorry,” he’d said, expecting the usual glare—Varona, you idiot, you could have killed me—but everything was off between them; strange. He’d thought the magic was the worst of it, but maybe not.
“This is stupid.” Her eyes were elsewhere, staring out over the empty pews from where she sat in the glow of the stained-glass triptych.
“Yes, it is.” He tried to find the words to soften that, but came up empty. “You know that we can do it. I know that you want to. The only thing I don’t understand is why you’re still trying to hold us back.”
“I told you, Varona, the consequences—”
“Stop trying to stay small, Rhodes,” he snapped at her, feeling himself lash out over something, over nothing. “You can’t stay in this house forever just because you’re scared that if you actually make a choice the world will end—”
“You think I’m worried about being too small?” Her expression in response was a troubling stillness, bathed in the luster of knowledge’s torch. “You wanted me to let it burn, Varona, and I did. You don’t get to talk to me about my choices.” From the stained incandescence of enlightenment or arson, he could see the set of her jaw. The tiny fissure between her brows. “If I’m going to set myself on fire again, I won’t be doing it just to prove something to you.”
There was an insult there, something worse than usual. An accusation that held weight, like maybe this was somehow his fault. Like she had changed and he would always be stuck, always a waste of her time, always an idiot. Like she had outgrown him when all he had done was try to shrink down for her. All those months treading carefully, being kind, being considerate.
Apparently that meant nothing to her, so fine. So be it, he’d thought.
Time for a different tactic now.
“Okay fine, fine.” He felt his teeth gritting in something, anger or disappointment, because he didn’t understand this, didn’t understand her anymore. “I just think you need to relax a little bit, Rhodes—”
“Relax?” Exactly the wrong word, but he pressed her anyway.
“This experiment, this … this magic, it’s what we came here to do!” he said, too angrily. Too much. “It’s why we came here—to prove that we’re the best, that we’re the only ones who can do this, and the fact that you can’t even see that—” He broke off in frustration. “Why did you even bother coming back if you’re just going to let everything we are go to waste?”
He’d known it was the wrong thing to say even before he saw her face. Afterward, though, there was no way to properly apologize—no way to eulogize the people they’d been before the words left his mouth.
That night, a week ago, she’d walked away, and he’d gone to the Berkshires with Max. And now they were here again, and she was looking at Nico with something he thought might have been a white flag, or her version of it, which wasn’t actually conciliatory. More like we need to talk.
By the time he ventured in from the threshold, Libby had poured a second glass, which she’d set on top of a coaster. Nico sat on the floor in front of the fireplace and she hesitated, then slid down from the sofa to join him, handing him the glass. “I have no idea if it’s supposed to be good,” she admitted. “Tristan picked it out.”
“Oh, then it’s excellent,” Nico assured her. “Didn’t you know he’s the house purveyor of quality wines and sarcastic comments?”
“What does that make you?” she countered.
“I,” Nico replied, “am mostly here to piss everyone off. Cheers,” he added, clinking his glass against hers before taking a sip.
She mirrored him, her eyes warily on his above the glass.
“Listen, I was thinking—”
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said in the same moment. They both paused, and since he figured he was more in the wrong, he continued, “I know better than to tell you to relax. But in fairness to me, I have no idea what our rhythm is anymore.”
“I—” She cut off like he’d taken the wind out of her sails. “I didn’t expect you to put it so un-obnoxiously, but yeah. That’s—” She fiddled with the stem of her glass. “That’s pretty much what I was thinking, too.”
“You got mad,” Nico said. “Like, actually mad, not fake mad.”
“I’m never fake mad,” she muttered with annoyance. “You’re a constant disaster.”
“Thank you—”
“But I know what you mean. I reacted badly.” She took a sip and he frowned.
“I wouldn’t say badly,” he said. “Just … like you’ve forgotten something.”
“Something?”
“Like you’ve forgotten I’m not your enemy.” Ah, there it was. “Like you’ve forgotten I’m supposed to be your ally. I’m on your team.”
Her glass had been partway to her lips when she paused. “Are you still?”
“What?” He blinked at her, a stab of something crossing his mind at the distant imagination that he could be otherwise. “Of course.”
