Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Nolan Booth is thirty, gorgeous, soaking wet, in love—bruised and bleeding with it; shaking to pieces with adrenaline and relief and rage, his hands slick and trembling as he clutches the third and final golden egg to his chest. There’s sand in his shoes and in his mouth, a layer of grit across his tongue.

“Hartley?” He asks softly.

John Hartley steps across the beach and wraps his arms around her waist and presses those strong fingers into that secret spot at the divot of her right hip. She melts a little into him, so intimate it burns to watch and Nolan blinks lake water from his eyes. Hartley grins, sly and sharp, the sort of smile Nolan’s been dreaming about, and says: “We are Bishop.”

Nolan swallows and feels the sand go down into his belly. Oh.

Nolan Booth is twenty-three, gorgeous, untouchable, inspired; a genius with adrenaline singing angel-sweet in his veins as he back-bends—he sticks the landing and the crowd goes wild, the judges are crying—over the last infrared laser tripwire and stands before the podium bearing the very one-of-a-kind, very expensive Grecian urn. (Yes, you fucking English nerds. That Grecian urn.) He’ll scoop the urn carefully into his foam-padded backpack and be halfway back to Istanbul, and his fence there, before anyone notices what’s missing. There’s only one teensy-tiny problem with his brilliant nothing-can-go-wrong-no-sir plan.

There is no urn, Grecian or otherwise, waiting for him under the bright display lights. Only a crisp white business card stamped with…. his soulmark.

Oh, thinks Nolan as he stumbles back over a dozen tripwires and the alarm starts to blare. 

Oh, thinks Nolan as he barely sneaks past a dozen frantic guards.

Oh, thinks Nolan as he snags a spare uniform and lets himself back out into the clear, cold sunshine of the first day of the rest of his life. He absently grabs an outdoor seat at the cafe opposite the museum, still dazed, still blinking too fast like that will make the world stop spinning. He orders an espresso in really terrible Italian, flirts a little with the waiter, and makes note of the time it takes the police cars and fire trucks to respond to the alarm. (Hey, even emotionally shattered, he is still a professional. There will always be a con spinning its gossamer threads in his back brain.)

As he presses his fingers gently next to the divot of his right hip, over the crisp lines of his soulmark—his little bishop—he can’t help the smile spreading across his face like an oil spill. So his soulmate is looking for him, huh? So his soulmate wants to play?

If there’s one thing Nolan Maria Booth can do—besides fit thirty-two marshmallows in his mouth at once, or list all of America’s state capitols in alphabetic order, or do a surprisingly accurate impression of John Malkovich, okay, look, so there’s a lot of things he can do, he’s actually something of a Renaissance man—if there’s one thing he can really do, it’s play.

“I know how a confidence scheme works.” Hartley had said quietly, with that strange glint in his eyes. “Trust me.” 

Oh, thinks Nolan later. Much later. Much too late.

It’s the first thing Nolan steals, you know. 

His parents have dumped him at the university library again and little Nolan—six, not gorgeous yet but cute enough to get away with his little six-year-old crimes—is wandering up and down the aisles of books which seem to go up, up, up, all the way to the ceiling, occasionally pulling a book out here and there, sounding out words like cloisonné and theoretical abnegation under his breath. He passes by a table and jerks to a stop.

Eyes round, he points at the rows of little wooden figures and asks in wonder, “What’s that?”

“Where’s your mom, kid?”  The man grumbles, eyes drawn reluctantly from the black-and-white board to frown down at him. On some whim—or instinct, who can say—Nolan points over the man’s shoulder. As the man turns away to look, Nolan is already leaning forward to snatch up one of the little figurines carved out of black wood. It’s just like the symbol on his hip, the one his mother called his soulmark and promised to explain to him someday, soon, when he’s older. He shoves it quickly in his pocket, smiling innocently, as the man turns back around, frowning.

“You shouldn’t be unsupervised in here.” The man huffs. “This isn’t a playground.”

There’s another identical figurine, Nolan notices, but in white. He points to it again, more insistently. The one in his pocket seems hot as a fresh-baked cookie, like it could burn straight through his jacket and rattle back to the floor. He clutches his jacket tight around him.

“What’s that one called?” Nolan makes his eyes go round and watery, a trick that usually works on his teachers at school. Just in case, he adds: “If you answer me, I’ll leave you alone.”

That trick seems to work on his dad, usually, and it works here too. The man sighs.

“That one’s called a bishop.”

It’s a beautiful game.

Nolan has never been happier in his life, the newspaper spread out across his knees as he sits in the park and laughs until his still-healing ribs ache as badly as when the charmingly brutish bodyguard—really, where did evil rich people find these guys? Was there a training program? Were they lab-grown?—had first punched him. They’d been stupid enough to leave him unattended for a few minutes tied up with nothing but a couple of loops of rope. He’d been a little insulted.

In the time Nolan had spent pretending to be a punching bag—a moving performance by one of the most promising talents of our time, critics rave—it seems Bishop made their move. 

The cheesy headline will have to get cut out and go into his scrapbook. It’s a good one.

Bishop Takes Knight—Historical Suit of Armor Disappears Without A Trace!

Nolan can’t help but trace his fingers over the grainy image beneath the headline, the familiar business card, and the even more familiar shape stamped on it. The Bishop. Our bishop, he thinks, and shudders a little bit, feeling strangely indecent sitting out here in public touching his fingers to the image of his soulmark, their soulmark, a shape that must have been copied faithfully from the naked skin of his other half. There in the paper, for anyone to look at—but not for anyone else to understand. A secret message just for him. Intimate and brazen; connecting them across countries, timezones, crime scenes. 

Nolan lays back in the park grass, smiling as he cradles his tender ribs, and plans his next move. The Birth of Venus, he decides. The real one, not the fake one they have on display in the Uffizi Gallery. The real one was currently being wasted on the mistress of a Texas oil man in his truly hideous vacation home in Cancun. 

I could use a vacation, Nolan muses and adds sunscreen to his grocery list. (Reef safe, of course, come on, he might be a criminal but he’s not a monster.)

“I’m the bad guy.” Hartley had said, with that strange glint in his eyes. Like the glint across the muzzle of a gun, sunlight across grey steel. Like the glint of her red smile. 

Oh, he thinks and swallows hard. Swallows down the sand, the salt, the sea.

Nolan Booth is twenty-nine, still gorgeous, still a genius, still horribly, painfully, irredeemably in love. He’s stolen so much art over the last seven years he’s finally had to buy himself a place to put it all. Someplace by the water, not too hot, not too cold, private, romantic, classy, a big bathtub with claw feet, a fireplace—he lists on and on as the real estate agent’s smile begins to slip. Not too modern, you know? Someplace that could feel like a home. That could be home someday when he—what?

Finally proves himself to his Bishop, he supposes. It’s still a beautiful game, of course. But sometimes, late at night, nursing a glass of whiskey and maybe a bruise or two, Nolan can’t help but wonder if maybe he has the rules wrong. He’s been playing to win but can’t seem to find the right hand and he’s running out of ideas if he’s completely honest—which he never is. He's got a policy and everything.

The house, when he enters it the first time, takes his breath away. The sun is slanting off the water, filling the entire living room and kitchen with honey-gold light. It’s quiet, only the waves and the birds singing their horny trilling birdsongs. Plenty of blank walls to display his spoils of love and war. Bishop will like it. There’s no doubt in his mind. Nolan has made a study, an obsession, out of Bishop’s tastes, their methods, morals, personal preferences. Tracking not just what they steal but what stays stolen instead of popping back up on the black market. So he buys the house on the spot, in cash, in his own name. Later, after the movers are all finished and the sun has set, he opens up a bottle and goes to sit by the water. He takes another swallow of whiskey and sees the full moon glinting through the bottom of the bottle, lets the burn linger in his mouth, imagines that it’s Bishop’s kiss burning him up instead.

He lets the whiskey sink him down into the soft curve of the beach and dreams. 

The prison guards shove them back into their cell and Nolan nearly goes sprawling across the stone floor, his too-big prison shoes offering no traction. He feels adrenaline-jumpy, nerves alive and sparking, like he was the one in the prison fight instead of Mr. Not-A-Cop who glares at him with dark eyes, wincing as he rubs his jaw. It’ll be a fantastic bruise, Nolan thinks with bitter satisfaction. A fantastic bruise for a fantastic jawline, he thinks a little wildly, heart beating too fast and ready to take a swing at it himself as Hartley crowds him back against the wall with those dark eyes and those shoulders nearly twice as wide as his own.

“Don’t do that again.” Hartley warns, his voice heavy with promise, his body throwing off heat and the clean undiluted smell of his body like a physical thing. It’s the soap here, Nolan thinks, as the gossamer threads of a plan begin to weave into his back brain, pure glycerine, nothing to interfere with the body’s honest scent. “Or you’ll regret it.”

But Nolan, adrenaline-drunk and swaying on his feet, only bares his teeth in a laugh.

“That,” he says, sweet, oh-so-sweetly, pressing forward. “Was for taking my house.”

Hartley blinks at him in surprise, then with a sneer of his own: “Blame the Bishop. Or yourself, for being careless with your safehouse address.”

It wasn’t a safehouse, Nolan wants to scream at him. Wants to tear into him with his bare hands, add another shiny bruise to the other side of his face to even him out. Wants to sink to his knees and weep hot tears until he’s all dried up and crumbled to dust so the wind can sweep him through the window bars and away into the white-blue sky. He’d never been less careless in his whole sorry life. His heart could burst at the seams with the weight of all his caring. 

“You’re lying,” Nolan says instead, shoving past him. “The Bishop didn’t sell me out.”

Nolan throws himself into his top bunk bed, facing the wall, and tugs the thin blanket up to his chin. He feels Hartley stand there for a long time, looking at the curve of his back. He should make a joke, quip about perverts and Peeping Toms, anything, but his throat has closed up tight as a cat’s asshole—or however that saying goes. He lays there, eyes burning, one fist pressed helplessly against the divot of his right hip, until the sun goes down.

Nolan is twenty-eight, gorgeous, lonely, drunk. He’s plastered halfway against the body of a very fit, very blond German twenty-something-year-old, rocking further into the firm V of his legs with every thump of the bass. God bless techno music, Nolan thinks sluggishly, what an honest genre of music. No pretenses at all, just the bass giving them a rhythm to thrust into.

“I’m gonna ask Bishop to marry me,” he mumbles into the side of the German boy’s neck, nuzzling into the damp curls there. He licks a strip of skin and the boy shudders against him, arms encircling his hips. “I’m gonna steal the ring of Augusta Victoria—that’s the Kaiser’s wife, you know—“ he adds helpfully in case the boy doesn’t; he should, of course, working as an intern in the museum archives “—very traditional, been in the family for—oh, yesss right there—for five generations. ”

Nolan sneaks one hand into the boy’s back pocket to squeeze the generous curve of his ass and the other under the boy’s shimmering t-shirt to thumb over the pink circle of his nipple, gratified by the answering shudder.

“It’s been five years for us, you know. Our game.”

The boy’s own hand goes sneaking past the top of his too-tight jeans, towards the divot of his right hip. Nolan catches his wrist in a vice-grip.“Nein,” he says and guides the boy’s hand down lower, lower, until he’s throwing his head back in a wet pant of breath. And then, later, washing his sticky hands in the club’s bathroom sink, Nolan pulls him back down into one last thorough kiss. An apology, though the boy doesn’t know it yet, for the stolen ID and the five euros for the train. It’s really a three-person job, this heist. Nolan has worked with a team, very occasionally, in the past and he knows this strains even the limits of his considerable talent. But the idea of bringing anyone else on this job, of the Bishop knowing he had to bring in help—no. Sink or swim, baby. 

“Wish me luck, alright?” Nolan says over his shoulder. The boy, starry-eyed and flushed, gives him a weak wave from where he’s half-collapsed against the counter. 

Anyway. That’s how Nolan Booth gets arrested for the third time in his life. 

She’s beautiful, suffused in the holy glow of the stained glass window. Nolan can’t seem to catch his breath, looking at her.

“It was love at first sight, for me and your dad.” His mom told him once, when Nolan was still little enough to sit in her lap. She rolled up her sleeve enough to show him her strange squiggly soulmark. He was already starting to learn the Egyptian hieroglyphs but didn’t know this one yet, not exactly. Treasure, maybe? Or maybe Fool's Gold—there, in the jagged line of the tail.

It was supposed to be love at first sight, for soulmarked pairs, and god knows Bishop is beautiful with her red lips and white teeth and miles and miles of flawless olive skin. But Nolan has already been in love with her for seven years—with the ghostly fingers that stole a Banksy off the streets of London in broad daylight and the ghostly smile behind the heist of an entire gallery which left only the collection of Andy Warhol untouched—has been in love with her since he found her card waiting for him on that empty podium. But.

"So nice to finally meet you, Mr. Booth.” She says, casually, as if they hadn’t been chasing each other halfway around the world these last seven years, re-arranging the face of the art world in their wake. As if they’ve been merely distant colleagues, with only a tangential common interest, a livelihood, to connect them. As if there was only this chance encounter that kept them from being strangers. “Such a thrill to be face-to-face with the second-best art thief in the world.” 

There’s a flash of bare skin, smooth leg, when she puts her feet up on the desk. Red on the bottom of her shoes, yes. That’s a nice touch. Bishop is all about the little details, about the style. There was a time when Nolan might have put himself under that red-licked heel and let her skewer him right through the heart. Except she already has, hasn’t she?

She’s here. Hartley was right.

She sold him out.

On the plane, Nolan pulls out a notebook. He takes a deep breath and gets to work.

“What are you doing?” Hartley squints sidelong at his neat cursive handwriting—a trick he picked up in boarding school—and the suspicious cast of his face is so ridiculously at odds with the sparkly sweater and jean jacket that Nolan cracks a smile despite the pain running through him like a faultline.

“Inventory,” he sighs, shaking out his wrist a little. “It’s going to take ages to steal everything back.”

Hartley’s mouth falls open. Not unattractive, Nolan can admit to himself, especially since the other man is so constantly and irritatingly difficult to catch off-guard despite his best efforts. Hartley had barely reacted to the obnoxious clothing beyond the jaw-clenching thing he did—which was also, sadly, not unattractive.

“You kept a Gustave Klimt in your safehouse?” Hartley demands. “Are you insane?”

Nolan’s good mood evaporates.

“It was not,” he says slowly, as if slowly will make it hurt less. “My safehouse.”

Hartley falls backward in his seat, blinking rapidly. He looks, for the first time in their brief but intense acquaintance, utterly confused. Now there was a strange partnership, Nolan muses without much humor. It would’ve been better for them both if this chance encounter had never happened, if fate had left them strangers. 

“Then why…?” Hartley stares at him across their small table, their knees nearly touching beneath. “Why tell Bishop? The risk…”

Nolan hadn’t thought it was a risk, though, had he? Not that kind of risk. He’d thought of it as an invitation, as another evolving chapter in the game between them. He’d spent weeks waiting—torn between boredom and frantic excitement—in his house by the water. Waiting for Bishop to arrive so that he could show her—what? That he was worthy of her attention? That he knew what she liked and had carefully arranged for her to slot into his life—their life—like a Nazi watch into a gear-locked vault door (okay, yeah, he’d found his dad’s theories on the watch; he would’ve happily left the thing in pieces otherwise).

“I was sending Bishop a message. A message only she would understand.” Nolan smiles wide and pleasant, keeping his eyes as cold as possible. Another trick he picked up in boarding school. “And she’s clearly sent me hers.”

“How did you know? About me and my dad?”

In the dark, it’s easier to be honest. (Well. He’s never completely honest.) The prison is pitch-black at night, no city pollution to warm the sky and the Russian high command cut costs wherever possible. Eyes open or closed, there’s hardly a difference. The only light is the occasional guard's flashlight moving through the hallways or out in the field. Nolan’s not afraid of the dark, never had that phase even as a kid. The dark has always been kind to him.

He listens carefully as Hartley's breath pauses. Then:

“I hate to break it to you but you’re not a complex case.”

Classic bad cop line. Nolan’s lips quirk up involuntarily but he allows himself to be drawn out a little bit, despite himself. What’s the harm? He’s starting to like Hartley a little bit—not enough to forgive him for the house; he’s still going to pay for the house—and their easy banter, likes the way Hartley can keep up with him, those dark eyes bright with amusement at Nolan’s running commentary of their fellow prisoners despite telling him to shut up. Nolan wonders idly what this stolen life of Hartley’s was like. What’s been left behind? A wife? Husband? A faithful dog waiting by the steps for a man who might never come home? Nolan’s bruised heart aches a little bit for someone else; a strange feeling after all the accumulated self-pity. His thoughts shy away from Bishop, from the memory of her curving red lips—that cruel smile, no, not cruel; impersonal. Those eyes that had looked at him and dismissed him all at once, giving no acknowledgment of what they should’ve been to each other. 

“Like I didn’t even exist.” Nolan finishes quietly, his throat dry.

The silence between them is loud. A good cop should offer a line of sympathy here, throw out a lame hook, an attempt to start building rapport. Instead, the silence is broken by a raucous fake snore. Nolan nearly twitches out of his bed.

“Really?” He says and is answered by soft laughter—the first time he’s heard Hartley laugh.

“Just kidding.”

There's a touch, barely a touch, brushed against his shoulder but the warmth goes all the way up his arm. Nolan nearly twitches out of the bed again. He blinks up at the darkness, confused. He tries a different tack, attempting to draw out Hartley with a question about his own dad and is promptly shut down. As the silence between them lengthens into genuine sleep, Hartley’s breathing becomes deep and even but Nolan finds himself tossing and turning. He wraps the blanket around himself and tries to feel warm again.

Either Hartley is a terrible cop or a very, very good one. Nolan eventually drifts into sleep trying to decide which option is worst. 

“Got you something,” Nolan kicks open the hotel bedroom and throws a small container at Hartley, another bag of obnoxious Hawaiian shirts under his arm. Nolan does not believe in packing lite. Hartley catches the container instinctively and then winces a little, still moving stiffly. They’ve left Spain behind entirely, hours and hours of rolling landscapes passed on the train sometimes in silence and sometimes not—something shifted between them, between their last escape and his confession—and now they’re back in the city, fresh clothes and fresh passports preparing them to get from Portugal to Argentina.

“What’s this?” Hartley asks, frowning in confusion at the label.

“I thought you could read Portuguese, Mr. I’m-Fluent-In-Eight-Languages. Which honestly, the Romance languages should all count as one so actually I do still beat you.” Nolan quips, turning away to rifle through their new luggage. “It’s antiseptic burn cream, for chemical burns. For the, um—“

Torture, he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say I’m sorry either although the words are pushing their way up his throat, like a particularly insistent belch. He’d been so wrong, so wrong about Bishop, not just about their little game but about her—about the rules of what they were willing to do. He doesn’t understand. Can’t. Seven years and all of his careful meticulous research, the handful of facts he’d clung to, confusing a weakness for the color red and a lack of bodies with a foundation strong enough to build a life on. Nolan wonders if Hartley felt like this, seasick, when Bishop cracked his life out from under him too. Even on the train, Hartley hadn’t said much about what he was fighting so hard to go back to. He wonders—quietly, selfishly—if Hartley is also realizing how empty that old life was. If nothing else, well. They do work well together. 

“And don’t go all macho on me now. Chemical burns are prone to wicked infections. Smells terrible, let me tell you. Just ugh, you know?” Nolan tries to keep his voice light, playful, like this is an academic discussion. His hand does not drift to the small of his own back. “It’d be a shame to mess up that my-body-my-temple thing you’ve clearly got going on.”

"...thanks." Hartley shoves the container into his back pocket and clears his throat. “I’ll—I’ll pay you back. How much was it?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Nolan shrugs the question away, so busy trying to play it cool that he misses the flash of guilt on Hartley’s face entirely.

“You can get the next round.”

And later, in the dark—always that tender, honesty-inducing darkness—as they lie awake on their separate hotel beds, breathing in the same hot summer air, Hartley whispers:

“Taser?”

And Nolan, who makes it a policy to be honest but never too honest, lays there clenching and unclenching his fists against the rough texture of sheets. He nods, futilely, and then clears his throat. His voice comes out in a husk, too quiet, not casual at all. No quips. 

“Yeah.”

Another long silence, cars and city life and distant drunk laughter. Again, Hartley’s whisper piercing the dark: 

“Prison guard?”

Nolan laughs—no, nothing like a laugh at all, a raw unspooled breath, with teeth it in. No tears. He’s got no tears for this memory, only teeth and his fists clenching and unclenching, and the ghost of a flame licking its memory up his back.

“Juvie. I was…” He pauses, counting backward. “Thirteen? Yeah.”

A hiss from the other side of the hotel room. Nolan can’t help but turn towards it; the room isn’t nearly as dark as their cell in Russia, too much life spilling in through the windows even with the curtains drawn. He sees the outline of Hartley’s broad naked shoulder turned towards him, sees the glint in the whites of his eyes. Like moonlight on the bottom of a whiskey glass.

“Scum.” Hartley hisses through the darkness. Then, more softly. “What was his name?”

Nolan does laugh, then. Small but from his trembling belly, his lips curving up involuntarily and he knows that Hartley can see it, can probably see straight through to the straining beating center of him, into his limping heart—an empty bottle of whiskey sinking into the dark water.

“He’s dead.”

“Yours?” There’s no judgment in Hartley's voice. What a terrible cop, Nolan thinks again, a lump forming in his throat. Or a very, very good one, he reminds himself.

“No,” Nolan shakes his head slightly, mouth a damp circle pressing briefly against the mattress. “He... he had a stroke a couple of days before I was released. He... hit his head on something... bled out on the floor before they found him.”

Hartley hums deep in his throat, a satisfied sound. He doesn’t say anything else, just watches Nolan steadily with those dark lovely eyes of his. Nolan’s own eyes feel heavy. He wants to stay awake, in this oddly charged moment, wants to watch Hartley watching him as the moment gathers up into something—something that—but every inch of body aches. He feels like an anchor weight, pulled down into sleep.

“You don’t know me, Booth.” Hartley had tried to warn him, the train rattling them down to their very bones.“You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

Nolan is twenty-nine, gorgeous, desperate, at the top of his professional game. He’s tired of waiting—he’s going to change the rules and the game with it. It’s been exactly seven years since he picked up that little white card stamped with his little black soulmark and felt his world backbend right over. He’s kept it, carefully, with his father’s watch and his mother’s favorite pen and the other tiny treasures that nobody else knows are worth stealing. His house is an overflowing dragon’s hoard but still—some things are more priceless than others. With his mother’s pen, he writes a simple message on the back of the card: For my better half. And underneath it, his address. 

He leaves it waiting for Bishop, taped tenderly beneath the gallery spotlights.

The Kiss he hangs, with equal tenderness, at the foot of his sprawling kingsize bed. He goes to bed early that evening, watching the honey-gold sunset splash over the painting and bring itself to life. Oh, he thinks, his heart beating faster inside of him. He counts the gold-washed freckles of his own arms, legs, down across the trembling-taut muscles of his belly, and wraps a hand around himself. Someday, he thinks, his eyes fluttering shut, he will push Bishop back into the golden sheets and they will kiss and kiss and—

“There are two bishops in chess,” Hartley says and standing in the loose circle of his arms she smiles red, even without the lipstick, skewering him straight through the heart: 

“And a whole lot of pawns.”

Chapter Text

To be completely honest—which he’s not, ever; he’s got a policy and everything—Nolan Booth knows he’s not a complex case.

He’s a classic rich kid, emotionally starved, trying to stuff that empty black hole of his parental abandonment complex with sex, liquor, drugs, art, designer clothes; pretty things and pretty people. Nolan himself was too pretty and too smart for boarding school and it did him no favors. He learns three lessons there: to give and get a good blowjob, to smile without his eyes, and to run like hell without looking back. Solid life lessons. Swallow, Smile, Sprint. He should get that embroidered on a throw pillow with roses and shit.

He followed those rules faithfully for years—years and years—until the day that a waterfall chews him up and spits him back out, gasping, sand between his toes and between his teeth, crawling up the beach with his knees and hands and heartbeat shaky as a newborn foal. Even weak-kneed, his feet propel him step by step into the jungle out of sheer habit. Momentum. Like his body knew that he was in danger before his brain. He could’ve taken three long steps, a sideways roll, and disappeared forever with his golden egg. With his hollow victory. 

Run like hell and never look back. He has always preferred to learn the hard way—the better to remember the lesson, right? Run like hell. But instead, Nolan—gorgeous, stupid, broken-hearted—hesitates and looks back over his shoulder.

“Surprised to see me?”

They emerge from the water, naked skin dripping clear water like glass beads, the pair of them with their dark eyes and flawless skin a perfect matched set. The painful edge of his desire is blunted with vindictive satisfaction at their obvious surprise.

Hartley recovers first.

“Just surprised it took you so long to find us.” Hartley flicks a look at Bishop—not Bishop, he reminds himself, she’s only half the play-set; a third of it, though she doesn’t know that—and she returns a bare nod, communicating wordlessly in the way that only longtime lovers do, their bodies separate extensions of a single unit. 

“We have something for you.”

Nolan sprawls casually in one of the deck chairs, smiling through his gritted teeth, toasting them both with a stolen martini.

“You mean this drink? You shouldn’t have.” Nolan cocks his head, faux-thoughtfully, tapping his stubbled chin. “Or do you mean the gun downstairs? Because, confession time. I dropped that overboard. My bad, I’m a total butterfingers, you know?”

He didn’t, actually. The gun had a carved sandalwood handle which looked well-cared for in a way that went beyond expensive and into the personal. In the end, he could only bring himself to toss the bullets. But he does have the pleasure of seeing her eyes narrow and her nostrils flare out in suppressed anger. He thought it might belong to Bishop—not Bishop, he reminds himself again, but he has no other name to call her—given the size. A gun like that would’ve looked like a toy in Hartley’s big hands. 

“That was an antique.” She says mildly, not a hint of annoyance in her voice.

“We don’t mean the gun,” Hartley adds, flicking another look at her. She lets out a breath of a sigh. “Let me go get it for you.”

Nolan laughs—genuinely. He flicks up his sunglasses and raises an eyebrow at Hartley over the rim of his stolen martini which he hopes communicates I appreciate the classic tricks as much as the next guy but let’s be adults and get on with it, yeah? He’s not sure it translates. His body isn’t a separate extension of a single unit, after all. Nolan is a stranger to these people.

“First,” he says, letting his sunglasses fall back into place. “I have something for you.”

Hartley tenses, shifting his weight to put himself in between Bishop and Nolan, his fingers twitching oddly at his sides. But Nolan only raises his other eyebrow and idly licks the salt from the rim of his martini glass, waving a dismissive hand at the protective gesture.

“Look, am I upset about what happened back on the beach? Absolutely not.” He lies—lies as big as he can; with his face, with his hands, with his entire easy, sprawling body. “All is fair in love and eggs.“ —his grin, for a second, goes crooked— “I came to congratulate you.”

Unimpressed, Hartley keeps his body between the two of them.

“So what do you want?”

What a question, Nolan muses, dark and secret from the depths of his empty heart. What doesn’t he want? He wants a long string of zeros in a Swiss bank account. He wants a good night’s sleep and a proper latte. He wants his parents to be proud of him. He wants to apply another layer of sunscreen before his Irish blood cooks his skin red as Bishop’s lipstick. He wants his goddamn house back.

And—just this once—he wants to eat, instead of be eaten. (Oh yes, Nolan plans to eat his heart out.)

In a few simple strokes, he lays it out for them. Their drained Cayman Island accounts, the international police approaching to arrest them, the potential score and three-person job waiting for them in Paris. Triple the challenge. He sees the moment he has them hooked. That spark of familiar adrenaline. Oh yes.

“ What are we stealing?”

Nolan taps a mocking finger over his heart and smiles with all his teeth. The best lies, he knows, are mostly truth.

Nolan is eight years old, puffy with tears and snot, innocent in every sense of the word, clinging to his mother between sobs.

“Please,” he says. “Make him believe me.”

She sighs, dropping a kiss to his forehead, absently grading a paper with a smearing red pen behind his back. He’s getting a little too big to sit in her lap these days. He’s getting too big to leave in any of the usual places either—too big and still too small—too prone to wandering off, his insatiable curiosity pushing him to strike out on his own no matter how much they yell at him afterward. She smoothes his hair back behind his ear and tugs at his earlobe.

“Just give the watch back to him, Nolan. He’ll forgive you.”

Her name—or the name she decides to give him, later, when they’ve finally outrun Interpol and booked their first class tickets to Paris—is Zara Black. It suits her.

“Hebrew spelling?” He asks.

“נכון,” she agrees with an oddly wistful twist to her mouth.

“Huh,” he says. “You kosher?”

“Not for a long time.”

“Good to know.” He zips up his new electric toothbrush but leaves his SPF 75 sunscreen on the hotel bed. It’s winter in Paris, he shouldn’t need it. “Because there’s this restaurant in the Montparnasse district that’s absolutely to die for. You’ll love their cheese boards—they get a little kinky about their cheeses. The wait time sucks balls but one of the chefs owes me a favor.”

“What for?” Hartley asks, hovering, his arms crossed, in the doorway. He’s been watching Nolan closely, too closely for comfort, ever since he ruined their romantic post-egg victory celebration. If his plan is going to work, Nolan has to find a way to take the edge off of that suspicion. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” He gives Hartley a sloppy wink but the man’s stare doesn’t even waver. Nolan sighs. “Fine. I stole some ancient yeast for the guy.” 

That does make Hartley blink.

“Excuse me?”

“Some scientists found ancient bread yeast preserved in a tomb.” Nolan grins a little, remembering how the usually overly-composed Frenchman had lost his shit when he realized what his birthday gift was. Nolan’s grin goes a little feral remembering, actually. 

“I happened to pick up a sample while in the process of acquiring some rare dishware.”

Dishware consisting of four ancient Kemet plates, beautifully carved with repeating swirls of black ink. Acquired for the soulmates—though he hadn’t known back then that it was two soulmates, or he might have been tempted to steal the entire nine-piece set—who are standing before him right now. Nolan looks down at his suitcase, feeling a little dizzy. 

He used to keep those plates on the top shelf of his cupboard for special occasions. He wonders where they are now. If Interpol has finished processing them and sent them off into the world already or if they’re still sitting in a dusty storage unit somewhere as evidence, awaiting his arrest. His re-arrest.

Just a little longer, Nolan vows to himself. Wait for me.

They turn the sitting room of their suite of hotel rooms into what he dubs the Situation Room. Nolan uses push pins and a gratuitous amount of red string to hang up the precious Lourve blueprints. He adds a couple of glossy photos of the Salvator Mundi decorated with squiggly dollar bill signs. Salvator Mundi is purportedly Da Vinci’s masterpiece, the most expensive painting in the entire world, and currently on loan to the Louvre from its anonymous donor, now sitting pretty in a top-security underground bunker as it awaits the finishing touches on its exhibit display. 

“Impossible,” Hartley says. 

“Not impossible.” Nolan insists, pointing at a square representing the elevator shaft on the blueprint. “This area will be completely unguarded during the Christmas fundraiser.”

Hartley stares at him. 

“Yes. Because it’s an elevator shaft.”

Nolan stares back at him, not seeing the problem.

“What Hartley is trying to say,” Zara cuts in lazily, reclining half-backward over an overstuffed armchair, her dark hair pooled artfully around her. “Is that he thinks you’re going to break your neck shimmying down the metal wires. Or your leg. If you’re not smashed flat as a bug beforehand.”

“Excuse me?” Nolan flails his arms in professional outrage. “I’m not going to break anything. Does my reputation mean nothing to you people? I’ve been—mostly—not-breaking things for over a decade, thank you very much. Okay, a hematoma… maybe. I’ll give you that. No, wait. I’ll give me that. You didn’t even think of a hematoma, I did.”

Hartley sighs, touching two fingers to his temple. “Is this supposed to be comforting?”

“No,” he says spitefully. “I would like you to never have a good night’s sleep again.”

Zara only clicks her tongue and pushes herself upright, hair falling in dark ripples back over her other shoulder, close enough that Nolan can breathe in the faint scent of coconut oil. She’s like a goddamn living hair commercial, he thinks, swallowing hard and trying to hold on to his annoyance.

“What Hartley is trying to say—“ she flicks him an admonishing look and he raises his hands defensively “—is that your plan could work if we get desperate. But we’re not desperate yet. We’ll find another way, a less dangerous way.”

“Like Bishop doesn’t take risks.” Nolan sulks, rubbing at his face. They’ve been up late again, going in circles. 

“Not those kinds.” She tells him seriously. “We’re a bonded pair, Booth. We tend to veto plans that put one of us in physical danger.”

Oh, he thinks.

He looks at them—their flawless skin and dark eyes, that my-body-my-temple thing they’ve both got in spades—and can’t help but curl, a little ashamed, around his own body, knees drawn up to his chest. He’s littered with little scars, burns and cuts and breaks and the remnants of deep mottled bruises; a legacy of working alone. Of hurling himself recklessly towards the result—no matter the cost.

“Fine.” He says, looking at his curling toes. “I’ll keep looking.”

The lies we tell ourselves are always the strongest—optimistic self-delusion—so the first step of any successful con is to make the Mark participate in their own deception.

(“I know how a confidence scheme works,” said Hartley, eyes glinting. “Trust me.”)

Hartley and Zara know this already and they don’t trust him. Triple the challenge, Nolan promises with his broken heart beating faster in his chest. He taps a finger to it and smiles. They say you can’t cheat an honest man—Nolan already knows he can’t out-lie his smiling two-faced Bishop, one set of dark lovely eyes always watching him, and that leaves him with only one path forward.

(“There was an easier way in,” said Zara with red lips. “But I doubt very much you could’ve managed it.”)

For a criminal, Nolan is not a very good liar. But he has learned to backbend the truth until it comes full circle and says whatever he needs it to.

(“It doesn’t matter what you do,” said Nolan in the dark. “It only matters what they think you’ve done.”) 

Gabriel, head chef now, is as accommodating as Nolan could’ve hoped—how many years has it been since they’ve seen each other? Four? Five? God, he feels old—and insists on setting them up at the nicest table; a corner booth by the window with a view into the rain-glossy cobblestone street below. He sends out a complimentary bottle of wine that makes even Zara raise an impressed eyebrow.

“Ancient yeast, huh?” She muses.

“Yep.” Nolan pours himself a generous amount, gives it a swirl and a deep sniff. “Way to a man’s heart, you know. Through his intestinal tract.”

“Hmm,” she eyes him slyly over the rim of her own generous glass. “I must be misremembering my biology lessons.”

“I could give you a refresher course,” he flirts outrageously just to see the way Hartley rolls his eyes. Zara only throws her head back, exposing her throat in a long sinuous line, and laughs. She’s good, Nolan has to admit, her laugh sounds like the real thing. He wonders, swirling the first sip of wine over his tongue, how far they would let him push this game. They’ve set Zara up as the good cop to Hartley’s bad cop; an inverse of the previous con, which he appreciates. The Egg-cident he calls it. He suspects that Zara will be better at this type of con than Hartley was—not that Hartley’s way hadn’t worked in the end, he reminds himself harshly—quicker at coaxing him out from behind his defenses with her half-lidded eyes and her lips stained darker from the wine. Oh yes, Nolan lets himself be impressed. She’s got a precise surgeon’s touch. Nolan suspects that she could cut him open so quietly, so cleanly, that he’d bleed out before feeling the wound.

“So where do we begin, Mr. Booth?” She asks, elbows on the table, chin resting in her hand. “Tell us about this grand plan of yours.”

Nolan holds up three fingers.

“This is going to be a three-part con.” He ticks down a finger as he goes. “First, we acquire the new blueprints of the Lourve underground bunker complex where the Salvator Mundi is being held. Next—obviously—we steal it.”

“That seems like two parts to me.” Hartley says.

“Part three,” Nolan continues, ticking down his second finger to leave his third finger—his middle finger—pointed at the other man. “Is replacing the original Da Vinci with my client’s knock-off and making sure that the opening night goes ahead without setting off any alarms. That, ladies and motherfuckers, is where the biggest part of the payoff is.”

Hartley and Zara exchange a look, intrigued despite themselves.

“Why?” Zara asks.

“Our client is an art school reject with a chip on his shoulder. Classic rich kid complex.” Nolan shrugs one shoulder a little too carelessly. “But he’s got enough money to make it worth our while.”

Hartley arches a sardonic eyebrow. “How bad is the imitation?”

Excitement pooling low and warm in his belly, Nolan forgets himself a little—forgets to let Hartley play the bad guy while Zara draws him into her orbit—and turns to smile at him a little too warm and wide, a little too familiar. You’ll like this, he wants to say. Like that job you did in Calcutta. He’s beginning to tease them apart, which parts of them made up the whole of Bishop. The sheer anticipation of the con is already prickling the sensitive pads of his fingers and he rubs them gently against the cool stem of his wineglass instead of pressing them into the divot of his right hip.

“I promised, didn’t I?” Nolan says. “Triple the challenge.”

Hartley looks at him, at the painting, and back at him.

“Impossible,” he says.

“Not impossible,” Nolan insists. He squints his eyes at the painting, cocks his head, takes a few paces backwards and then forwards again. It doesn’t help.

“You sure it’s not an imitation of Salvador Dali?” Zara asks, a little doubtful.

It does look a little melted.

“I’ll think of something.” He says.

“Sledgehammer?” Hartley suggests, unhelpfully. “Flamethrower?”

“Paintbrush?” Zara suggests. Much more helpfully.

“You, sir, are a team player. You’re invited back for the next one.” Nolan sticks his tongue out at Hartley behind her back and blinks innocently at her when she turns and catches him in the act. “Can you paint?”

“A little.” She says, all modesty.

