mr. & mr. smith / sal & niho

[gamemaker kelsier]

N. A.

He can't remember the safe word.

They do have one, but he can't remember it. Something silly, stupid word, too many vowels, what is it.

What is it.

His palm hits the ground, curls his fingers up in chunks of glass and pills, no they're not pills.

His other hand reaches up, goes from below, tries to get under the wire, if he can slip his hand under then he can breath a little easier, that's all he can think about.

banana?

No, not it.

He looks up, Sal's crying. Well, that's kind of nice but it also kind of hurts at the same time. Sometimes holding Sal is like holding a bird in his hands. It's like holding a bird and feeling that heart beat, too fast, beneath a thin membrane and fragile little bird bones. Everyone looks at Sal and sees something strong, something scary. Niho looks at Sal and he sees a man that's been hurt as many times as him, that's just as in pain, that's just as lonely and he wants to hold him gentle in the palm of his hands. He wants to feel that little bird heart slow down into something calmer.

He gives up on trying to get a hand beneath the wire, reaches up instead, gotta fix it, gotta hold him, make the tears stop.

But he isn't strong enough. not enough air moving around his body, not enough blood, it's pooling out his side. It hurts but it doesn't in a scary sort of way. It's like being born, you don't remember it and you don't want it.

And then the pressure's gone, Sal's gone.

Niho wheezes, curling onto his side, scrambling, clutching at nothing as he sucks air back in to his lungs. Sal's gone, that's bad maybe, no nevermind, he's at Niho's feet, folding himself in half. Does that sometimes on bad days, Niho knows that. He's seen that, woken up with Sal's hands around his neck because he's dreaming again and doesn't even realise.

Niho drags himself to his knees, crawling away slowly in the rubble through a mess of glass and orange fucking tic tacs.

Sal's been taking tic tacs.

Niho falls to an elbow, so dizzy, but he knows where the back-ups are.

Cupboard under the cookbook shelf.

Takes him two tries to open the door and there it is, little yellow container with Sal's name on it. Shakes it, little white pills hit against the top and bottom, rattle around in there.

He turns then and sighs, suddenly Sal is so far away.

"Baby," he says, voice hoarse and cracking all over, giving away how much he's actually hurt. Niho frowns. He's fine, he feels fine, it's just that the idea of crawling back makes him want to cry with exhaustion.

"Baby, Look at me," he says, "I need you-" he falters. It's the wrong start, it probably doesn't matter what Niho needs at the point. He falls back against the cupboard door.

"You need to come get these I can't-" he sighs again, frustrated. It hurts to talk. He's past tears, past anger, love. There's just the job now. He has to finish the job.

He aims carefully, then rolls the pills towards Sal. It only makes it halfway.

Now he feels like crying.

"Baby can you just get them?" he asks, "Please?"

[tick 12a / calla]

S. A.

Third sign. The numbness.

Sal watches Niho try and catch his breath, some odd kind of veneer over the entire thing. He's still crying. He can feel it. The rest of him's detached thought, like someone's lifted his brain right out of his body.

He's back against something solid. The island again maybe. The couch. He can't tell. Everything feels like white noise, the static starts creeping up along the edges of him, all consuming and threatening.

Fuck off. There's other problems to deal with.

Like the fact Sal can't stop staring at Niho now. The look on his face. Why-

He doesn't know where the garrote went. He lost it somewhere between the movements of sitting up and leaning back. That's probably a bad thing. It seems like a bad thing to lose your weapon in the middle of a fight. Sal looks at Niho. Hands. They're flat against the ground, clutching himself, empty. They were fighting. Are. Were?

He's bleeding.

Sal lurches forward and then stops. Collapses a little more. You did that you fucking idiot, you worthless piece of shit, you did that.

He wishes Rune actually did die in a car crash. Every damn day, it's the same wish. Every birthday. Every time they see a fountain and Nowles demands a quarter to throw in, because a penny just isn't powerful enough.

Hey Sal, what'd you wish for this year-

I wish that my ex wife cracked her head open on the blacktop because we got hit by a drunk driver and she ended up going through the windshield.

Happy fucking birthday.

It would've been better, though. Even still, it would've been better.

Maybe he does need help.

Because now it's Niho there, lying on the ground. Hurt because of Sal. He can't move. Sal can't move.

