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The silence around the dinner table is comfortable. Nile lets herself relax into the feeling of family, slowly sipping a glass of what might be the best (and most expensive) wine she’s had in her life. Her new team has a lot of great wine, simply because they buy it when it’s bottled and let it sit in cellars scattered around the world for a few centuries. People would probably kill for the wine these three have tucked away. Not that killing would do much good, in the end.
Nile leans back in her chair, closing her eyes to enjoy the fleeting ghost of alcohol as it rushes too quickly through her system.
“Did you dream of each other?” she asks. She knows this could be a dangerous topic, but she desperately wants to know, so terribly curious about these people she had felt compelled to sacrifice her previous life for. “Before you met up?”
The silence in the room tautens a bit, and Nile opens her eyes. She’s just about to apologize and withdraw the question when Joe grins at her.
“Yes,” he says, in an uncharacteristically succinct answer.
And Nicky… is Nicky blushing? Just the slightest blush, but now Nile is desperately curious.
She sits up in her chair, looking around.
“Well?” she asks, when no one elaborates.
Joe, Nicky, and Andy share a look. Andy looks… odd. Her eyes are wide and red, like they had been when she’d walked in on their discussion about Quynh that first night. But she’s smiling, a wistful smile with more than a trace of her wicked humor.
“Andy?” asks Nicky carefully, and Nile waits, understanding that hearing this story, for some reason, hinges on Andy’s approval.
Andy nods, just once, sitting back and taking a large sip -- more of a gulp, if Nile’s being honest -- of her wine.
“Well,” Joe begins, looking absolutely delighted to be sharing. Nicky looks like he can’t decide if he wants to bury his face in his hands or burst out laughing. “It took much longer to find each other, in those days. It was years, I believe, before Andy and Quynh” -- ah, thinks Nile -- “found us. And the whole time, the dreams.”
“At first it was quite annoying,” says Andy, obviously deciding that she refused to be upset by this and making a conscious effort to participate in the story. “It was just flashes of these two idiots killing each other over and over. Did you know that they even resorted to bashing each others’ heads in with rocks?” Nicky and Joe look faintly embarrassed at this.
“Well, the swords clearly were not working,” points out Nicky, as if that somehow makes it better.
“So you tried rocks,” says Nile. “As one does.”
“As one does,” agrees Nicky, completely serious.
“Anyways,” interrupts Joe, “after that Nicolo and I decided that obviously we were not meant to kill each other, and so instead we started traveling together.”
“And then,” interjects Andy dryly. “They decided that because they were not meant to kill each other, they were obviously meant to kiss each other.”
“Well, yes,” says Nicky, as though this is indeed the only conclusion they could possibly have reached. And, Nile supposes, for them, it probably was.
“Anyways. They then progressed beyond kissing.”
Nile thinks she sees where this is going.
“And you… saw that? In your dreams?” she asks Andy, somewhat horrified.
Andy scowls at the other two. “They weren’t doing much else at the time, so it was the only thing there was to see.”
“True,” agrees Joe, obviously amused. “We were a bit distracted, and kept forgetting to actually travel.”
“But then,” Nicky jumps in, completely over his embarrassment, “Andromache and Quynh decided it should be a competition.”
Nile chokes on her wine.
“Andy and Quynh did WHAT?”
“They were very creative about it,” Joe puts in. “They were still looking for us, and actually had to travel during the day, but they were quite determined that we would dream of them having sex and not the mundanities of travel.”
Andy grins. “So we had sex all the time . It was great, and sex on horseback is certainly an interesting challenge.”
Nile tries desperately not to imagine this. She pushes away the only images she has of Quynh, those of her drowning over and over. She tries not to imagine Andy having sex. She tries not to imagine Nicky and Joe having sex. Nile buries her face in her hands.
“Wow. Thank god you guys found me so quickly.”
“Yes. Booker--” There is a palpable stutter in the room. “Booker was not amused, when we found him.”
Nile snorts. “I imagine he wasn’t.”
There is another silent pause.
“Was it… awkward? When the four of you finally found each other?”
Nicky grins. “Maybe a little, for Yusuf and me. Quynh and Andromache thought it was hilarious.”
“Plus,” Andy adds, “We never had to worry about walking in on each other after that. There was literally nothing that could be happening that we hadn’t seen before.”
“Oh, god .” Nile buries her face in her hands again. “Nicky?” she asks plaintively. “Can I have more wine?”
She hears Nicky snort with laughter as he gets up.