“A lot.” Hartley says, all pride on her behalf. 

“Teamwork makes the dream work,” says Nolan and side-steps the pillow thrown his way without looking.

Sometimes they make him so angry. 

Watching them fit together, smooth and effortless, magnets spinning in their tender orbit—eyes only for each other; a private galaxy—round and round while the rest of the world falls away, unable to touch them. It hits him in the smallest moments. The sensitive pads of Nolan’s fingers prickling as he presses them into the marble counter, desperate not to touch his own soulmark, the friendly argument he and Hartley were having about Mission Impossible dying in his throat when Hartley suddenly turns to fill a glass of water. Just then, Zara wanders out of the Situation Room. She takes the glass absently, ghosting a paint-stained thumb over the divot of Hartley’s right hip, and disappears back into her makeshift studio without a word. 

“I’m telling you, even with 3D printing, face masks are a pipe dream…” Hartley continues as if nothing has happened. 

Nothing has happened, Nolan reminds himself.

There’s just no room for him. No crack between them to ooze into. Nolan trespasses for a living, eats the impossible for breakfast lunch and dinner but this—

The Spanish countryside zips by in a smear of pale greens and yellows, blue sky streaming cloudless overhead. The hot day turns slowly, ever so slowly, into a hot night. Stars pop into existence, one after another. The train tracks rock them into a kind of trance and Nolan finds himself melting in the humid air, fiddling with the top buttons of his shirt. He flicks them open, one after another, like the stars overhead, until the jut of his collarbones are completely exposed. He’s aware of Hartley watching him as he presses a hand against the glossy sheen of sweat gathering at the notch of his neck.

“We ain’t in Orenburg no more, huh?” Nolan jokes, panting a little. “I actually kind of miss prison. I’m gonna complain to customer service after we disembark. Leave a bad yelp review.”

“This is nothing.” Hartley huffs a laugh, sinking back further against his pile of grain bags in a way that looks relaxed instead of like he’s melting down. “You should try a full Texas summer, landlocked, godforsaken, sultry air so thick you can almost drink it. I used to dream I was drowning.”

“Shut up,” Nolan groans, undoing another button, as he files this detail away for later. Texas boy, huh? It’s the most concrete bit of information the other man has let slip. “I’m Swiss and Irish, okay? I burn if I think too hard about the sun.” 

“I can see that.” Hartley makes a sound deep in his throat.

Nolan, shirt fully unbuttoned and pushed down to expose the tops of the shoulders, feels even warmer than before. More naked. He swallows, licks his lips, feeling suddenly tongue-tied and desperate for something clever to say. Anything to keep Hartley’s eyes on him like that, dark and lovely and warmer than the air around them. 

“If you could have anyone paint you,” he asks. “Anyone at all. Who would it be?”

He does not say Gustave Klimt. It’s a little too honest.

Nolan flutters his eyes shut, thinking of his house. Of being gold-washed, counting the freckles on his arms, swallowing the sunset. Klimt understood the human condition—what it was to be a lover. To have one hand crowned in a thicket of roses and one foot in the thorn-wrapped grave. Love and grief mingling in the garden bed of the human heart, taking equal root. 

Black soil, Nolan thinks. Kemet. The old Egyptian word for themselves, for the fertile dark soil of their own land; a civilization that learned to shape itself around the inevitable flood.

The Becker & Sons Christmas party spans all three of the Plaza Athénée spectacular ballrooms. As one of the most famous luxury hotels in Paris, the Plaza Athénée is about as bejeweled as it gets but in the spirit of the holiday season—or in a fit of madness—the entire first floor has been utterly drenched in gold and silver, a cartoonish display of wealth that is frankly making Nolan’s eyes water. These people may provide the insurance policies for the Louvre, the National Gallery, and its contemporaries but clearly, good taste is not a transitive property. 

Through the glitter and bling, Nolan finally catches sight of his mark. Mr. Garrett Dupont, the head of the Lourve accounts at Becker & Sons and one of three people in possession of a physical copy of the blueprints to the new storage bunker where Da Vinci’s masterpiece is being kept.

“Target acquired,” Nolan whispers into his earpiece in his best Tom Cruise impression.

A soft groan is his only response as Nolan eases his way into a circle comprised mostly of middle-level managers trying desperately to get in some positive face time with their bosses. Corporate holiday parties have to be good for someone besides the con artists of the world, he supposes. The conversation is predictably dry with the underlying rot of office politics. He nods with familiar warmth to one of the younger, tipsier men with a casual, “Good to see you again, mate. Can’t leave Paris before we have that squash re-match, eh?”

The man blinks hard at him and then, with an uncertain bravado: “I’m ready whenever you are.”

“Good man.” Nolan toasts him and smiles at his real target—the older man in a black suit with ivory buttons, standing just slightly apart from the group and looking bored to tears behind his bland mask. 

“Do you go to our club, too? You look familiar.”

The man does not smile back at him.

“I doubt it.”

Nolan, undeterred, snaps his fingers in faux recognition.

“Of course, Mister Dupont. You bagged that impressive stud out in West Africa two years back—black rhino, right? 1,500 kilogram, wasn’t it?"

“Nearly 2,000, actually.” Dupont corrects, unable to help himself, turning more fully toward Nolan. “Nasty beast.”

“Hooked,” whispers Zara silk-soft in his ear. “Reel him in nice and slow.”

“Were you on the safari?” Dupont asks, forehead furrowed as he looks down his nose at Nolan until noticing his snake-skin boots. His frown loosens a little. The boots had been Hartley’s touch—it seems the Bishop style, that iconic attention to detail, came from both halves. 

“I don’t remember you.”

“Alas, no.” Nolan sighs. “I don’t often get to join the ventures themselves, unfortunately. Too busy, uh, working with local governments to make sure they happen, if you know what I mean.”

Dupont looks like he’s bitten into something sour.

“Oh yes,” he says bitterly. “My last three trips have been canceled. Fucking protesters sitting on the airport tarmac the last time. Run them over, I said. Fucking pussies. Is private property still a thing or no?”

Nolan's smile grows a little fixed but he says, “Still is in some places if you know the right people.”

“And you do?”

Nolan leans in and lowers his voice. 

“You know the Malayan tiger?” 

Dupont’s mouth falls open in shock. 

“But… they are classified as Completely Endangered on the IUCN Red List.”

Nolan smiles his slimiest smile, mimes shoots a gun, and holds up three fingers. Dupont’s eyes are full of a horrible bloodlust as they watch him.

“When do you leave Paris?” Dupont asks. “Drop by my office before you go.”

Garrett Dupont’s office should be quite impressive, a corner office boasting a generous view of the fog-tipped Eiffel Tower, but the walls of mounted ivory tusks and animal heads rather spoil the effect for Nolan personally.

He introduces Zara, armed in a red dress and a fur-trimmed coat, with a vague wave.

“My assistant.” 

There’s that same look of bloodlust in Dupont's eyes as he kisses Zara’s hand in greeting and Nolan feels seasick with a sudden barrage of emotions he’s unprepared for—none of which are his to feel, he reminds himself. But still, Nolan realizes he’s moving through the pitch for the Malaysia “pleasure tour”—All Your Favorite Illegal Things In One Place! Sex, Drugs & Murder Now With 5 Star Hotel Accommodation!—a little too quickly when Zara flicks him a glance and a pointedly vacant smile.  

Nolan takes a deep breath and forces himself to sink deeper into his character.

Finally—finally—after what seems like hours of Dupont reminiscing in increasingly vulgar detail about the circumstances of his various trophies, they finalize the itinerary, and with one last guarantee of having a shot at the Malayan tiger or equivalent rare native animal, Dupont signs a traveler’s check with a flourish and slides it across his desk.

“Mind you,” Nolan grins through his aching teeth. “We can guarantee you a chance to take the shot, not that you’ll make the shot.”

Dupont’s own smile grows noticeably colder and Zara steps—hard—on his foot.

“I never miss,” Dupont assures him.

“A man like you? I don’t doubt it.” Nolan agrees brightly, standing up. God, his foot is throbbing. “Mind walking us back to the lobby? This building is a maze.”

With an ill-concealed reluctance, Dupont leads them to the elevator. Just as the door begins to close, Zara slips out crying, “Oh, bathroom! So sorry! I’ll meet you in the lobby!”

“Feminine problems.” Nolan confides to Dupont with a roll of his eyes as they descend alone in the elevator. The other man regards him thoughtfully, a strange look that makes Nolan tense all over.

“She fucking you?”

Nolan blinks, opens his mouth—no, he reminds himself. The dominos are set, the causal chain tipped off and in motion. Zara is already elbow-deep in his personal files, not just for the blueprints and their personal gain, but also with enough evidence to keep him sitting in a very uncomfortable Malaysian prison for a very long time—and a French one after, when he finally buys his way home. The moment Dupont steps off his private chartered plane, he will be buried. A good con, like a good chess game, is over three moves before the checkmate. Don’t trade the cheap satisfaction of a punch, the illusion of a win, for the real thing.

He swallows and forces a casual one-shoulder shrug. 

“Yup.”

“Hmm,” Dupont doesn’t look surprised or upset, merely calculating. That horrible bloodlust. 

“When she's done with you, send her my way, yeah?”

Nolan is braced for it and still, it hits him in the solar plexus, a puff of breath forced out between his aching, threadbare smile; his fingers clench and unclench at his side. His reaction does not go unnoticed. Dupont's own mouth twitches with smug satisfaction.

You're a dead man, he thinks furiously. But even dead, Dupont has good aim.

Later, Nolan will toss and turn and wonder if the words were aimed at the character he was playing or the real man underneath. How thinly worn are his disguises? Can they all see through him—straight to the bleeding heart? 

Gabriel pulls him aside after he's settled the bill—somehow he ends up paying, which never happens anymore unless he wants it to—before the of three them slip back out into the rain. He claps Nolan’s shoulder and winks at his dinner companions, asking for a private word in his charmingly thick and fake-as-hell French accent.

“I'll catch up with you,” he tells them and sees the flash of suspicion on their faces.

“We’ll be right outside,” Zara says sweetly. 

Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies…

“Be careful,” Gabriel says, accent evaporating to only the thinnest trace, humor sliding off his face as the door clicks shut, leaving his face older and greying. “With your new friends.”

Nolan opens his mouth to defend himself then stops, swallowing. This is the man who taught him how to make love, not just to fuck. The way the French do it, you don’t really need to be in love with each other—just with the act itself. Still. They’d had something good for a while there and, more importantly, they’d kept something good after. Nolan doesn’t have a lot of people who care about his well-being, inner or outer, and he’s loath to push this one away.

“I’ve got it under control.” He promises.

“You think so?” Gabriel’s eyebrows raise all the way to his hairline. “You should remember that the cat has a soft belly because it has claws. Not the other way around.”

Nolan scrubs at his tired eyes. 

“Gabe. Babe. Cut the fake folk wisdom bullshit and say what you mean.”

“I know you, Nolan. I know how you get about beautiful things. I know how you get about dangerous things. Your friends are clearly both.“  Gabriel sighs, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “But I don’t like the way they look at you.”

“How—“ Nolan pauses, wets his lips. “How do they look at me?”

The look that Gabriel gives him is full of pity.

“Like they can still walk away.”

Chapter Text

The glass pyramid of the Louvre, slicked with fresh rain, glitters like a finely cut jewel embedded in the concrete ground. The wind pushes icy fingers through his hair but Nolan, adrenaline pooling low in his belly, is already hot with the anticipation, with the thrill to come. 

“Ready?” He asks, breath steaming in the air.

“What could go wrong?” Hartley says, lips quirking. 

“Everything,” Zara says, shaking her head.

Everything, Nolan thinks as they peel away from each other to once again become strangers in the milling crowd. Neither one of them look back over their shoulders at him—why should they? He can feel his heart pounding a triple-step, can feel his pulse quivering in the hollow of his throat and in the sensitive pads of his fingers as he wraps them around the door handle and crosses the final threshold. Neither one of them turns around for one final look at him and so they don’t catch the wicked smile spreading across his wind-numbed face. But even if they did, it would be too late.

Set. Match.

A good con, like a game of chess, is over three moves before the win.

Because the second rule of a good con is to keep both hands moving.

Like the street magician and his game of cups or the bullfighter waving his red muleta, you have to give the Mark a target, something to charge at, something to absorb their attention while the left hand creeps around back holding the knife.

Nolan is no hero. He’s greedy to the bone, to the bleeding bone marrow. 

Nature or nurture—who can say? A little boy with his nose pressed to the glass of the display window, half-starved or maybe just born empty, a boy who steals his own soulmark. He squeezes the hidden bishop like a talisman, a good luck charm, inside his jacket pocket with his head bowed in contrition as his dad yells at him for wandering off but when he says it won’t happen again, sir what he really means is you left me first. 

He doesn’t know it then—doesn’t know it for years to come, emotionally stunted craven thing that he is—but a seed is growing in his heart. Someday, little Nolan thinks as the angry lecture washes over his bowed head, someday I will find them as his clutching fingers go numb around his stolen bishop, the cheap black paint already flaking off where he rubs his thumb over the carved face to stain his skin.

And they will not leave me.

“I hate reconnaissance. I’m bored.” Nolan complains into his nearly invisible earpiece just to bait his soulmates into conversation. 

“It’s the Louvre.” Hartley's exasperated voice whispers in his ear, right on cue. His voice is close enough to make Nolan shiver; a false intimacy. “How can you be bored?”

“I’m bored by this conversation.”

"You're the one—"

“I’m in position,” Zara interrupts smoothly. “Nolan, please distract the guard.”

Finally. Nolan lets the crowd pull him a little farther downstream until he can wander nonchalantly up beside the guard he’s been eyeing for the last hour. He’s on the young side with a bit of a paunch, fingers drumming unconsciously on his security belt with his eyes glazed over. In the time Nolan’s been watching him, the guard hasn’t so much as glanced at the art, although his eyes have been snagged by a pretty face here or there in the crowd,  which makes him stand up a little straighter and suck in his stomach.

Nolan suppresses a smug grin when the guard glances over at him and straightens up fully. He even puffs out his chest a little bit. Adorable.

“Busy day, eh?” Nolan says brightly with his best Aussie accent. “Always this crowded in here?”

The security guard—Laurent, by the name tag—turns eagerly towards him.

“Oh, this is nothing,” Laurent informs him, self-importantly. Good. “Wednesday is our slowest day. And it's off-season for the tourists. You should try coming back in the summer, you can barely turn around in these halls.”

Nolan makes sure to look impressed.

“Sounds like this would be the best time to try and steal something then, eh?”

A static-y hiss in his ear.

“Nolan, what the fuck are you—“

The security guard laughs. He turns more fully toward Nolan, who arches a playful eyebrow at him, just a hint of flirtation in it. Not too much.

“No one can steal from the Louvre,” Laurent says with such bold confidence that it makes his mouth water.

“Oh, come on.” Nolan teases, leaning in and lowering his voice, creating an artificial bubble of intimacy, of co-conspiracy, between the two of them. “You must think about it sometimes when you’re bored. Just standing here all day long.”

“Well,” Laurent hesitates. Then, in a half-confession: “Sometimes.”

“Hmm, let me guess.” Nolan bites his lower lip thoughtfully, watching Laurent’s eyes drop to his mouth. “Do you storm the castle at midnight in a thunderstorm? Guns blazing?”

“No way. Nighttime would be impossible, everything’s locked up real tight whenever the guests are gone. The only chance would be during opening and closing when the guards change. This place is too big to know everyone working both shifts.” Laurent puffs out his chest again. “I’ve only been here for a year but I already know all the names of the people who work in my wing.”

“Impressive,” he says, not letting a hint of irony creep into his tone but Hartley snorts in his ear, the same little sound he’d let slip during their prison stint whenever Nolan made a particularly insightful remark about their fellow inmates. He doesn’t let the tingling warmth of that familiar sound derail him though, nope, he’s a consummate professional. Instead, Nolan pulls that genuine warmth to the surface and projects it towards Laurent, poor innocent lamb, reeling him in step by step. Not too fast, not too slow. Drawing the man’s whole life story out of him in bits and pieces so friendly-flirty-smooth, a light touch, a slanted look, a whisper, a laugh.

They’ve been chatting for almost twenty minutes with nothing to show for it and Nolan is just about to cut his losses when—

“—sucks because my sister got me one of the latest smartwatches for my birthday but they banned them at work because of this weird interference glitch with the badge scanning security system…” 

A double-hitch of breath in his ear in time with the skip of his own heartbeat.

“…and now I have to wear this clunky old thing to keep track of my breaks and it doesn’t log my steps or anything while I’m at work so…”

Nolan gently steers the conversation back away from Louvre security flaws without calling any attention to what the man has inadvertently revealed. They continue to face each other for another few minutes, which for him feels like a small eternity, as Laurent looks increasingly hopeful until Zara suddenly materializes from the flow of people and slips her arm around Nolan’s waist.

“There you are, darling.” She smiles, bright and guileless. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“Sorry, babe.” Nolan allows himself to melt into her embrace for the sake of their audience. “I lost track of time.”

“I hope my husband hasn’t been boring you.” Zara apologizes to the security guard who is looking torn between disappointment and heart palpitations at the million-watt smile she sends his way. Nolan’s own heart is doing weird things in his chest.

“Not at all,” Laurent stammers, going red. “You two are a very beautiful couple.”

“Thank you,” Zara says easily and presses her fingers into the divot of his hip.

It’s unconscious on her part, it must be. Years of reflex, muscle memory, running little cons like this one with Hartley on the flushed and stammering public, except, of course, that this particular little con isn’t a con between her and Hartley. If he’d been expecting it maybe he could’ve gone still and smiled through the touch. But he’s not expecting it and the touch cracks through him like a faultline of grief and desire, a fissure revealing the churning, melted depths of the earth underneath. 

Nolan gasps, nearly swallows his own tongue, and shudders away from her.

“Sorry,” he says, voice tight, not looking at her directly. “Ticklish.”

“Once there was a giant serpent who tried to swallow the earth, the sun and the stars.” 

His mother reads from a collection of Egyptian mythology, careful fingers flipping the pages of her book, her other hand resting cool and calm on his fever-hot forehead. Nolan lies very still even when the fever makes him feel like squirming, careful not to dislodge her touch. She used to read to him almost every night but now that he’s old enough to get through most of the words on his own, it’s become a rare treat. As sick as he feels, a part of him wishes he could wake up feeling just as bad tomorrow.

“His name was Aphosis. He lay waiting in the dark pit of the underworld and the hungry rumbling of his stomach shook the earth above. He was a greedy and selfish serpent who cared nothing for the humans who lived above…”

But later, shivering under his pile of blankets, little Nolan rubs his belly and wonders.

He convinces his partners in crime they need a night off to celebrate the successful acquisition of the museum blueprints and the completion of the first major step of their plan. Nolan feels buzzed on the victory, on the shaking adrenalin come-down, even before they find an anonymous hole-in-the-wall bar where they toast to Dupont’s imminent downfall with the most expensive drinks on the menu.

“Scum,” Hartley growls with that look in his eyes that makes Nolan feel hot and cold all over.

He drinks to that. Drinks again. Pretends not to notice how diligently Zara refills his glass over and over until he’s had more than both of them put together. Pretends not to notice how they lean in a little closer on either side of him and begin to carefully steer the conversation.

“So what was the first thing you stole, Mr. Booth?” Zara asks, eyeing him sideways over the rim of what he thinks is still her first drink.

“Me?” Nolan can feel his grin go a little sloppy. “I’ve never committed a crime in my life, Miss Black.”

“Oh, come on. Play the game.” Harley’s barely halfway through his second glass but on the surface his own grin is loose and his usually upright posture is unwinding, one knee pressed to Nolan’s below the table. The heat of it is difficult to ignore, a dare—a taunt—all on its own. “Show us yours, we’ll show you ours.”

He can’t help the way his body opens up to them like a sun-starved flower but that’s the point, isn’t it? Let your guard down. Nolan slouches back against the faux leather lining of their small corner booth, pretending to think about the question. Tell the truth. Tell the truth—just not all of it.

“I stole a good luck charm.” Nolan looks down at his glass instead of at them as he says it, careful not to give too much away. “My parents had dropped me off at the library while they worked. The day afterward was my birthday and I was hoping they would get me something good.”

“Did they?”

He finishes his drink off with an aggressive swallow and grins wide, but not wide enough to hide the wound. Flashes the weakness like the red muleta. Look here, little bull.

“They forgot.”

Beneath the table, Hartley’s knee presses hard against his.

“Suppose it’s karma, eh?” Nolan adds, looking through the empty bottom of his glass, at the magnification of the chipped and cracking tabletop beneath. “For trying to steal a piece of good luck? I suppose these charms have gotta have some in-built consumer protection, right?”

They laugh at the feeble joke and ease the conversation away from the raw hurt of his childhood and into his early criminal career—Hartley mocking, stinging his professional pride for a response, Zara quick to soothe his ego and follow up on any dropped information. And so he lets them draw his whole life story out of him in bits and pieces so friendly-flirty-smooth, a light touch, a slanted look, a whisper, a laugh. The same con he ran on the security guard, really, but so artfully executed that to compare the two would be criminal. Ha. Criminal.

It’s without question the most painful seduction of his life.

Zara, giggling faux-drunk, presses her hand against his chest and then jerks away as if burned. Hartley tenses, coming out of his loose posture as effortlessly as he came up out of the crystal-clear waters of the Maldive ocean. Nolan doesn’t tense—barely—letting the dizziness of the alcohol and their closeness override his fight-or-flight instinct. It works. He feels safe with them; he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t, but he does.

“Your heart.” Zara stares at him in concern. “It’s going very fast.”

Well. Nolan has never met a losing hand he couldn’t play.

“Heart condition. Runs in the family.” Nolan groans, reaching for his drink by Hartley’s elbow as if he doesn’t notice the sudden coiled tension, the readiness to do violence.  He gives the air a lopsided toast. “Guess dear old dad did get me something after all.”

Three days until they switch out the paintings and Nolan feels taut as a bowstring—archery is another thing he learned at boarding school. He took the elective with grand visions of becoming some kind of art heist Robin Hood, shooting zip lines into hard-to-reach spaces, flaming arrows, etc., even sketched out some seriously terrible costumes. The first time he tried to repel down a zip line held up only by two inches of arrowhead buried in wall plaster quickly changed his mind. It’s not the dumbest way he’s broken a bone but that’s only because Nolan has an impressively long history of making stupid decisions. 

Living with his soulmates-slash-professional rivals in Paris is definitely one of them.

That doesn’t stop him from seeking them out compulsively at every opportunity, especially with the frigid rainfall trapping them inside together. He’s popped into Zara’s makeshift art studio a dozen times that morning on the thinnest excuses. 

He’s come to refill her water for the third time in under an hour and she heaves a sigh, pushing back from the much-improved forgery to look at him.

“What’s wrong?” She asks, more blunt than usual. They usually have Hartley do the straightforward stuff, he must’ve really annoyed her. “Is there something wrong with the plan? Do we need to call this off?”

“No!” He jerks, spilling a little water over his hands.

He swears, apologizes, swears again, and places the glass roughly on the side table. He can feel his cheeks growing hot and he throws himself dramatically on the fainting couch, draping an arm over his face to cover his embarrassed blush.

“Don’t tell Hartley but…” he says in a falsetto mockery to disguise the actual plea. “I still get pre-heist jitters. It just gets me all hot and bothered.”

Nolan is a self-admitted hedonist—he would swallow the earth, the sun and the stars if he could. He can’t remember the last time he pulled a big job without the pre-heist fuck. And here he is, three days away from the biggest job of his life, brushing shoulders with the two most beautiful people he’s ever seen. With his soulmates. He’s a little pent-up, okay?

He peeks out under his arm to catch her looking at him with a speculation that suddenly makes him feel like his skin has boiled away and left him naked.

“Hot and bothered?” Zara repeats slowly, drawing closer. “Will that interfere with the mission?”

They lock eyes. He licks his lips—doesn’t mean to but can’t stop himself, tries and fails to swallow. As she draws closer still Nolan notices that she has an errant spray of paint on the left side of her chin, like a smattering of blue freckles. It makes her look younger. He blinks and a whole history of possibility seems to unspool backward from this moment—a bright-eyed eighteen-year-old packing up for art school, an angst-ridden pre-teen sketching pictures of her crush under the covers, a little girl with her bushy hair in pigtails drawing stick figure families to pin to the fridge.

Then he blinks again and Zara is hovering over him. She’s smiling at him with intent but the edges of it are oddly brittle and beneath the paint, her face looks too smooth, a mask placed atop a real person—before the thought is fully formed, Nolan is already sitting up and dodging her upturned hand with its perfectly manicured nails.

“Usually I go jogging.” Nolan hears himself saying as if from far away. “But I’m like a cat, you know? Hate to get wet. Guess I’ll just have to suck it up this time.”

He can feel her eyes burning a hole in his back as he beats a hasty retreat. Even when he escapes into the downpour to work off the excess tension, he swears he can feel her watching him. He runs for a good hour until he’s soaked from both directions and the sharp edge of tension has been forcibly ground down. As he trudges back to the hotel, socks squelching with every step, he considers going to Gabriel instead or finding any number of local clubs where he could find a willing body.

The thought is thoroughly unappealing.

The problem is now that he’s found them—now that he’s met Bishop and realized they’re more in every single way, better than he ever imagined—no one else will satisfy the craving. Again, the memory of Zara flashes over him, her face descending towards him. Will that interfere with the mission? He winces, kicks moodily at a puddle, and drags himself forward.

No one else will satisfy the craving. Not even Zara and Hartley themselves could satisfy it—not if it was just for the mission.

“Fuck,” Nolan swears up at the weeping sky.

He doesn’t just want all of them. He wants them to want all of him in return.

Chapter Text

There’s a trick to pulling off the first rule of a good con, Nolan knows.

You’ve got to choose the right lie, the lie that the Mark himself wants so badly to be true that it will make him do anything, anything at all, to keep believing. No expensive paperwork, no cutting-edge technology, no flawless acting, no idiot-proof planning will ever be stronger than that desperate desire to believe. 

(Like everything he’s good at, Nolan has learned this lesson the hard way.)

It’s still raining when Zara and Hartley scrape what’s left of Nolan from the sticky faux-leather booth of the bar, bracketing him with their body heat and their clean scent—a shared bottle of coconut oil and something else, more primal, nothing he could put words to except for a distant recollection of school boys giggling and the stoic teacher doing his best to make sex unappealing with boring, scientific words.

Pheromones. Compatible biochemistry. 

Not so boring and unscientific now. He’s plastered in more than one way as they navigate the nighttime streets, hair dripping and slicked to his face, the three of them laughing and tangled up in each other. The city lights reflected in the puddles, artificial stars churned up beneath their feet. Looking down, gasping and dizzy, half-drowning, Nolan thinks he might be flying. Might be falling.

“Les étoiles, les étoiles.” He croons before he can think better of it. On a choppy breath, yes, but sweet and slow, hitting the notes just so and rolling the consonants the way Gabriel taught him to do. “Dites-moi étoile, qui vous donnera l’amour?"

The night spins a little slower around him and Nolan realizes they’ve stopped, that Zara and Hartley are staring at him in surprise.

“I didn’t know you could sing,” Zara says and she sounds genuinely impressed. 

The way they looking at him… He feels warm, no—burning. Like he really has swallowed the stars.

“Boy choir,” Nolan admits, trying to find his footing beneath him. Trying to play it off, torn between the desire for them to keep looking at him and the desire to hide away—to put a protective hand back over the gaping greedy wound of his heart. Before they see him for what he really is. 

“God lost an angel,” Nolan quips, a little slurred. “The day he dropped my balls.”

Hartley laughs, deep sounds that travel through their connected arms, shaking through him. They continue and Nolan swallows a mouthful of spit and wistful music. By the time they arrive back at their building, he’s shivering despite the false warmth of the alcohol pulsing through him. Harley and Zara are wrangling him up the steps to their suite of rooms as Nolan tries to struggle out of his soaked t-shirt which feels five pounds heavier from rain. 

“I had no idea you were such an exhibitionist,” Hartley complains, as he prevents Nolan from falling down the stairs, nearly getting an elbow in the face for his trouble. Zara finally gets the door open and the three of them stumble into the living room. 

“Exhibitionist?” Nolan says in faux outrage, still muffled from inside his shirt. “You’re the one who plastered your soulmark across international newspapers.” 

Silence.

With a vicious tug, Nolan breaks free of his twisted shirt and blinks—into the barrel of a polished ivory gun.

“How.” Zara’s face is white, her aim steady. “Did you know that?”

For a long moment, Nolan stares into the black gaping hole of the barrel and cannot grasp the question. He’s slurred, stupid-slow, drunker than he’s been since the safety of his home was stripped from him. His eyes move slowly up the barrel—beautiful and deadly, his own confused reflection distorted in the polished surface—to the grip of Zara’s hand on the trigger. It’s the perfect fit, really. A classic femme fatal weapon, a work of art.

His eyes finally move to her face and he knows then that she’s not bluffing. She’ll kill him right now and to hell with the risk, to hell with the triple-challenge job. He can see the whites of her eyes, the white glint of her teeth when she snarls at him. Animalistic. She’s scared, he realizes, brain still going too slow. Too slow. Why would she be scared? And Hartley, grim-faced and coiled for violence, a silent steadying shadow behind her.

“Have you been spying on us?” Zara accuses.

He blinks again. Stupid—stupid.

Of course, he realizes. The Bishop is their calling card, their secret taunt but it’s been a secret from everyone—including him. There’s no way he should know. They’ve been incredibly careful in how they dress and how they move about in their shared space despite a general lack of self-consciousness when it came to nakedness. Maybe they even doubled up with soulmark blanking patches under their clothes like he did. Like he always did when he was working a job.

And this is, he reminds himself harshly, a job.

Oh yes, they’d kept their secret flawlessly, effortlessly, through ease of habit and with the criminal pleasure of running a con always humming in the background. The only—the only reason he knows is because of his own little soulmark.

For a moment—

For just a moment, he thinks about showing it to them. 

But as he looks at her face, at her fear-wide eyes and the haunted look in them, Nolan knows it’s no use telling the truth. Confusion turns slowly to dread inside him as he looks at her—that perfect hair of hers now plastered to a face that has gone white and taut, like the skull is straining through the skin. He wonders if he’s seeing the real woman for the first time since they’ve met each other. Wonders what, or who, in her past taught her this kind of fear. He feels sick from more than the alcohol. 

“Answer me,” Zara demands, and neither her voice or her hand around the gun shakes. “How did you know?”

“I know because…” He swallows. “Because…”

There’s no use telling the truth—nobody has ever believed Nolan. So he does what he does best. 

“…because I had the same idea.”

They stare at him. Zara, her eyes still white-rimmed, and Hartley behind her, his own eyes narrowed to suspicious slits.

“I was… alone. My mom was dead and my dad was… not winning any Father of the Year awards.” Nolan swallows hard, his throat drawn tight. He couldn’t sing now if his life depended on it. 

“I thought if I put my soulmark out there… they would find me. I wanted… to be…”

To be loved? No. It was both more and less than that. His mother had loved him, however badly and inconsistently. Nolan had wanted to belong to someone. Funny. He hadn’t thought to specify that the belonging be mutual. And now he stands before them, half-naked and shuddering with cold and the emotional overload, the whiplash from being held so gently between them to being held at gunpoint making his ears ring. It was a lie, that gentleness, and he’d know that it was a lie the whole time and still—oh, he thinks, aching. Oh.

“But you never left a consistent signature on your jobs.” Hartley glares at him and Nolan can practically see him flicking through a mental dossier of his past crimes. “There was that stylized B you used for a couple of big heists but you stopped after getting arrested in Germany two years back, didn’t you? Was that your soulmark?”

Nolan sways a little on his feet and the gun follows him. The truth, he thinks, just not all of it. Just not the bleeding heart of it.

“No, you see…” he licks his lips and tastes bitter rainwater. “My soulmate found me first. Not that it matters now.”

Nolan can’t help the brutal laugh that rips its way out of his throat. It’s not a good sound, barely a laugh at all. The world begins to spin again and he wonders, will Zara shoot him if he collapses? It’s not a bad gun to die to, he thinks. Beautiful and deadly. His vision is going black at the edges.

He hears more than sees the gun hammer cock back. Ready for violence.

“Is that why you chased Bishop down?” Zara asks, her own voice pulled tight and nearly unrecognizable. “Trying to replace your dead soulmate?”

The shock of her question nearly takes his knees out from under him. Of course, a perfectly bonded pair like Zara and Hartley would think that only death would separate soulmates once they’ve met. But what makes the pit of his stomach sink heavy and lead-toxic with shame is the realization—finally, unavoidably—of what his one-sided obsession must have looked like to them. To the real Bishop. He was a stranger, a professional rival, a superfan, a stalker trying to get their attention with increasingly desperate and personal stunts. No wonder they had handled him the way they did over the golden eggs.

He closes his eyes. He can’t bear to look at them right now. He pulls on the final thread of the lie-truth-lie with his last reserve of willpower. 

“I just thought… since you were still using the bishop after all this time… maybe you were like me. I thought… maybe you would understand.”

Even with his eyes closed, the world still spins. He only distantly feels his knees hit the floor. That will hurt tomorrow. He doesn’t hear a gunshot or feel any pain besides the burning sickness wriggling in his stomach. That will hurt tomorrow too since it seems he’s probably not going to be shot. He presses his spinning head against the floorboards. He feels wrung out. Empty.

“Nusquam Ire.” He whispers to the ground and waits for sleep to take him.

Nolan arrives at boarding school with a single backpack—extra school uniform, winter socks, book of Egyptian bedtime stories, the little bishop—with his cheek stinging with his mother’s goodbye kiss. She did not look back at him when she left. 

The school is a hulking architectural ode to past generations, rows of perfect Greek pillars gleaming white and under the bright noon sun, the building is nearly impossible to look at. Nolan has to squint through his own tears to read the school’s motto carved in Latin over the main entrance.

Nusquam Ire Sed Sursum.

“Nowhere To Go But Up,” the principal had explained, giving his parents a firm handshake and giving Nolan a stern frown. “We like to think of our school as a human forge. We are here to push the next generation towards greatness.”

Even inside the dorms, it’s too bright. To prevent all matter of uncouth behavior, the dorm beds are strung out in long rows with no doors to close off the buzzing fluorescent light from the hallway. There’s no hint of privacy, no welcome darkness, for Nolan to hide his tears in. 

The boy to his left kicks at his bedpost and hisses for him to shut up.

“I want to go home,” hiccups little Nolan between wet breaths. 

“You don’t have a home.” The boy answers with a sneer. “Not if you were sent here. Don’t you know the real school motto? Nusquam Ire.”

Nowhere to go.

Nolan wakes up on the wooden floorboards, disoriented and blinking back tears, his body a single pulsing bruise. The unwelcome morning sunlight shines through the open curtains to illuminate the softly drifting dust dotes; beautiful and dead. A blanket slides off his shoulder to pool heavily on the ground as he sits more or less upright, clutching at his head. For a blessed moment, he can’t remember where he is or how he got there, then—oh. Oh.

His body—his gorgeous, broken, aching body which always seems to know before his conscious mind when he’s in danger—takes three long steps, a sideways roll, and disappears into the city outside. 

The sky is a soft, cloudless blue and the respite from the rain should be miraculous but deep within himself, Nolan still feels like he’s drowning. 

The job is over. 

The triple-challenge con, the paycheck that was meant to save his house, and the thrill that was meant to soothe his wounded ego. Over. Not with a bang but a whimper. He can’t go back to them after everything that happened, was confessed, last night; not because he can’t face them but because the Nolan Booth he is playing—the one who does not belong to them no matter what, who is not the third spinning wheel of this uneven triad—would never go back to them, not after being forced to show his vulnerable belly. 

If he had been telling the truth last night, Nolan would already be on the next plane to some fucking far-flung backwater to wallow in misery and alcohol in equal measure.

“Rough night?” 

Nolan is startled to find himself standing at a cafe register, the sweetness of fresh baking and the bitterness of fresh coffee heavy on his tongue when he inhales to answer.

“You could say that.”

The barista makes a sympathetic noise, her eyes flicking up and down his clearly slept-in clothes, the stiff wincing posture, the red eyes, and says: “I recommend our espresso special, that shit is potent enough to bring back whatever you forgot last night.”

“That is,” she adds with a wink. “If you want to remember.”

“Want to…?”

With the stinging pins-and-needle sensation of shaking blood back into proper circulation, Nolan’s mind begins to whirl. 

Twenty minutes later, he is kicking down the front door of their hotel suite with as much noise as possible, laden down with cups of steaming coffee and a full tray of almond croissants and lemon scones and some twisted pastry glossed with honey. It smells heavenly and Nolan’s stomach is growling with too many kinds of hunger as Zara and Hartley turn towards him, jaws dropping just enough for him to know they didn’t expect him to return either. He winces with over-affected drama as the door bangs against the wall and hopes they can’t hear the banging of his heart inside his chest. 

Nolan flips up his cheap, stolen sunglasses to reveal bloodshot eyes. 

“Alrighty then,” he bluffs—bluffs as big as he can; with his face, with his hands, with his entire stiff and limping body. “Which one of you assholes left me on the floor last night? Because you’re not getting any coffee. All of this is mine.”

Take the bait, he urges silently. He spreads the dragon’s hoard of pastries across the kitchen counter, lets the full smell of it hit them. Like the expert fisherman, he lets the line settle and waits. Because he knows they want to believe he was that drunk—they don’t want to let the triple-challenge job, the money, the thrill, slip through their fingers because of interpersonal bullshit either.

Hartley licks his lips. His eyes flicker to Zara and whatever he sees there makes his shoulders loosen. He grins in that sardonic, teasing way of his and reaches out a hand toward one of the scones.