The sound of the pills in the bottle, rattling.

The pharmacy logo flips up as it rolls across the floor.

There's Sal's name, bolded. Prescription number. Date. Say what you want about the murders, the gang's got one hell of a health plan.

You did this you did this you did this.

He feels cracked open. He is cracked open. It takes him three tries to get the bottle open once he can hold it properly, and then he dry swallows three of the capsules all at once, just to be safe. A bullet rolls by his foot when he shifts, one end of it flattened from hitting the cast iron. Sal grips the pill bottle so hard that the plastic starts to squeak.

He echos it, keening like some wounded thing.

He reaches out, tentatively, like he's not allowed to because he probably isn't. He touches the hem of Niho's pants, shifting until he can close his fingers around and just stay there. He's probably not allowed to. He holds on like someone's about to rip him away. He's gasping like he was the one being throttled. How the fuck is he supposed to apologize for that? For this? For any of it?

Niho'd be doing the world a favour by shooting him. Good riddance.

Don't leave me don't leave me here like this don't leave me alone I'm sorry I can't don't

[gamemaker kelsier]

N. A.

Sal gets them, Niho exhales slowly. Job complete, he can rest. Maybe.

The gun didn't go that far, wire's still off somewhere, probably close and Niho doesn't have it in him to fight back. It'd be easy now for Sal to get him. Niho'd let him anyway.

Niho was always going to let him. In sickness, in health, death, all of that. A lot of time in their marriage was spent in sickness, Niho didn't mind. Not until now.

He has to concentrate on breathing, strange how that happens, how a basic body function that he takes for granted every day can be so much fucking work. He should sit up, get a better angle for air flow. He knows that, he tells his body to move but it doesn't. It doesn't feel a threat anymore, there's no reason to.

Strange sound, sad sound.

Sal sound. Like he's hurt. Niho only saw glass in the knees, in the palm. That's it. Maybe just now he'd hurt him, in that moment on the floor when Sal was suffocating him and Niho's body was doing more to save him than he cared to.

He looks at his husband.

"Oh," he mumbles, "Artichoke, it's fucking... it's artichoke."

What a stupid safe word.

Sal moves towards him and Niho just watches this happen, too tired to move. He knows that medication doesn't work like that, it's not just some quick fix that flips a switch immediately. It should have been enough though to wake Sal up. Should have been enough to let them have a civil conversation before he tries to kill him again.

He feels a tug on his pant leg, it's agony.

Every movement is agony now, it's like being shocked.

Niho's been shocked before, never talked though.

"Mmmm," he hums.

Sal doesn't say anything and neither does he. There's too many things to try and fit into one sentence and Niho doesn't know where to start. I'm sorry would probably be a good start, I'm sorry I never told you, I'm sorry you never told me.

But he has a question first.

"Baby," he whispers, then coughs.

He's not dying, he just needs to shut his eyes for a little while. Come back stronger tomorrow. He's not dying because there's no way a single bullet hole, some glass and suffocation can-

Well he's not.

"How long have you been on tic tacs?"

He coughs again, his throat kills, the motion kills, Niho slides a little further down the front of the cabinet and that kills too. He's getting too old for this or maybe he's just been out of the game for too long.

The lights are somehow back on, they're not. He blinks and his head is on the tile now. It's nice and cold against his cheek. Sal's still making awful sounds, bit like a dying animal.

He's hungry, steak on the counter.

No, he needs bandages. Niho pulls the cupboard door open above his head, hand searching for the little red first aid kit they got for emergencies. There's got to be something in there.

There's no extraction on this job, no medic, the only person he can ever rely on is himself.

His hand lands on it, he slides it towards him and it falls off the edge and hits the side of his face before landing on the ground.

More Sal sounds.

He needs to be held.

"Be right there," he mumbles at the tile, "I've got you."

[tick 12a / calla]

S. A.

He's pawing at Niho's leg like a fucking idiot. Pathetic, really.

"Baby." Niho whispers.

Sal gets out a response too garbled to really understand.

Always like this. Always ends like this.

When Vern died, Sal went through their father's study methodically and ripped every book off every shelf, tearing the pages out in fistfuls at a time. He tried to throw the big heavy office chair out of the window. He tore pictures and certificates and diplomas down from the walls and shattered them on the corner of the Passerini desk. He tried to climb into the fireplace afterwards. It wasn't lit, but that didn't matter. Thirteen, he curls up in the cold grate and lets the ash settle around him and then one of the cleaners walks in and screams.