“Are you actually wounded or just being theatrical?”
“I’m—” He stopped. “Well, wounded is a theatrical word, first of all, but yes, actually, now that you mention it, I am wounded. I mean, we already went through this,” he reminded her, thinking of the day she’d saved him, almost two years ago now, when he’d been trying to reinforce the house’s wards on his own. The state of exhaustion he’d been in, which he would never have admitted. The help he never would have requested from anyone, which she’d offered without a single string, just because she’d known him. Because she’d known.
He had made a promise to her then, that he would turn to her for help, and she had promised she would do the same. “It’s like you’ve completely forgotten that I already gave you my word.”
“Oh, silly me,” she said bluntly. “I wonder if anything remotely traumatic might have happened to me between two years ago and now—”
“But that’s what I mean.” He set the glass aside. “You need me right now, more than you’ve ever needed—” He stopped. “You need someone,” he clarified, because the expression on her face had become something he didn’t fully understand, and he suspected that maybe he was assuming too much. “You obviously need help. You need to talk to someone, and it doesn’t have to be me, but—”
He looked away, glancing at his discarded wineglass and deciding never mind, he did need it after all, and then brought it up to his lips, taking a long pull. “Fuck,” he said, eyeing the glass when it was empty. “That is actually delicious.”
“I really wouldn’t know,” she said, though she stretched up toward the side table for the bottle, pouring more into his glass. “The only wine I’ve had in the last year came from a box.”
Aside from her cataclysmic reminders about the apocalypse destined to befall the earth, that was more information than she’d revealed so far about her time away from him. Nico was hesitant to spoil the mood. Instead, he leaned against the couch, settling into a more comfortable position on the floor and inviting her to mirror him.
She did.
“It’s not—” She paused, hesitating. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you about it. It’s just—” She stared into the fire, and so did he, recognizing that eye contact would be far too vulnerable a thing to ask from her. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Was anything good?” he asked.
He saw her blink with surprise. “I … yeah. Yes, actually.”
“Any good meals?”
She laughed, seeming to have surprised herself with it. “Seriously?”
“Completely serious. Even when there’s nothing to live for, there’s always your next meal,” he joked, and she laughed again.
“Wow. That’s so…”
“Hedonistic of me?”
“I … guess?”
“There’s also revenge,” he added. “The two most important things in life.”
“Food and vengeance?”
“Yes.” He hazarded a glance at her and saw that she was smiling. Naturally his instinct was to spoil it, so he did. “And also,” he mused, “the chance to come back and tell me that I was right about Fowler all along.”
He waited for her to clam up again, shoving all her pain into some box she didn’t want anyone else to see, but instead her mouth thinned with something he could have sworn was a smirk.
“You know, don’t let this go to your head,” she said, “but I actually had that exact thought several times last year.”
“What, that I was right?”
“No, that you’d somehow realize telepathically that you were right from thirty years away and still manage to annoy me with it.” She glanced at him, and the unexpected eye contact sent his pulse cantering somewhere out of reach.
He raised the newly topped-off glass to his lips, taking another long sip. “Is it weird to be sitting here drinking expensive wine and talking about your ex-boyfriend?”
She laughed again, caught off guard a second time. “Yes.”
“I feel like we’re in a pretentious film about tortured geniuses.”
“Yes.”
“But actually we’re just babies with expensive glassware.”
“I actually think these are crystal.” She tilted her head, eyeing the glass in the light. It caught the flickering heat of the flames in the hearth, sending the colors dancing. Nico watched for a second, living on the precipice of the moment. Bracing for the fall and whatever could no longer be left unsaid.
“I did think about you, you know.” He took another swallow of whatever Tristan picked out for them. “I think the technical verbiage is I missed you.”
Libby said nothing.
“When I thought you were—” Nico stopped, feeling a strain in his throat. “For a second I thought you were gone, and I was … It was like I lost a piece of me.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear, burying her nose in her glass.
“And I don’t mean that like—” He hesitated. “I know we’ve always been … us,” he determined for lack of a better word. “But I don’t know, there’s just something about you, about knowing that you exist. It’s like without you, I’m just push, you know? Just push with no pull, but then you were gone and I just fell over.” God, he sounded like an idiot. “Sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying, I guess I just wanted to tell you that it wasn’t nothing to me, you know? I know I make it seem like everything is nothing to me, but it’s not.”