“You’re lucky we dragged your stinking carcass back from the bar at all.”

Nolan deliberately snatches the scone he was reaching for and grins back through a mouthful of half-mashed pastry as Hartley rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, thanks actually, seems like the kind of place that would sell me for parts after-hours. What the hell did they put in my drink?” Nolan averts his eyes ceiling-ward, as if embarrassed. “I haven’t blacked out like that since I was twelve.”

Slowly, Zara takes a seat at the kitchen counter and claims one of the coffee cups, “And after all that bragging about your Irish liver, too.”

“Hey!” Nolan yelps in genuine protest. If only you knew.

The undercurrent of tension breaks and, suddenly, it’s just the three of them spinning around each other once again in the easy orbit they’ve fallen into since arriving in Paris—Hartley and Zara, two extensions of a single unit, natural as breathing, and Nolan, the loose wheel rattling behind. 

Things go back to normal between the three of them—better, even—and if Nolan really had blacked out that night, he’s not sure what he would make of their current situation. It’s like a storm has passed, the easing of an enormous pressure he hadn’t even known was there, only sensed, barely, in the back of his lizard brain, in the sudden rash of goosebumps that would pass over him sometimes like the shadow of a passing raincloud. He tries not to enjoy the deliberate loosening of the flawless mask that Zara used to wear around him, the letting down of Hartley’s continual guard but it’s difficult to remain aloof. They touch each other less, touch him more.

If Nolan didn’t know the cause was pity, well. Sometimes he does wonder.

“Booth! Booth, answer me—“

There’s a frantic edge to her words that he tries not to find gratifying. Their fake painting is in place and the real Da Vinci’s masterpiece is encased in a protective plastic box and secured to his back with nothing but his striped Kipper tie as Nolan braces his legs against the awning and starts feeling his way up the metal paneling. It’s dark in the elevator shaft but then, he’s never been afraid of the dark. There. A double notch and a deep groove. Nolan digs his fingers in and pops the electrical box open.

He clips the wire controlling the alarm for a set of east-facing exit doors and hisses painfully as a spark of electricity bites him through his thin black gloves. 

“We’re pulling back—“ a garbled sound “—do not improvise. Do you copy? Nolan?”

The sound of his name in Hartley’s mouth sparks through him just as sharp but Nolan is a consummate professional and shoves the feeling into a box in the back of his mind to examine later. He’s only got seven more minutes. The adrenaline is swirling fever-bright inside him, burning its way through his bloodstream until each of his fingerpads feels like a falling star, singing with heat, with the sweet dizzy rush of gravity. Six minutes and fifty-nine seconds, fifty-eight…

Nolan begins to climb.

With thirty seconds left to spare, he slams through the heavy exterior doors, heart slamming against the inside of his ribcage so loud he can barely hear the tell-tale click of the alarm re-setting itself. When he finally catches his breath (he’s not eighteen anymore, okay?) Nolan unlocks the sprinter van reading Godot’s Deliveries (yes that Godot you fucking English nerds) parked in wait for him on the side street and tucks the stolen goods inside, hidden among the rows of decoy packages. 

Heart still beating too fast, Nolan locks the van back up and takes a moment to re-do his tie, wondering that his touch doesn’t burn straight through the fabric. He tilts his face up into the drizzle and imagines the rain steaming off of his bare skin. He grins up into the wet sky, lets the rain slide across his teeth and onto his waiting tongue. 

(The snake who unhinges its jaw and swallows the sun.)

A crackle of static—“Nolan I swear”—and he finally clicks in his earpiece, pushing as much smug satisfaction as he can into his voice (which, for the record, is a whole goddamn lot) and says:

“Awww, did you miss me?”

A pause and then Zara’s voice, whip-sharp, but underneath that displeasure there’s an undeniable and deeply gratifying note of professional admiration. 

“Elevator shaft?”

Nolan hums to himself. “Yep. I told you so.”

A static-y sigh. Half-annoyed and half-relieved.

“Are we compromised?”

“Only one way to be sure.”

Nolan smoothes down the bump of the broad Kipper tie (it really is too big for this outfit, damn Hartley and his judgmental eye-rolling but function before fashion, kiddos) and heads back to the front door. He lights a cigarette on the way not so much to smoke, although the single drag of nicotine does help offset the post-heist jitters, but for the authenticity as he smiles sheepishly at the front guard and hands over his slightly crumpled entrance ticket. 

No one arrives to arrest him, no alarms begin to wail, but as Nolan steps through the front hall for the second time that evening he finds himself suddenly pinned between two dark, lovely sets of eyes and knows that he is well and truly caught. 

He slithers from the moonlit Maldivian waters onto the boat, nearly soundless except for the quiet drips of water onto the wooden deck. It rocks gently in the night breeze and Nolan rolls with it, keeping his knees and ankles flexible.  

There’s no light on and he thinks they’re asleep until he catches the faint whisper of voices from below. Nolan lowers himself gently and presses an ear to the floor.

“—sure about this?” A feminine voice. “It’s a lot of money.”

“No.” Masculine. Hartley’s voice. “I’m not sure of anything. Do you think he knew?”

“You saw his face same as I did.” A rustle of fabric. “How good of a liar do you think he is?”

“Not as good as you.”

Even through the flooring, Nolan can hear the smile in Hartley’s voice. He curls his fingers against the woodgrain and listens, flushing hot as the rustling of fabric grows louder, suggestive. He turns up towards the night sky, trying not to listen, recalling the old names and stories of stars to distract himself, looking up desperately at the bright swirl of constellations blurring overhead. Blurring? 

Oh, Nolan thinks, touching a hand to his wet face.

It’s too warm inside the Louvre from the heat of the crowd, from his own triple-timing heart, and his fake glasses are fogging around the edges, narrowing his vision. The churn of the crowd is like a storm-tossed sea but Nolan is a fucking shark and as he passes under a sweeping banner proclaiming Da Vinci’s Masterpiece Restored he grins with all of his teeth. All those human bodies should make tailing him nearly impossible but Nolan does not doubt that if he looked over his shoulder he would see Hartley—or maybe Zara, she’s more maneuverable in a crowd—looking back at him, watching for a sign of betrayal. 

They are sharks too, after all.

But it’s too late. A good con, like a game of chess, is over three moves before the win.

“Our client said he’ll be wearing a blue and gold suit—yeah, I know. Not exactly subtle.” Nolan grins at the wryly amused huff of breath in his ear. “But you saw his art. What’d you expect?”

“And the money?” Zara's voice, calm and cutting the heart of things.

“In his black briefcase. He’ll hand it over once the curtain drops.” Another amused huff and Nolan is suddenly struck by the urge to push the headset deeper into his ear, as deep as it will go, knowing he’s not got long left to listen to it. “Like I said, not exactly subtle but, you know, I have to confess that I’m the type of guy who can appreciate some theatrics every now and then.”

“I’m shocked.” Zara says, at her driest and he can practically hear her single arched eyebrow. “Spread out and call in if you see him.”

“Aye, aye captain.” Nolan agrees, the spot between his shoulder blades itching where Zara—he’s sure it’s her tailing him, she’d want to do it herself just to be sure, the little control freak, he thinks fondly—must be watching him and lets the crowd push him back and forth, pretending to scan the mass of reporters and critics and historians and art school students, waiting for just the right—

“Found him,” Hartley’s voice is a satisfied whisper in his ear. “Outside the Da Vinci exhibit, left of the velvet rope. He’ll be one of the first to go in.”

There’s only one entrance and exit to the room and the plan is for all three of them to re-group and wait—keeping watch more on each other than on the door; this last stage is always the most delicate working with people you don’t trust, not that there’s any other kind, for Nolan. 

Which is why he suddenly ducks behind one of the museum pillars, hissing “oh fuckety fuck” and a string of other curses—mixing in some nice new Argentinian slang he picked up—as he peeks out behind the column.

“What’s wrong?” Hartley’s voice pulled wire-taut. “The client has entered the room.”

“An old friend of mine is here,” Nolan answers, ducking behind a group of tall Swedes as he travels to the next pillar, smoothly stealing a baseball cap to jam onto his own head. He hopes Zara is enjoying his theatrics. “And to be completely honest with you, I’ve been putting off this particular reunion. I’m gonna have to circle back, try and get in another way—do not approach the client without me.”

“Of course not,” says Zara, a beat too late for Nolan to believe her. Not that he would’ve believed her anyway, of course. There’s no way they will wait for him.

Nolan works his way upstream, against the tide of the crowd flowing to the DaVinci exhibit, and scans the crowd for a sign of either Bishop. Nothing. He grins to himself but forces an edge of panic into his words.

“Not that the client will hand over the briefcase without me there,” he bullshits, his lie as obvious as Zara’s own. “So it’ll be useless to try without me. Just hold on.”

A beep from his phone. He swipes a thumb across the screen and looks for a long moment, his throat gone dry, at the fresh string of zeroes in his bank account.

Set. Match.

“Just wait for me,” he says one final time and his voice does something strange, rough from the suppressed excitement and satisfaction and maybe something else he's unwilling to name but if they hear it too, if they say something in response, he’ll never know because Nolan plucks the tiny headset from his ear and crushes it between thumb and forefinger. A metallic crunch and then silence. He is alone in his head.

Feeling lighter than air, Nolan passes through the main entrance, dances down the steps to the rain-slicked curb, and hails a taxicab to leave them both behind. Hesitates, just once, on the bottom step, looking back over his shoulder at the bright lights winking in the museum windows.

(He does let himself pretend, just once, just for a moment, with his hands twisted together and shaking from the high of the con and the jerky stop-start of traffic, that they did wait there for him.

That they waited and wondered where he was and worried for him. That when the realization finally broke over them that he wasn’t coming, that the suitcase was empty and the man was a hired actor, that despite their vigilance and talent and beauty it was Nolan Booth who won this round…

He wonders if they felt the same way he had on the beach.)

Nolan watches Paris receding in the distance and it feels a little bit like his heart is receding into the distance too, smothered by the grey cloud cover—a maudlin thought, over-dramatic, a side-effect of the adrenaline come-down. Nolan groans into his trembling hands and feels something shift in his breast pocket as he hunches over.

Frowning, he slides a hand into his suit jacket and withdraws—an envelope. Stamped with the unmistakable Bishop.

Pulse beating in his fingertips, he pulls out the single sheaf of paper and wonders, for a dizzy moment, if the plane has rolled sideways and begun to plummet to the ground. He can’t seem to get enough oxygen into his lungs.

It’s the deed to his house. 

His house. 

The paperwork is notarized and dated from three months ago and suddenly the realization comes crashing over to him, slotting into place, the stolen nighttime conversation overheard on the boat and Hartley’s words to him the morning after—we have something for you—that he’d discarded so easily at the time. Nolan can’t seem to get enough oxygen into his lungs but, still, he throws his head back and laughs. He plucks the yellow sticky note from the deed and reads the single, freshly scrawled word.

Stalemate?

Chapter Text

Nolan stands frozen in the entryway for a long time.

He’s breathing slowly—counting four-three-two-one exhale, four-three-two-one inhale—and willing himself not to cry. What’s he got to cry about, huh? He’s home. Don’t be an idiot, he tells himself harshly, what were you expecting anyway?

It’s just so empty. A fine layer of dust on the floor and shadows in every corner. 

Finally, he manages to close the door behind him and steps forward to place his bag on the kitchen counter. It’s a good thing he ate at the airport. Nolan inspects the rows of vacant shelves when a flicker of something catches at the edge of his vision. He turns sharply to look at the corner where his favorite sofa used to be.

(“Nice place you got here.” Hartley had said, from Nolan’s spot on the sofa with Nolan’s whiskey in his mouth. At the time, Nolan had been furious but now the memory of those wet curving lips haunts the empty, echoing space and—oh. )

“Oh,” he whispers. 

It’s not the house that’s empty, he realizes. It’s him.

Nolan is sitting in the luxury airport lounge reserved for business class flyers, his knuckles clenched white around the cord of the complimentary telephone, not even an international fee or anything. Being rich is easy. 

The phone rings once. Twice.

He’s just about to hang up, to cut his losses when—

“Hello?”

Hartley’s voice sounds sleepy. There’s a beat of silence as Nolan tries to remember how to move his tongue and there’s a sudden rustling of cloth—bedsheets?—on the other end as if Hartley is sitting up straighter.

“Nolan?” His voice is still soft but much more awake. “Is that you?”

This was a mistake, Nolan realizes. He can’t do this. He reaches for the button to cut the call. 

“Wait.“ More rustling and then another voice joins the line.

“Good morning, Mr. Booth.”

Nolan squeezes his eyes shut to block out the view of the airport lounge. He can picture them so clearly, tangled up and sleep-mused, the white of their hotel sheets a clean, enticing contrast to their flawless, sun-licked skin. They must be pressed nearly cheek-to-cheek to share the telephone; Hartley’s arm looped around her waist to pull her in close, one of her clever hands placed against his broad chest for balance. 

“If it is morning, wherever you are.” She adds and he huffs out an involuntarily laugh at her prying. 

“It is,” Nolan confesses and hopes the rough scrape of his voice doesn’t translate through the phone line. He feels raw all over. “I’m going home.”

“We’re glad,” Hartley says and his voice is a little muffled as if he has his face half-pressed to Zara’s cheek. Dear god but he can picture it so clearly, can almost smell the familiar coconut oil scent. 

“Why?” 

Nolan doesn’t mean to ask it. Doesn’t know if he can handle the answer. 

There’s a beat of silence—one heartbeat, two, three—and then a sigh of static. Nolan realizes he’s pressing the phone too hard against his ear, hard enough that it hurts but he can’t seem to ease his grip. He feels like he’s the one being squeezed too tight, like he’s a thin veneer of shiny plastic cracking under pressure, wires sparking just under the surface. 

“The truth is…” says Hartley slowly but it’s Zara who finishes “…working with you was fun.”

By the time they leave the Louvre Christmas party, Nolan’s wallet is stuffed with business cards and the rough outlines of another dozen future cons. 

The night has turned over into early dawn, the wavering edges of the horizon over the city skyline beginning to blush with the coming sunrise. Maybe he should feel tired but the adrenaline overload of the heist and his last-minute improv to snatch success from the jaws of disappointment, the physical exertion of scaling the elevator shaft, and then the hours and hours of socializing with the clueless holiday patrons while the pleasing weight of Bishops' eyes followed him no matter where he went—all of it combines to make him feel strung out in the very best way, a rough jumble of overstimulated nerves. Then Hartley steps forward with the polite smile of a stranger edged in something darker, more intense, and offers him a drink, their fingers sliding hot-slow against each other, a sweet agony. 

Nolan takes the glass, his expression perfectly controlled but the ripples in the champagne surface give him away.

“Should I cut you off?” Hartley leans forward to purr into his ear, not an electronic whisper but the real thing—hot breath, the spiced scent of him, a brush of stubble. 

Nolan wants nothing more than to lean forward but he takes a step backward instead and feels two delicate hands steady his waist, blocking him in.

“Careful there,” says Zara in his other ear. “Or we’ll have to take you home with us.”

Her touch is a gossamer thing, more a suggestion of touch than the real thing but she brushes dangerously close to the sweet ache in the dip of his right hip where he knows her fingers would fit like a work of art and the weight of his wanting crushes the breath out of him. 

For the first time in a long time, Nolan finds himself speechless. 

“Mhh, no witty response?” Hartley says, stepping forward, re-claiming the space Nolan put between them and fuck he’s so tall when he’s close like this, big enough to block out the flickering chandelier lights, casting them into shadow; an intimate, temporary darkness just for the three of them. “Is that all it takes to shut you up?” 

“Um,” Nolan says, breathlessly and curses himself for a fool.

“Post-heist jitters?” Zara says and like Hartley, there’s an edge, an intensity, to her voice he doesn’t know how to interpret. The cruel tease of it shouldn’t affect him so much but it’s all Nolan can do not to spill his champagne glass over his shaking hands and for a second he allows himself to picture it—sucking the sweet sticky tang of the wine from his fingers, both sets of dark eyes growing even darker as they watch him and surely they’ll tell him he did a good job, that they couldn’t have done it without him, that he deserves a little reward for his good behavior, don't you, Mr. Booth?

But—he forces himself to take a sideway step, to roll away from the temptation, the beautiful lie of it, before his greedy wanting can tangle and trip him up. They let him go without protest and he brandishes a gold-embossed business card instead of dwelling on the disappointment of that. They’re only teasing him, after all. 

“Unlike you slackers,” he says with a shaky grin. “I’ve been scouting our next job.”

The golden imprint of the Hermès fashion brand catches the light and the two of them exchange a slow, meaningful look that he can’t even begin to understand. Hartley raises an eyebrow and Zara nods. 

“Very promising.” Hartley declares aloud and then—oh fuck—then they both smile at him.

Nolan swallows hard and tells himself that it’s enough.

Do they mean it? 

Do they?

They don’t, of course, Nolan reminds himself endlessly over and over but then again—what if they do? Nolan knows that this is only the next part of whatever con is unfolding between them but when he reviews his handy list of rules, trying to follow the logic of their next move in order to plan his own counterstrike, he ends up with a palmful of smoke and pieces that don’t fit together—the sleep-soft way they said his name, a half-dozen lingering touches that never went anywhere and the deed to his fucking house. 

They don’t mean it they don’t they don’t—like a mantra, like the lyrics to his own stumbling heartbeat. 

But if they do…

Nolan sends them their cut of the Louvre heist payout minus the cost of his favorite bottle of Parisian Chardonnay. It’s not a test. It’s not anything, just a playful whim, one last way to piss them off. But it still feels like he holds his breath for a full week until one morning he walks down the gravel road of his house—his fucking house—and finds a wooden crate waiting for him beneath the mailbox. 

They’ve sent him an entire six-bottle set of Leflaive. In the absolute worst year possible. 

Nolan laughs until his ribs feel bruised with happiness. 

The final and most important rule of the con is the easiest one, and yet it’s the one rule Nolan has never quite figured out how to follow—don’t bet anything you aren't willing to lose. Obvious, right?

Still, he sends them back a postcard of the Empire State Building, unsigned, with the following message:

It’s become clear to me that you both have terrible taste. If you’d like to correct this embarrassing moral failing, you can find me at New York Fashion Week. You know where. 

Chapter Text

Nolan stares down at the visibly peeling edge of his soulmark patch, the once seamless and unmarked stretch of his hip slowly revealing itself as a lie.

How did I forget? How did I end up here, like this?

Nolan can remember sitting bare-assed on the ice-cold bathroom countertop of his hotel room two streets down from the Castel Sant’Angelo where the first gold egg sat nestled in velvet waiting for him, his tongue wedged between his teeth in concentration as he applied the military-grade soulmark blanking patch to his skin so slow and steady that not a single wrinkle or air bubble would give him away. The really good synthetic patches only last six months before they start to peel off (one of his old prison bunkmates from Arrest #3 used to complain “they” engineered it that way to catch aliens; he had a lot to say about aliens and alien sex but Nolan was only in that particular prison for twenty-six hours and therefore Arrest #3 shouldn’t even really count, Zara, come on) so usually he's paranoid about refreshing them long before their expiration date becomes an issue for the con.

But that’s the crux of the problem, isn’t it? It’s not a con anymore—not for him. If he’s honest with himself, which he tries to avoid only slightly less than he avoids being honest with other people, then he has to admit that maybe it never was a con, for him. Not even at the very start when Zara was the sole, backstabbing Bishop and Harley was the (in hindsight, suspiciously well-dressed) FBI agent. Nolan knows he is made for them, his heart opening to them on smooth soundless double-hinges; they were inside of his defenses before he realized the danger.

Nolan drops his head into his hands and groans.

“You okay in there, Booth?” The words echo a little off the corners of lofty stone-carved bathroom. Every single room in the El Dorado Villa is designed to make its visitors feel small but even warped by over-engineering, the sound of Hartley’s voice and the undercurrent of genuine concern there makes Nolan want to squirm.

“Just realized I put my briefs on backwards this morning,” Nolan lies easily; if nothing else, six months of nearly constant close contact with Bishop have honed his skills at every level.

“Need any help in there?” Hartley asks, tone comically lecherous.

“Every day it becomes more clear to me that you have absolute zero game.” Nolan groans, pretending the off-hand joke doesn’t make his body flush with a mix of panic and longing. He hasn't seen his own soulmark since meeting them, he realizes suddenly. His fingers tap hungrily along the curve of his hipbone and for just a moment he thinks—what if? 

“How did you ever manage to seduce someone like Zara?”

“She seduced me.” Every joking around, Hartley says her name with such obvious warmth that it makes him feel warm inside too from sheer proximity. A contact high.

“That makes a lot more sense.”

Hartley laughs and all the stone surfaces echo with it. His laugh echoes again, electronic, in the curve of Nolan’s ear.

“Comms are up,” Hartley says, accompanied by the brief sound of the running faucet. “Hurry and fix yourself up, we’re on in ten.”

“Nah, it’s—“ Nolan swallows past a sudden lump in his throat. He drags his finger along the curling line of the patch, over places which haven’t been touched skin-to-skin in months and are all the more sensitive for it. He shudders, digs his fingers in to ground himself, half-moon nail marks next to the dimple of his hip. “It’s fine the way it is.”

He licks the pad of his thumb and gently smoothes the edge back down to nothing.

Chapter Text

Once upon a time, Bishop told him: “You can have excuses or results.”

But Nolan’s a maximalist; why have just one thing when you can have both?

He sees them first. Possibly—probably, definitely—because they aren’t looking as hard as he is but hey, a win is a win, right?

The two of them are sitting side by side in the third row back from the official Hermès runway, deliberately placed outside the line of sight of the cameras, sitting with the crowd of what one of his old professors called ‘the quiet money’. Not the celebrities and influencers; the investors.

They look good.

It hits him harder than he expects it to, the sight of them in person again for the first time since leaving them at the Louvre nearly five weeks ago. (Looking at them now brings a fragment of Shakespeare to his helpless lips—she makes hungry where most she satisfies. They make him think of painful, precious things.) It's redundant to say they look beautiful, but it's true. Zara is wearing an ankle-length leather trench coat dyed such a dark red that it appears nearly black, a pale grey silk scarf knotted at her throat. Hartley is dressed in a dark grey suit with a lighter grey shirt beneath and a pair of red leather Chelsea boots to match her.

Oh, yes. They look good sitting together, beautiful and dangerous and untouchable.

(But then, Nolan is a thief. He has to try.)

Nolan wakes up at dawn the morning after coming home, his stomach cramping with hunger but his fridge is still empty.

His house is still empty and yet the flat, grey dust of the night before is somehow transformed by the warm morning sunlight; he’s reminded that even emptiness isn’t nothingness by the eddies of dust motes caught floating in their slow patterns like a snowglobe of gold dust.

Nolan flicks at the layer of dust on the kitchen counter, creating mini twisters with his fingers, carving wobbly hieroglyphs into the dirtied marble. Fool’s Gold, that deceptively simple shape with the wicked line of the tail; his fingers draw it instinctively but he pauses, adds another arching curve, smoothes out the jagged ending, and finds himself smiling.

New Day looks up at him from the grime.

The official Hermès runway is over which means the real show is just getting started as people mix and mingle, everyone wanting to look and be looked at, showing off more than the models did as they network their way across the room. Bishop is drawing no small amount of attention in their guise as a rich, beautiful power couple, and even though the small group they’re chatting with consists of at least two B-list actors and the former vice president of France, the conversation drifts in orbit around the both of them.

“Daaaarlings!”

Nolan draws out the word obnoxiously, approaching them on the arm of the one Andre Dumas-Chastain, and doesn’t bother disguising his gleeful smirk. A look of something—surprise, maybe? No, anticipation—flashes briefly between them before smoothing out, Zara and Hartley turning to greet him with matching expressions of polite interest. They’re waiting for his cue, he realizes with a sudden jolt and his grip flexes involuntarily around his escort’s arm.

Giddy with this knowledge, with what is practically permission, he can’t stop himself from stepping forward and smacking a loud kiss to both cheeks; first Zara and then Hartley, the slight heel of his boots forcing Nolan unsteadily up onto his toes to reach his cheek, a brief touch on that well-muscled arm to steady himself. He hisses ‘so tall’ under his breath in an accusatory way and gets a mouthful of Hartley’s delicious, unidentifiable cologne for his trouble.

He pulls away, a little flushed, and his date reclaims his arm with just a hint of territorial uncertainty. A rather tepid and plain-looking man caught in his extended family’s net of obscene generational high-fashion wealth, Andre has predictable appetites and insecurities; but there’s a certain earnest sweetness to him that makes Nolan think he, in another life, would’ve been a perfectly happy family man living out a wholesomely gay white picket fence ideal. It’s sad that nepotism has ruined him but not sad enough to stop Nolan from using it to his advantage.

“Andre, please meet the special investors I was telling you about.” He says with unfeigned enthusiasm. “I owe them my everlasting gratitude.”

“Art is its own reward,” Zara deflects demurely, effortlessly picking up her cue.

“True enough,” Nolan agrees with an expansive gesture at her own lovely ensemble. “But tangible rewards do make continued patronage all the sweeter, don’t they?”

Hartley understands a beat before Zara—of course he does. Greedy little bag slut, Nolan thinks affectionately, ignoring the uptick of his own pulse, the avaricious way he tracks the swallow of Hartley’s throat, the quick dart of his tongue wetting his lips, the half-aborted twitch of his fingers.

Special edition Hermès bags are incredibly exclusive items, available only to VIP clients through close relationships with insiders. They are not simply special orders; rather, they are part of secretive, limited-run collections that are shrouded in mystery due to limited information.

They cannot be ordered, only given.

Hartley clears his throat. “Sweet indeed.”

Nolan winks at him—not discretely enough by the huff of breath in his ear and Andre’s rather abrupt, “We have dinner reservations, please excuse us.”

Still, he resists the tug at his elbow long enough to add innocently, “I’ve taken the liberty of contacting your assistant and arranging the gifts to be dropped off at your hotel room for you” before allowing himself to be ushered away, fighting off the predatory grin that threatens to overwhelm and expose him.

Eventually, Hartley will notice the Waldorf Astoria room key card that was slipped into his pocket under the guise of a fumbled cheek kiss. Until then, let him clench his jaw in that unhealthy, unfairly attractive way of his, stewing in frustrated uncertainty, unsure if Nolan had been telling the truth or only teasing. A part of him wishes he could see their faces when they arrive—he’s truly outdone himself not only because of the special edition bags but for the whole penthouse Honeymoon Suite complete with complimentary champagne and chocolates, not to mention the private hot tub with a corner view over Peacock Alley.

Maybe he will see for himself. After all, the other key card is in his pocket.

The first time Nolan puts on a soulmark patch, it takes him an hour and there is a telltale ripple where he overstretched the elastic on previous attempts.

He is eighteen and tomorrow, if things go badly—which they won’t because he’s incredible and intelligent and talented, not to mention drop-dead gorgeous—but just in case they do go badly, there is a itty-bitty teensy-tiny chance that he might be arrested for the second time, and this time he’d be facing big boy prison. Nolan is perfectly willing to never think about his brief stint in juvie ever again and has, in fact, done so happily and successfully for the last five years.

But juvie, at least, was not allowed to record information on his soulmark. No EU-sanctioned government is allowed to record or store information about a minor’s soulmark; a law whose roots reach all the way back to the Lex Aquilia of 286 BC in the early Roman Republic. (There are less than a dozen known fragments of the original Law of the Twelve Tables; someday, he swears, he will steal one.) Of course, the original ordinance was meant to protect ambitious matchmaking parents who didn’t want their plans to be affected by such trivial things as true love.

At eighteen, Nolan believes in true love with his whole heart.

At thirty, Nolan still believes in true love.

Just, maybe not for himself.

Nolan lasts through the entirety of the appetizers, lemon-zested olives plus the most expensive bruschetta he’s ever eaten, and then halfway through the entree, a delicious black truffle risotto that he’s too keyed up to truly appreciate, before he fakes an emergency work call—a warehouse fire in Paris, half of his fall demo collection in ruins; he even squeezes out a few tears.

Andre, bless him, offers to personally drive him to the airport.

He declines, of course, but Andre insists on paying for his taxi and stands outside on the sidewalk curb waving goodbye like a complete dork. Nolan is actually starting to feel a little bad for ducking out early when the car turns the corner out of the restaurant sight lines up onto 49th Street and he abruptly stops caring—or, rather, all of his caring gets re-routed, like blood rushing away from the brain when you stand too quickly after sitting too long.

A fancy way of saying that Nolan is about to make a stupid decision.

“I’ll give you an extra twenty bucks if you let me out here. Off the books, in case anyone asks.”

The driver eyes him curiously in the rearview mirror but accepts. Of course he does. Everyone hates driving to the airport.

He realizes his palms are sweaty when he leaves damp smudges closing the taxi door. He shoves them deep into his pockets, takes a fortifying breath, and starts walking the half-block up to the hotel. It’s dark outside, he realizes, the sun having set quietly at some point between the Hermès runway and the appetizers and he slows down to breathe it in. There’s a hazy, blue-tinted veil drawn over the city; everything feels both awake and oddly muted, the kind of night that tastes like jazz and the burn of good whiskey. Nolan is filled with a sudden nostalgia for old things, lost things, things he never had in the first place.

He walks slower and slower but eventually he arrives outside the iconic art deco entrance of the Waldorf Astoria, all gilt and glitz, larger than life; the gold-on-grey lettering, the gold-on-gold fresco of beautiful maidens teasing their kneeling supplicants, the gold light glowing warm and holy through the huge metal-and-glass mullions and revolving doors.

Nolan pauses in a blue-black shadow just beyond the light’s nimbus and his body throbs suddenly with the knowledge of what he is—a liar and a thief. He is dirty fingerprints on clean glass.

I don’t care, he thinks to himself and then, more truthfully, I want to see them anyway.

“You look away when you lie,” his co-star and girlfriend of two weeks tells him idly one day as they’re sharing half a blunt, taking turns blowing the smoke out through a cardboard roll covered at both ends with dryer sheets to try and hide the smell. Nolan is nineteen, gorgeous, delightful, full of unearned youthful confidence. Dating her is mostly part of the con; it’s not a honeytrap but it’s also not not a honeytrap. Still, he’s surprised by how much he likes her specifically and how much he likes the role of boyfriend in general.

“You’ll have to do better if you want to make it out here as an actor.”

The aspiring actor bit is a cover story, successful enough that it will become one of his go-to's in the future, but the advice is useful either way.

“If you could have anyone paint you. Anyone at all. Who would it be?” Nolan asks and immediately regrets it, feels stripped down and stupid; what is this, 20 fucking first date questions or something? But the only thing worse than asking would be taking it back immediately, as if the question meant anything more than idle distraction from the heat and boredom, and so he waits and waits and—

Hartley hesitates.

Barely noticeable, a hitch in his otherwise even breathing—a sound that, if Nolan made it, could mean a hundred things ranging from the suppression of a panic attack to a mild hiccup; that’s the advantage of being a mess, he’s unpredictable—and for an impossible, stretched-out moment he wonders if the question could mean something important to Hartley too.

Wonders, if maybe, in this strange rattling darkness, this train ride that feels like it’s happening outside of normal time-and-place, maybe Hartley will answer him honestly.

Hartley looks away and says: “Andy Warhol.”

But the answer doesn’t matter. Not if the question doesn’t.

“You lying son of a bitch! Come over here and say that to my face you—” Nolan attempts to pick up a bag of grain he’s been using as an armrest to throw it at Hartley’s lying sonofabitch face only to learn that grain apparently weighs an absolute metric fuckton.

“I’m serious,” says Hartley, face poker-smooth, watching him struggle with the bag. “I like the colors.”

“Fuck you,” Nolan repeats, heartfelt. He gives up trying to heft the grain bag and rifles through his pockets for something else to throw, finds a handful of emergency bobby pins and lobs them one after the other. Hartley swats them lazily out of the air, otherwise unmoved. “No way you like that hideous, over-glorified, colorblind, idea-stealing consumerist garbage of a—“

“I just think it’s neat.”

“You fucking troll.”

Nolan does consider just using the key card to let himself in but he doesn’t particularly feel like ending up at gunpoint on such an otherwise successful evening so instead he knocks twice on the door and intones Room service! in a ringing falsetto.

The door yanks open almost immediately and he has just enough time to think (1) did she just sprint across the entire penthouse suite or was she lying in wait like some kind of ambush predator?; (2) she's wearing it; and then (3) oh. Nolan spent the whole twenty-eight-floor elevator ride thinking up a variety of clever, bantering excuses for his late-night visit but as he opens his mouth to try and smooth talk his way inside, Zara grabs his wrist and tugs him across the threshold with an impatient, “What took you so long?”

“Um,” says Nolan eloquently, his entire attention consumed by their point of contact for a moment as she pulls him through to the bedroom—a lavish California king bed, already mussed, which he tries not to look at too closely, and a box of half-eaten truffles—so he ends up explaining, a little too honestly, “Andre ordered a bottle of Lafite Rothschild Bordeaux, I couldn’t exactly guzzle it.”

“Well, no.” Zara agrees, partially appeased, still holding his wrist. Her thumb rests lightly over his exposed pulse point, the blue veins; an accident on her part surely but a dangerous one for him. He doesn’t trust his heart to behave around her. Not with the intense way she’s looking at him like he’s an unusual specimen of butterfly she is deciding how to pin down for display, his every expression and micro-expression cataloged.

The pressure of her attention makes him ask, inanely, “So you found the Hermès bags?”

Obviously. She’s wearing it.

The cross-body bumbag is slung from her left shoulder to right hip, her black silk camisole a perfect backdrop to showcase the crimson red leather with its thick, double-stitched black lines. Even with an impartial designer’s eye, Nolan is pleased to see how well the sportier shape combines with the elegance of the expensive material. The result is effortlessly cool, high-class, and unmistakably something Bishop would wear.

(How many nights has he lain awake, thinking of all the things he would someday give his soulmate? Thinking of how to make them happy.)

“Did you pick the color?” She asks and the question has an unexpected and uncomfortable weight.

“Me? Don’t you know I’m colorblind?” Nolan jokes, buying time. He grins at her, that ridiculous come-laugh-at-me-and-my-antics grin which usually lets him side-step questions he doesn’t want to answer but she remains intent, continuing to search his face for something, and he adds, still trying to laugh it off, “Yeah, yeah, okay I might have made some suggestions. You know Andre’s email password was really Password123? That's so bad it’s like, vintage. Anyway, I look amazing in red. Totally my color. I’ve been thinking about trademarking it.”

For a moment, her thumb presses harder over the thump-thump-thump of his pulse and he worries she can translate the morse code of I did it for you and please tell me you like it and please tell me you like me.

“What Zara is trying to say,” Hartley’s voice cuts in wryly from behind him. “Is thank you.”

Nolan turns to see Hartley emerge from the adjoining bath and catches the tail end of a pointed look passing between him and Zara. By the time he turns back—sometimes, if he sees both the giving and receiving, Nolan can decipher the message behind their glances; an imperfect code-cracking but it’s what he’s got—Zara has already dropped her eyes to her bare feet, an almost pinkish tint to her cheeks, and she finally lets go of his wrist, stepping away to join Hartley in the bathroom doorway.

He’s wearing his gift too; the same crossbody bag but in black leather with red double-stitching, the dimensions of the bag cut wider, a bit more masculine.

As always, they are a beautifully matched set.

“Yes,” says Zara, threading her fingers through Hartley’s. “Thank you, Nolan.”

It hurts a bit to look at them right then so he doesn’t, goes wandering around the room instead, picking things up and putting them back down slightly askew—just to be obnoxious, to put his dirty fingerprints momentarily over their life—and talks. That’s what he does best. If other people can talk in circles then he can talk in spheres, in fucking dodecahedrons.

“Gratitude is for suckers,” Nolan says, stealing a chocolate truffle. “I take payment in—goddamn, that’s actually really good, is this nougat and cardamon?—I take payment in cash, paypal, venmo, treasury bonds, and a variety of stolen goods, speaking of which… mhhh strawberry, very nice, the hotel honeymoon package is not playing around. I’m tempted to take the whole room back.”

Nolan dances his own copy of the key card across his knuckles, grinning, “So how long did it take you to find the room key in your pocket, buddy? Zara, tell me honestly, did he pout? Did he think I was lying about the bags?”

“First of all,” says Hartley, plucking the key card from between his second and third knuckles. “We both know it’s harder to notice if someone has planted something on you than to notice if they've taken something off you. Second, I don’t pout. And third—”

“Am I hearing this right?” Nolan interrupts, gasping in mock outrage, cupping a hand around his ear dramatically. “Did you just make… excuses? Quick, Zara, feel my forehead, am I running a—ouch! Did you just flick me? In the forehead? When I’m dying of shock-induced fever and turned to you as my only source of hope, my only comfort in this bleak—“

But Hartley keeps talking right over him, “And third, no.”

Nolan steals another truffle (salted caramel, his favorite) and munches on it, tilting his head curiously. “No what?”

“No, I knew you weren’t lying,” Hartley says simply, warm and devastating. “I believed you from the start.”

Chapter Text

His therapist once told him there is no love where there is no trust.

Nolan is skeptical about her advice for several reasons including, in no particular order, that she has a certified genuine Rothko hanging in a ten-dollar polyester frame in her office, that she’s banging him even though he’s her patient, and that she pronounces the word ‘bagel’ like ‘baaah-gel’. Admittedly, the last one isn’t terribly relevant but it’s extremely annoying.

(“What do you see?” She asked him at their first appointment when Nolan lingered too long in front of the painting—it took all his self-control not to rip it from the wall right then; it’s not even glassed in, hasn’t she ever heard of sun damage?—and in a strangled voice, he accidentally said, “Neglect.”)