Kade had a friend over to play video games a few years ago. Just some kid from school, they never saw him again so it must not have stuck. But he stayed over for dinner that night, made some comment about how Sal looked good for his age because his dad was already gettin' grey hair an' shit. Nowles had piped up from across the table that Sal's only fifteen years older than Kade, and it's kinda funny because Kade is fifteen now - He can't even get a girl to look at him, HA!

Sal's still never seen Kade manage to change the subject so fast.

And he get's it. They're all kinds of fucked up. What's another tally on the sheet.

He'd been kind of worried at first, back when the whole thing started. Vern was eight years older than Sal, and that's his brother. Sal is fifteen years older than Kade, and that's his son. Eight to fifteen, just seven years, the difference didn't seem so big.

His son isn't supposed to feel like a brother. He's not supposed to feel like a brother to his son.

He's trying, though. Sal never matured quite right with all the trouble and the partying, the instability, but he's trying.

So when Niho says baby like that, when he looks at him like he still might love him, Sal gets the phantom feeling of ash on his skin. Something comes back online.

"Tic tacs."

Sal frowns at him.

How long have you been taking tic tacs.

He frowns down at the ground.

Oh.

Little pieces of orange everywhere. The stain on his hand. Fruit flavoured.

Oh.

Stupid, stupid.

Little sound from the back of his throat. He might cry again.

"Dunno." He says. Small.

There's no excuse. He doesn't have one. Maybe he just thought it was some new prescription the pharmacy set him on - lie. Maybe he was just too busy to notice - lie. Heavy, heavy head, he wants to go back to this morning when they were still in bed and blissful.

"M'gonna call-" Buck. "Mourn."

Where the fuck is his phone. He just saw it. It was there and now-

Here.

He grabs it and punches his code in - 1111 because it's the easiest thing to remember. He jabs his way over to recent calls and hits Mourn's name and presses the phone to his face, listening to it ring and ring and ring. And then it goes to voicemail.

Prick never even set up a custom message, he's still got he default one. It jumps straight to the beep and Sal drops it back down.

Because Niho is hurt. Sal did that. He needs Mourn to come here and clean up his mess, because that's what his big brother always does. He needs him. The phone lies silent. Sal touches the corner of the first aid kit. He's got his leg twisted under him funny, asleep now, but it's okay because he can still sort of reach Niho.

"Let me-" He starts. Stops. Stupid, stupid. Can't say things like that anymore, you shot at him. You shot him. Tried to kill him, you don't get to make demands. You're just going to make it worse. Beg instead. Grovel. Maybe he'll let you fix this and then he'll put you down gently.

Sal's phone starts vibrating against the tile but he doesn't fucking care.

He ignores it, thumb on the zipper of the kid, eyes still too wide and still too blown, there's so much blood, he whispers-

"Can I?"

[gamemaker kelsier]

N. A.

"Dunno."

Well that's not good.

Niho's fingers are working at the zipper but not doing a very good job at it. There's a high pitched buzzing sound in his ear and his throat hurts. He has to pause to dust a chunk of glass out of his palm.

He used to be better at all of this, used to be employee of the month with the lack of resources he required to get a job done. A job becomes a very different thing when you actually give a shit about the person you're up against.

If Niho didn't love Sal, this all would have gone very different.

It's at least a nice story to tell himself.

"Well someone's grounded," he whispers. It had to have been one of the kids, unless Sal had made the switch himself, but he knows his husband. He'd never self-sabotage in that way, not anymore at least.

There's movement at his feet, Sal scrambling around in the glass, he's looking for something. Looking for that wire maybe, finish the job. Niho picks at the zipper, he's got it open a little bit but for some reason it's too much work to keep pulling.

Sal's on his phone. Don't call 911, he wants to tell him. Sal's not stupid though, he doesn't need that kind of advice. They're just lucky that there's a good crop of trees between their place and the neighbour's or they would have seen flashing lights already.

Phone falls, hits the ground with a clatter and skids closer to Niho's head. Sal had complained about the otter box when Niho had insisted on it, look who's laughing now.