This was only getting more incoherent. “I just want you to know it matters. You, I mean. Us.” He motioned awkwardly between them. “I got a taste of what life is like without you, and…” He sighed, expelling a breath and leaning back to rest his head against the sofa. “I just want you to know, officially, that what you said to me at graduation, about us being done with each other—that’s not what I want. If I ever meant it before, I definitely don’t mean it now. I don’t actually want to never see you again.”
The fire crackled and danced, the clock on the mantel ticking.
Then Nico snorted into his glass, taking another long pull. “Wow. Really good speech, Varona,” he mimicked in Libby’s voice.
To his relief, Libby laughed, a hiccup of a giggle, and turned to him with wine-flushed cheeks, a dance of amusement in her slate-colored eyes. “I don’t actually want to never see you again, as the poets say,” she mocked.
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah—”
“Without you,” she said with feigned solemnity, “I would simply … fall over.”
Ah, fuckety balls. “Okay, we get it, Rhodes, you’re hysterical—”
“It’s not not cute,” she said, reaching over to riffle his hair as he ducked out of reach, straining not to spill on the rug he did not know how to clean.
“Rhodes, come on, I know you’re a heartless monster but please, I’m just a human man—”
“I always thought—” She stopped, and he slowly swayed back to sitting, arching a brow in prompting as she looked over at him and hesitated. “No, never mind.”
“Oh, come on.” He nudged her with his shoulder. “I undressed in front of you. You know, metaphorically.”
One brow shot upward. “Are you telling me to strip?”
“Metaphorically,” he repeated with emphasis, “yes, I am. Here,” he said, reaching over for the bottle and moving to pour more wine into her glass. “You’re empty, maybe this’ll help—”
“Right, help me relax. If only you knew,” she muttered to herself, taking the bottle from him.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Don’t tell me you spent your year on the run starting a boxed wine club without me.”
“No, but I definitely thought you being right about Ezra was some kind of cruel cosmic joke.” She sighed and abandoned the tyranny of a glass, lifting the bottle for a sip instead. “Promise me you’ll let me get through this without interrupting?” she said through a mouthful of old-world vintage.
“I promise. It’ll crush me inside, but I’ll be quiet, I swear.” He saluted her with his glass, and she offered him the bottle. “Fine, when in Rome—”
He took a swig, and she took advantage of his distraction. “You weren’t right about Ezra, you know. You just weren’t wrong enough, which is somehow equally annoying.”
“Too true,” he said giddily.
“You said you’d be quiet,” she grumbled, taking the bottle back from him. With a glare, she continued, “I don’t want to joke about it. I don’t want to talk about it,” she clarified, “but I guess I just … I guess—” A sigh. “Some part of me kept thinking that if I’d had you, things would have been better. Or that without you, I was more lost than I’d ever been.”
She took another sip, contemplatively that time, and Nico, who was not completely without nuance, remained very silent, even though he could tell something had shifted. Some form of resistance had begun to give.
In the silence between them, Nico’s mind wandered a little to the bedroom upstairs, to the way Gideon looked when he slept; to his sense that Gideon would approve of this conversation in some way, and of what Nico had tried to say, even if another part of Gideon would be pained by it. Not wounded, exactly, but pained. Nico thought he understood the difference, which was also to understand the complexity of everything that existed between him and the dreamer upstairs.
“Do you ever—?” Libby began, her voice rough, but not uncertain. Nico didn’t move, didn’t breathe. “If we’re right,” she said. “If the experiment works—if Atlas’s theory is right, and there really are other versions of our world out there, and we’ve met in them, do you think—?”
She turned to him, the bottle forgotten.
The flames danced. The clock ticked.
She spoke first.
“Do you ever wonder if maybe it’s supposed to be us?”
It felt inevitable, that moment. That question. Like every alternate path still led them here. Like somewhere innate, they both knew they’d spent lifetimes dancing around the gravitational pull of the obvious.
“Yes,” Nico said. “I do.”