“I don’t think love and trust are necessarily exclusive,” Nolan disagrees in a mild voice, zipping his pants back up as she rebuttons her shirt. She shoots him an incisive, terrifyingly knowing look as she slips back into her heels and says, “Next week we’ll talk about your mother.”

Anyway, that night Nolan steals the Rothko and one of her expensive Italian staplers because the kind he gets always jam up, so they never do get around to talking about it.

“If it be love indeed,” he whispers, “tell me how much.”

In the semi-dark of the boy’s dormitory, twelve-year-old Nolan practices his lines again and again, mouth shaping the words without sound, barely even breathing; they meant it as a punishment and embarrassment, assigning him Cleopatra’s lines and the other women because his voice is still high and sweet, the last unbroken holdout amongst his year of puberty-ridden classmates but they’ve miscalculated. He doesn’t mind his little boy’s voice, knowing just how effectively he can wield the perception of innocence, and he’d rather play Cleopatra than anyone else, even a version of her twisted by an ancient Roman smear campaign and sidelined as a romantic subplot.

Even then, she remains impressive. She makes hungry where most she satisfies.

Nolan closes his eyes and imagines himself instead lying back on the couch in his mother’s office at the University listening to the familiar scritch-scratch of her grading pen, the weird buzz of the ceiling fan which did nothing to ease the slight mildew smell of the old brick building but set all the papers in the room to rustling like a field of tall summer wheat, the muted footsteps and conversations going by outside in tides—sometimes a mere trickle of sound, sometimes a ringing ocean of people on the other side of the wall where he dozes so that he spends much of his childhood drifting into dreams of other people, picking up their lives like he does their half-heard conversations—and, of course, through it all there is his mother’s lilting voice giving her familiar, meandering lectures on the impact of Cleopatra’s education in astronomy on Egyptian agricultural policy or on such-and-such tax reform punctuated by little hums and tsks and the occasional mutter of ‘did not do the reading’ as she cut her way ruthlessly through a jungle of essays.

She didn’t call him yesterday, the first Sunday that they haven’t talked, even if their conversations often only last ten minutes. It’s been eight days since someone has told him I love you and he feels the lack in his bones like a vitamin deficiency, like an old man can sense the incoming cold front.

“If it be love indeed,” Nolan practices diligently, eyes shut burning tight with the desire to be there instead of here, trying to imagine it so perfectly that he transports himself across space and time by will alone. He’ll learn eventually that wanting is not enough; it’ll break his heart for a while, sure, but ah bon! someday soon he will learn to plan and scheme and steal all the things he wants instead of asking for them. Someday, surely, he will learn to stop wanting them at all.

He wonders if his mother notices the silence where he was once. Or is she simply giving her lectures to the audience of the buzzing ceiling fan and the half dozen succulents perched on the grimy window sill?

“Tell me how mu-uch,” and his voice cracks on the word, breaking for the first time.

(And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how we grow up; in quick and quiet moments when no one else is looking.)

I believed you from the start.

Nolan stalls out for one heartbeat, two, three; his body flushing with heat, with a confusion of signals. He knows his face goes pink, gives him away—gives something away at least, if not the depth of it—and he turns (his body, sensing danger, takes three steps and a sideways roll) pretending to wander to the window. He stares down into the street below, into the blue-tinted shadows, the strangers moving whiskey-slow along the sidewalks, and tries to ignore the warmth pooling in his stomach.

“Careful,” he says when he trusts his voice to be steady and just a little playful. “Or I’ll take you for everything you’ve got.”

From behind him, Hartley’s own words come low and dangerously smooth, “Oh? You think you can take both of us at once?”

He can’t tell if he’s being threatened or flirted with; it does things to him. God, he’s a mess. He feels goosebumps erupt down his bare arms; he breathes out, fogs the glass and that, too, is embarrassing. Revealing.

“So forward!” Nolan forces himself to turn around, to turn his breathlessness into a performance. “Remind me which one of us came out, shall we say, on top in Paris?”

(He shouldn’t have turned. They’re both looking at him, surely they’ll see…)

Hartley’s eyes flash, that gun-metal glint, and it’s all the warning he gets before, “You like being on top then?”

Nolan can’t help himself—maybe it’s the nerves, maybe it’s the bottle of Bordeaux he drank faster than he should have—but he starts to giggle. “Darling,” he says, a little hysterical, “I can make any position work. I can win with a losing hand.”

“We could test that theory,” Zara says, slow and sly, a flick of pink tongue across her lips. She takes a step forward, towards him, her gaze flicking towards the bed and for a moment he thinks she might really mean—abruptly, Nolan gets it. The realization scrolls through his brain red and flashing like a breaking news bulletin. They’re Conning You. Of course. It’s the first rule: the lie he most desperately wants to believe in, the one he’ll do anything to preserve.

(For a moment, the realization hurts. The faultline fissure, the ever-bleeding scab torn open again, and yet, in a way, it’s also a relief. To have an explanation, to be on familiar ground.)

Zara is still moving towards him; precise, predatory steps.

“But you’re safe from me tonight,” Nolan blurts and then forces a carefree grin as if his heart isn’t hammering away inside his chest. He picks up another truffle for an excuse to turn his body aside and devours the chocolate heart in two bites (who knows what flavor; he swallows and tastes sand, salt, sea) before adding, “I’ve already got plans to take everything I can from somebody else.”

“Oh?” Zara pulls up short. Her eyebrows furrow, head tilting in an obvious invitation to continue.

Nolan laughs very carefully. “You guys didn’t think I dropped by just to bother you, did you?”

Zara and Hartley exchange a look that he can’t read at all.

“Why then?”

Well. Um. Okay. For a moment, all of his thoughts are blotted out by white noise but then, blessedly,  through the panic he recalls the flyer he passed in the hotel lobby heading towards the elevator, hooks the gossamer-spun thread of an idea from the depths of his back-brain and tugs.

“Tonight, my dear colleagues, the Waldorf Astoria is hosting a private art auction in their Grand Ballroom. And I plan on picking up a little housewarming present.” Nolan smiles to himself and rubs one hand along his jawline, along the excited tension winding there; his fingertips already beginning to buzz. Bishop might excel at the detail work, the elaborate plots and intensive planning, but he’s always worked best under pressure, making it up as he goes along. Inside of him, the thread spins and spins and—

He bites his lip, hesitates, but then: “Care to join me?”

This time when Zara and Hartley look at each other, he knows exactly what they’re thinking.

“We’re in,” says Bishop and Nolan tells himself that it’s enough.

Later, he'll have to look at the moment more closely. He'll have to go over the memory of their words and the way they looked at him and the way they moved towards him with a fine-toothed comb, dissecting and examining it from every angle, trying to figure out what exactly their con was aiming towards so he can plan his own moves and countermoves.

But not yet. Not yet.

A bit of fast talk buys himself a thirty-minute head start. It shouldn’t be enough, the whole thing is insanity—he has no idea what he’s stealing, let alone how—but as he thunders down the stairs, taking them two at a time, his heart beating just as fast, Nolan honestly can’t remember the last he felt so alive.

(Or, mostly-honest. Paris was… something he still can’t look at too closely.)

In the hotel staff room, counting down under his breath, he swaps the luxury of his up-and-coming fashion designer outfit for a stiff polyester uniform with the Waldorf-Astoria logo on the breast pocket. The pants are a little short at the ankle but nobody besides him should notice.

Down in the Grand Ballroom, the auction director is looking harried, doing twenty things at once, and gratefully vacates his spot behind the welcoming desk for Nolan to take over. He runs a faintly trembling finger down the guest list, scanning down the row of names—eighteen minutes and counting; gossamer threads spinning, spinning—until he blinks once, twice. Theodora Applebaum.

Oh, he thinks with a touch of wonder. Set and match.

Nolan pulls out his phone to text them, gleefully outlining his plan as if it had been a thing set in stone for weeks instead of mere minutes, and then, whistling to himself, he strolls down the gallery lanes to start shopping.

Descending on the escalator somewhere between the third and second floor of Ralph Laurent with his latest honeypot hanging off his arm along with about six bags of her newly purchased clothes, Nolan is twenty, gorgeous, freckled from the relentless Florida sun, and coming to a startling conclusion about himself—he could totally be a sugar daddy.

He likes this honeypot girlfriend significantly less than the last one which is just as well since he’s planning to rob her family’s Palm Beach vacation home of pretty much everything that isn’t nailed down but he still enjoys playing the role of doting boyfriend. Okay, so it helps that the credit card he’s being generous with is not his own. Still, it’s a bit of a revelation for a self-proclaimed hedonist like Nolan, someone who has promised to swallow the sea, the sun, the stars and damn the consequences. He’s been stealing and hoarding his treasures with dedicated self-interest since before he came of age and to find a sudden heat pooling low in his stomach at the thought of seeing someone else dressed up in fine things, wearing them and thinking of him… huh.

It’s just practice anyway, Nolan thinks to himself, serenely mouthing apologies to the harassed-looking store manager behind his girlfriend’s back. He’s putting in the work now so that someday when he meets his soulmate for real, he can play the part perfectly. If this is how much he enjoys buying presents for someone he’s not particularly fond of, he wonders how good it will feel to spoil someone he actually loves.

There is nothing I would not give them, he vows, fingertips tingling, hands flexing around the handles of the plastic shopping bags, nothing I would not do to make them smile.

Auction item number 32 is listed simply as “Edward Hopper, Notebook Excerpts”

But what Nolan finds displayed under the soft, white-blue display light makes his mouth water and he wrestles with the sudden urge to press his tingling fingertips to the glass.

“Don’t worry, baby,” he croons in a nearly inaudible whisper, “Papa’s come to take you home.”

Two loose pages are framed in a single panel of glass with frayed edges where they were torn from a notebook. The right side is a rough series of black-and-grey hatchmark sketches of the same five-story townhouse from different angles. On the left is a single, more refined sketch of the townhouse with a woman’s face peering from a window on the top floor. Written in the corner is the following message: I put you in every building looking back at me. Josephine, I yearn— and then the charcoal smears illegibly, the words lost but the sentiment remains clear.

At least, Nolan understands it. He, too, is the slanted I yearn—, is the unintelligible smear, the wanting for something beyond words.

(Nolan doesn’t keep track of the days since someone last told him I love you anymore but he still feels the lack, the vitamin deficiently. He knows his body moves differently without it; the three steps and a sideway roll to keep his tender heart safe, reflexes born of repeated injury. His bones already fine-tuned and sensitive to rejection in all its forms.)

When the auction director is pulled outside to oversee a crisis with the loading dock—twelve minutes and counting—Nolan takes the chance to shed his Waldorf Astoria jacket and rolls up the sleeves of the white button-down beneath. He slips on a pair of faux reading glasses and parts his hair on the other side. For the finishing touch, he snags an auction employee name tag reading ‘Nick P.’ which he carefully changes to a B so that he doesn’t get accused of stealing if he runs into the real deal.

It’s not bad for a last-minute costume change, bland and vaguely academic.

Nolan strolls back to Aisle G where a pale-faced young woman is visibly sweating through her own white button-down shirt.

“Hi, Nick Barnes.” He introduces himself, offering a hand. “Looks like we’re in the same section.”

She grasps his hand like a lifeline. “Oh, thank god. I’m Jenny.”

“First time?”

Jenny lets out a high-pitched wheeze of a giggle. “I’m only here to finish off my NYU credits. When I started writing my art history thesis on nineteenth-century acid etchings they never warned me I would have to talk to people.”

Nolan smiles close-mouthed to obscure the sharply pleased edge of his sympathy, his shark’s sense for blood-in-the-water. He pats her shoulder and uses the motion to discretely check his watch.

“How about this,” he suggests amiably as if it doesn’t matter to him either way. “You give me a ten minute info dump on anything you think is relevant then go hide in the break room and I’ll sign off on your school paperwork once it’s over.”

Jenny looks at him with something bordering on adoration.

They only get through about five minutes before Zara and Hartley are suddenly in front of them. CHEATER, Nolan mouthes silently behind his co-worker’s back (someday, maybe he will be able to convey this in a glance, in the annoyed twitch of an eyebrow) but the upward curve of Zara’s red-painted lips is entirely unrepentant.

They’ve changed back into their coordinated outfits from the Hermes fashion show, easily slipping into the role of rich and beautiful power couple—hell, it’s not even acting, it’s what they are—with the single, heart-stopping addition of their special edition bags. It’s one thing for them to try his gifts on in the privacy of their own rooms and another to wear them in public, effortlessly incorporating his gift into the tapestry of the con, and if Nolan is a little flustered, if he regrets, in that moment, the necessity of acting like he doesn’t know them, well, at least he’s keeping it together better than poor Jenny.

“Hi! Hello!” Jenny says and devolves into another fit of nervous giggles. “I’m Jenny. I’ll be your server today—I mean, I’ll be serving you—I will—if you need any help, the art is—I can—“

Nolan takes pity on her and cuts in. “And my name is Nick. We’re excited to have you both in today, please let us know if you have questions about any of the art pieces on display.”

Zara, who hasn’t so much looked at Jenny, flicks a glance over Nolan’s name tag and pauses.

“What’s the B stand for?”

Nolan stares at her, seized with a crazy urge to say Bishop, to reveal himself just this once, just this much. They would take it as a joke, a taunt. It wouldn’t mean anything. He opens his mouth and—

“Barnes! Like the owl.” Jenny says, still in that nervously manic pitch. “Hoot! Hoot!”

There’s a moment of silence as Zara finally looks at her, eyebrows faintly raised, and whatever remaining color drains from Jenny’s face. “I see,” she murmurs in a way that means you idiot (Nolan is intimately familiar with that particular tone of voice) and sweeps past them, Hartley’s hand resting on her lower back as they peruse the auction items.

Jenny sways in place, looking ill. “Why would I say that? Why would I say that?”

“Do you want to go lay down?” Nolan asks, genuinely sympathetic; he knows firsthand what it’s like for Bishop to look straight at and then through you, dismissing you in a flick of the fingers, a toss of the head.

“Yes please,” she whispers with longing and then, a little steadier. “Are you sure you’ll be okay out here by yourself? I didn’t finish telling you about dye fixatives…” but Nolan is already prodding her in the direction of the break room.

He waits until the door closes behind her before catching up to them.

“Sorry about that,” Nolan says. “Early bird gets the distressed grad student blah blah life lesson blah blah. I had at least five more minutes, you know.”

“Our sincerest apologies.” Hartley mocks, eyeing his too-short pant legs with something like amused pity. “I can only assume you were planning to use your last five minutes to steal clothes from someone your own size.”

“You are literally the snobbiest person I know.” Nolan tries to make it sound like an insult.

“Besides,” Hartley grins back at him in a way that tells him he didn’t succeed. “Being early is considered on time in New York.”

As one of the poor suckers who was dragged out of bed at four in the morning to prepare for the Hermes runway show,  Nolan has to concede that point. Instead, he changes the subject.

“See anything else worth adding to our shopping list?”

Zara makes a so-so hand gesture. “You’ve called dibs on the most exciting thing in here.”

Nolan bites the inside of his mouth to stop from grinning, not wanting to let the validation—personal and professional—affect him, at least visibly.

“There was one piece that looked promising…” Hartley muses, his tone so placid it sets off immediate warning bells. “I thought I saw a Warhol print.”

Nolan and Zara turn on him nearly in sync, puffed up in matching expressions of outrage.

“If you steal another Warhol, I will hand you to the police myself—“

“I will beat you to death with a goddamn soup can, I swear to—“

And suddenly, Hartley is throwing back his head in helpless peals of laughter. Real laughter, uncontrolled and warm and a little dorky, the kind he’s only ever surprised out of the man on a handful of precious occasions.

A beat of incredulous silence. Then Zara’s own firmly pressed-together lips start to tremble and turn up at the corners.

“Don’t you dare,” Nolan tells her unsteadily. “If you start laughing, I’ll start laughing, and then I'll get kicked out which would be such an embarrassing way to flub a con that I’ll be forced to retire and pursue a secondary career in something ridiculous, like taste-testing children’s cereals which will tragically ruin my perfect figure.”

Zara covers her mouth with one hand, trying to smother her quiet hiccuping giggles but it’s no use and she half turns into Hartley’s shoulder to hide. He doesn’t care at all, head still thrown back, tears at the corners of eyes, the kind of continuous juvenile snickering you get precisely when you know shouldn’t but can’t stop, a hysterical chain reaction.

“I can’t believe I used to think you guys were cool,” Nolan complains, biting hard at his knuckles to try to keep his own bubbling laughter in check, and beats a strategic retreat.

Chapter Text

Nolan on the bittersweet cusp of sixteen is in the middle of hating everything and everyone, including himself.

This week, he’s decided to concentrate all the force of his hatred on his stuffy boarding school education, which is only concerned with teaching him things that are either useless or outdated and useless. In the spirit of teen rebellion, he has even decided to hate their class trip to the Belvedere Museum of Vienna, generously paid for by the father of one of his classmates to smooth over a spot of recreational arson.

(If Nolan sourced the necessary components for said fire-starting, well, the lacrosse hut was an eyesore. Besides, he has become very good at convincing people he’s innocent. The trick, he’s learned, is in convincing them that they want him to be innocent. That it reflects on them as teachers, mentors, caretakers if he did something wrong…)

But try as he might, Nolan cannot hate The Kiss.

Standing before the painting, which is nearly the same size as he is—so much bigger than he expected, with the realness of the layered paint and gold foil physically striking in a way that can never quite be reproduced on flatly printed paper—he breathes in slowly and feels the sharp ache of I yearn—,  feels it like pressure on a bruised rib, like drinking and drinking and still feeling thirsty, like running towards something in a dream knowing the dream-logic won’t let you run fast enough to catch up but trying anyway.

Ever since he was released from juvie (after having served five of his six weeks of summer break on the recommendation of his police chief father, feeling almost worse those last seven days at home than behind bars) Nolan has resolved to stop wanting things. Or, failing that, to only want the kinds of things it was possible for him to have.

Bathed in the warm backsplash of the museum display lights, Nolan decides abruptly to enlarge his definition of possible.

“So the Hopper sketch is why you were in New York City?” Hartley asks in a low voice, sidling up next to him while the rest of their auction group pulls ahead to look at a series of color field abstractions in square black frames.

“Yup,” Nolan agrees easily. (Always easier and more believable to let other people’s assumptions do the work; it’s hardly even lying.)

“Was it one of the items on your list?” Hartley asks, curious, stepping closer. Nolan lets him, his own body already turning without conscious input, shoulders and feet angled towards him like a magnet. “For re-stocking your house?”

“Mhh,” Nolan makes a vaguely affirmative sound, wondering at the show of interest. He gets a sudden tingling of a sixth sense, that conman’s vestigial instinct, warning him that Hartley is fishing for something specific, is trying to guide him down a particular conversation path.

“How’s that coming along for you?” Hartley presses, leaning even further into his space with the scent of his cologne and the warmth of his shoulder pressed briefly to his. His fingers trace down the red double-stitching of his bag, an unconscious caress, and Nolan feels heat crawl up the back of his neck.

“Is your house starting to feel less empty?”

He doesn’t mean to be cruel, Nolan is almost certain. There’s a friendly curiosity in his voice that feels genuine, even if the idle quality is feigned. But Nolan still sucks in a too-quick breath, his shoulders hitching defensively and the movement pulls him away from their point of contact.

“It’s a big house,” he snaps and knows that he sounds bitter, wounded. “It’ll take some time. Good things always do.”

“I didn’t mean—“

But Nolan has already moved out of reach.

The staff room afterward is that particular mix of exhaustion and elation that comes after a big event ends well and Nolan thrives on it. Someone has wheeled in the catering leftovers and people are picking through mixed-up trays of fancy finger food and alcoholic drinks, kicking off their shoes and unbuttoning their starched collars. Nolan snags one of the last glasses of champagne and lets himself be passed around the room in congratulations.

The auction director is already several glasses in and he gives Nolan his business card on two separate occasions full of drunken assurances to call him right away if he’s ever interested in more auction work. Nick Barnes is a natural, a charmer, an asset, etc. He accepts the business card both times with unfeigned enthusiasm; truly, the trick to pulling off a good con is letting other people do the work for you. He's always had a knack for knowing how to swim with the current, letting other people’s assumptions carry him down the river.

Jenny has also had a few drinks, face flushed with color and loose hair escaping her bun in a wispy halo. She's halfway sitting in the lap of another co-worker, the one with the bull nose ring and short-cropped purple hair. Good for her, Nolan thinks bemused, and strolls over to check in on her, just in case.

“Hey, still need me to sign your school paperwork?”

“Oh my god, I nearly forgot.” Her eyes widen in almost comical distress but Nolan realizes with no small degree of amusement that the drink in her hand is only root beer. Her giddiness is entirely a result of her relief at the event being well and truly over.

“No problem,” Nolan says, digging in his pockets for a pen. Instead, he pulls out a Walford Astoria room keycard.

“Oh my god,” Jenny repeats, eyes going even wider. “Is that what I think it is?”

Nolan’s brain is whirling with possibilities, trying to pinpoint exactly when Hartley must have planted the keycard back on him. The brief brush of a hand against his lower back with an apologetic excuse me. Two fingers plucking teasingly at the empty belt loop of his too-short slacks. A half-dozen other innocent touches, not to mention the lingering handshake at the end after he'd pulled Zara away from their argument. Petty bastard, he thinks fondly, remembering their earlier banter—we both know it’s harder to notice if someone has planted something on you. Of course, he had to have the last word, prove a point.

Belatedly, he realizes what it must look like to others.

“Oh, it’s not like that!” Nolan says quickly. “I think Mrs. Caro dropped it by accident, I’m going to turn it in at the front desk when I leave.”

“Riiiiiight,” says Jenny, giggling, drawing the word out. She makes exaggerated air quotes. “An ‘accident’…”

“Oh, that was you!” The co-worker with the nose ring, who had been giving Nolan a rather unfriendly look, suddenly brightens and leans forward. “I saw the way she looked at you when you two started arguing over accessibility in the art world. You totally have a shot.”

“No way,” Nolan tries to laugh it off casually, something squirming in his stomach. “Didn’t you see her husband?”

“Her husband looked into it.”

Nolan genuinely doesn’t know how to respond to that.

“Ha ha ha,” he says awkwardly, shoving the key card back into his pocket.

“You should have seen the way they looked at him from the moment they showed up,” Jenny says, swaying closer to her co-worker in a conspiratorial way, one hand braced on the back of her chair.

“How did—“ Nolan stops. He licks his lips and tastes sticky alcohol sweetness. He feels dizzy suddenly, disoriented, a flash of déjà vu tickling his nose like an inhale of champagne bubbles. His fingers press hard against the stem of his glass to stop them from trembling, from giving him away.

“How did they look at me?”

Jenny and her co-worker exchange knowing grins.

“Like they wanted to eat you up.”

“—it’s that kind of gatekeeping, elitist nonsense that’s choking innovation in the art world—”

“Don’t pretend the patronage of the rich isn’t the historical precedent.” Zara pushes forward another step; there’s a flush high on her cheeks and her eyes are bright with emotion as she glares at him. Her nearness, her intensity, does nothing to calm the racing of his pulse, adrenaline-skipping, heart-throbbing, and even as he tries to cling to his role as the inoffensive academic tour guide, he can feel himself reacting to her, to the challenge she’s throwing at him.

“If we’re going with historical precedent,” Nolan argues back, not giving an inch. “Then we have to acknowledge that the rich have historically had the privileges and responsibilities of our current system of government, so investment in public works of art has always—

His exact text to Zara and Hartley goes like this:

Our mark is Theodora Applebaum: rich widow, competitive, no personal taste. She’ll try and outdo anyone she feels threatened by. Start a bidding war on item 32 and let her win.

Hartley’s response goes like:

Copy that

Zara’s response goes like:

lol u txt like a nerd

Nolan responds like:

This is a mission debrief not the YouTube comment section, have some self respect.

Zara responds like:

neeeeeeeeeeeeeerd

Theodora Applebaum looks like an old dress that is being pulled taut with clothespins, her smile fixed and unmoving in the center of her plastic face no matter what kind of emotions pass through her watery blue eyes.

Despite repeated exposure, the effect is a little unnerving. Still, Nolan is a professional and he doesn’t let it affect his own fixed-in-place customer service smile.

“Lady Applebaum, a pleasure.” He greets her, ignoring Zara’s arched eyebrow and a stifled sigh that might mean aren’t you laying it on a little thick?

Although he knows she doesn’t recognize him, Nolan has been stealing from this particular woman for almost a decade now; it’s almost embarrassingly easy, like taking, well, priceless art from a fabulously rich widow. Mrs Applebaum keeps almost everything she buys in storage and in six months won’t remember having bought it at all. Nolan sold her the faulty security system she uses in the warehouse where she stores her art—she’s the kind of collector who keeps things in boxes, who owns without appreciating—and every few years, he drops by to collect anything of interest she may have acquired.

(Someday, when she passes away, her frankly awful gaggle of grandchildren will realize that they’re a little bit less rich than they assumed. Maybe, if he can swing it, Nolan will join the reading of the will.)

He overcharged her for the security installation too and still enjoys, a tad sadistically, the thought that she paid him for the privilege of being stolen from.

“The pleasure is all mine,” says Applebaum, but her attention is fixed more on Zara in all her effortless beauty than on him. “Be a dear and show me to your best pieces. Unlike other guests, I’m not here to waste my time.”

When they eventually reach item #32, Zara’s dark kohl-lined eyes go round and awestruck. She turns back to Hartley and her expression makes her seem somehow younger; guilelessly, thoughtlessly seductive. She licks her lips, glazing her red mouth—it’s a lovely effect. Even Hartley, who must have seen this exact trick a thousand times, can’t help but look. Some of the other guests in the group that Nolan’s collected are looking too, including Applebaum. Although her smile stays fixed in place, her watery blue eyes go hard and flinty.

“Oh sweetheart, we must—” Zara begs, a little breathless. “That’s the one I want.”

“Of course,” Hartley says immediately, watching her face more than the ink sketch. Nolan can’t even blame him for it, won’t be able to tease him about it later. He feels a sudden lump in his throat, remembering the way she’d looked at him upstairs in their hotel room, wondering how much of that look was artifice, a practiced mask that she could’ve pointed at any helpless sucker standing in his place. She’s just too good, he’d never know until afterward if there was any truth to it. And maybe not even then.

“It is a very beautiful piece,” Applebaum cuts in, digging in her purse for her packet of blue auction slips. “I must have it for my collection, it would be absolutely perfect.”

Zara turns pleading eyes on Hartley. He pats her arm reassuringly and then pins Applebaum with a witheringly polite smile; truly, a work of art. Rich person speak for I wouldn’t piss on you if you and your entire collection of antique wood furniture were on fire.

“May the best man win,” Hartley says, pulling out his own stack of blue slips.

Technically, Nolan supposes, you can’t start a bidding war at a silent auction.

Nobody has informed Applebaum of this apparently and so he makes sure he stands behind Hartley while he writes on his little blue auction slip and makes appropriately impressed faces over the imaginary numbers Hartley writes. He does his best to look a little faint.

(Later, the auction director will actually swoon a bit.)

“Remember, half of our donations tonight will be going to charity,” Nolan encourages them, beaming around at the whole group. “Think of the children.”

The argument starts off innocently enough.

Nolan is explaining some relevant historical context to auction item number 56, trying his best to enliven an otherwise mediocre work of American realism depicting a nearly-empty NYC alley in the early morning. It looks exactly like half a dozen other paintings on display but he tries to inject some enthusiasm into his voice.

“People make art like kidneys make sugar and for similar reasons,” he says with a flourish and a wink at an older man sipping at a glass of white wine. “Processing toxins.”

Nolan grins, gesturing, inviting his crowd of listeners to laugh along with him. They do, of course, he’s built up the proper rapport; they like him and they want to be amused.

“Of course, the less romantic reason is this: even artists have to eat,” Nolan admits. “This piece was created on commission for a Manhattan magazine spread in 1958. It was the first of a five-part series which sadly remains unfinished, as the artist passed away before completing the last one.”

This detail creates a brief surge of interest, as he was sure it would. Sex scandals and deaths are always sure to increase the value of an artwork.

He’s been trying not to look at either Zara or Hartley too much over the course of the event which is, of course, impossible; he’s resigned himself to stealing his glances covertly and not addressing them head-on but this time when he flicks a look in their direction, he is struck by the open boredom of Zara’s expression as she regards the auction display. It’s stupid of him but it pricks at his professional pride and he steps closer to her, asking politely, “Not a fan of this one, Mrs Caro?”

She flicks her fingers with careless dismissal and the gesture, even when not directed at him, seems to set something burning in the pit of his stomach.

“Derivative,” she says, turning away. “But what else can you expect from a commercial artist?”

“Oh?” Nolan says pleasantly, fingers flexing at his sides. “I’d hate to disagree with you…”

“Just take a look at what they’ve done to Hokusai’s The Great Wave” She argues, jabbing one perfectly manicured nail against his chest. Somehow, he isn’t exactly sure how or when, they’ve closed the polite distance between themselves and they’re standing nearly chest to chest. He’s only got an inch and a half of height on her but he uses every bit of it to his psychological advantage, for all the good it does him. Zara’s cheeks are flushed with color, chin tilted up at him defiantly, two smudged indents in her bottom lip where she keeps biting down in frustration; her perfect, controlled image starting to fray, to fall apart.

“The commodification of his iconic image is everywhere, the spoofs and spinoffs with stupid cartoon cats riding surfboards—“

“Oh god, are you a dog person?”

“—or whatever pop culture meme is having its current moment, completely diluting the original meaning in a sea of trivial meme-culture where the shelf-life of jokes is measured in hours. How can you not say the integrity of his work is threatened?”

“Threatened?” Nolan huffs out an incredulous laugh. She’s so close that he can feel her elevated breath and he knows he should back away, that he’s showing too much of his real self but he is helpless to stop his own momentum, already shaking his head in denial of her accusation. “His work is reaching people who might never set foot in a gallery. That’s a good thing!”

“It’s blasphemous,” she hisses. “A betrayal of the artist’s vision.”

“The memes and parodies can serve as a gateway,” he says earnestly, urgently, and it takes all his self-control to keep his hands fisted and trembling at his side instead of reaching out to touch her.

“People might start with a stupid sticker or junky tourist keychain but then find themselves drawn to learn more about the original—Hokusai’s intent, his technique, his influence on both Eastern and Western art.”

Zara scoffs but he presses the point, presses further into her space, feels the heat of proximity. He’s aware, distantly, that the other guests are staring at them, that Hartley is there, watching the both of them with keen, silent interest.

“It’s a form of accessibility in itself.”

He resents them sometimes for changing him. But it’s inescapable.

Rain in Paris will always make him think of them. That particular shade of red. The moment when the sun rises or sets, the light washing everything golden and forgiven.

Nothing stays pristine forever, not even art. Paint chips, stains, strips, yellows.

As a little boy, he adored Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam and its epic scope, the intensity of its sooty, atmospheric darkness. It had been sepia-tinted, shrouded, ancient and frightening in a way he hadn’t learned the words for yet. When the restoration of the Sistine Chapel stripped back five hundred years of grime to reveal vibrant colors with clean skin tones and bright blues, the end result invalidated the careers of a dozen respected art historians and upended Nolan’s idea of what history looked like.

To love something is to change with it though, and so whenever Nolan goes back to Rome, he joins a tour group and sits under the fresh colors of the painted fresco. He’s not religious, not the kind of person to pray, but looking up at the ceiling until his neck burns, he still finds a satisfying kind of peace.

The evening of the Louvre holiday fundraiser arrives both too fast and too slow. Nolan is giddy with anticipatory tension, with the first true test of their combined skill, but even with the triple-challenge job looming before them, his thoughts keep getting sidetracked. He has a rule about getting distracted on the job, i.e. don’t do that. It’s really more of a mantra, a positive affirmation he likes to keep in his back pocket than a hard-and-fast rule because Nolan is, sadly, distractible. His attention is, for lack of a better word, ‘bouncy’. He juggles.

So Nolan straps the latest smartwatch model around his wrist, watching Zara strap a small ivory knife—a perfect match for her gun—to the inside of her upper thigh with an impressed whistle.

“How do you dance with that thing between your legs?”

She sends a filthy grin his way, “How do you?”

He’s still laughing when they emerge from the warmth of their hotel suite out onto the ice-slicked streets, the three of them pressed nearly shoulder to shoulder. He is thinking about the con, about the plans and the contingency plans and the secret plans-within-plans. He is thinking about how cold it is and how his next job is definitely going to be somewhere tropical. He is thinking of how much he needs to save up to buy back his house, how many jobs it’s going take, how he can’t afford to be picky, how maybe the next job won’t be tropical after all. And, always, he is thinking of his soulmates—when the three of them walk nearly shoulder to shoulder they take up the entire sidewalk, forcing other people to step into the road to pass them. It makes him feel like a king, like an emperor of old. It makes him feel like he belongs there, besides them.

All three of them show up on the VIP guest list without issue (of course he never doubted it, Zara, ouch, yes you’re hacking skills are unmatched, oh my god are your shoes made of knives, I can’t feel my toes I think I’m dying) and they separate smoothly after entering—Bishop as a couple, Nolan by himself—but not before Zara contrives to step on his foot one last time and it feels like the laughter is crystallized inside him, a bright bottled-lightning feeling humming away in his chest just below his heart.

Later, as Nolan ducks around the corner towards the elevator shaft, already anticipating the massive passive-aggressive bitch-fit that they are going to throw at him for going off-script without warning (his head full of plans within plans within plans) he thinks to himself: I wish we could do this forever.

Impossible, of course, and he smothers the wish even as he makes it.

“Hosaki was massively commercially successful in his time,” Nolan points out and knows he’s scored a point by the way her nostrils flare out and her cheeks flush a darker pink, her kohl-lined eyes narrowing at him dangerously, looking like she would happily gut him with the sharp points of her stilettos. God, she’s fucking beautiful, he thinks helplessly and grins, taunting: “By your standards, he was already a sell-out.”

“You’re a cynic,” snaps Zara.

“You’re a purist and a snob.”

Nolan spends the entire elevator ride swinging between emotional extremes. He’s talked himself out of knocking half a dozen times on the walk to their room and thinks about shoving the keycard under the gap of the door for them to find in the morning but when he arrives, he scrapes together his courage and knocks. He waits, listening. He knocks again, louder.

“Room ser—“ Nolan trills but the door opens before he can finish.

He’s half-expecting Zara to pounce on him with a vicious You’re arguing semantics because you can’t argue the actual point! and continue right where they left off, feels himself draw up with anticipation for the challenge, and instead comes face to face with Hartley’s very naked chest.

“Um,” he says, staring at a perfectly formed nipple. “Hi.”

“My eyes are up here,” Hartley says, amused.

“I’m getting there,” Nolan says absently, eyes wandering down instead. Hartley is wearing a pair of damp swim trunks that cling nicely to his muscled thighs and the smooth contours of his stomach. Nolan drags his eyes back up the expanse of naked skin and tries to look only mildly appreciative instead of what he really feels, which is a little bit devastated.

“Enjoying the hot tub?” Nolan aims for nonchalance and thinks he mostly succeeds. “The hotel promised the view was nice.”

“It is,” Hartley says, stepping back as if to invite him inside. “Come join us, Zara promised to play nice for the rest of the night.”

Nolan blinks at him, unsure if he’s heard right.

“I don’t have a swimsuit,” is the first thing he thinks to say.

“You can borrow my extra.”

Nolan glances back out into the hallway, towards the elevator door which would take him away from here, from the tangled mess of emotions they provoke in him. He’s tired in a way that’s becoming hard to ignore and he knows that he shouldn’t be around them right now, self-satisfied and still a little shaky from leftover adrenaline, vulnerable, likely to give some vital piece of himself away by accident. But if he leaves now, who is to say when they’ll see each other again?

“Alright,” he says, stepping forward. “Just for a little bit.”

“You know,” says Nolan, looking down at himself. “If I weren’t so secure in my own masculinity, this would probably give me a complex.”

The extra swim trunks are obviously oversized on him and even tied tightly, the fabric hangs low and loose across his hips, exposing the sharply cut V of his lower abs and the cluster of freckles spread across his stomach. Logically, Nolan knows that, even if the flimsy trunks were to slip and expose the naked stretch of his hip, there would be nothing to see—his secrets will be safe until he chooses to give them away; that’s the whole point of being careful. But he somehow still feels transparent, itchy, like they’ll take one look at him and know. Quickly, before their eyes have a chance to linger, Nolan steps into the hot tub and deliberately sits down in a way that makes the oversized trunks balloon out with air. They make a horrible wet farting sound as he sinks into the water and Hartley chokes on a hastily stifled laugh.

“You are such a child,” Zara complains, rolling her eyes. She hasn’t bothered taking her make-up off and the kohl is smeared around her eyes, still unfairly sexy but more relaxed than she usually lets people see her.

He tries not to look at her or Hartley directly, knows it can only end badly for him. Easier said than done. The hot tub is objectively quite big for a hotel room but even so, the three of them are pressed close together, their legs tangling in the middle. They don’t seem to mind when he brushes against them by accident and, eventually, he stops trying to hold himself back. He doesn’t know if they’ve adjusted the temperate themselves or not, but the water is startlingly hot, set just under the threshold of physical discomfort. He’s always been sensitive, though, can already feel the heat going to his head, making him feel heavy-lidded and loose-limbed.

“Congrats on another successful heist, Mr Booth,” says Zara, tipping her head back against the rim of the tub, her black hair a haloing ink spill in the water around her. The playful use of his surname makes him realize with a jolt that neither of them has used it in a while, that without him being able to pinpoint exactly when, he’s become used to the intimacy of his first name.

“Couldn’t have done it without you, Miss Black,” Nolan says with elaborate gallantry, making a little half-bow that sends tiny waves rippling across the surface of the pool. “Green is such an unfortunate color on poor Mrs Applebaum, don’t you think?”