Sal's close. Niho told him that he'd go over there but Sal's the one who came to get him. His eyes follow his movements as he reaches over Niho's head to get the first aid kit. Part of him feels petty. Part of him wants to headbutt him for even thinking he's allowed to get close right now but those parts are so quiet and buried so deep in his pain that they might as well not exist.

He reaches up, hooks a finger on the collar of Sal's t-shirt, tugs. No blood in there, that's cool. It's a relief actually, it's good having someone so durable to love. They say people like Niho can't have a normal relationship, his handler told him it wouldn't work, well, this works.

Most of the time.

The phone is buzzing beside Niho's head. It makes clicking sounds as it rumbles on top of shards of glass.

Sal's asking him something, "Can I?"

What?

Kill him? No.

Oh, first aid kit in his hand.

"I'd love that," Niho says, voice raw and hollowed out.

Then, with some effort, he answers the phone on speaker.

"SAL!" says Mourn.

"Nope," Niho says.

"Niho?"

"Yup," Niho says. He points at a pair of nail scissors and some antiseptic wipes.

"Where's my brother?" Mourn asks him. Well, it's a question but it comes out more like a threat.

"Kitchen," he answers.

"Alive?"

"Thriving."

There's a sigh of relief on the other end. Niho shuts his eyes, turning his face away slightly as Sal starts picking glass out of his palms using the end of the nail scissors.

"Listen, he may try and-"

"Oh, he tried," Niho cuts him off, "Guess I have you to thank for that?"

Another sigh, this time heavy and tired.

"Fuck you, Mourn."

Niho hangs up.

And immediately feels a little bad for saying that to his brother-in-law. Mourn is a pretty good guy despite everything and he's always gone out of his way to make Niho feel welcome in the family. Maybe the pain's making his mouth a little looser.

"Hope you didn't have anything important to tell Mourn," he says.

Sal's cradling Niho's hand in his, his fingers feel warmer than usual or maybe Niho's are just cold. It's hard to say, hard to think really. His brain feels foggy, a little useless, a little unhelpful. He kind of wants to cry. That'd just make everything worse, Niho rarely cries.

He watches Sal work and gets this urge to kiss him.

The fact that even after all of this, all he can think about is holding him is probably a bad sign for Niho's mental health. He's usually so good at appearing normal. He's supposed to be mad right now and he is, for sure, so mad. Except it was all also a little bit hot.

And it's still their anniversary.

Niho pulls himself up a little with his free hand, whoops, blood on the kitchen floor, grunting in pain a little. His head feels light now, like someone's taken all the heavy bits out, freeing him. He slips to the side a little, he's felt like this before but that was after one too many glasses of wine on his birthday last year.

They'd rented a boat and floated around in the harbour. Watched the sunset, then the city lit up all around them, it was magic.

Niho gazes at Sal, and the urge spikes again.

He blinks slowly, Sal keeps fading in and out, annoying.

"Should we kiss right now?"

[tick 12a / calla]

S. A.

Sal unpackages the antiseptic wipes very gently, trying not to make too much noise. Trying not to crinkle the packaging. Niho's got Mourn on the phone. Sal doesn't say much, suitably cowed in his corner, kneeling over Niho's legs.

"Be nice to him." He chides softly, once his husband's told his brother to fuck off, "He's sensitive."

His heart isn't really in it though, he just sounds tired.

His hands aren't very steady, not very still, but he still tries. He moves Niho's hands into his lap and gets the biggest pieces of glass out. He brushes away the glimmer of the dust. It would be better if he could get them under water but the sink is so far away. So high up from the floor.

Sal'd very much like to just curl up and not deal with any of this. His head's started to go funny again, but heavy instead of light. Slight difference. A routine difference.

If it was any normal day he would be under three blankets right now, glass of water on the side table and Niho stretched out beside him, quietly reading something with the lights down low. Sal would be texting Mourn not to bother him the next day and he would be telling Kade to make sure Nowles and Yale got up in time the next morning because he'd be sleeping off the next fourteen hours, at least. It would be a take-out night. They'd all fight over what movie to watch and Sal would settle into the couch to listen to it fondly, a little more subdued than usual, and he would side with Niho on whatever artsy noir he wanted.