“Some people are just begging to be stolen from,” Zara agrees and Hartley cuts in with some technical questions about the logistics of picking up the Hopper auction piece, which leads to questions about Applebaum’s warehouse security, which leads into questions about all the past things he’s stolen from her. They’re both gratifyingly impressed with his foresight and with how he’s turned a basic job into a long-term personal shopping cart.

“You’re not afraid she’ll recognize you?”

“Nah,” says Nolan. “I’m basically invisible to her, not her type at all. Like I said, she’s got terrible taste.”

He’s in the middle of a funny story about stumbling across a realistic plaster-cast dildo of a famous retired athlete—you’ll never guess which one, go on, guess—when he pulls up short, realizing that he’s given away the figurative keys to the kingdom for absolutely nothing. Not that he seriously thinks they’re after Applebaum’s warehouse, he really has taken anything worth having already, but it’s a bit embarrassing to realize how easily they can play him, how soft he is for them.

“Stop taking advantage of me,” Nolan complains, only half-joking. He drags a wet hand across his face; presses against his eyes until he sees fireworks. “Have mercy, come on, I’ve been up since four.”

“It’s almost four now,” Hartley comments in that idle way he doesn’t quite believe.

Nolan tilts his head, eyeing him sidelong, trying to figure out what exactly he’s angling towards, trying to pick up any clues in his face or body language. More skin should make that easier, right? He tracks the path of a water droplet down the line of Hartley’s throat before realizing what he’s doing. He hastily averts his gaze but a flash of want goes through him anyway, hot and overwhelming; he wants to lean over and put his whole face to the naked hinge of Hartley’s neck, wants to taste the cords of muscle and drag his teeth along the masterful stroke of his collarbone. (The first time he came with someone else’s hand around him, he and his lab partner were wedged together into a narrow bathroom stall frantically groping each other in the fifteen-minute interval between Science and History and Nolan had his face pressed hard against the sweat-salted line of a collarbone to muffle his groan; he’s had kind of a Pavlovian thing for them ever since.)

Nolan clears his throat forcibly, says: “No wonder I feel like a wrung-out dishrag.”

Zara’s mouth curls up in a coy smile, her red lipstick worn through in the center to reveal the real pink of her lips beneath. “Would you like a massage?”

Just then—totally coincidentally, of course—Nolan’s elbow accidentally slips a bit against the tub and he dunks himself, comes up red and spluttering.

“Look at him, all flustered,” Hartley says, low and amused, as he catches his breath.

Nolan licks his lips, tastes the wet mineral tang of the pool, sucks in the heavy heat of the air and feels dizzy with it. He blinks, water drops clinging to his eyelashes.

“Ha ha, I meant to do that,” he says, trying his best to play it cool. The amused look on their faces tells him he didn’t succeed. “Besides, I can’t relax too much, gotta make it to the airport tonight.”

Their look of amusement shifts into… something else.

“You’re leaving?” Zara pouts at him, sinking lower into the pool; beneath the water, their legs slide together, calf to calf, thigh to thigh. Fuck, but the heat is getting to him. Nolan feels dazed, flushed all over, pulse thudding in his ears and in the hollow of his throat. Water has collected in the nook there and he brushes the wet drops away as if that will help, as if he can flick this maddening heat away with his fingertips and return himself to sense.

“Do you have another job lined up or something? Another item on your list?”

“Mhh,” Nolan makes a vague sound, not really lying. “There’s a lot to do.”

“I told her about some of the highlights of your treasure hoard,” Hartley says in a faux whisper, shifting closer, the muscles along the inside of his arm flexing in their casual sprawl across the rim of the hot tub. “It actually made her jealous—you really do have good taste.”

Nolan sinks deeper into the pool, up to his chin, cursing his pale complexion, and hopes they attribute his blush, the unsteadiness of his breath, to the heat of the water. Why can’t they be mean to me instead? He laments, trying to find some shred of composure to hold on to, some piece of wooden flotsam. He likes it when they’re mean to him but this he doesn’t know how to handle.

“Just you wait,” he says with false bravado. “It’ll be even better the second time.”

He throws out the hook with a sense of rising desperation but they take it—he knew Zara wouldn’t be able to resist—and he lets them take the conversational wheel, asking him about past and future conquests so friendly-flirty-smooth that it doesn’t feel like an interrogation at all. He tries to be careful, to only give them details that are no longer relevant, that couldn’t be taken from or used against him, but he knows he’s treading water.

They keep complimenting him on his past victories, close calls, his ability to turn a setback around in his favor. “We experienced that first hand,” Hartley says with a wry twist of his mouth, fingers twitching, so close to the back of Nolan’s neck that his hair stands on end, like it's reaching back towards him. Zara even makes an obvious innuendo about his technique.

Nolan thinks he might be dying.

His every nerve feels strained with effort—they’re flirting with him, they are, there’s no other way to interpret it but he doesn’t know what the next step is. If they’re flustering him on purpose because it’s fun and he keeps falling for it, or if they have some other reason. Underneath their light touch, the conversation is beginning to move in a recognizable pattern, driving at some ulterior motive, and if he weren’t so distracted, Nolan is certain he could figure it out. That alone might be reason enough for the flirtation.

(If they try to—if they take that next step—what will he do then? It’s impossible, as much as he wants it, to let them touch him. That soulmark patch at the divot of his hip might be strong enough to resist a seduction, but he isn’t. He knows that a single touch there would unravel the lie, would crack him open.)

“What about the Klimt piece?” Zara asks eventually and there’s absolutely nothing in her voice or body language to suggest this question is any more or less important than any of the others. But Hartley’s fingers twitch, trail momentarily across the back of his neck and Nolan half-shudders, feels a bolt of electric comprehension go through him.

So that’s what they want from him. The Kiss.

Oh, he thinks.

But he can’t blame them. Nolan would betray Nolan too, for that.

There must be something wrong with him because he finds himself finally relaxing, the last piece of the puzzle slotting into place. It’s good to have answers—even bad ones. Besides, though it will inevitably hurt when they betray him, he can’t begrudge them this particular prize. Hell, if they asked nicely, he would give it to them. He’s stolen a lot of things for his soulmates but The Kiss was special, had been meant as a figurative engagement ring even more than the actual royal ring he’d botched the job on, and although their answer had been a resounding rejection, Nolan considers himself enough of a gentleman to let them keep the ring after they part ways.

“Any leads on that one?” Zara continues, unaware of his revelation. “Let us know if you need help stealing that piece again. It’s really the crowning achievement of the collection, we’d feel real guilty if it was our fault you ended up losing it permanently.”

Nolan hesitates. His eyes flick away—that old tell—and then back at her to find her stare has gone heavy, intensified, the effect of smeared kohl striking at she looks at him. That look that says I see you.

“Nothing yet,” his voice comes out quiet, almost shy. “But I’ll let you know.”

The look in her eye softens, becomes less dangerous. Or rather, becomes dangerous in a different kind of way.

“We won’t rush you,” Zara says.

“Like you said,” adds Hartley. “Good things take time.”

Chapter Text

Nolan is eight years old, wrongly accused and bewildered at it.

His father’s hand is clamped around his upper arm as if to stop him from running away but his body, like his heart, is still soft and unscarred. He has no protective instincts, his feet would only trip over themselves if they tried to get away.

“I know you stole it,” his father says, crouching low so that they are eye to eye.

They have the exact same eyes, him and his father; looking at each other is like peeking into a fun-house mirror. It’s not just the color, the shape, the darkly framing eyelashes—they have the same ability to parse someone in a glance, to look at a person and penetrate to their core mechanism, to their vulnerable soul. This makes his father an effective and very unsettling police interrogator, often seeming to know just what to say to frighten his suspect into compliance.

“Let me warn you of the consequences of your actions,” says his father in his calmest, scariest police captain’s voice. “Like Aztec coins and the tombs of the Egyptian Pharaohs from your mother’s stories, there is a curse on anyone who dares to steal a Nazi treasure.” A warning squeeze around his little arm. “In committing such a crime, these wretched creatures renounce that one truly precious treasure of life—their soulmate.”

At eight years old, Nolan wholeheartedly believes in magic, in cursed treasure, in true love. He bursts into tears.

His father, naturally, takes this as an admission of guilt.

It’s easy for Nolan to talk about his dad; in fact, he gets some mean-spirited satisfaction from using his straight-laced, law-abiding father’s memory to further his own criminal goals.

The first sob story he’d confessed to Hartley during their little Russian holiday, and the other one they pulled out of him during their painful seduction in Paris, and the dozen throwaway comments he’s made in between—they don’t matter. He uses the childhood trauma like bait, the waving red muleta, a misdirection which only looks like vulnerability.

That’s not to say it doesn’t hurt. But Nolan has become numb to some kinds of pain like a man gone nose-blind from prolonged contact and unlike other wounds, the emotional damage of his father has been contained and cauterized. There’s no capacity to bleed without caring, no messy entanglement, just the clean audible snap of dry bone. Like the sound of Rudolph Zeich’s watch hitting the wall and flying apart to reveal the secret map inside.

This, then, is the final lesson his father teaches him: even the things that hurt you can be used to your advantage.

The second time Nolan blinks himself awake, half-propped against the back of the hot tub and half-slumped against Hartley’s shoulder, he knows it’s finally time to say goodbye, so long, have a nice life, etc. etc.

He groans a little, rubs at his bleary eyes with pruned-up fingers.

“It’s t—“

“A favor for a favor,” Zara interrupts him, leaning forward abruptly. The water ripples from her to him, like a psychic touch. He feels jolted. He blinks, tilts his head to show he’s awake, mostly, and listening.

“We could use help with a little project here in New York,” she continues. “Since we helped you with yours.”

“If your next job isn’t time-sensitive?” Hartley adds, almost hopeful.

Nolan pretends to take his time considering, tapping a pruned-up finger against his chin. His skin feels strange, catching against his stubble.

“What’s the play?”

Zara grins at him.

“Oh, you’ll like this…”

The train is beginning to leave the gentle blur of countryside behind, replaced by the intermittent shapes of dark, squat buildings. There’s the faintest ember smear of a sunrise on the horizon and Nolan feels the exhaustion of the long journey settling like silt in his bones. Whether the trip will be worth the effort is still an open question.

He turns his father’s watch over and over again in his hands, his mind turning with it. Each rotation brings a new angle of shadow, plunging the gleaming silver face into darkness over and over again. The weight of it is both familiar and not.

“Do you believe in curses?” Nolan asks, the words slipping out of his grasp quietly, mournfully, but there is no response.

When he looks up, he finds that Hartley has drifted off to sleep against the grain sacks, the lines of his face gone soft with dreaming. It’s only now, in direct contrast, that Nolan realizes how tense the other man has been all this time together, how taut he’s kept the beautiful lines and angles of his body. Looking at him, it’s easier to blink away the burning afterimage of Bishop in her white dress, lightning sparking at her fingertips like an avenging angel.

“You’re right,” Nolan whispers, even softer. “I did it to myself.”

Nolan is thirteen and ugly with grief, red and puffy and swollen from hours of crying, his nose running continually with snot. There’s no beauty or nobility in tragedy, just a blank expanse of lost time and his throat rough from screaming at his father I hate you I hate you I hate you.

Nolan is thirteen and his mother has been dead and buried for three weeks without him knowing it.

“There was no reason to postpone your academic year,” his father informs him, calm and cold, his own grief having hardened into an untouchable mask of ice. He sits behind his desk, shuffling papers, writing reports, and approving acquisitions forms as his messy puddle of a son collapses, digs his fingernails into the rough purple-red fibers of the Persian carpet, and sobs so hard it shakes his entire body.

There’s no warmth in his father at all, less sympathy in his expression than in the paid strangers who picked him up from school after his final exams and drove him home. In another life, maybe, he looks up and sees the soft curve of his wife’s chin in his son’s face, sees the way grief puckers his face up like hers used to, as if she were allergic to her own sadness, and something cracks inside of him, a painful thaw that makes him reach out with clumsy arms. There’s a little comfort, at least, in acknowledging that a grief is shared.

But in this life, he keeps his eyes fixed on his department’s expense reports, keeps the grief jealously hoarded up inside himself and dismisses his son from the room with a wordless gesture.

Light reflects off the silver watch face at the flick of his father’s wrist.

Nolan’s tear-swollen eyes follow the glint of cold metal and in the back of his mind, through the haze of heartbreak, the thread of an idea begins to spin out…

The elevator door opens and Nolan, still half-asleep, shuffles over to make room. The group of well-dressed businessmen that enter give him a wide berth but he doesn’t blame them. He looks like the definition of a walk of shame, his white button-up so thoroughly wrinkled that he doesn’t bother tucking it back into the waistband and his too-short pants show off his bare ankles—he has no idea where his socks could have gotten to. At least his hair smells good, damp and curling at the edges from his shower.

They reach the ground floor of the Waldorf Astoria and Nolan steps out of the elevator last.

“Barnes! Hey!”

Nolan follows the smell of breakfast on autopilot, his eyes half-closed.

“Nick!”

A touch on his shoulder startles his eyes fully open. He turns to see a strange man smiling at him in a familiar way, wearing comfortable traveling clothes with a duffle bag slung over one shoulder. Nolan can almost hear his brain grinding, winding up, trying to place this person and how they know each other.

“Sorry, not awake yet,” Nolan says sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Yeah, the couches in the break room are terrible,” the other man agrees, hand still lingering on his shoulder. “I think they stuff them with nails so the employees aren’t tempted to linger. I was in no condition to drive home though,” he adds with a self-conscious laugh.

Of course. Nolan grins back at the auction director.

“I’m glad I caught you before you left,” the man says, digging out his wallet. “I wanted to make sure I gave you my business card in case you’re interested in—“

“Nick, over here!” The familiar voice, more than the fake name, snags his attention and Nolan turns his head to see Hartley and Zara seated at a brunch table with an empty chair, waving at him. They look gorgeous as usual, well-pressed and dressed, fully awake.

Nolan waves back at them, clears his throat a little awkwardly, turning back to catch the incredulous look on the auction director’s face which slowly morphs into something sly and knowing.

“You didn’t sleep in the break room last night,” the auction director surmises.

Fuck it, he thinks. Might as well play the part.

Nolan winks and presses a finger to his lips.

Nolan was born in the year of the rat and it shows.

Give him a cookie. Give him the smallest opening. He’s smuggled himself in through air vents and drain pipes, down elevator shafts and mid-air out airplane hatches jumping into the open sky, that leap of faith, that exhilarating belly-swooping rush of free fall spinning end over end over end…

“Who was that?” Hartley asks but Nolan is busy inhaling an absolutely delicious egg white omelet with the delicate consistency of hand-spun lace.

“The auction director,” Zara answers on his behalf, eyeing the man’s receding back. “Any complications with last night’s work? He nearly ran over an old lady trying to get to you.”

Nolan washes down the omelet with a bite of toast and some fresh-squeezed juice.

“Complications?” Nolan blinks slowly, still not entirely awake or functional. He shakes his head and then stifles a yawn. “He just wanted to say hi, gave me his number again.”

“Again?” Hartley’s tone is sardonic.

Nolan pulls three identical business cards from his pocket. He dances them between his knuckles, fumbles the trick, scatters all three of them across the breakfast table in every direction.

“Oops,” he says, plucking one card from his plate of waffles and shaking off the beads of maple syrup. “Anyway, he’s desperate to hire me.”

“Can’t imagine why not,” Zara murmurs, delicately extracting another card from her cup of Earl Grey tea. Her nose scrunches up in distaste as she eyes the dripping card. It’s kind of adorable.

“Good thing we booked him first,” Hartley tells her with a laugh.

Shortly after graduation and freshly eighteen, Nolan gets a job working as a tarot reader in an upscale esoteric sex club in Amsterdam. There’s a membership fee and everything. The interior is all done up in dark, heavy fabrics, brocades, velvets, soft surfaces to entice the senses (and absorb the bodily fluids); he even has a little corner to himself sectioned off with faux glass beads that reflect and refract the low light into a thousand broken rainbows.

It’s a great way to hone his cold reading skills and with a little supplemental pick-pocketing, he gets by quite comfortably.

Nolan experiments with eyeliner (which he likes) and growing out a beard (which he doesn’t, it’s itchy). Everyday he comes to work decked out ankle to wrist in jangling jewelry and body glitter, his shirt unbuttoned almost down to his belly button to show off a series of temporary tattoos he got especially for this job. A zodiac wheel takes up most of his left pec and upper ribcage, a scattering of astrological signs across his right side.

It’d be a good life, he thinks, tracing the broad heartline of a client’s palm, holding hands for a living.

“Don’t marry him,” he warns the sweet, young fiancé of one of the club co-owners, pointing at her line of fate arching around the meat of her thumb but looking at the deepening shadows under her eyes, the unhappy downward pull of her mouth.

She listens and Nolan finds himself fired a week later.

That’s long enough for him to practice breaking into the manager’s safe where club members can stash their valuables while they get freaky and so when he leaves, it’s with a box of glittering faux glass beads hiding a King’s ransom of real jewelry beneath.

When the breakfast table has been more or less vacuumed clean and Nolan has flopped back groaning under the strain of his full belly to nurse at an iced coffee, they get down to business.

Their target is Angelo Torres.

He made a fortune during the dot com bubble and got out before the crash. Now he’s a full time stock market investor with an impressively diverse portfolio. Among his many assets is a one-of-a-kind espresso machine hand-painted by Antonio Donghi with picturesque Italian landscapes. The machine itself is reported to be in use at his favorite vacation home in Venice but what they need first is several minutes of interrupted access to Angelo’s laptop to procure the address and alarm codes.

“What’s your plan to get into his hotel room? A honeypot?” Nolan jokes, chewing absently on the end of his straw, tonguing it in circles to stir up the melting ice cubes at the bottom.

“Exactly,” Zara nods.

Nolan inhales in surprise, shooting a stray ice chip straight into the back of his throat. He winces, coughs a little, rubs at his throat.

“I, uh—didn’t realize you did those types of jobs,” Nolan says, trying to sound uninvested in the answer. He gestures vaguely at the whole of their perfect matched-set vibe. “Being a bonded pair and all.”

Hartley leans back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest in a way that shows off every muscle and gives him that gun-glint grin, that hint of danger. Nolan rubs at his throat again, feeling his mouth go dry.

“Sometimes,” Hartley says, watching him. “We like to take a third. Just for fun.”

Nolan forces himself to take another sip of coffee, getting barely any suction through the chewed-up straw and looks carefully away from Hartley over to Zara. She’s watching him too and so he makes himself smile as if the words just for fun aren’t bouncing around his brain, taking up all the space in there, and asks, “So you plan to seduce Angelo while I case the hotel room?”

“Not quite,” she says, tapping her fingers on the tabletop. “Angelo has a predictable weakness. You see, a couple of years ago his soulmate very publicly divorced him—“ Nolan winces. He can’t help it, knows there’s a slight pause as both of them note his reaction but he just keeps looking down at his coffee, sucking harder at his broken straw, hollowing out his cheeks, and after a moment Zara continues on. “—and ever since, Angelo has been absolutely pathological about seducing and breaking up soulmate pairs.”

Nolan tilts back in his chair, balancing on the back legs, keeping the crooked straw between his lips like a strand of wheat.

“So you parade about in the hotel lobby playing happy couple,” Nolan says, thinking it through. “Then you give him an opportunity, a little argument in the elevator or a lover’s spat on the rooftop bar where one of you rushes off in a huff. You let him approach, keep him busy, while the other breaks into his hotel room.”

“More or less.”

Nolan looks between the two of them. “So where do I come in?”

“Angelo decided to bring his nine-year-old son with him on this trip. A last-minute addition,” Zara sighs, her nose scrunching up again with genuine annoyance. “We need you to run interference, get him out the room and occupied for at least a fifteen-minute window.”

Nolan feels his eyebrows go up. “You think Angelo will still go for a seduction with a little kid in tow?”

“Unfortunately,” Hartley says with a distasteful grimace.

“Huh,” muses Nolan. “Well, guess I don’t have to feel bad about stealing from him then.”

Nolan is thirteen, broken-hearted and overflowing with spite, committing his first felony crime.

He opens the lock to his father’s desk on the first try. Like all of his father’s passwords, the code is his mother’s birthday (she will never have another, he thinks and the grief pulls him down, down, down—). The watch is fit snugly into a velvet box and he is half-ready for a secondary alarm to go off when he picks it up. The resulting silence is so loud, so unexpected, that he fumbles the box, nearly dropping it on the floor. He recovers and shoves it into his pocket, hitching his backpack more securely on his shoulders before exiting the office with a quiet snick of the door.

He navigates the early Sunday morning streets in near silence, the city waking up around him. The sun is barely hitched high enough in the sky to peek over the high alleyways and all the shadows are stretched out long in front of him. His own distorted shadow looks huge, fully grown.

Good, thinks Nolan. He’s not a little kid anymore.

Nolan is the first customer in the Trill & Tinker, just like he planned it.

Mom was the one who brought him here ages ago, he remembers with a spasm of grief low in his guts, a feeling like his intestines are twisting back on themselves, when he was maybe seven years old and going through an intense, childish obsession with magicians. He had taught himself all the basic tricks—the disappearing coin, the cut and restored rope, the vanishing hanky, the knuckle dance—and had insisted on buying an authentic monocle to complete his costume.

“Hello? Can I help you?” The pawn shop owner, Mr Maddons, a blonde middle-aged man with a solitary streak of grey in his hair like a crack in fine porcelain, polishes a set of glasses and perches them on the tip of his nose. He leans down over his counter to peer at the young boy with exaggerated surprise—unnecessary theatrics, Nolan thinks, a little annoyed. He’s not that short.

“I’m here to sell some possessions, sir,” Nolan says with stiff formality. “Or do I need to set up an appointment…?”

He is proud of himself for keeping the tremble of his voice despite his heart pounding so hard he worries it might shake him into pieces.

Mr Maddons looks around the empty shop as if looking for an answer to the question. He reaches for his discarded lens cloth, takes his glasses off to give them another swipe, and finally re-settles them on his nose. Nolan tries not to tap his foot impatiently. Why are adults always so slow?

“I only deal in antiques, young man.” Mr Maddons warns him.

“That’s why I’ve sought out your establishment.” Nolan mimics the tone and expression of one of his father’s icy set-downs. He wishes he could lift just one haughty eyebrow—has, in fact, been practicing in the mirror—but he settles for looking bored. He reaches into his pocket and withdraws the velvet box. He pops it open with a single thumb and tilts the watchface so that it catches the light.

That, at least, puts a little pep in the old man’s step.

After a brief, intense inspection of the watch, Mr Maddons brings out a plate of biscuits for him to munch on and bids him to wait in the shop while he runs some calculations. Nolan, still doing his best old-money impression, tries to nod his head in condescending agreement but has to admit he might be too short to pull that particular move off. It’s hard to be condescending while looking up—another thing for him to practice.

Soon he’ll have enough time to do anything he wants.

Nolan has big plans for the money he’s about to make. He’s not a stupid little kid running away from home without a solid idea of what to do next, he’s not acting out.

Nolan is going to buy a ticket to New York City and live secretly inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art like Claudia and Jamie Kincaid. Okay, sure, they were fictional characters but that doesn’t mean their plan wasn’t solid. Life imitates art and all that. He’s got it all figured out. He’ll start off in the Medieval Art for two weeks, maybe three. Then Greek and Roman, then European Sculpture. Or maybe he’ll do the Costume Institute. Or—

The bell jingles over the door. Once. Twice.

Nolan glances up, expecting to see a curious tourist or an early-morning junk seller, and instead freezes in place as he meets the serious expressions of two police officers in full uniform. Mr Maddons emerges from the back room with the velvet box for them and an apologetic look for him.

“I’m sorry, young man.” Mr Maddons sighs, his gaze lingering wistfully until the watch is stashed out of sight. “Let this be a lesson. You’re too young to get mixed up in this sort of thing.”

“No hard feelings,” Nolan lies, offering his hand.

Looking surprised and increasingly regretful, the pawn shop owner takes it.

(Someday, a much older Mr Maddons, his blond hair gone fully grey, will drag his creaking bones down the staircase to unlock his shop and find that every single watch in his entire inventory, including all the unsorted boxes behind the counter and the adjacent storage room, have been stolen away in the night. He will think, for some reason, of the boy with his solemn eyes full of an unnamed grief.)

It’s not the first time Nolan has been at the police station but it’s the first time he’s there because of something he’s done. His father arrives to pick him up, stiff-backed with anger and embarrassment. His lips are thinned out, white around the edges, and even as he accepts the velvet box back from one of his officers, Nolan knows he must be grinding his teeth to stubs behind his flat smile.

He knows he should feel guilty or scared or—anything all at.

But his insides have been scooped out wholesale and he is numb all over, floating a little above his body, above the grief lodged there in his heart like a poison dart. So, instead of apologizing or crying or more shouting, Nolan looks up at his father with a slight smile.

“You’ll never solve it without her help,” he says, quiet but unmistakable. “You’re not good enough. You never were and you never will be.”

It’s the last time they speak for a long time.

It’s New York Fashion Week and every street corner is full of pop-up shops selling shoes, belts, street fashion, high fashion, alt fashion, everything under the sun (and a few things better left in the dark; he finds a dress sewn out of genuine NYC-bred sewer rats that the designer promises she killed and skinned herself) and so the three of them go shopping in preparation for their next con. Nolan hasn’t had more than a single pair of socks to rub together in at least a fortnight, having jumped from stolen outfit to outfit, picking up and discarding characters and backgrounds as needed.

Hartley and Zara object to this way of living in the strictest terms.

“I’m a minimalist,” Nolan answers their outraged expressions with a shrug.

“You managed to accumulate twelve Hawaiian shirts in the week we traveled together,” Hartley points out with justified skepticism. “And we were on the run.”

“What can I say?” Nolan shrugs again, wondering idly where those shirts ended up. He’d found a rainbow fern pattern that had been truly hideous, the face Hartley made when he wore it had been priceless. “I contain multitudes.”

Zara narrows her eyes at him.

“Is that an orgy joke?”

Nolan splutters with laughter. “Is is now.”

They start in Brooklyn where the bohemian pop-up market feels more like a giant flea market full of sustainable fashion labels, handmade jewelry, and vintage finds. In SoHo, a minimalist boutique with mirror-polished white walls offers limited-edition streetwear collaborations, each pair of shoes elevated on their own Grecian pedestal, drawing a line of eager sneakerheads. In the Meatpacking District, a converted industrial space offers an almost equal showcase of avant-garde and kink.

Eventually, they end up on Fifth Avenue where luxury brands have set up opulent temporary stores, their windows adorned with elaborate displays to rival any full-blown art installation. They sip champagne and nod along to previews of upcoming collections. Browsing through the Versace collection, Nolan is approached by the boutique’s personal stylist, her eyes full of hearts and dollar signs as she offers him a selection of shirts and jackets.

“This would look really wonderful with your complexion,” she insisted, showing him an electric purple print with yellow, orange and green sea stars. He’s tempted; it’s one of those statement pieces that’s so ugly it comes full circle back around to being cool.

Suddenly, he feels a warm hand pressed against his lower back. Nolan inhales, tastes that familiar mouth-watering scent.

“Thank you for your help,” comes Hartley’s voice, polite but dismissive. “But we’ll take care of him.”

(For just a moment, Nolan lets himself imagine it. Lets himself savor it.)

With the lightest application of pressure, Nolan lets Hartley guide him away from the obvious disappointment of the personal stylist and the temptation of that awful print, lets Hartley keep him in the warm half-circle of his embrace as they move through the crowd, Hartley muttering goes with your complexion, what an idiot under his breathe. He can feel his eyes go soft and crinkly at the corners, can’t help but tilt his chin up and pout, putting a deliberate wobble in his lower lip.

“So you don’t think I can pull off fuchsia?”

Hartley looks down at him. Looks, maybe, at his mouth. Looks away again quickly, around the crowded streets for their other half.

There she is, striding towards them, her red heels click-clacking on the pavement, parting the ocean of people around her with an effortless force of personality, looking like an undercover movie starlet or runway model in her strappy black dress and oversized sunglasses. She has boxes and bags dangling from both arms and has no compunction about handing the lot off to both of them, pack-mule style, when she arrives.

“That should be the basics,” Zara says, self-satisfied. “You’re a thirty-five waist, right?”

Nolan stares at her and then at the bags.

“Are these… for me?”

His voice is doing something weird again. The back of his neck feels weird too, hot and tingly.

“Of course,” Zara says, rolling her eyes. “You’re the weirdo who travels without a suitcase.”

“I’ll pay you back,” he insists.

Hartley and Zara exchange a look he’s in no condition to dissect. He feels oddly breathless, devastated, like someone has reached into his belly and given all his organs a gentle squeeze. He knows he must be blushing, can feel the heat of it splashed across his cheekbones, can feel heat throbbing even in his ears. He licks his lips and thinks that—maybe—Hartley tracks the motion.

“It’s our treat,” says Zara firmly and then, leaning toward him with an air of conspiratorial mischief, “Besides, we’ll bill it as a business expense.”

Nolan blinks once, twice. He frowns.

“You guys pay taxes?”

Down and down, they descend the tightly spiraling metal staircase into the black jungle soil, a dizzying drop, like stepping down—knowingly, deliberately—into the heart of hell. They say the inner circle there is frozen over and when Nolan exhales, he can almost see his own panting breath. It’s shockingly cold in the underground bunker after hours of trekking beneath the sweltering Argentinian sun and his arms break out in goosebumps, a shiver going down his spine. Well, maybe it’s not entirely the cold.

It’s also the thrill of victory, the sweet adrenaline buzzing in his fingertips are he grips the railing. Hartley is in front of him, descending before him like a modern psychopomp with his battery-powered flashlight sweeping the darkness in front of them like a thin broom of white light and all Nolan can see is the silhouette of his broad shoulders, the back of his head tilted down and to the side as he strains to see through the gloom to the bottom.

(Nolan doesn’t bother; he knows how stories like this one go—there is always some twist, some moral lesson lying in wait for the hero.)

The anticipation is oppressive. It crushes the near-constant stream of their banter into a thick paste of silence broken only by the squeal of their rubber boots against the narrow steps, the creak of metal scaffolding, their own quickened breath. In that quiet darkness, with Hartley facing safely away from him, Nolan is moved to share a little piece of truth.

“I used to wonder why my father left me his watch. He was very specific in his will.”  His voice echoes oddly off the metal walls, sounding tinny and serious. “Now I know.”

Hartley makes a low sound, maybe encouragement to continue, maybe not.

“He knew that I was right about him,” Nolan says and feels something unfurling in his heart, a complex tangle of grief and and pride and vindication. He thinks it might be the closest thing to closure he will ever get.

“He knew that giving it to me would be the closest he would ever get to succeeding.”

After the ensuing lecture on why he, a successful and upstanding criminal, should indeed pay taxes—the biggest threat to his lifestyle being not Interpol or the local cops but the relentless IRS—the three of them decide to make a quick stop at a cluster of food trucks before heading to the Marriott.

“I bet you don’t even have a retirement plan,” Zara says, despairing, watching him add three different kinds of sugar syrup on top of his Belgian waffle. Chocolate, strawberry, and something unlabeled that squirts out a bright synthetic purple color.

“Nope,” he agrees. His waffle tastes like liquified fruit roll-ups.

“But what will you do if you get injured on a job? It’s stupid to assume you’ll always—“

Zara is gearing up for another lecture when Hartley steps forward, lacing their hands together. The gold wedding rings they’ve donned for this con clink off each other sweetly, like little bells, and the tension goes out of her.

“Remember what we talked about,” Hartley says, his dark eyes butter-soft as he looks at her, like nothing else exists in the whole world. Like he can’t bear to look away.

Nolan does. Instead, he watches the colors—brown, red, purple—congealing in the square divots of his deflated waffle, spears the dough in half viciously with his plastic fork to let the colors run through the crack.

(“Uggggh,” Nolan complains, one hand pressed to his stomach as he flops on his bed at the Marriott. “I shouldn’t have eaten that.”

“I told you so,” says Zara, totally unsympathetic.

But, later, he will find a bottle of Tums sitting on the bathroom sink.)

There’s live music playing on the rooftop bar when the three of them re-group—just a pianist and a jazz singer in a floor-length glitzy dress but it’s good, very classy, and a number of couples have taken to swaying on a small temporarily cleared-out dance floor. They’re biding time, waiting for Angelo to show up. Their intel shows he comes up here every night for a drink after getting off work.

The hotel overlooks Times Square and there’s a light breeze this high up, bringing with it snatches of conversation and laughter from the streets below. They’ve snagged a table in the corner near the dance floor and Nolan taps his fingers against the side of his drink with the beat, daydreaming idly about how nice it would be to have a wedding ring of his own to clink bell-like against the glass. And yet… he touches two fingers to the diamond pendant that hangs framed between his clavicles. Right where his wishbone would be if he were a bird.

A gift, one of the many things he unpacked from the boxes and boxes Zara insisted on giving him.

They’re just starting in on a fresh round of drinks when her phone trills, a ringtone he hasn’t heard before. That alone would be enough to intrigue him but the way their faces light up makes him feel itchy all over with curiosity.

“Good news?” Nolan asks, craning his neck to read the screen.

Knee-jerk, furtive, Zara slips the phone up her sleeve. It’s a nice sleight of hand and he’d compliment her on it if the suddenly closed-off expressions on her and Hartley’s faces didn’t put a painful lump into his throat. Oh, he thinks. I’ve done it again.

They are Bishop—just the two of them, separate and apart from him. He shouldn’t expect more.

There’s a distinctly uncomfortable beat of silence before Nolan kicks back in his chair with a friendly grin, palms up to show he meant no harm. “All right then, keep your secrets,” he teases, doing his best Frodo Baggins impression.

The tension eases like it was never there but Nolan reminds himself grimly not to fall for the illusion.

“Do you know she still hasn’t seen those movies?” Hartley says, aggrieved, and Nolan flails his hands about in outrage, immediately distracted, making elaborate threats and plans for future mandatory pop culture lessons. Zara rolls her eyes at both of them and slips out of her chair. She gestures with her phone which another sleight of hand brings smoothly back into her palm.

“I’ll deal with this up in our room, it might take some time.” She presses a kiss to Hartley’s cheek. “Come get me when Angelo arrives.”

Nolan tries to let it go, tries to ignore the magnetic draw of the mystery—even as a kid he was never satisfied with because I said so, always had to know more and more—and instead re-focuses the whole of his attention on Hartley. It’s not a hardship.

They wander easily in and out of conversation. Hartley accidentally (or maybe not, he realizes in hindsight) gets him ranting on the topic of conspiracy theories about the Egyptian pyramids, which are all stupid and rooted in imperialist racism, so he is in the middle of an impassioned speech about the brilliant use of damp-sand sleds to move stone and, oh, by the way, did you know that they had unions and work strikes and one of those work strikes demanded that the Pharaoh-King provide more sunscreen for their builders, no really, they made this mixture out of chalk dust and—

“Shit, oops,” Nolan complains, dabbing uselessly with his free hand at the cocktail he’s just spilled over his leg. At least he's wearing dark wash jeans.

“Here,” says Hartley, pulling the pocket square out of his jacket and pressing it to the damp spot on his knee. “I’ve got it.”

He feels his breath catch in his throat not just from the proximity but from the careful way Hartley works, a little wrinkle of concentration springing up between his eyebrows, one big hand cupped gently around Nolan's knee, index finger hooked behind his kneecap to keep him in place, the other hand dabbing with the handkerchief.

“I bet you say that to all the ladies,” Nolan teases faintly, fluttering his eyelashes. “Do you keep an emergency supply of seductive handkerchiefs on hand?”

“Depends.” Hartley glances up at him, eyes dark but his touch still gentle. “Is it an effective strategy?”

“Very effective,” says Nolan truthfully. “I think I swooned myself.”

He fans himself theatrically with a folded-up cocktail menu, draping himself across the back of his chair in increasingly ridiculous fainting poses, goading Hartley into laughter.

“Stop, stop,” Hartley shakes his head, crumbling the damp pocket square up to toss onto the table. “You’ll get us kicked out.”

“Kicked out before you’ve even asked me to dance? I’d die of shame!” Nolan says in a best (re: worst) southern belle accent, extending his hand playfully.

Hartley eyes his hand with extreme skepticism. “Do you even know how to follow?”

“Honey. Sweetheart. Daarrrrling,” Nolan croons, wiggling the fingers on his outstretched hand. “How many times do I have to remind you that I went to an all-boys boarding school? I’m ambidextrous. Two-footed. Double-dealing. I go both ways is what I’m saying.”

Hartley laughs again, a little helplessly, still eyeing his hand and for a moment Nolan thinks he’ll take it.

Then his phone trills, the same mysterious ringtone.

“Be right back,” says Hartley, a silent apology in his eyes as he gets up and heads towards the rooftop exit.

Nolan drops his hand back to his side. “Yeah, yeah, no problem, I get it.” 

He does not watch Hartley leave, looks instead out over the beautiful view. Neon lights, slow-moving cars stuck in the city’s Friday night traffic, beautiful air-brushed advertisements glowing on their digital screens. Nolan props his chin on his open palm and tries not to think of anything in particular. Meditation, it’s supposed to be good for you, empty your mind, drift like a leaf down the river of your innermost psychology blah blah. He is at peace.

“Excuse me, I hope I’m not overstepping,” says an unfamiliar, masculine voice. “But may I have this dance?”

With a sinking feeling, Nolan turns to see none other than Angelo Torres standing before him with his palm outstretched.

He must stare a beat too long because Angelo takes a small step forward, palm still an open invitation, and says in a tone of false sympathy, “Only, it seemed like your husband might be otherwise preoccupied.”

Nolan realizes several things in rapid succession: (1) somehow neither he or Hartley noticed Angelo arriving on the rooftop, a fact that Zara will surely tease them about later, and (2) he’s inadvertently ruined Hartley and Zara’s carefully laid plans because, incredibly, (3) Angelo thinks that he and Hartley are the married couple.

Well, he might as well try to salvage something. No way out but through, as they say.

“I guess… if it’s just one dance…” Nolan affects shy uncertainty, glancing towards the rooftop exit with a look that’s half-wistful, half-defiant.

He places his hand in Angelo’s and feels his fingertips begin to buzz.

“You dance beautifully,” Angelo compliments him, holding Nolan a little closer than is proper for a waltz. Mr Breene, his old boarding school gym teacher, would’ve whacked them apart with his ruler.

“Thank you,” says Nolan, trying to force a blush. “I love dancing but it’s been years…” He trails off expressively and Angelo leads him in a basic twirl, pulling him back in a little tighter than before. Don’t overplay your hand buddy, he thinks with amusement but allows himself to be held. His cologne is nice, Nolan has to admit, nothing like the natural biochemical fireworks of his soulmates, but pleasant enough, and the man does know how to dance. Nolan has slept with people based on less and if he has to invite Angelo back to his room to give Bishop an opening, he’s confident they’ll have a good time.

“That’s a shame,” says Angelo. “You deserve to do things that make you happy.”

“I don’t know,” Nolan drops his eyes, looking uncertain. “I don’t want to be selfish.”

“Selfishness isn’t always a bad thing.” Angelo guides him through a dip. Nolan gives himself over to gravity, rests the weight of himself in the other man’s hands, letting his head fall back. He sneaks a side-long glance up at Angelo and catches him eyeing the glint of his diamond pendant with sour resentment.

“Taking care of your own needs… your own wants… it’s only natural. We have evolved to put ourselves first after all…”

Nolan tunes out most of the following speech—arguing evolutionary sociobiology with a compulsive home wrecker would be a waste of time—and instead concentrates on the flow of the music, the rhythm of the dance. It really has been too long since he danced; he always enjoyed it, even in boarding school during their stiffly formal lessons.

Angelo spins him away again and Nolan, eyes half-closed, startles as the unexpected heat of a different—a familiar—hand slides around his waist.

“Sorry to cut in,” Hartley says with icy politeness, sounding not even the tiniest bit sorry.

“Of course,” Angelo replies, pressing a lingering kiss to the back of Nolan’s hand as Hartley’s mouth flattens to a hard line. “Thank you for the dance, cara mia. I hope—” But whatever slyly insinuating thing he means to add is unceremoniously cut off when, with a sharp tug, Nolan finds himself stumbling fully into Hartley's embrace. He places a broad hand against the small of Nolan’s back and he can feel the heat of it, the individual outline of each finger, pressed against him through the thin linen of his shirt. Nolan places his own hand on Harley's arm out of reflex and then Hartley is swinging them in a broad arc away from Angelo’s astonished face.

“Nicely done,” Nolan says. “Angelo totally brought the jealous husband bit.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“I can’t believe we missed him coming in,” Hartley says, voice tight. He sighs a little, pulling Nolan close through another spin, closer even than Angelo dared to. The contact is electric. His fingertips buzz and spark. Mouth watering, Nolan swallows once, twice, tries not to breathe in too deeply, tries not to think about how effortlessly Hartley moves him, the full strength of him apparent in that moment in a way it’s never been before. An exercise in futility, Nolan already knows he will be up all night driving himself wild with the memory.

“He’s still watching us,” Hartley murmurs into the shell of his ear. He shivers, turns helplessly into the contact, feels Hartley’s hand flex against his lower back.

“Maybe you should kiss me or something,” Nolan whispers, the suggestion leaving him before his brain can catch up. He feels feverish, the hungry pit of yearning at the bottom of his soul suddenly boiling over, a rush of indisputable desire.

“Maybe I should,” Hartley says, so quietly that he thinks maybe he dreamed the words up until he feels a warm thumb glide along his jawline, dip under his chin and press it up. Nolan looks up and sees Hartley’s dark eyes gone nearly black, watching the curve of his mouth with a frightful intensity.

He licks his lips, opens his mouth to say something—and then they’re kissing.

It’s a full-body shock and he gasps up into it, glories in it, like the electric buzzing of his fingertips but full-bodied, demanding every piece of his attention. He clutches at Hartley’s shoulders to stay upright, feels Hartley’s fingers dig greedily into his back, dragging him closer.

Eventually, Nolan reels back, light-headed, and realizes that somehow they’re still dancing, spinning in ever-slowing circles. His mouth feels swollen and tender. He licks his lips and they throb.

“Cool… cool…” Nolan says, nonsensically, trying to catch his breath. “Is Angelo still watching?”

Hartley’s eyes flick over his shoulder for a long moment then back to Nolan’s mouth.

“Yes,” he says roughly, slipping a hand more completely along Nolan's jaw, fingers curved around the back of his neck, tilting his face up.

And kisses him again.

Chapter Text

How do you explain a kiss?

Do you list the chemical chain reaction, break the desire down into its mathematical formula, a paper snowflake chain of amine ions, carboxylic acid, hydrogen bonds? Do you graph the exact angle of intersection, mouth slanted over mouth, that wet, panting point of connection? The human language is a clumsy thing, surface-level, incomplete—some things can only be described by their silhouette, can only be glimpsed side-long and longing, like the solar eclipse spied through a peephole, through darkened glass. Too bright for words.

The elevator ride from the rooftop down to their room isn’t awkward. Nolan won’t let it be awkward.

“So, um, some view that was on the rooftop, huh? I mean, Times Square from up there is just... all those lights, the billboards, the energy. You can see everything, the whole city just spreading its legs for you. All, wow, you know? I actually thought about living here, like, permanently at one point…” He rambles, can feel blood throbbing in his tender lips with every newly shaped word. He has no idea what he’s saying, mouth on auto-pilot. His whole body feels stirred up, one leg bouncing restlessly as he resists the urge to pace their enclosed metal box like some wild thing. Resists the urge to cross the empty meter of space between them, press Hartley back against the wall and beg—

What is taking so long, he wonders, desperate, are we even moving? Is the elevator broken?

“I mean, I love the city’s energy, I really do, but I think I’d miss having, um, space. Somewhere to unwind, where you’re not surrounded by millions of people all the time. It’s great to dive into for a while, but... living in it? That’s a whole other story."

Nolan is doing such a good job of playing it cool, of not looking at Hartley, forcibly dialing back his awareness of his soulmate’s body to focus solely on the descending numbers of the elevator floor levels that the sudden touch on his shoulder makes him jump.

“Booth, relax.” Hartley commands and Nolan, risking a side-long glance at him, immediately regrets it.

Hartley looks frustrated, his lips—don’t look at them!—twisted downward in a shape that wrings all the softness out of them. His eyebrows are furrowed, almost confused.

“It was just a kiss.”

All of Nolan’s pent-up nervous energy goes suddenly cold, frozen over. His leg stops bouncing, his fingers lay flat at his side. From the outside, it looks like calm, like an acupuncture needle slid into just the right spot to release the tension, instead of what is really is: emotional paralysis.

“Yeah,” says Nolan, even his lips gone numb. “Just a little work smooch. I give those to all my co-workers.”

“We know,” says Hartley shortly.

Ding. The elevator door slides open.

The door swings open and Nolan, nineteen, giddy with excitement, balances the ice cream cake carefully on one open palm. He spent way too long dithering at the grocery store, trying to decide what to ask the bored-looking employee behind the pastry counter to engrave on the top.

Happy 1 month Anniversary! seemed like too much to fit on a small, two-person cake and was technically grammatically incorrect. Thanks for all the great sex was more accurate but a little crude. In the end, he’d gone with Cheers To Us.

Sweet but not coming on too strong.

“Hana, it’s me!” He calls out, hoping his girlfriend’s roommate isn’t in so they don’t have to share—the cake or each other. Her roommate is an actress too and the two of them are always running lines these days, helping each other prepare for auditions, talking about acting workshops and character backstories and dialect coaching and a million other things that secretly make Nolan go cross-eyed with boredom.

Nolan leaves the cake on the kitchen counter and makes his way up the stairs. Her bedroom door is cracked open and he is bounding enthusiastically halfway through the door before his brain registers the glimpse of bare skin, two many arms and legs, tousled hair too blonde to be Hana’s. The world goes slow-motion, that dragged-out hyper-focus Nolan gets when he’s on the job and something is about to go wrong—but by then it’s too late to halt the momentum and he’s pulling up short in front of the bed.

There’s a moment—gut-wrenching—before his girlfriend and her roommate look away from each other when her face is soft and easy in a way he’s never seen before.

“Sorry,” Nolan says, stupidly, “Should’ve knocked.”

“No worries,” says his girlfriend, like it’s no big deal. She doesn’t sound guilty. Just awkward, maybe even a little annoyed, flicking a glance at her roommate who rolls her eyes and tugs the duvet a little higher. “Were we supposed to meet up tonight?”

Nolan is rapidly coming to several conclusions, all of them deeply embarrassing. He can feel his face go hot, feels the corners of his eyes prickle—idiot, he tells himself viciously but it doesn’t help—and all he can do is hope desperately that it doesn’t show.

“Nah, I just, um, thought I’d surprise you.” Nolan tries to smile but it feels weird, he’s not entirely sure what the muscles in his face are doing. “Since I was in the area, you know. No biggie.”

“That’s so sweet,” says Hana after a pause. “Sorry I can’t hang out tonight. But I’ll see you at work tomorrow…?”

“Yeah, it’s all good,” lies Nolan and despite his prickling eyes, he does not look away from her. “It’s not like we were dating."

It’s deeply embarrassing to admit but… Nolan is not good at picking locks. He’s the number two art thief for good reason—he’s got the audacity for it and the soft skills, the ability to blend in when required, and the shark's sense for blood, for weak spots.

Sadly, none of this helps him with lock picking. He gets nervous, excited, shaky with adrenaline, and when he presses his ear to the keyhole to listen for the tell-tell sounds of the lock tumblers, he is instead overwhelmed with the sound of his own heartbeat, his own blood throbbing in his inner ear, balance gone off-kilter, and he misses the momentary snick.

Nolan spins too far, spins himself back out.

“You want it too much,” chastises his juvie roommate, all of fourteen years old but looking half that age with his face screwed up in a mix of amusement and exasperation as he hangs over the top bunk to give Nolan pointers as he sweats and swears over a set of practice handcuffs that he bribed off the boy from across the hall.

(Bribery, thankfully, has always come easy to him.)

“Of course I want it,” Nolan snaps back, lack of progress and sleep making him bitchy. “I wouldn’t be wasting my fucking time practicing if I didn’t.”

His roommate executes a disorienting upside-down shrug.

“Can’t want it too much,” he says again, unhelpfully.

Nolan tries to take the advice, really, he does. But he has never figured out how to want things less. To let go of them, sure, but that’s something else entirely.

Still, what he can’t learn by aptitude, he learns instead by brute force and muscle memory. He cuffs himself nearly three hundred times that summer, until the tiny metal screws and hinges go wobbly and threaten to fall apart, but in the end, taking the handcuffs off is as simple as putting them on.

Zara opens the hotel door, looks between the two of them. She frowns.

“What’s wrong?”

There’s a long answer to that question but Nolan pushes past her, shaping his numb lips into an easygoing grin, flops in one of the overstuffed hotel room chairs, and gives her the short answer instead.

“Turns out Angelo’s an idiot,” he says with a nonchalant wave towards a stoic-faced Hartley. “Thought we were…”

Soulmates, he doesn’t say. Physically cannot get the word out.

“Together,” finishes Hartley after a protracted pause.

“Oh!” Zara says, more enthusiastically than he thinks she means to. “Did the plan…?”

“Salvageable.” Hartley twitches one shoulder in a shrug, two fingers raised to rub at his temples and he looks tired, looks frustrated, that familiar muscle twitching along his jawline. Nolan knows the exact shape of his jaw now, the flex of skin beneath his fingers, the taste. He looks away.

“Oh,” Zara says, dimming, taking a seat on the edge of the freshly made bed. Again, she glances between him and Nolan. “What happened?”

That’s Nolan’s cue to jump in, to say something meaninglessly flirtatious and perhaps a little crude. The show must go on, right? He slouches down further into his chair, kicks out his legs in a messy sprawl. He gives Zara a sloppy wink, sing-songs, “A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.”

The muscle along Hartley’s jaw twitches.

Zara stands up in one graceful motion, so beautiful it must be practiced—a slow uncrossing of legs, a flash of sun-kissed inner thigh, one perfectly manicured hand smoothing down the ripples of her dress, drawing the eye to every curve of form. She moves over to Hartley’s side, drapes herself along his back, and runs her slender fingers along the length of Hartley’s jawline to ease the tension there, the whole time keeping eye contact with Nolan so that he is forced to look at both of them at once.

“Good thing you’re not a gentleman,” she answers in a sly tone.

“Shot in the heart,” Nolan says in a mock gasp, collapsing backward, one hand placed protectively over his chest. He presses hard, feels the thump-thump as if from a great distance. “So cruel, so…”

“Accurate?” She offers, unbothered by his theatrics.

“You always are,” says Nolan and suddenly it all feels terribly difficult—the easy smile, the easy sprawl, the easy banter. Sitting here in this tiny airless room with the both of them so close to him and yet so unfathomably far away. At least, Nolan can’t. Fathom it, that is. Can’t figure out how to reach across the distance and ask them to love him like they love each other. It’s hubris.

“You should see me with a gun.” Zara sighs a little with self-satisfaction, no false modesty.

“Not sure I’ll survive a round two,” he laughs, a little brittle.

They both blink at him, in tandem. He’s so busy repressing his resentment, his yearning envy of their in-sync-ness, that it takes him a moment to realize why.

“So you do remember that night in Paria,” muses Zara. “I had wondered…”

Nolan laughs again; brittle is an understatement.

“Told you not to underestimate my Irish liver.”

They’re looking at him with the same expression on their faces but he has no idea what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling. He wants to look away and finds he can’t, suckered in by the gravity, the intense magnetism of their attention.

There’s a weird pause in the conversation, uncomfortable and unusual. One of them always seemed to know what to say but…

“Look, about the job,” Nolan says abruptly, a clumsy attempt to re-direct the conversation, to put some solid ground under him because he feels lost and unmoored, tugged at by invisible currents he doesn’t understand. He is a strong swimmer but dark waters should always be treated with caution. The ocean is bigger than you was his boss’s mantra the summer that he worked as a lifeguard.

“Let me handle Angelo,” he continues, getting to his feet. “Zara can take over the room service plan and I’ll pretend you and I had some big fight, that I’m trying to make you jealous. I can take Angelo back to—” the rooftop he never gets a chance to finish because Hartley is suddenly shaking off Zara’s soothing touch, all the tension back in his jawline, the vein at his temple gone taut.

“Do whatever you want,” Hartley snaps. “I’m taking a shower.”

He stalks towards the bathroom, shoulders hunched up almost to his ears. Nolan watches him go, watches Zara watching him go, and can’t decide if the suppressed twitch of her lips is annoyance or amusement.

“Is he…?”

Zara waves the implied question away. “Don’t worry, he gets overly attached to plans sometimes.”

“I thought that was you.”

She makes a low humming sound, thoughtful, looking at him slantwise from under her long eyelashes. Definitely amused now, though he can’t tell why.

“We’re both learning to improvise more.”

“About Angelo—“ he tries again but she cuts him off with a quick shake of her head, not angry but sharp and decisive.

“No need,” Zara says, looping her arm through his and gently escorting him to the door. “We’ve got it handled.”

So much for improv, he thinks bitterly. He feels his face go hot with a mixture of embarrassment and anger, feeling the professional snub more acutely than he expected. This whole mess is his fault after all—he’s the one that went off script, the thing he knows they hate doing unless they absolutely have to. Maybe it was hubris, his suppressed longing to play the role of husband making him go temporarily insane.

But to have had the briefest taste—oh, he thinks. Icarus, how warm and sweet was the sun on your face before you fell? Did you regret it?

"Right. Well, I guess I’ll just…” Nolan starts, but his words trail off. He mutters a quick goodbye, pulling his arm away from hers, and hastens out the door without looking back.

He gets in the elevator and paws at the top buttons of his linen shirt, at the diamond pendant hanging heavy at the hollow of his throat, feeling like he can’t breathe. Like his skin is fit too tightly over his body, like his heart is about to go bursting out of his ribcage in a super-nova flare of emotions so strong he can’t even identify them.

(His therapist once showed him a handy chart of emotion words, all color-coded. Sad words had been various blues: hopeless, disappointed, sorrowful, miserable, etc. You don’t have a word for sad and horny, he’d joked. She’d dismissed that as not being a primary emotion but Nolan begged to differ.)

He punches the button for the rooftop without really thinking about it, needing air.

It’s blessedly cool on the rooftop, and quiet, the musicians long since having packed up and gone home. The bar is still open—this is New York City, after all—but only a few stragglers sit around and the bartender is beginning to tidy up. Silhouetted by the city lights as he leans out over the railing, a lone man smokes a cigarette.

Angelo.

He shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t.

But Nolan is already taking out his phone and sending off a brief text.

The mark is on the roof. You’ve got twenty minutes.

At any given moment, Nolan is tracking down a half dozen leads for the art he wants back: Vermeer’s Girl with a Red Hat, the first thing he’d specifically acquired based on his perception of Bishop’s preferences, which is currently caught up in a fierce three-way international custody battle between Holland, France, and Austria; his early and untitled Temara painting, which is rumored to be in Warsaw; his Kemet plates which have popped back up in an authentication house in Rome of all places; his original Hokusai pornography woodcut—he took a knife to his left arm for that particular piece and he is unwilling to give it up, even if they think it's crude.

It’s frustrating as hell but there’s not even the slightest whisper of a rumor on the current whereabouts of The Kiss, which managed to disappear sometime between his house being invaded and evidence processing in Lyon, France. No word yet on how or who. The why, Nolan assumes, is self-explanatory.

Of course, he’s not bothering to go after everything he lost.

After meeting his soulmates and refining his former blurred best guesses with hard data, there are a half dozen pieces he’s happy to let go of. His three-piece collection of Chagall for example. He’s still torn about whether to go through the effort of requiring Mignon’s The Overturned Bouquet, which always confused him a little but now makes sense as an inside joke, or maybe a prank on him, a test to see if he would jump through hoops to acquire something objectively silly if he perceived they valued it.

(The answer is, embarrassingly, yes.)

But despite his best efforts, his house remains a work in progress, the re-building going painfully slow. It’s his fault, really.

Nolan simply can’t stand the idea of anything temporary in his house so he leaves certain places empty; odd, noticeable gaps in the functionality of the space. He owns an exquisite set of knives, forks, rosewood chopsticks, large porcelain soup spoons, and tiny delicate sugar spoons but no regular ones. His bedroom is almost entirely empty, with nothing on the walls, a bare wood floor. Two nightstands sit comically far apart, waiting like patient sentinels for the arrival of a back-ordered mattress and bed frame from Tuscany. He doesn’t go in there much.

For now, he sleeps on the couch, suspended in limbo, in that place between the idea of home and the reality of it.

Gabriel’s apartment is comically tiny, a little Parisian matchbox, but it’s all he can afford on his salary as a newly hired station chef and he despises living with roommates. The only redeeming feature is the generous wrought-iron balcony, located a half-step from the bed, which nearly doubles the square footage of the place.

Nolan watches the silvery play of moonlight over the muscles of Gabriel’s naked back as he leans out over the railing and smokes a cigarette. He looks like a beautiful sculpture, like he could be added to any number of stunning marble fountains that Nolan passes by on the way to school. He’s playing the wide-eyed foreign exchange student for this con, scamming the University of Paris into a semester of educating him on their dime while he cases their world-renowned library of medieval literature. He’s got a buyer lined up for a gorgeously illustrated Book of Hours manuscript that he’s almost tempted to keep for himself.

“You’re such a French stereotype,” he teases, propping his chin up on his elbow for a better view. Gabriel flips him a lazy middle finger and he chokes back an honest-to-god giggle. He’s still in that blissful dreamy post-sex haze, wrung out in a pleasant way and stupid with it.

“Gabe, I’ve been thinking…”

He trails off with a sinking feeling in his belly, watching the muscles of Gabriel’s back bunching up into chiaroscuro knots of tension. Still, he wets his lips and tries again.

“I know we haven’t known each other that long but—“

“We said no strings,” Gabriel cuts him off without turning around but his voice is kind. Horribly, painfully kind, with no room for negotiation. “I can’t give you what you’re looking for.”

Nolan drops his eyes to his lap, to the pooled fabric of the bedsheets in his lap cast mostly in shadow. Neither of them moves for a long moment—Gabriel smoking at the balcony, Nolan with his head bowed low—and he thinks, the sweet coital haze dissipating in the silence to be replaced with a sardonic self-cutting humor, that they make a perfect Baroque painting. A Lover’s Quarrel, he titles it.

“Yeah, of course,” Nolan says, keeping his voice light. It’s become easier over the years, with practice. “Forget I said anything, it was the orgasm high.”

The tension smoothes away, like rippled water eddying out, and Gabriel flicks the cigarette stub down in the street below—asshole, he thinks with unwilling fondness—as he turns around to face Nolan. There’s a grin on his handsome face, the slight chip in his front tooth on full and devastating display.

“Bet I can make you say something even stupider,” Gabriel promises and crosses the half-step back across the room to press him back down into the bed.

For three months, Nolan lazes about Saint Petersburg as the kept man of the kept women of a minor Russian mobster. He’s twenty-four pretending to be eighteen, still baby-faced enough to pull it off, all youthful bravado and clumsy eagerness to please. Katrina thinks he’s just some lonely, too-pretty kid trying to make it as a professional mistress and is delighted to take him in, in every sense of the word.

She teaches him all manner of useful things, including how to make himself cry on command.

“Very good,” she praises him from her perch in his lap, hand-feeding him pomegranate seeds in-between kisses, the sweet-tart burst of them mingling with the taste of her mouth and the salt of his tears until his lips are swollen and slippery with juice and he is begging her to stop—or to fuck him already.

“Baby boy,” she croons. “Always hold something back, remember that.”

The day after he’s stolen a matching ruby necklace and earrings set from her Russian mobster, he gives Katrina one last call as a courtesy, a heads up that she should either firm up an alibi or find another wealthy sponsor. He is expecting anger, maybe betrayal, but she only hums approvingly—a sound that, over the last twelve weeks, he has been trained to react to and even with two countries between them for safety, Nolan begins to salivate.

“You are like a Matryoshka doll,” she tells him with the tap tap of her long fingernails against the phone. “A thing within a thing within a thing, a pretty deception.”

“I don’t understand,” says Nolan but he’s afraid that he does.

“You use the illusion to distract from the truth—that you are the same on the inside as the outside. Baby boy, you wear your heart on your sleeve.”

She’s still laughing at him when he hangs up.

Usually Nolan packs his stuff in a half-blind rush but this time he’s got an extra two hours to kill and several gift bags to somehow fit into a single carry-on bag, counting they love me, they love me not under his breath with each folded shirt and pair of pants.

He’s not sure it will all fit. There’s a chance he’ll end up wearing an awkward amount of layers at the airport but Nolan, who once left behind five thousand dollars cash in a checked suitcase because he was too impatient to wait for the delayed baggage carousel, does not consider leaving a single item behind. Not even the socks.

If Angelo is surprised to see him, he hides it well.

“Oh no,” he says with grating false sympathy. “I hope I was not the cause of any trouble with your husband.”

Nolan sighs, extending an open hand in a ‘gimme’ gesture. Angelo passes him a cigarette and steps closer, entirely unnecessarily, to light it for him. He takes a long drag of the cigarette, sucks the sweet poison of it into his lungs and holds it there, letting himself go a little dizzy.

“Thanks,” says Nolan finally, exhaling smoke. And then, because the other man is clearly dying to ask why he’s up here alone, he instead adds: “Winstons? Very nice, haven’t smoked these in a long time.”

Angelo’s smile tightens at the corners, going stale.

“My wife hated them, always tried to make me quit.” He pauses, corrects himself. “Ex-wife.”

“Ah,” says Nolan.

Angelo hasn’t stepped back after lighting his cigarette and Nolan doesn’t either. He turns his head slightly to the side to exhale more smoke, still keeping his eyes on Angelo, watching the man watch his mouth. It makes him feel satisfied, as it almost always does to know someone is attracted to him, but not like—whatever that had been earlier, with Hartley. Like comparing apples to orchard dirt; coming from the same point of origin but otherwise worlds apart.

“Do you still think of her, every time you kiss someone else?”

Angelo jerks like he’s been shot. Bang.

“Will her memory always haunt you, turning every other kiss to ash? Did your soulmate ruin you for everybody else?” Nolan continues ruthlessly, not sure what exactly he’s doing but yielding up to the words that have been crushed up under his tongue with the cigarette smoke. They come out heavy, laden with toxins, with all his suppressed fears and frustrations. It’s not exactly therapy but he hasn’t slept with Angelo, which already makes this situation more ethical.

“I—I don’t—“

Angelo stumbles a half-step back, the hand holding his cigarette thrown up between them like a warding gesture. The tip of his cigarette glows red-hot in the darkness.

Nolan doesn’t care, steps closer.

“Tell me how you do it,” he asks, nearly begging. “How do you keep going afterwards, when they leave you?”

“I don’t—it was just a dance—it’s not my fault.” Angelo gasps on a ragged breath and there’s something else that lays festering just under the surface, some guilty resonance to the excuses running too deep to be about a stranger.

“You blame her for leaving,” Nolan guesses and when Angelo flinches—bang bang—he can’t help adding, with a touch of cruelty, “But how many times did she stay?”

Angelo’s eyes are red-rimmed. The tip of his cigarette has cooled from its ember glow and when his hand trembles, it ashes the ground between them. Nolan shakes his head, obscurely disappointed. This isn’t a man with any answers.

“Do yourself a favor,” says Nolan. “Take better care of your son before he leaves you too.”

Angelo makes an odd sound—part whimper, part curse—and flees.

It’s only then that Nolan notices they have an audience.

“Oops,” he says, attempting a smile. “That probably wasn’t twenty minutes.”

Hartley steps up to the railing to join him, his body language oddly hesitant. He ducks his head, looking out over the city—still beautiful, still lit up—instead of at Nolan. To stop himself from saying anything stupid like please tell me you didn’t hear all that, or worse yet are you mad at me?, he takes another long drag of his cigarette. He’s starting to feel the nicotine buzz in the back of his teeth, feels the grit of the smoke settling unpleasantly on his tongue.

“I didn’t—“

“I wanted to—“

They both start at the same time. They look at each other, share an awkward laugh. Nolan executes an elaborate bow in Hartley’s direction, letting him go first.

Hartley takes a deep breath, squaring his broad shoulders, and turns to face him head-on. His gut is already sinking, a dozen unpleasant conversations jumping to mind starting with it’s been fun but I think we should see other people or whatever the equivalent is between a couple of freelancing professionals sharing a niche field of work.

“I wanted to apologize.”

Nolan blinks.

Hartley takes another big, gulping breath and says in a rush. “I—I shouldn’t have assumed or taken one of your jokes for permission to… and especially not when the job meant you weren’t actually in a position to say no without blowing our cover. It was badly done of me and I’m sorry.”

Nolan blinks again, thrown entirely off-kilter in the face of such unexpected and overwhelming sincerity. His throat feels dry; he licks his lips and tastes the residue of soot. Bitter, a hint of clove. He wishes there was something else spliced in, some chemical compound he could blame for the sudden giddy rush that has him swaying in place beside his own emotional weakness.

“Oh,” he says, voice soft.

Hartley makes a aborted gesture, like he wants to reach out and thinks better of it. Instead he shoves his hands into his pockets and looks away again, out across the wash of city lights.

“You’re still in love with your soulmate, aren’t you?”

Nolan feels the bang of it, feels his body shudder from the impact. He spares a second to feel sorry for Angelo, for his emotional ambush. The silence stretches between them like taffy, the weird rushing distortion of time that happens when you’re held under moving water. Smeary-slow and fast at the same time. He takes another long drag of his cigarette to buy time, to plug up the sudden wound.

“Nah,” says Nolan eventually, his voice rough from the smoke. “That was a long time ago.”

“I see,” Hartley says, looking unconvinced and increasingly—not awkward exactly, something else. Nolan’s own emotional equilibrium is too messed up to leave him any room for guessing how anyone else is feeling. “Either way, I’m sorry for overstepping.”

“It was—“ fine he doesn’t say. Fine doesn’t begin to cover it. The best kiss he’s ever had, but he can’t say that either.

He swallows, tries again.

“You can seduce me whenever the job requires,” he ends up offering. The words come out casual, completely lighthearted, and he’s almost proud of himself for how steady he sounds. A lifetime of brute force practice brought to bear upon this single moment. “Blanket permission for you and Zara.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Hartley jerk his head away from the city and back to him. Good, thinks the part of him that’s been shriveled up and attention-starved for too long but for his own sanity, Nolan does not look back. He brings the cigarette back to his lips and tries to keep his fingers from trembling.

“Every job should have its perks,” he adds, smiling a little crookedly.

It’s not their fault, what they do to him. Not so much a seduction as a subduction, pulled so deep that he is melted down and re-forged. They will leave him a different shape than they found him. I love you is a pale imitation of what he really feels, like the shadow on Plato’s cave wall. I am sick with you gets closer to the truth, or I crave the jungle heat of your mouth. Nolan wants to be crushed flat beneath the animal weight of him until their atoms touch and ignite in a shower of sparks. He wants to be sublimated.

Instead, Nolan gestures with his cigarette, a careful motion to disguise the tremor.

“I’m just gonna finish this,” he says. “Don’t wait up.”

He feels more than hears Hartley linger another moment, fights to keep his posture loose and casual, as if lost in thought. Finally his footsteps retreat and Nolan is alone. His casual sprawl becomes a slump, his free hand drifting down to the divot of his right hip. His heart throbs inside his chest.

“Fuck,” he whispers. He’s in so much trouble.

Chapter Text

His classmates begin to move on but Nolan barely notices.

The Kiss glows on the wall, seeming to capture all the light and warmth in the room, a world within a picture frame. He feels rooted, transfixed. His eyes trace the curve of the man’s hands as he cradles the woman’s face in both palms, the way her head tilts back as if surrendering completely to the moment. The delicate touch of her hand on his hand, around his neck. It isn’t just the material opulence—though that alone was dazzling—it’s the stillness, the intimacy. It’s the way her eyes seem to have just fluttered shut, how the world seems to fracture into golden light around them and fall away. Did love make you feel that way? Like there was nothing else in the universe?

Behind him, low voices break into giggles. He blinks, realizing for the first time how silent the rest of the gallery has become. He turns slightly, looking for his class and instead spies a group of girls around his age that he didn’t recognize standing by the doorway. Their heads were bent toward each other in a whispered conspiracy. One of them, a pretty girl with auburn hair tied loosely at the nape of her neck, steps forward suddenly as if pushed by an unseen hand.

“Hi,” she says somewhat nervously as she approaches. “You’ve been standing here for a while.”

Nolan feels a weird stab of emotion and has to repress the reflex to raise his arms, to cover the painting from the eyes of everyone else. He makes himself step aside gallantly instead.

“Sorry,” he says. “Didn’t mean to hog the view.”

“Oh, that’s not—“ The girl goes bright red. She turns hastily to stare at the painting and then glances sidelong at him. “I just meant… you seemed to like it.”

“Yeah,” says Nolan. “It’s nice.”

The sheer understatement makes him feel a little dizzy. His fingers twitch at his sides and he realizes that his palms are sweaty. He tries to wipe them surreptitiously on his jeans but the girl is still looking at him. Did she notice? He shoves his hands into his back pockets instead.

She really is pretty, Nolan notices suddenly. And she is standing very close to him.

“Have… have you ever been kissed?” She asks shyly.

His mouth goes dry. Nolan looks back up at the painting, fingers curling in his pockets.

“Not like that.”

That night, when he returns to his hotel room from the rooftop, Nolan gets himself off in about thirty seconds. And then, before he’s even really finished, he is touching himself again. He doesn’t pretend, even in the privacy of his own mind, that Hartley is touching him, or Zara, or—god—both of them. Thoughts like that feel too dangerous tonight and need to be kept quarantined from the raw livewires of his heart.

He is oversensitive and the rough drag of his palm over his cock is nearly a punishment, but it feels good too—condensing all of his overwrought nerves into a single point of stimulus. To push it to the edge, and then finally, with a wet gasp of breath, over into release.

Nolan shudders under the strain, tears at the corners of his eyes, and collapses backward across the hotel bed. His diamond pendant slides up from the hollow of his throat to rest under the bump of his Adam’s apple, a cool weight against his fever-hot skin. He falls asleep like that, too exhausted to even crawl under the sheets.

The next morning, he procrastinates until the last minute, delaying the moment he will see them again—or won’t. The break-in to Angelo’s vacation home is not really complicated enough to take three people and they all know his inclusion is merely a courtesy or maybe bait, a pawn-move in a bigger game. It’s possible no one will be waiting for him at the front desk at all.

But as he comes sprinting out of the elevator, artfully disheveled, and with only two minutes to spare before check-out, they aren’t just waiting for him. They look—well, stunning, of course. But also unsurprised, exasperated, fond.

“I’m booking us a shared suite when we get to Venice,” Zara threatens as Hartley scoops up Nolan’s bags and herds them toward the door. “Clearly you can’t be trusted on your own.”

“Very funny,” says Nolan.

She’s not joking.

The city of Venice is a tragedy in the Greek sense of the word, beautiful and doomed, beautiful because it’s doomed, sinking by slow degrees back into the ocean. Their hotel suite is breathtaking, not least because of the proximity; they share a bedroom wall and Nolan tries not to think about what they could be doing on the other side, making love to each other a scant few inches away from his own naked body. They are not always quiet. Sometimes he feels poised on the verge of madness, like he is trapped in one of Zeno’s paradoxes—the infinite halfway theorem. Doomed to forever be approaching the object of his desire without ever quite reaching it.

They picked the room between him and the exit.

Nolan tries not to read into this but there was a reason he was hired as a tarot reader in Amsterdam and it wasn’t because of his pretty face and willingness to show off his abs. Okay, so he can admit it was mostly that. Sex club criteria and all. But he was genuinely good at his job because he could take a tiny detail and extrapolate an entire unseen universe behind that single point of data—the conman’s sixth sense.

They want him, or at least they want his body.

Nolan knows there’s an ulterior motive to their flirtation, some deeper game they’re playing, but the physical chemistry is real. It’s flattering and a little torturous to live with the knowledge that they find him attractive enough to offer him a fun night—possibly several—of no-strings-attached sex. If it were anyone else, he’d say yes in a heartbeat. But they’re not anyone else.

It would have to be all or nothing, with them. And Nolan isn’t ready to ask—isn’t ready to risk the nothing.

His therapist tells him there’s a difference between trust in intention and trust in ability.

“Let’s say you have a dog,” she begins.

“I’m really more of a cat person,” Nolan interrupts, folding his hands behind his head in a way that shows off the freshly tanned flex of his biceps. His therapist has told him it’s not necessary to lie down on the couch like they do in the movies, that they can look at each other like this is a normal conversation, but Nolan is enjoying the pageantry too much to listen.

A slight pause, and she tries again. “Let’s say you have a cat. You love your cat and you trust that your cat loves you too.”

Nolan is already shaking his head before she finishes her sentence, tsk-ing up at the ceiling.

“Not sure about that,” he says, crossing his legs at the ankle to get comfortable. “If I died that little guy would be eating my body within twenty minutes flat. Cats, you know. You gotta respect those self-reliant assholes.”

A slightly longer pause.

“Alright. You have a dog.”

Her voice is perfectly even, not a hint of annoyance, but Nolan hides his grin in the crook of his arm.

“You love your dog,” she continues, determined. “And your dog loves you. You know that if you were to do a trust fall with your dog, he would want to catch you—that’s trust in intention. But, of course, you don’t do a trust fall with your dog because he doesn’t have arms  to catch you with—that’s trust in ability.”

This time when his therapist pauses, Nolan can’t help feeling like she’s the one that has scored a point. He’s uncomfortable without being able to pinpoint exactly why, shifting on the couch, crossing and uncrossing his ankles. The ceiling has a yellow-brown water damage stain over the window, he notices. He opens his mouth to point this out to her, water damage being one of those things that can worsen very rapidly, but she beats him to it.

“Mr. Booth,” she says, her voice laden with meaning. “Do you trust that someone is able to love you?”

After that, well, he basically seduces her out of self-defense.

“Oh fuck,” says Nolan, eyes going wide. “Do that again.”

Hartley grins up at him from where he’s kneeling on the carpet, a predatory glint in his white teeth and in his dark eyes, so smug that Nolan almost wants to take it back. Unfortunately, that look does things to him and he’s pretty sure they’ve figured this out.

“Only if you ask nice.” Hartley’s voice is low, commanding.

Nolan tries not to visibly let his knees wobble but he’s glad for the supporting wall at his back. His tongue darts out, wetting his lips.

“Pretty please,” he says, a little hoarse.

Without breaking eye contact with him, Hartley closes the steel door of Angelo’s office safe and thumbs the lock, spinning it first one way and then the other. With a sharp click, the door springs open again. The whole process takes him less than ten seconds. All of Nolan’s lock-picking skills are clumsy and hard-won but he can recognize when he’s in the presence of a natural, a real criminal savant. His fingertips twitch with the urge to touch and he balls them up instead, pressing his fist helplessly into the divot of his right hip.