But it's not any normal day. Their couch is upturned, tattered. He's not curled up in bed. Niho's lying beside him, but he's on the tile. Glass digging into him. Wine slowly seeping into his socks.

He's bleeding.

He's trying to move, and Sal is tracing the bloodstain back from the floor, to his hands, to the wound in Niho's side.

"I shot you." He says, very quietly, aghast.

"Should we kiss right now?"

"Baby, I shot you."

And maybe Sal's a freak, but he's not that much of a freak. Never mind the fact that he shouldn't be allowed to kiss Niho right now. He shouldn't even be allowed near him. He should be far, far away. Where he'll stop running things, stop hurting people.

"Stay still."

Floor sways. Bulges like there's water in there. The rolls and rolls of bandages unspool over the grout.

Thing is, Sal's only ever been really good at destroying. He gets sent in to make messes, not to fix them. Just because you know how to take something apart, blow something up, doesn't mean you know how to put it back together.

"We've got a good medic. I can get her over here, it'll be fine, you'll be fine."

He stops.

"Unless you want..." A Fenwick. "Fuck."

Fuck, what are they going to do. He wants to ask. He's very afraid to ask.

He's very, very afraid to ask.

If any other Fenwick walks into this house, they'll kill Sal on sight. He knows that. Anticipates it.

Can't call an Adroxis, they'll kill Niho.

Can't call any sort of authorities, then they're both screwed.

It becomes the easiest decision in the world. Sal picks up the discarded phone and as he does, it starts vibrating again. Fucking Mourn, paranoid to hell and back. That terrible candid photo of him from his 27th birthday pops up and Sal hits the decline button.

"Baby," Hand in doomed hand, he folds down, closer, tell him what to do, "Tell me who to get."

[gamemaker kelsier]

N. A.

"Should we kiss right now?"

"Baby, I shot you."

That's not technically a no, which makes it a grey area. Niho tips forward slightly and the room goes pitch black, like Sal turned off all the lights.

"Hey."

"Stay still."

The command comes from a hundred miles away. Feels like deja vu, like they've been here before. Maybe they have been, maybe this is one of those movies Yale loves, maybe they're stuck in a loop, no way out of it, destined to kill each other over and over again. "That's funny," Niho says.

It hurts to open his mouth, he forgot about that part, the punching, it wasn't as important as the wire around his neck.

He can't feel his hands anymore, his body has disconnected from his mouth, like he's just a floating brain with lips. One sharp laugh at the image of that and he's whimpering in pain. Throat hurts, worse than it did when he got that viral thing that was going around last October. Niho had slept for almost three days straight, body so tired from being sick.

Maybe that's what he needs to do, sleep it off.

His eyes close.

Sal's talking again, Niho can't remember what they're talking about. He's got one of Niho's hands cupped in his own. Sal's palm is so warm against the back of his hand. It reminds him of the winter, when Niho got distracted by a deer in the yard and stood outside too long. Sal had pressed Niho's hands between his to warm them up, scolding him the whole time.

The next morning he painted the deer for him.

Niho smiles faintly. He probably never knew what love was until Sal.

His eyes open again. Sal's got that same look on his face he gets when he can't find his keys. They're probably in the bowl though, by the front door. Niho will get them. He places his hands on the ground to either side to push himself up. His palm slips on the tile and Niho slides a little further to the left.

Sal leans in closer, close enough that Niho can feel his breath on his cheek. It's warm. He wishes they were in bed, not like that though. He wants the half asleep, wrapped around each other way, Sal's legs tangled up with his.

Sal's fingers interlock with Nihos. He feels his husband's knuckles beneath his fingertips, raw from use. His eyes fall on Sal's lips, right there. Moving.

They're moving but he can't hear the words.

No, he heard them already- what?

His gaze slides away, something smells like oranges.

Tic tacs?

His husband's looking at him like he's waiting for an answer but Niho wasn't listening to the question. He raises a hand slowly, runs his thumb over Sal's cheekbone and it comes away wet. Sal's crying.

He blinks.

"Baby, tell me who to get."

"Sal," he breathes out, then coughs again. It only half hurts now, it's beginning to not matter anymore.

"Didn't know who you were," he croaks out, "When I hit on you."

His hand falls, it's too much to hold it up. "I'd do it again," Niho says.

He can't keep his eyes open.

"Hurts," he murmurs.