“Wow,” breathes Nolan. “That’s… that’s…”

“Sexy?” Zara suggests, and despite her straight face, he just knows she’s laughing at him.

Nolan makes a high-pitched sound of agreement.

The codes all work, disarming the alarms and opening the front door without issue, so breaking into Angelo’s vacation home feels less like a crime and more like a real estate tour. There are only a few personal touches: a framed little league soccer jersey hanging in the living room, a chipped coffee mug in the cupboard that says BEST BOSS, a themed calendar of sexy Vatican priests—a gag gift, Nolan assumes, or else Angelo’s obsession with seducing the unavailable has extended in an unexpected direction—and in every room, without fail, there are pictures of Angelo and his ex-wife smiling into the camera. They look happy. Nolan hoped selfishly that they were happy, at least for a little bit.

He distracts himself by doodling reminders in Angelo’s calendar, carefully mimicking the other man’s angular handwriting. He adds a vaguely ominous IMPORTANT! DON'T FORGET!! in red ink on a random Wednesday that falls just below the air-brushed belly button of a bare-chested Cardinal and then, flipping through the rest of the year, creates several little notes reminding him to call his son.

“What are you doing?” Zara calls from the kitchen where she and Hartley are in the process of boxing up the exquisitely painted and fully functional espresso machine. Nolan, who has spent a lot of time pretending to be a barista, had immediately made them a round of foamy cappuccinos. Hartley had complimented his smooth pull, Nolan had wiggled both eyebrows, Zara had sighed and stolen the first cup for herself.

“Nothing,” Nolan calls back, his voice overly innocent. He lets the calendar pages fall back into place and waits. A moment later, Zara’s face peeks around the doorway, her whole face scrunched up in that particular mix of suspicion and curiosity he finds inexplicably endearing. He couldn’t suppress his grin even if he tried and so he gives in to it, lets a little of the burning feeling in his chest show in his expression.

“Hi,” he says.

She blinks at him, her face softening in response.

“Hi,” she says back. Then she frowns and her suspicion re-doubles, her face re-scrunching along the familiar lines and she repeats, sharper: “What are you doing?”

“I’ve never done anything in my life,” says Nolan, breezing past her spot in the doorway and heading towards the kitchen. He can feel her glare burning against the back of his neck and he has to smother a laugh with the back of his hand.

Hartley shoots him a knowing look when he enters and Nolan shrugs back, unrepentant.

“It’s too easy,” Nolan explains.

“What’s too easy?” Zara asks immediately, entering right on his heels. He can hear the pout in her voice without turning around. Hartley and him exchange a look over the top of the boxed-up espresso machine then immediately have to look away again or risk bursting into laughter.

Hartley manfully clears his throat and gestures expansively around the room.

“I was just telling Nolan to grab himself a souvenir.”

“Liar,” Zara complains but she turns to Nolan and adds: “As long as it doesn’t endanger the job, we always try to take something besides the principal target. Just for fun.”

“Greedy,” says Nolan but he means it as a compliment. Hartley tips an imaginary hat at him.

While they take the newly boxed goods out to the car, Nolan wanders the various rooms, picking objects up at random and putting them back down. They’ve already emptied out the office safe, taking the cash and leaving the personal documents—though Hartley had, with a streak of vindictiveness more typical of Zara, suggested shredding them in the garbage disposal.

Besides the espresso machine, Angelo’s vacation home isn’t decorated with any degree of good or unusual taste, and eventually, bored, Nolan returns to the kitchen where he settles on stealing the entire eight-piece set of spoons. They have the right weight, a pleasing depth to the curve of the ladle, and a nice twisted knot at the end of the handle to give a little interest to the otherwise minimalist design but they are essentially no better or worse than a dozen sets that Nolan has researched and passed on—still, he decides, this is the right thing to take.

(Every morning when he licks the leftover honey clinging to the curve of the spoon after sweetening his coffee, he will think of them. Of this moment.)

Nolan slides into the back seat of the car, his fistful of metal clinking as Hartley reverses on the gravel driveway and heads back down the private road. Zara twists in the passenger seat to peer back at him.

“Did you grab the whole set?”

“No,” Nolan opens his palm to show off his stolen treasures. “Just the spoons.”

“Why spoons?”

“I didn’t have any yet.”

“You…” Zara narrows her eyes. “Why?”

He just grins at her, shaking his head. He sees the question simmering, sitting just under her tongue the whole long drive back to the city where he insists on pulling over at the first post office they pass so that he can mail off his new spoons right away, wrapping them individually in pink bubble wrap three times over to be safe. He touches each one like it is infinitely precious. She watches him the whole time and he can feel her curiosity sharpening to a killing edge, feels her desire to pin him, wriggling, to her internal corkboard like a butterfly in order to diagram and catalog his each and every detail. He feels something squirm in his stomach at the thought.

Still, he keeps evading her questions with an infuriating obliviousness that has her digging her newly painted nails into the leather of her seat. Even Hartley is grinning openly at her frustration.

Eventually, when he thinks she might actually tear through the car seat, Nolan opens his hands palm-up as if in surrender. “Alright, alright,” he says, drawing the words out, savoring them. “I can’t explain the spoons. Ask me something else.”

The instant triumph that lights up her face almost has him backing out from reflexive self-preservation. She must catch some muscle twitch, some micro-expression of panic, because she at once goes unreadable and aloof. Her nails detach from the seat, and she taps a single finger slowly against her chin in a show of bored detachment. If he didn’t know her better, if he hadn’t already watched her switch her masks on and off smooth as butter, Nolan might even have bought the act.

“Offer expires in five… four…” He jokes nervously.

Her gaze flicks to Hartley and then back to him.

“If you could choose anyone to paint you,” Zara asks. “Who would it be?”

It becomes a recurring game between the three of them, after that. 

Harmless, almost sweet.

Nolan will be half-sprawled across the kitchen counter, reading off options on the take-out menu between sips of white wine. “What do you want for dinner?” he will ask, and Zara will carefully slide a coaster under his wine glass, even though the kitchen counter is marble and doesn’t technically need one, and say, “Ask me something else.”

A thousand useless questions will rush into his head. He will grin stupidly, feeling all warm and fuzzy, feeling like he’s dating them, almost, kind of, and ask, “How did you and Hartley meet?”

“I’ve already figured it out,” Nolan announces, throwing back the dregs of his fourth margarita. The three of them have settled themselves comfortably at the bar inside the private members-only airport lounge, and he can feel the attention they’re attracting, the eyes drawn magnetically towards their little corner. Zara can feel it too, he knows, and revels in it. She lets her hair spill in black waves down the back of her chair, her body held at an enticing angle, and her voice just soft enough that the straining audience can catch the musical quality of her voice without understanding any of the words.

“I know why you really asked me to join you on your little Venice trip.”

“I doubt that,” says Hartley, wry.

Nolan flicks his balled-up straw wrapper at him, which he doesn’t even bother dodging. It bounces off his perfectly defined chest and lands on the floor. Zara merely raises an eyebrow and says, “If you know, then what’s your answer?”

“Yes,” says Nolan, maybe a little too eager. He hesitates, biting at his lower lip, and then confesses quickly, like ripping off a band-aid. “I’ve been thinking about it too, you know.”

Hartley sits up straighter and Zara tucks the cascade of her hair behind one ear, eyeing him with sudden interest.

“Have you?”

Stupidly, Nolan feels the tips of his ears go hot.

“Who wouldn’t?” He says, tilting his finished drink back to get at a misshapen ice cube. He sucks on it, enjoying the sharp sting of cold, tracing the uneven edges of the ice as it melts against his tongue. He swallows and continues, “The Gallerie dell’Accademia hasn’t been successfully stolen from since Hastings nearly a decade ago. I’m assuming your plan needs a third?”

Zara’s other eyebrow joins her first. She looks at Hartley, who grins back at her, rubbing two fingers along the underside of his jaw.

“How much do I owe you?” Zara asks.

“You bet against me?” Nolan complains. “Come on, it was obvious that the whole Angelo thing was a set-up, you didn’t really need me for that.

Hartley ignores him, winking across the table at Zara in an exaggerated way. “I’ll collect later.”

“Awwwwww, so cute,” Nolan coos, only half-joking, making heart eyes with his sticky fingers. “Stop being so literally perfect or I will actually die.”

“It’s such a boring story.” Zara looks almost apologetic.

“I had no idea you felt that way.” Hartley fakes a heartbroken sniffle until she swats him playfully on the arm. Then he swivels on his kitchen bar stool towards Nolan to explain, “She usually lies about how we really met.” He leans one elbow on the counter as he removes the cork from a new bottle of chardonnay and sets to refilling all of their glasses. Nolan can’t remember what number bottle this is, and the need for take-out food is becoming pressing.

“So what’s the truth?” Nolan asks, intrigued.

“We met at a bar in San Diego. We were both, hmm, twenty-one? Twenty-two? I remember I was still enjoying the novelty of drinking in public.” Zara sighs in a put-upon way, but there are fond crinkles at the corners of her dark eyes as she looks over at Hartley.  “Both of us were free for the night, single, attractive. He took me back to his hotel, and well—the next morning I noticed his soulmark.”

Though he should’ve been prepared for it, the mention of soulmarks makes Nolan feel like he is sitting on hot coals. He shifts awkwardly in his chair, and she must pick up on something because her expression loses some of its reminiscent warmth.

“Like I said, very boring. Neither of us was even in town for anything fun.”

“I think it’s sweet,” Nolan says quietly, toying with the stem of his wine glass. “Love at first sight. It’s nice when fate makes things easy, you know?

Hartley and Zara exchange a heavy glance. She laughs in a way that isn’t exactly happy.

“It took a while for her to warm up to me.” Hartley’s tone of voice is so lighthearted that it triggers all of his conman’s instincts, his shark’s sense for blood in the water. There’s a pause, almost like an invitation for Nolan to ask more. He opens his mouth to—and then takes a sip of his wine instead.

It’s not his place to ask, he reminds himself.

“I’m glad you both worked it out,” Nolan says instead and is startled to realize that he’s being honest. Completely and totally. All those years they’ve known each other, keeping each other safe, making each other happy—they deserve it. They deserve to have each other.

“What about your soulmate?” Hartley asks, topping off his drink again.

Nolan smiles a little crookedly, swirling the honey-gold liquid so that it catches the light. The helpless affection he feels for them bleeds into his expression and it’s all he can do to keep his eyes on his glass. He’s sure, in that moment, if they looked directly at him, they would see everything.  Right through his empty, aching glass-bottle heart.

“That,” he promises, “is not a boring story.”

There’s a bookstore he always visits when he’s in Venice. The store has become so used to the constant floods that they keep their books in bathtubs and little boats. His mother might have taken him there once when he was very young, or told him stories about it perhaps, his memories of that time gone soft and blurry. The store always smells of old books and damp stone; crammed full of books, magazines, maps, and the stray cats who have learned to escape the overflowing canals for refuge among the high shelves.

They and all the treasures of the Libreria Acqua Alta, like Klimt and Egypt and maybe Nolan himself, who have learned to live half-drowned.

Nolan caps his pen and folds the note in quick, simple lines to create a little paper airplane.

He looks across the aisle to see Hartley already shaking his head in silent warning. Next to him, Zara is still asleep, her face relaxed and innocent with dreaming, her first-class seat reclined nearly flat. The lights in the airplane cabin are dimmed and the sounds are all muffled, that strange suspended bubble of time and space that is a cross-Atlantic flight from New York City to Venice. He’s always thought there was something strangely touching, almost wholesome, about a group of strangers laid out to sleep side by side. A kind of trust found nowhere else.

Nolan grins, brimming over with mischief, already hefting the paper airplane. He aims carefully and releases, confident in the knowledge that Harley will snatch the little note before the displaced air can do more than stir the loose hair framing Zara’s softened features. 

He’s right, of course. Hartley plucks the paper airplane with an easy swipe.

Zara half-sighs in her sleep, shifting, kicking her legs out further into Hartley’s space. Hartley smiles down at her reflexively, with easy and unthinking tenderness, re-tucking her blanket around her more securely. Nolan feels something throb under his breastbone, feels something catch and hook, tugging his breath out of his lungs.

(He is the boy with his nose pressed to the glass. He is the boy lingering by the telephone that doesn’t ring. He is the boy at the talent show with no one to clap just for him, his monocle magnifying the empty seats in the front row.)

Then Hartley unfolds his note. He reads it over then blinks, reading it over a second time more closely. He looks up, catching Nolan’s eye, and grins in a way that gives him goosebumps. That puts the air back into his body.

“What do you think?” Nolan asks, trying to sound cool, but his mouth is dry from the airplane cabin pressure and his voice comes out wrong, too needy. Dry-mouth will do that to you, hazardous to health and dignity.

“A three-man Belgium Fire Drill? It’ll need some work,” Hartley hedges but Nolan can hear the buried compliment. Even if he didn’t, the fact that Hartley leans over and gently shakes Zara awake would be a dead giveaway.

“Go away,” Zara grumbles, half-asleep and shockingly adorable, even as she cracks open bleary eyes to squint at the note that Hartley passes over to her.

“God,” she groans. “You do write like a nerd. I bet you used commas and everything when you passed notes in class.”

“You will not bully me out of my Oxford comma,” Nolan says, resolute. “I will die on this hill.”

“Is that so?”

The oddly flat inflection of Hartley’s tone reminds him of that night with Angelo. Curiosity wins out over caution and Nolan risks a glance up. He finds both of them looking at him with such intensity that all the cleverly evasive words dry up in his mouth.

“Go on,” demands Zara. “Tell us how you met your soulmate.”

Nolan looks away from them. He licks his lips and takes a desperate sip of wine but it hardly helps the lump in his throat.

“Ask me something else,” he begs.

Chapter Text

“Ask me something else.”

The silence stretches longer and longer, nearly to the point of pain, until Nolan’s throat feels so tight he thinks he’ll choke on the silence, on all the things he doesn’t dare say.

“Alright,” says Zara eventually, easing back. “What’s the one thing in the world you wish you could steal but can’t?”

If you only knew, a private voice howls from the very depths of him.

“Tough question,” Nolan stalls. He feels the silence stretching out again and blurts:

“The Three Graces.”

“The one at the Getty?” Hartley looks surprised, a faint crinkle between his brows, and Nolan nods, trying not to wince outwardly, to reveal that he’s given a bit of himself away after all. They always draw more truth out of him than they should and the only comfort is that they won’t recognize it.

If Zara is surprised at his answer, or suspicious, she doesn’t say so, moving straight into logistics. “Life-size marble statues would be difficult,” she acknowledges, fingernails clicking on the kitchen countertop as she thinks it through. “But not impossible.”

“It’s not that.” Nolan twists the stem of the empty wine glass between his fingers, knowing their conversation is purely hypothetical but still oddly touched. “I can’t steal it. Because of the ground rules.”

“The ground rules?”

“Yeah,” says Nolan. “There are checks and balances, you know. A system. I don’t just go around stealing things willy-nilly. That would be unethical.”

“Is that right?” Zara asks, the corner of her mouth twitching.

“Please enlighten us,” Hartley adds, pouring another round of wine, killing the bottle.

Nolan straightens and adopts a snooty British accent, adjusting his imaginary spectacles. He would love to get up and pace with his hands behind his back, really ham up the professor act, but he’s not entirely sure he can walk in a straight line right now.

“Ethical Art Heist Philosophy 101,” he declares. “Can be broken down into two simple questions: Do I want it more? Would I take better care of it?”

Nolan glances back and forth between them with mock sternness, waiting for them to digest the profound logic of this statement. Hartley and Zara humor him with all due gravitas, exchanging thoughtful looks.

“And you think the Getty would take better care of it than you would?” Zara tilts her head in question, her loose ponytail swaying behind her back.

“Not the Getty,” he clarifies and then hesitates. How much of himself is he about to give away? A little bit of the truth won’t hurt, he decides. He’ll tell them just enough.

“You remember when I stole Cézanne’s Still Life With Apples?”

“Not at the time,” Hartley admits. “We realized it was you later when we prepared to—“ and he wiggles his hand in a vague egg-like shape, neatly summarizing and dismissing the whole unfortunate Golden Egg saga in a single gesture. Nolan takes a sip of wine to cover the bitter twist of his mouth, the unexpected stomp on not just his heart but his professional ego. The reminder that he had been a complete non-entity to them for most of what he had considered their epic courtship sits painfully under his breastbone.

“It wasn’t my best work,” Nolan shrugs, a little too carelessly. “Anyway, I was pretending to be an art student while I was casing the place. And almost every time I was there, I ran into the same old woman. Gertrude. Total GILF.” He adds, just to see Zara scrunch up her nose in distaste. “So of course I had to chat her up.”

She had talked to him first actually. Had asked him questions about his art program and asked to see his sketchbook—which, being mostly a prop and for his own amusement, he’d filled exclusively with close-ups charcoal drawings of historically accurate penises. Ya know, for science. She hadn’t been phased at all, just laughed and teased him with a sly ‘they do say to draw what you know’.

They’d struck up a strange friendship over the course of the next month, never arranging to meet but overlapping with enough regularity that his visits began to feel incomplete without seeing her.

“Gertrude always went to see one thing.”

“The Three Graces.” Zara guesses.

Nolan nods.

“She said… on their honeymoon… they saw the statue back when it was still displayed in Italy. And she was grateful to live close enough to visit… now that she was the only one left to remember.”

What Gertrude had really told him was that she had gone on her honeymoon with her two soulmates. “Us three girls couldn’t have looked more different than those beautiful marble statues,” she had laughed, the tears at the corners of her eyes trickling down into the deeply grooved laugh lines etched there over the course of a happy lifetime. “We were all short, fat, and brown. But lord above, you see how they look at each other? That’s how we looked at each other too.”

It had been a mildly interesting fact at the time—meeting someone with two soulmates was pretty rare. Now, with the clarity of hindsight, he wishes he had asked more questions. How had the three of them met? And did she have any advice for the awkward and unlucky third wheel?

“That’s really sweet of you,” says Zara but there is something slightly off about the way she’s looking at him, like she has finally gotten ahold of a puzzle piece but isn’t entirely happy with the picture that’s forming.

Nolan kicks back, swirling his wine in what he hopes is a villainous way.

“Not really,” he says. “She’s ancient, I’m sure she’ll kick the bucket any day now.”

It gets the laugh that he was aiming for but the strange undercurrent remains. The thing he can sense sometimes, that prickles at his well-honed instincts.

“It’s not a bad philosophy,” Zara muses but there’s a sharpness to her, not a meanness but an intensity, as if the full force of her attention is honing in on him despite the idle way she is inspecting the golden wine swirling in her own glass, not looking at him at all.

“But you should know that Bishop only has one rule.”

Nolan rubs the tingling pads of his fingers together, feels the same pins-and-needles he gets on a job when the stakes are high and have to be played just right. The difference between being in danger and being close to it, like magnetic fields beginning to push on one another.

“Oh?” He says. “And what’s that?”

They grin at him then, that perfect matched-set look that gets him every time.

“Finders keepers.”

The Fire Drill is one of Nolan’s favorite cons, though he usually goes for a more modified Trojan Horse version. He’s good at playing the honeypot, the best friend, the harmless new guy, the office gossip. He can blend in easily and make people feel like they’ve known him for years, that they can tell him anything.

The original 1906 con was the work of career criminal Wilhelm Voigt who, arriving in a small Prussian hamlet armed with nothing but his mustache and a captain’s uniform from a military surplus store, declared himself an army inspector and took unopposed control of the entire town. For days, no one questioned his authority. He wore the uniform and that was enough. (Not that Nolan blames them—he, too, loves a man in uniform.) With the power of his perceived military authority and, this really must be emphasized, his truly stunning snow-white mustache, Wilhelm conscripted local soldiers to arrest the mayor and treasurer for crooked bookkeeping. Eventually, he “confiscated” the city’s treasury, issuing a fake receipt before walking away.

He would have gotten away with it too, if only he had resisted boasting to a former cellmate who sold him out to the authorities. Not that Nolan blames Wilhelm either—his second, and possibly most embarrassing arrest, happened pretty much the same way.

Anyway.

For all his strengths, Nolan knows he is missing the innate authority needed to pull off a good Fire Drill heist. Maybe it’s his lack of mustache.

But Zara and Hartley have the je ne sais quoi—the effortless force of personality, the aura of complete self-assurance, the tone of voice that make people obey without thinking about it. Big cat energy, intimidating and a little dangerous even when they’re relaxed and off-guard. Put the two of them in uniform (and here, Nolan admits, his attention wanders a little bit), have them respond to a false threat, and call it a day.

Straightforward, right? Easy, even.

Well, Nolan thinks as his fingertips dance across the unrolled museum blueprint, where’s the fun in that?

“It was you!” Nolan jerks upright from the couch, only barely stopping himself from falling to the floor with an ungraceful flail of his arms. One of his elbows smacks into the coffee table, upending the neat stacks of travelogues Zara has been reading to brush up on her Italian and sending shooting pains up his funny bone.

“Probably,” says Zara, unconcerned, barely glancing up from her book, but Hartley draws closer and carefully grabs his arm, running a thumb over the reddened scrap along his elbow.

“Ouch,” Hartley says sympathetically. “Want some ice?”

“I—“ Nolan feels his breath catch, feels the shooting pains travel from his elbow up into his chest. The back of his neck goes hot and tingly.

“D-don’t distract me,” he jokes weakly, pulling away. Hartley lets him.

“Well then,” Zara says, turning a page, “What did we do?”

“The Isabella Stewart Gardner heist.” Halfway up his throat, the words become hushed and wonderstruck, practically dripping with admiration. Thirteen works of art stolen in the single night, the largest property theft of the modern world, an unsolved cold case with no leads even two decades later despite the active 10 million dollar reward. Talk about a successful, if straightforward, Fire Drill. Nolan feels his water mouth, feels the heat at the back of his neck spreading up into his face as he looks at Hartley who is still too close, half-bent over him, pinning him to the couch with sheer presence.

That’s my soulmate, he thinks, flustered. Giddy all over again.

“I cannot confirm or deny,” Hartley says, radiating so much smug satisfaction that he might as well have pulled the missing Vermeer out from under the couch. Whatever Nolan’s expression is doing,  red-cheeked and star-struck, seems to please him. His fingers curl around the back of the couch, the scrape of skin against taut fabric, and Nolan can’t help but note the flex of muscle. If he turns his head the barest amount, he could sink his teeth into the flawless expanse of Hartley's forearm without ever breaking eye contact.

Instead, Nolan clears his throat and asks, “So, totally unrelated, but have I asked you for your autograph yet?”

The plan goes like this:

For two glorious weeks in mid-February, the whole city of Venice is caught up in the madness of Il Carnevale. On the last day, Fat Tuesday, the festivities culminate in a riot of parades, masquerades, and revelries of every kind.

The Gallerie dell’Accademia has generally acted with restraint, participating in the broader celebrations by offering special tours or programs that explore the history of the Carnival and the significance of masks in Venetian art. Classy and educational, y’know.

They’re going to change that.

“So is this officially a team-up? A canon event?” Nolan asks, practically skipping along in his chunky galoshes. (Which is, for the record, very difficult. The judges are in awe.) Hartley and Zara are in more practical and fashionable leather boots but he hadn’t been able to resist the yellow rubber galoshes or the old man marketing them as an “authentic Venetian experience” perfect for navigating the half-flooded streets. Zara had pointed out the ‘Made In China’ tag disputed this claim to cultural relevance and Hartley had pointed out that they were completely hideous but Nolan’s heart had remained unswayed.

“We need a team name!” Nolan insists, zig-zagging through the alleyway, making sure to step into every single puddle. “We need a catchphrase!”

“Bad things come in threes,” Hartley suggests.

“Oh my god,” he realizes, coming to a halt so fast that Zara almost runs into him. She fumbles her armful of Behind The Mask flyers and jabs him in the shoulder with an annoyed finger but he is too busy staring at Hartley in amazement. “You’re a nerd! You’re secretly uncool! I love—“ he stutters, stumbling over his own feet, and continues on, mostly intact “—hearing you embarrass yourself.”

The plan goes like this:

Exactly ten days before the start of Carnevale, on a mundane and entirely boring Thursday afternoon, a handsome man dressed like an academic except for his yellow galoshes stumbles in through the front doors of the Gallerie dell’Accademia.

“Sorry I’m late,” says the man, adjusting his round glasses and grinning with the kind of bright, infectious friendliness that makes you feel like you’ve known each other forever. “I got a little lost on my way through the marketplace. But look!”

He proudly sticks out one of his oversized rubber boots and nearly overbalances.

“Anyway,” he says, straightening. “I’m Nicholas King. Here for the Behind the Mask program. You got the email, right?”

Not all time is created equal—any half-decent criminal can tell you that. 

Weeks or months of staking out a building balanced against the thirty sweaty seconds of breaking into it. Success or failure balanced on the edge of a knife. Nolan is grateful that drugs do nothing for him; he’s under no illusions as to his self-control otherwise. He’s a hedonist, a glutton, but his drug of choice has always been the con, the sweet adrenaline thrill of working the sharp, unsteady angle to completion.

The ancient Egyptians were obsessive time-keepers too and his mother always made a point to celebrate the beginning of the old Egyptian New Year in mid-July with her summer classes by giving them easy extra credit assignments. Nolan got to celebrate with ice cream and extra bedtime stories, although sometimes they weren’t so much stories as excerpts from whatever essay she hadn’t had time to finish up at the office.

“The heliacal rise of the star Sirius, known to the Egyptians as Sopdet, marked the beginning of the annual flooding of the Nile and the start of a new year,” His mom would read, pausing occasionally to check if he was still awake. “Initially, the Egyptians adopted a lunar calendar consisting of 360 days, but they soon recognized that this system resulted in an additional five days beyond the calendar year before Sirius returned to its proper position. These unanchored, free-floating days were considered ‘time outside of time’ and gave rise to some unusual superstitions…” 

Five days. 

It’s only been five days since they settled into their shared suite, their cozy two-bedroom Venetian vacation home, but it already feels like a lifetime, like they never parted ways in Paris at all. It feels better, actually, somehow easy despite what should be an extra weight of baggage between them after his double-cross. Instead, it feels like—like they might really be friends.

Time outside of time. Unanchored days, loose and lawless.

Nolan leans closer for a better view of the museum blueprint they bought off Pablo and experimentally hooks his chin over Zara’s shoulder. For half a second, she goes very still and he prepares himself to jump back, to turn the rejection into a joke, but then she just continues talking as if nothing has happened, pointing out the various potential exit points.

“Do you think it could work?” She asks him, turning her head until they are almost nose to nose. She hasn’t bothered putting on make-up this morning, puttering about their shared kitchen with a mug of lukewarm coffee and stifling the occasional yawn in her baggy sweater sleeve. Nolan wants to scream. Wants to press tender little kisses to the bags under her eyes.

“Yeah,” he whispers. For some reason, his heart is racing. “I’m starting to think it could.”

“Why did you fall in love with Dad?”

Nolan is seven years old and small for his age, curled up in his usual place on the lumpy couch in his mother’s office. He’s busy watching the ebb and flow of university students passing by the propped-open door but he notes the pause in the rhythmic scritch-scritch of her pen.

“He’s my soulmate,” she answers simply.

“But what if he wasn’t?” Nolan presses. 

She doesn’t respond right away and curiosity pulls his attention from the door to look at her. He is surprised to find his mother looking back at him, really looking. Her brown-eyed gaze, usually warm but distracted, is inexplicably sad. She looks tired, he realizes. She looks tired a lot.

“Oh, darling. Your soulmate will love you.” She puts down her pen and reaches out to him. He goes willingly, gladly, pressing his face to the warm safety of her shoulder. 

“They have to.”

Nolan, eyes closed, feels his little heart twist with something he is too young to identify. Feels a seed being planted in the very depths of him, in that black fertile soil.

It isn’t until later—much, much later—that he will recognize the feeling as doubt.

By then it will have already grown, wild and nearly unchecked, over and through the garden bed of his heart. A weed, an invasive species, and yet, so familiar that he’s afraid that the snarl of root systems is all that’s holding the pieces of him together.

“How can you not like Pablo?” Nolan asks, aghast. His breath puffs out, white and visible in the cold. “He’s a staple of the industry! You couldn’t ask for a better info broker. Plus, he’s adorable.”

“Adorable?”

“He drinks espresso like he’s having tea with the Queen, pinky extended, napkin on his lap, taking itty bitty little sips, and yet he swears like a sailor. How is that not adorable?”

Zara ignores him and instead makes a big show out of cheering for the colorful passing boats. She blows a kiss towards one of the gondoliers as he passes under their arched bridge and his face goes bright red, visible despite his La Belfana face paint. Nolan had insisted they watch the Regatta delle Befane (“Come on, Zara, how can you of all people be uninterested? It’s traditional! Yes, I’m calling you a snob! Hey, if you want a round two, I’m happy to—”) and was only regretting it a little bit, his nose and lips chapped from the cold wind rising off the water.

“No messing with the race,” Hartley teases her. “Remember what happened in Amsterdam?”

“That was an accident.” Zara looks entirely too satisfied for that to be true.

“When were you in Amsterdam?” He asks, intrigued. He can’t remember any jobs they did there, nothing they put the Bishop signature on at least. An impossible fantasy pops, fully formed, into his brain of the two of them visiting the sex club where he used to work, and he firmly banishes the image of them parting the glittering curtains to his private booth.

Later, he promises himself.

“Never mind,” Nolan says before Hartley can answer, turning his back on the gondola race. “Don’t distract me. We were talking about Pablo.”

“He’s fine,” Zara snaps and immediately purses her lips like she wants to suck the words back into her mouth. “I just don’t think he’s necessary for this particular job.”

Nolan cocks his head, watching her. Something niggling in the back of his brain.

“What?” Zara says, defensively.

“Wow, you do dislike him,” Nolan realizes, trying to puzzle through her strange reaction. He can feel the shape of something coming into focus, little details piling up here and there into a recognizable picture. “I bet you can’t stand that he only does business face-to-face. You must hate how no matter how much you pay him, he always seems to take away more information from a meeting than he gives, huh?”

Zara’s eyes flash with anger and his stomach gives a sudden seasick lurch. Has he finally overstepped, has he—?

“You have to admit,” Hartley says mildly. “The man is a bit patronizing.”

Zara exhales a huff of breath—half a snort of laughter and half a release of tension—and Nolan realizes that he, too, was holding his breath. He lets it go with an audible whoosh.

“I’ll meet with Pablo then,” he offers tentatively, an olive branch. “He likes me.”

Hartley and Zara exchange a look, one of those still-impenetrable Bishop Looks™ that seem to say a hundred secret things at once. Nolan can only perceive, dimly, the shape of something naggingly familiar in their silence—something he should be able to figure out. His gut is screaming Don’t Trust Them! at him while his heart sticks its fingers in its ears.

“It’s fine,” says Hartley, just a shade too casual. “It’s better if we all go together.”

They let Nolan make all the arrangements so when they finally step into the little pop-up macaroon shop at the end of a maze of residential streets tucked behind the main thoroughfare, both Zara and Hartley look around the cutesy pink-and-purple interior with raised eyebrows. The air smells intensely of sugar and the warmth is such a contrast to the chill outside that Hartley’s designer glasses fog over momentarily.

“So you haven’t figured it out,” Nolan says, smug. He’d been hoping to surprise them—it happens so rarely and he enjoys it every time.

“Haven’t figured what out?” Zara asks, sharper than he expects. Something more than her usual annoyance at not having all the cards in her own hand is putting her on edge and Nolan, who had been planning to dangle the information just out of reach, hesitates only a moment.

“Pablo’s soulmate is an undercover food critic,” he explains. “If I find a good spot that they don’t already know about, he cuts me a deal.”

“Usually we meet in a Starbucks,” Hartley mutters, cleaning his glasses with the hem of his sweater. Both of them are dressed in layers of soft fabrics, cable knits in creams, grays, and slate blue. Still elegant but unassuming, meant to make them appear harmless. The strategy isn’t entirely effective—they have too much of that big cat energy to ever be truly approachable—but it makes Nolan’s heart do weird things when he looks at them too long.

“Wow,” he says, blinking a little. “I guess he doesn’t like you either.”

Whatever his personal feelings, Pablo greets them all with equal friendliness. He’s a shorter man in his late sixties, neither handsome nor ugly, never over or underdressed for his surroundings, so easily overlooked that it must have required extensive training. Still, as he takes a sip of his espresso, he can’t suppress the dainty lift of his pinky. Nolan flashes a conspiratorial grin at Zara and Hartley which he hopes communicates come on, isn’t this the definition of adorable? The half-suppressed grimace they flash back at him might mean something along the lines of we are buying you a dictionary on the way home or maybe is just an expression of discomfort at how the three of them are forced to squeeze close together to fit around the comically tiny bistro table.

“So what’s the verdict?” Nolan asks as Pablo dunks a lavender-colored macaroon in his coffee and takes a thoughtful bite.

“Fifteen percent,” Pablo says, dabbing at his upper lip.

“Deal,” he agrees easily. With most info brokers, he would try and haggle (re: pout) but he’s known Pablo long enough that they both cut to the chase. Neither Zara or Hartley object and Nolan wonders if they also skip the haggling step or if they simply trust him to take the lead during this meeting. They might just be leveraging his closer relationship with Pablo for their own benefit but whatever the reason, they are content to sit back and watch—Zara with her show of cool detachment, Hartley with watchful patience—as Nolan hashes out the details.

He does his best to concentrate on the present.

Pablo has cultivated a reputation of neutrality and his price tag includes complete digression. If Nolan thinks of even half the outrageous offers he made trying to pry information about Bishop out of the reticent old man, he would be tempted to burst into hysterical giggles or tears or both.

If Pablo was surprised to see the three of them walk through the door together—Nolan hadn’t told him either; he doesn’t really expect to catch the man off guard during his lifetime but he enjoys the challenge of trying!—not even the slightest twitch of an eyebrow betrayed him.

It isn’t until the very end, when all of them are shaking hands and making a show of being totally normal business people leaving a totally normal business meeting, that there’s the slightest hint of the dangerous undercurrents churning beneath their smooth conversational surface.

“If you want to schedule a follow-up meeting about the other objective,” Pablo says, looking deliberately past him towards Hartley and Zara. “I’m in town for the rest of the week.”

His voice doesn’t change, still blandly friendly without any suspicious or undue emphasis on his words. He doesn’t wink or nudge or make meaningful eye contact. But Nolan is a consummate professional—he’s good at what he does, at catching the invisible cues and clues that normal people don’t even know they’ve dropped. Pablo isn’t a normal person and that makes the secret message all the more blatant.

Don’t trust them.

His warning is kind. Touching. Heart-breaking.

“We’ll keep that in mind,” Zara replies, smiling sweetly, but her eyes are as cold as he’s ever seen them—they’re consummate professionals, after all.

They heard it too.

Nolan spends Christmas alone in his house surrounded by furniture catalogs, buying himself anything he wants.

(He wants and wants and wants.)

His house feels like an exhibition still under construction—unfinished walls, empty spaces, no centerpiece to make it whole. He visits a local print shop and picks up five-dollar photocopies of the art he plans to steal back. The copies are flat and lifeless, the colors are a sad approximation, and the cheap paper is nearly see-through, easily wrinkled.

He tapes the copies up on the wall anyway, a reminder and a promise to himself.

None of his contacts can give him a single lead on the whereabouts of Klimt’s painting since it disappeared from evidence processing. The rumors on the black market add insult to injury: insurance fraud, a payout too large to ignore. The thought of The Kiss locked away, held hostage for mere profit, makes him feel sick.

In a fit of holiday-induced depression, Nolan rips down all the print-outs.

No placeholders, he promises himself.

I want the real thing, he thinks and opens another bottle of whiskey.

“Nolan! Nolan, slow down—“

He looks back over his shoulder and catches them exchanging a look that so clearly means damage control that he can’t help letting out a humorless bark of laughter.

“Hurry up,” he says, trying to turn the sound into a more convincing laugh. “It looks like rain and since you two are too cool for proper, culturally appropriate rain boots—“

“Nolan,” says Zara, grabbing his wrist and pulling him to a stop in the street, heedless of the gathering clouds or the cars zipping past spraying a cold mist at them. It’s not a pretty part of town, purely functional, a wide two-lane throughway with ugly grey buildings on either side. No view, no water. There’s nothing for him to pretend to look at as her warm thumb rests over his pulse point. His heartbeat is going too slow. It should be racing, triple-stepping, bleeding out. But Nolan… he already knows, doesn’t he? He’s not here because he trusts them.

She frowns, looking down at where their hands connect and then back up in his face.

“Nolan,” she says again with a slow, deliberate breath. The kind of breath you take when lining up a shot you can’t afford to miss, when the stakes are high and have to be played just right. 

“Ask us something else.”

"Pen pals?" Gertrude asks incredulously, pausing mid-stir. The coffee at the Getty Cafe is expensive and barely a step above sludge, but the stunning garden view and the scent of flowers make it worthwhile. Nolan is as beautiful as any of the blooming flowers thank you very much, still baby-faced enough to pass for an undergraduate student despite turning twenty-four years old on the weekend. He’s got big plans to get himself an original Cézanne for his birthday—there’s a fine line between self-care and federal crime and he plans to walk it blindfolded.

“Kind of. My soulmate thought it’d be a good way to get to know each other," Nolan answers her, trying not to sound defensive. "Why rush things?”

Gertrude eyes his sketchbook of penises meaningfully.

Nolan feels his face heat up. "I just… want things to go well.”

Gertrude reaches across the table and takes his hand. Her skin is fragile and age-spotted, like some of the old vellum scrolls on display in the textile exhibit and he holds her hand the same way he has learned to hold the artwork he steals. Careful, almost reverent, touching just the edges for fear of causing damage.

"Don’t worry so much," she tells him, kind but firm. "Your soulmate will love you. They have to.”

He looks away, out over the beautiful gardens blurring into blots of color. Blurring? He sniffles, swiping the back of his hand over his face, trying to play up a sudden attack of allergies.

Those are his mother’s words, and yet, they sound so different.

The difference between they don’t have a choice and even if they did, they would choose you anyway.

Professionally speaking, Bishop is known for their attention to detail.

Hartley divides a stack of glossy Behind The Mask flyers then preps a paintbrush and a small container of cold tea. Zara consults a highlighted map of areas in Venice where the staff members of the Gallerie dell’Accademia live or are otherwise known to frequent. Tonight, they’ll go around the city to hang up a range of variously-aged flyers in places where they’ll have the maximum psychological effect.   

“Wow,” says Nolan, propping his chin up on one elbow as he watches them work. “You guys really do put the Gaslight in Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss.”

“Shut up.” Zara shoves a second brush at him but before she turns away, he notices the tips of her ears turning red.

“No, really,” he teases, tickling the tip of the paintbrush along the curve of her earlobe to let her know she’s been caught. “I suppose it’s why your character work is so exceptional. Every gesture you make, every line you deliver—it’s pure Stanislavski. ‘There are no small parts’, huh? Not when it’s you.”

He watches, fascinated, as the blush spreads from the tips of her ears across her sculpted cheekbones. She shakes her head, her loose hair forming a protective curtain between them. He’s tempted to reach out anyway, to part the strands of dark hair with the tip of the paintbrush, wants to drink his fill of the vulnerable pleasure he saw flash across her face. Wants to press his lips to the suprise-softened oh of her mouth.

“You’re such a flirt,” she sighs, hidden away from him. “So unserious.”

“No one is more serious about you guys than I am,” he says, but only because he knows they won’t believe him.

Nolan, in his guise of Nicholas King, insists on getting a quick and dirty tour of the museum.

The museum director, a veritable dragon of a woman named Giulia Vianello, loans him both of her assistants since they’re on their lunch break. Nolan makes apologetic faces behind Vianello’s back but both Luca and Elena insist they’re happy to help, though the mournful way Luca eyes his unfinished sandwich makes this feel more polite than truthful.

The two assistants take turns leading the tour.

The museum building is generally prettier on the inside than the outside with high, decorated ceilings and he learns that the original structure was a Benedictine monastery which became an art school in the 1700s and then a gallery for the works of the Venetian masters. Elena is more knowledgeable about the history of the museum and the permanent exhibitions while Luca, the newest and youngest hire, a lanky and acne-ridden twenty-two-year-old, is responsible for helping Vianello manage the rotating displays and new programs.

There’s the weak link, Nolan identifies with quiet satisfaction, content to let the dynamic play out.

He can read the twitchy uncertainty in the too-quick cadence of Luca’s speech, the way his eyes dart continually back to Elena to check for her approval only to cut her off when she tries to add something, his show of overconfidence barely masking the underlying insecurity. Every time he interrupts her, the frustrated line of her mouth compresses further until her lips have practically disappeared and not even Nolan’s corny monastery jokes can lighten her blackened mood.

(Why did the monk bring a pencil to mass? To draw closer to God. Haha. It’s a good thing Zara isn’t here with him, Nolan’s poor feet wouldn’t survive her wrath.)

“Of course, this work needs no introduction,” Lucas cuts in on Elena’s explanation of how the monastery’s relatively progressive view on anatomical studies helped to elevate the realism of the Venetian masters. The younger assistant executes a ridiculous little power walk to reach the velvet curtains shielding the special exhibit before they do and then pauses dramatically, making them wait.

Not that Nolan minds. He enjoys a bit of theatrics now and then.

“Say hello,” Lucas announces, sweeping aside the heavy curtain in a heaving flourish to reveal a small ink sketch encased in protective glass. “To the Vitruvian Man.”

Hello baby boy, Nolan coos to himself, eyeing the target of their heist with a barely suppressed hunger.

“And yes, it’s smaller than people expect,” Lucas says, somewhat defensively, as the seconds tick by without him saying anything. (It’s not his fault, the tips of his fingers tingling and wanting to dance across the divot of his hip. He is busy swallowing a mouthful of spit, clinging to his character of Nicholas King with all his willpower.)

It’s true. DaVinci’s famous sketch is barely bigger than a standard printer paper. But did he have to phrase it like that?

“Ah yes,” says Nolan. He tries, not altogether successfully, to turn his laughter into a cough. “But it’s not about the size, my boy. The weight and the, um, breadth of history encompassed by the artist is—”

Elena cracks her first smile but Lucas looks decidedly unamused.

“Anyway!” Nolan claps his hands together, turning his back to DaVinci’s famous sketch as if he couldn’t care less.

“I really wanted to get a tour for the insider tips. Which bathrooms are the best? Which vending machine sometimes gives an extra bag of chips? That kind of information—that’s gold.”

As they move away from the DaVinci exhibit, Nolan learns that all the vending machines are sadly tight-fisted but Lucas helpfully informs him that a second-floor door leads out to a balcony that isn’t on camera where people like to go for smoke breaks. Nolan files this away for later and makes a mental note to pick up a pack of something other than Winstons.

“So which wing is getting cleared out for the masquerade?”

The blank looks he receives in response make him want to cackle and rub his hands together with evil glee.

“You know… the big fundraising event for the Carnival? The grand finale of the Behind The Mask program?”

Elena turns on Lucas with a gesture for him to explain, her expression not quite able to conceal her satisfaction at watching him flounder. She doesn’t think to question why Lucas is clueless or why Nolan isn’t, too excited for her least favorite coworker to be caught fucking up in a way that can’t be shrugged off by a superior.

“I don’t—I mean, Mrs. Vianello hasn’t officially delegated so it isn’t my responsibility—nobody told me about—“ Lucas breaks off, looking very pale and sweaty. He stares at Nolan with a confused sort of resentment as if he’s trying to figure out a polite way to ask why the hell do you know about this when I don’t???

Nolan takes pity on him.

“Ok, so don’t hate me,” he holds his palms up, looking sheepish. “But my wife is on the museum’s board of directors. Nepotism, I know, but I swear I am an expert in the history of masks.” He carefully derails the conversation, shifting the question away from why a new employee is the only one to know about a huge upcoming event to the lesser question of his academic integrity. “Well, I’m an expert in Bauta Masks specifically and the rest of them more generally. I did want to write my next book on the Pantalone and its influence in Venetian theater but the application for grant money is such a—anyway!”

Nolan looks back and forth between the assistants, shaking his head, blinking owlishly, exuding so much familiar hapless academic energy that he can see them begin to mentally rally to the challenge—he clears the first hurdle in perfect form, the judges are showing 10s across the board!—and Elena looks as if she wants to wrap him up in a blanket and feed him like a little baby bird.

“Where do we even start?” Nolan wails. But on the inside, he grins like a shark.

The plan goes like this:

First, the flyers.

Second, Nicholas King starts his first day at work and innocently asks a question about the museum’s upcoming Masquerade Ball.

Third, the unlucky Lucas will refer to his email inbox to defend himself from accusations of having majorly dropped the ball. Unfortunately for him, he will find twenty-six emails in his spam folder from one Isabella King, Vice Chair of the museum’s Board of Trustees which are backdated over several months discussing all the details for the upcoming Masquerade Ball. From the acquiring of a temporary liquor license, to special donor VIP guest passes, to catering receipts for Godot’s Fine Dining—Zara has truly outdone herself.

Fourth, a flurry of panicked activity. Twelve days until the Masquerade Ball leaves them just enough time to pull the event off without giving any of the staff time to stop and think about the sheer oddness of what’s happening. Nicholas King, as a guest speaker, isn’t responsible for helping with any set up but he manages to charm everyone, even the notoriously icy Vianello, by helping to set up catering with the incredibly intimidating chef John Hidalgo. That he uses his position as husband to the Vice Chair to push for staff overtime pay and free event tickets makes him a local hero.

Fifth and final, the night of the Masquerade…

“What do you think?” Zara asks, spinning to show off her full masquerade outfit. It’s the first time he’s seen all the pieces put together and the effect leaves him speechless, struck dumb.

She is like something out of his mother’s bedtime stories. Deep midnight brocade embellished with gold bullion embroidery of constellations, matching elbow-length gloves, tightly corseted until the curving shape of her is exaggerated to its fullest; a study in desire, in decadence. Her half-moon mask covers nearly her entire face, gold paint framing her dark eyes, rendering them more alluring and unreadable than ever without any of her micro-expressions as a guide. Only her mouth is left exposed and her lips are painted a poisonous candy-apple red.

“Tell me, would I pass for a proper Venetian lady?”

She is a wet dream, a wild nightmare. She smiles at him, the curve of her mouth wicked and bewitching.

“Proper?” Nolan answers, a bit hoarse. “No—but you would’ve been worshipped.”

“Or burned at the stake,” Zara laughs, full-throated, head tilted back to show off the lovely, vulnerable line of her neck. It’s impossible to look away from her.

Nolan finds himself stepping forward and offering her his hand palm-up. She places her gloved hand in his, somehow turning the simple gesture into a beautiful piece of theater; her wrist tilted at its most delicate angle, her fingertips just barely brushing the center of his palm. He bows, kissing the back of her glove in appreciation of the spectacle, gets a faint trace of her scent, and feels his mouth water, has to fight the sudden urge to kiss his way up the rest of her arm.

“Then I would’ve burned with you and been satisfied, m’lady.”

Nolan keeps his voice steady with a heroic effort of will, thankful that he’s already put on his own mask. He knows his expression would give too much away otherwise. His mask, complementary but not matching, shows off a sun-burst crown, its navy and gold palette mirroring hers, and his outfit is cut in the same midnight brocade with celestial embroidery.

“Will you ever be serious?” Zara sighs, tugging her hand out of his grip and looping her arm through his instead. He can hear the orchestra begin to play faintly in the distance and begins to steer them in the right direction.

“Why be serious when you can have fun instead?”

“Why can’t I have both?” She pouts at him, playful but entirely effective. “Hartley is always telling me I can have everything I want, you know.”

“A wise man,” Nolan agrees.

“I’m recording this for later,” says Hartley’s tinny electronic voice in his ear.

“I take it back,” Nolan says. “Stop interrupting while I’m trying to seduce your wife.”

“She’s your wife tonight,” Hartley reminds him. The words trickle into him like warm honey, making the pit of his stomach feel strange and squirmy.

Nolan risks a side-long look at Zara and finds that she’s already watching him, her dark eyes huge and mysterious behind their painted golden frames. She smiles at him again, slow and glowing as a sunset, sugar-coated, dangerous.

“If you can handle me.”

“Ask me something else.”

Nolan feels damp spots bloom on the tops of his shoulder, can’t tell if it’s the spray from passing cars or if it’s beginning to rain. This is such an ugly stretch of city, blocky concrete buildings garishly over-lit from the row of streetlights along the thoroughfare. Nolan feels exposed, pulled out of his shell, no shadows to hide his face in, nothing to look at besides them and the flow of commuter traffic heading home. He takes a deep breath, turning his gaze from Zara to Hartley, who is hanging back a step behind them on the narrow sidewalk.

“Tell me something honest?” Nolan asks quietly.

What he’s really asking is ‘if you can’t be honest about everything, can you at least be honest about something?’ and from the way her fingers tighten around his wrist, he knows she gets the message.

He is expecting a beat of awkward silence as they hesitate and figure out what to say.

He is expecting something like I hate olives but I eat them to seem classy (Zara) or I’m naturally a leftie but I pretend to be right-handed (Hartley) or I love all the James Bond movies, even the bad ones (both).

He gets himself ready to laugh and respond you absolute heathen, I’m stealing all your olives for the rest of your life or so which hand is your favorite? or Sean Connery is the only valid Bond, fight me. It would be enough for them to say any of these things—they don’t know how much he’s figured out about them, how closely he watches them. He has stolen a hundred thousand details from them already. That’s what they call a crime of passion, right?

But.

They don’t hesitate. They don’t reveal any of their charming little secrets.

“I’m the reason my Gran is dead,” says Hartley, stepping forward and wrapping an arm around Zara’s waist, leaning against her like she’s the only thing keeping him upright. She is still holding on to Nolan’s wrist and so he, too, sways with the added weight, the three of them strung together like a row of buoys. He feels the shockwave, feels seasick, feels cold.

“She watched everyone she loved go to jail and I tried but—“ Hartley swallows, glancing away. Nolan realizes that it has, actually, begun to rain. A misting rain falling so gently that it’s only when he looks at the headlights of passing cars that he can identify the raindrops.

“The first time the police came to the house to check for my alibi, she lied for me even though it broke her heart.”

Hartley sways, buffeted by some internal unseen storm, and Nolan, unthinking, slips his other arm around his waist, completing their little triangle. Three is the most stable number, he remembers from his old geometry lessons. Hartley is hot under his touch, even through layers of cloth.

“And I—“ Zara breaks off violently, grits her teeth in a snarl, and tries again.

“I was married once.”

If Nolan makes a sound, he doesn’t hear it over the sound of rushing cars. The blood rushing in his ears. He suddenly doesn’t know if he wants to keep listening, if he deserves to. She has that look again, the skull peeking out from behind the mask.

“I was twenty. He was my father’s friend but one day he pulled me aside, gave me a perfect description of my mark and told me we were soulmates. My parents were thrilled.” Her grip around his wrist tightens to the point of pain, her neat fingernails embedded in his skin. Her words are coming faster and faster, a continual flood. An upheaval, painful and impossible to stop mid-way. “For a while, I was happy. I didn’t figure out the truth until later—he’d been stalking me for months, had spied on me when I skinny-dipped in our pool.”

Nolan feels the impact spearing white-hot through his heart and then nothing. Numbness, not even the sharp bite of her nails digging into his pulse.

“I killed him. I shot him with my grandmother’s gun and I’m not sorry.”

She would’ve killed him too that night in Paris, if he’d said the wrong thing. Nolan can’t even blame her for it.

“I’m glad,” he whispers, his voice so rough that he’s not sure the words are intelligible. “I hope you never have to think of him again.”

It’s the best blessing he can think of. The only thing he can say.

Oh, he realizes. There’s one more thing.

They were honest with him—the kind of complete, devastating, rip-your-beating-heart-out honest that Nolan hasn’t been in, fuck, in longer than he can even remember. No, I don’t forgive him and I don’t forgive you either said to his mother at the boarding school gates maybe.

He owes them honesty in return. Otherwise, it’s not—not fair to them.

“My soulmate—they aren’t… aren’t dead. They had already met… and they don’t… they don’t—“

Nolan feels his throat close up, entirely against his will. He actually chokes, gagging against his own protective reflex. Struggles to get the words out despite a lifetime of honed instincts telling him to shut up.

What if they don’t believe him?

After everything Zara has been through why would she believe him? He’s already given them an explanation for how he knows what their soulmark is and what’s more believable—the original lie, or the truth, which is that he’s an accidental bonus soulmate who has been keeping his mark secret from them and, oh yeah, has actually betrayed them before on a previous job?

“They don’t…“ know I’m their soulmate he tries to say but can’t. Physically cannot get the words out. He watches as Bishop fills in his silence with want me and wishes he could scream. It hurts, in ways he can’t even articulate.

A car goes past with the high beams on, a temporarily blinding flash of light.

Nolan blinks black spots from his vision, rain clinging to his eyelashes. He might be crying a little bit. It’s hard for him to tell sometimes, years of boarding school and life teaching him to shed tears so quietly and painlessly that it’s like he didn’t cry at all. If no one notices, it’s the same thing, right?

“Oh sweetheart,” someone says. Fingers card through his damp hair. Someone holds him up. He feels warmth pressed to his temple, hears someone whisper, “You can cry if you want.”

Nolan wants and wants and wants.

“Do you want to dance?”

Surprised, Nolan looks away from the dance floor where the flick and flourish of waltzing couples has accidentally captivated his attention.

“Do we have time?” He asks.

“You’re good for one dance,” Hartley answers.

“We should always make time to do the things we want,” says Zara with serene dignity, offering up her gloved hand. She is playing her part to perfection, a queen in gold and midnight blue. There isn’t a moment where someone isn’t watching her and Nolan is absolutely sure that when the authorities create a timeline of tonight’s event, a dozen witnesses will be able to verify her exact position nearly minute by minute. That’s the point.

“I’m beginning to suspect that you’re the wise one,” Nolan says, clasping her hand in his and leading her out to the dance floor. “And that Hartley is just plagiarizing.”

He slides his other hand down her spine to rest at the small of her back, pressing her in close to him. Tonight, he gets to play the role of her devoted husband, unable to resist touching her despite all the attention. A dozen witnesses will be able to verify it. That, also, is the point.

“Ballet?” Nolan guesses, as they begin to dance. “How long did you take lessons?”

“Three years,” Zara says, letting him spin them apart and back together. Magnets pushing, pulling. “I was good but not exceptional—it drove me crazy, I had to quit. Still, I learned how to hold myself the way I wanted, how to move the way I wanted.”

She gives the word the most delicate emphasis and yet Nolan feels a sudden heat pooling low in his belly. He leads her in a half turn and then pulls her back against his chest, more of a tango position than a waltz but there’s nobody around to grade his form. Well, almost no one.

“That move would’ve disqualified us,” she murmurs, turning her head. She hasn’t missed a step.

He knows what they must look like to everyone else—lovers in every sense of the word, curved into a single shape like sea shells nestled one into the other or spoons stacked in a drawer. Their footsteps in perfect synch with each other and with the music.

“Mhh, but it would have been worth the consequences,” says Nolan, his lips brushing against the shell of her ear. He feels her shiver—is too close to her, too connected, not to feel it.

For his own sanity, he releases her, stepping back and spinning to face her in a proper waltz hold. Her eyes are nearly black against the gold frames when she looks at him.

“The song is ending,” she says. It’s all the warning he gets before she jerks him forward, off-beat, and kisses him.

There is no chaste press of closed lips, no facade of decorum before a ramping desire.

She holds him in place with both gloved hands, her touch silken but not delicate, and then licks straight into his mouth like a wildfire. He is helpless under the onslaught, can’t do anything but open up to it. He pours himself into the kiss and it’s overwhelming, as if she is sucking something essential out of him but also giving it back clarified, electrified, a live current bouncing back and forth between them until the feedback loop of pleasure has him dizzy and reeling backward, panting for air.

It’s not the kind of kiss you have in public and if Nolan could make himself look away from her swollen mouth, the smear of lipstick at the corner of her lower lip, he is sure there would be a dozen people staring at them.

“How was that?” She asks, a little too breathless to be smug.

“Perfectly timed,” says Hartley, sounding a little short of breath himself, although that could be the bad wire connection. “You can head to the balcony now.”

“It’s a bit stuffy in here. Let’s get some air.” Nolan says loudly, for the benefit of any eavesdroppers, and also because his heart is pounding hard enough in his ears to be disorienting.

As he leads Zara off the dance floor, he makes eye contact with Lucas and manages a wink. The kid has developed a bad case of hero worship over the last twelve days and Nolan is sure he’ll be happy to run interference to keep anyone from heading to the second-floor balcony for an ill-timed smoke break.

Not that anyone watching thinks that’s what Zara and Nolan are stepping out for, and so he lets his hand linger on the dip of her lower back as they exit the ballroom.

Nolan doesn’t really remember getting back to their vacation house or falling asleep but at some point he blinks awake, staring up at the familiar coffered ceiling of his bedroom. His jacket is hanging on a chair to dry and his hair is curling at the tips, still a little damp at the nape of his neck. He feels pleasantly warm and when he sits upright, letting the comforter fall and pool in his lap, he realizes that he is wearing Hartley’s blue cable-knit sweater.

He presses his nose into the collar, relishing the softness, the lingering scent.

Coconut butter and that special biochemical something that defies description. That skips right past his frontal lobe and goes straight to the brain stem, to the limbic system. The slanting I yearn— that hooks under his breastbone and pulls the oxygen from his lungs.

I can’t tell them, Nolan thinks.

I can’t tell them I’m their soulmate.

Nolan buries his whole face in the sweater, presses under he sees fireworks behind his closed eyes, breathes in until his lungs threaten to burst. He waits to be swallowed up again, for that rushing fissure of emotion to split open and overwhelm him but a heartbeat goes by and then two and then three. He exhales slowly and looks up.

He feels wrung-out, yes.

But something else has been left behind in the wake of the flood. Maybe, just maybe there’s another seed that’s been growing in the fertile garden bed of his heart, delicate and so carefully tended that he hasn’t even been able to look at it directly, forced to only steal furtive sideways glimpses to keep it safe from himself.

“So what?” Nolan whispers aloud.

So what if he can’t tell them that they were chosen for each other by fate, meant to be because of their matching soulmarks?

He is going to make them choose him anyway.

Nolan drags the soft sleeve of the borrowed sweater over his dry eyes and makes a silent vow. He is going to seduce his soulmates, slowly, surely, coaxing them piece by piece until they belong to him completely. And when they finally choose him, when they finally feel the same way about him, then he’ll reveal the truth.

Because if they don’t choose him, if they walk away instead…

Then, despite what fate had to say about it, he would not have deserved them in the first place.

Chapter Text

If Nolan is serious about seducing his soulmates—and he is, god help him—then he’s going to need to face something that he’s been putting off. He’s been living the last few weeks without looking too closely at what he’s doing, what they’re doing with him, and why. The why scares him.

Nolan is a good conman, but even he can’t plan a honeypot with his hands placed over his eyes.

It’s time to take out the magnifying glass and the fine-toothed comb. It’s time to dissect the accumulation of ambiguous moments: what they’ve said to him and the way they’ve said it, the way they look at him, the way they move towards him, at least sometimes, like magnetism, like he has thrown their planetary orbit a little off-kilter. He will need to sit down, cross-legged on the bed with paper and pencil like he’s back in school, and work out the probabilities until he chews the end of his pencil to a pink rubber dust.

It means finally acknowledging the reason that’s been keeping his head in the sand.

Yes, they might really like him. Like, really really like him.

But what if Bishop—beautiful, cunning, prideful—looked at each other that day he left them behind in Paris and said, “You know what would teach him a lesson…?”

It was his con first, after all.

Pretended to be falling for them, to be distracted by them, softened up, vulnerable, and then at the last moment, when they finally lowered their guard, executing a perfect Judas and disappearing with the spoils. To use the same con back on him and to do it better, so friendly-flirty-smooth that it should be classified in a higher category of devastation… well.

Doesn’t that sound like them?

It’s easier when he starts thinking of it as a honeypot.

That’s probably fucked up but, oh well, Nolan decides to blame his therapist.

Because Nolan is good at seduction.

He’s always been gifted at cold reading, at soft skills, at sniffing out desire and twisting himself to fit the form of it. He knows when to give chase and when to play hard to get, knows just where to push and where to pull. He can do the whole spectrum of the Madonna-Whore complex, enjoys playing up each role. It helps that Nolan can make himself fall a little bit in love with almost anyone. It’s kinda of like snuffing out a candle with your bare fingers—if you do it right, it doesn’t really burn you.

Point being, if Nolan approaches Bishop like a job, then he knows exactly where to start.

The second the balcony door closes behind them, Nolan steps away from her, dropping his hand from the warmth of her lower back. He gives her his most professional smile, smothering the sexual tension between them like a heavy blanket over an electrical fire. Not letting it billow or steam.

Not because he wants to let go of her, or because he thinks she wants him to, but because she doesn’t.

He feels it in the beat it takes her to catch up to him as he has his costume halfway unbuttoned, revealing the nondescript black bodysuit underneath. He pauses, tilting his head at a questioning angle as if to say come on, are you waiting for a hand-written invitation or something? He takes his mask off last, places it carefully on the stack of folded clothes.

“Time check?” Zara asks, voice clipped as she pulls up the hem of her skirt to show the fabric and metal of the hoop skirt underneath. Historically accurate and perfect for sneaking the equipment Nolan needs past the museum security checkpoint. Form and function, kiddos. It’s a thing of beauty.

“Right on schedule,” Hartley answers. “Take your time.”

Nolan kneels suddenly at her feet, tilts his chin to look up at her, knowing the way the light falls across his revealed face, hitting the gold-brown of his eyes, as he slides a hand up the back of Zara’s bare leg. He watches her bite the inside of her cheek, sees the indent.

“I’m impressed,” he says, still smiling professionally, his tone not even a little flirtatious as his blunt fingernails scrape against the back of her warm thigh. He sees the indent deepen, wonders if she tastes blood.

“Not many people can dance like that without making the grappling gun jingle.”

He unhooks the gun from her hoop skirt and stands again, stepping back. He deliberately does not wait for a response, instead pulling a thin black ski mask, previously disguised as his pocket square, down over his face.

“How do I look?” Nolan asks, arms out.

“Criminal,” she says, eyes half-lidded through the slits of her mask as she watches him turn away from her.

Nolan grew up on a diet of myths and legends, the origin stories of old deities.

His favorite has always been Aphrodite, born from the crashing wave froth. It made sense to him, the connection between love and drowning. The disorientation, the helpless thrill, lungs burning up and yearning. Not to be dramatic or anything.

Anyway.

He hadn’t felt the need to keep the Birth of Venus after stealing it—its historical merits outweighed its artistic ones and the painting totally clashed with anything he tried in the living room, bad Feng Shui, you know?—but the anonymous “donation” of the original back to the Uffizi Gallery had made headlines for months.

At the time, Nolan thought the symbolism was clear. He’d been pleased with himself, with the scale of the romantic gesture. Now, he wonders what Zara and Hartley had really thought of the stunt. If they’d thought of it at all.

And if the way they’re treating him is just part of a bigger game? Some plan-within-plan grandmaster chess move? Then Nolan will just have to be better. Make it so that pretending to be in love with him is so much fun that they accidentally do the real thing.

It’ll be fine. He’s an optimist, remember?

Nolan has his feet propped up on Luca’s desk because the assistant is too intimidated to say anything to him directly, even though it bothers him. He was being a condescending prick earlier to some of Hartley’s catering people when the man’s back was turned, and Nolan is feeling petty.

It’s also why he’s chewing with his mouth open but the joke’s on him because he nearly chokes to death when his phone lights up with an incoming call from WIFEY <3.

“Hey,” Nolan answers the phone, still wheezing a little.

There’s a pause. Then, sighing, Hartley asks, “You changed my contact info again, didn’t you?”

Nolan uncrosses his feet, sees the hope bloom in Luca’s eyes, then crosses them again. He makes sure to scrape his heel against the lip of the desk, settling in for a nice long chat. He sees the hope wither and die, watches Luca’s shoulders slump.

“Mr Hidalgo,” Nolan says brightly. “You should just accept that you have strong wife energy. You nag. You are a nagger.”

“For the last time, we are not adding a chocolate fountain,” Hartley says with a sound like he is dragging a hand over his face. “The cost of insurance would be astronomical. Do you know how hard it is to get chocolate stains out of carpeting?”

“You see?” Nolan can’t suppress a grin. “Wife energy.”

It takes Nolan less than fifteen minutes to scale the side of the building, shimmy in through the window he left unlocked, slip the Vitruvian Man into a specially padded backpack, and then shimmy back out.

Zara is waiting for him, arms crossed and unreadable behind her mask, when he drops noiselessly back onto the balcony beside her, landing on the balls of his feet, ankles flexing, knees bent to absorb the impact.

“Show off,” is all she says but Nolan is almost four and a half minutes ahead of schedule, and he’s pretty sure that she’s impressed.

One of their catering vans is parked below the balcony, the rooftop skylight propped open and they each take one of the backpack straps and lower it gently down until they hear Hartley’s triumphant hiss.

“Done,” he says, a drawn-out syllable in Nolan’s ear. “See you back at the party.”

Nolan hastily pulls his costume back on over the black bodysuit, not caring if the buttons are a little crooked. Zara watches him silently until he tries to do up the ties of his mask.

“Turn around,” she commands, and he does, knowing it’s safer not to look at her. He hears her step forward, feels her standing so close that she is nearly pressed against the full length of his back and yet making no contact at all, so close that it is more effort not to touch him than otherwise. He feels only the tips of her silk gloves carding through his hair, feels the ribbon of the mask slide against his scalp, pulling taut. Her warm breath on the back of his neck.

Goosebumps erupt up and down his arms, his cheeks flaming under the press of the mask. It’s fine, it’s all fine. Nolan knows how to let himself be seduced.

“That was very nicely done,” she whispers, her fingers still tangled in his hair, pulling a little. “We’re impressed.”

Nolan makes a sound, not the sound he means to make but something. There’s a difference between suspecting and hearing her say it out loud. He feels like he could boil the mask right off his face.

Zara lets her gloves slide against his scalp, trailing down, along the top bump of his spine. He shudders, can’t help himself, but that’s fine too. You have to let yourself be affected, sometimes, even when you’re playing hard to get. A small win to get them hooked, Nolan reminds himself. But not too much.

“Hartley’s waiting for us,” he says and it’s no effort to sound a little unsteady, a little ragged. It takes more effort to step away from her, to put himself out of reach.

“You’re right,” says Zara, suddenly sweet, worryingly innocent. She laces her gloved hands in his, tugging him to the door. “We wouldn’t want to make him feel left out."

It shouldn’t be too hard to push Bishop into making the first move—they’re ambush predators. Neither Zara or Hartley are impulsive but they’ve got that big cat weakness, the instinct to pounce when the target turns their back. Nolan was born the year of the rat and he knows how to slip through the cracks, how to make a dramatic escape. They know it too and it makes them twitchy, makes them claim the spot between him and the exit.

No, the problem will be pushing Bishop to make the right kind of move. To consider him in the right kind of light. He needs a way to make them think of him as something greater than the thrill of a single successful con, no matter how difficult and therefore rewarding.

Something worth investing in, something… long-term.

And then, later that night, Da Vinci’s masterpiece unwrapped and propped up on their mantlepiece, they toast each other with coffee mugs full of champagne, a gross breach of etiquette but Nolan had insisted, too impatient with post-heist jitters to let Hartley clean the glasses by hand.

The lit fireplace makes the whole house feel warm and comfortable, and one of them is always touching him, a lingering hand on his back or his shoulder pressed to another, innocent touches, but he’s so sure, so sure, that this is when they’ll do it. That this is when one of them will finally take the mug from his trembling fingers and press him back against the kitchen counter, press their mouth against his, lick through the sweet coating of alcohol to taste the thing beneath, the part that is just him, and he’ll get a chance to pull away gasping, lips swollen, eyes wide, and awkwardly stammer no wait, we shouldn’t complicate our working relationship for a mere fling and flee back to his room with a final, longing backward glance, letting the subliminal messaging take root, the careful word choice of ‘relationship’ and ‘mere fling’ .

Except, nothing happens. Nobody kisses him.

The fire dies down, rain begins to tap against the window, the adrenaline drains away to leave him heavy-lidded and drooping. They wash out their cups in the sink, head to bed. Nolan can hear Hartley’s electric toothbrush buzzing through the bathroom door. He crawls into his bed and goes to sleep.

Well, not nothing.

All three of them washing their mugs out in the sink at the same time, elbows bumping, Nolan somehow with soap bubbles in his hair, and Zara asks him, “So what do we steal next?” and Hartley adds “It’s your turn to choose” while scrubbing his mug out too hard, a puff of bubbles shooting up, oh yeah, that’s why they’re in his hair.

“I know you’re doing that on purpose,” Nolan says, jostling back, and water ends up soaking him up to the elbows and he complains, “Now look what you’ve done” but secretly, it might be the happiest he’s ever been.

Rome is maybe sort of cursed for Nolan, somehow he can never manage to get through a visit without damage, without getting arrested or a little bit stabbed, but he loves the city anyway with a sort of cheerful, reckless abandon. Layers of history peeled back and preserved, frozen in time for people to walk around in.

“A playground for nerds,” he tells Zara, who is wearing her faux librarian glasses, thick-framed and sexier than they have any right to be. She has them on a chain, delicate and gold-plated with tiny crystal beads.

“And how many times have you been here?” Zara asks mildly.

“Touché,” he concedes, applying another layer of sunscreen to the back of his neck. He used too much and has to tug his shirt this way and that, swiping his hand over the exposed tops of his shoulders and then down along across the bumps of his collarbone, trying not to coat the silver of his necklace too much.

“You’re making a mess,” Hartley notes, watching him.

“Always,” Nolan agrees, tugging up his shirt to drag the white mess of sunscreen across his stomach, muscles taut and twitching at the sudden cold.

Hartley stands up, says, “I’ll get us another round.”

He isn’t entirely sure that another cappuccino is a good idea for him but Hartley is already striding away when Nolan nods his thanks so it’s a moot point. Zara taps her pen thoughtfully against the crossword puzzle she is working on and takes off her glasses, letting them dangle around her neck. Nolan shouldn’t find that sexy either but oh well.

“Need help?” He asks, leaning over for a better look.

“Hmm,” she says, tapping the pen against her cheek this time. “I think I need a better hint.”

“Yeah, they can be pretty misleading,” he says absently, craning his neck at an awkward angle to look at the empty row of boxes that has her stumped. “The trick is not to think too hard about the hint, but the person who wrote it.”

“Good advice,” she murmurs, her head tilted close to his over the newspaper.

Nine letters down: Romeo and Juliet, for example. Scrawled in blue ink beneath the clue, he sees the words she has tried and crossed out. Soulmates, Star-crossed, Shakespeare.

“Hmm,” he says, considering. “Try teenagers.”

It works.

“All crossword puzzle writers are cynics,” Nolan huffs, looking up from the paper, and is startled to realize how close her face is to his. That she is looking at him already, that butterfly-hunting look, the one that tells him to be careful, that everything he says and does is about to catalogued, pinned down.

“And what do you think?” She asks, nibbling on the end of her pen as if in idle thought, but he knows her too well by now, doesn't let it distract him. Much. “Would Romeo have been better off if he stayed in love with Rosaline? Was his soulmate worth it?" 

Nolan wets his lips, grateful that in approaching this like a honeypot, he knows exactly what to say. He doesn’t need to do anything particularly difficult, like laugh off the question, or worse, actually think about it—he only has to worry about the right subliminal message, about introducing the idea of long-term. 

“Falling in love is easy,” he says with a shrug, like he couldn’t care less. He puts on one of his most effective smiles, crookedly charming, “Staying in love? That’s hard.”

“Hmm,” Zara says, propping her chin up on one hand, still looking at him too closely. She reaches out slowly with her free hand, projecting the movement like he’s a wild animal, skiddish, a flight-risk, which is stupid, except that he suddenly feels like one, forcing himself to stay still, to let her place her thumb to the hollow of his throat and swipe up across the bump of his Adam’s apple. He swallows against the pressure, knows she feels it. His pulse is hammering and he is so sure, so sure—

“You missed some sunscreen there,” she says, withdrawing. She uncaps her pen again and looks back down at her unfinished crossword puzzle.

“Thanks,” he says, feeling winded. Feeling, oddly, like he’s misstepped, said something wrong but before he can figure it out Hartley comes back balancing a tray of fresh espresso shots and the smell momentarily wipes his brain clean of all other thoughts. He knows, even as he makes grabby hands in Hartley’s direction, that he really shouldn’t be drinking more caffeine but Nolan is taking a break from making good decisions, thank you very much.

“Let me know if you need help with any of the other clues,” he says.

Zara sweeps a side-long glance at Hartley.

“I will.”

It’s still there, the elephant in the room.

That thing they know he knows they’re hiding from him. The thing that Pablo felt the need to warn him about.

Sometimes, one of them will get a text and excuse themselves right away and Nolan will make a big show of laughing it off, not asking any real questions, only stupid ones like admit it, you’re cheating on me, aren’t you? as he pretends to wipe away tears with the hem of the restaurant tablecloth. “Shut up, you’re going to get us kicked out,” Zara hisses, kicking him under the table but not as hard as she normally would. But it’s fine, really, you don’t need trust to pull off a honeypot.

At seventeen, his body beautiful and mostly settled into its adult proportions, Nolan signs up for the Latin club’s summer trip to Rome more to avoid going home for the holidays than anything, as memorizing declension sets and long passages from The Aeneid is still less painful than trying to talk to his dad.

It’s his first time in Rome, his first time seeing The Creation of Adam outside of low-quality pictures in his textbooks awkwardly split across pages, important details lost in the slope towards the spine. His first time standing in front of the famous Greek boxing statues, with their shattered noses and perfect torsos and that haunted, exhausted masculinity he later realized he found erotic. First time seeing The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, having to smother an inappropriate titter, thinking I’ll have what she’s having, thanks.

It’s also the first time he gets drunk, really drunk, at a half-legal rave inside the grass-smothered ruins of something that wasn’t important enough to renovate and rope off. Everything is heat and bass and centrifugal forces, the world spinning around him, stone columns flashing in and out of the shadows. He and one of the Latin club boys sneak away together to the secluded alcove of an arch and Thomas, or whatever his name is, shoves a hand down his pants, more eagerness than skill but Nolan can’t even concentrate long enough on the situation to give him any pointers, keeps getting distracted by the thought of how many generations of degenerates have had sex in this same spot, keeps reaching out to touch the cool stone, to prove that he’s really here.

“Mhh yeah, ubi audito stimulant ahhh trieterica Baccho,” he murmurs wetly into the side of Thomas’s face where he’s pressing sloppy kisses. The other boy draws back a little, confused, asks, “What did you say?”

“You know,” Nolan mumbles, touching the boy, touching the stone arch. “The cyclic orgy. Bacchus, the god of wine and revelry. The homework.”

At the boy’s confused look, Nolan can’t help the sudden welling of frustration, the bitter disappointment of being so close to someone and yet so disconnected from them, and ends up snapping: “You really shouldn’t be sneaking out if you’re that far behind the coursework.”

It might not be a surprise to hear that he doesn’t get off that night or that Thomas pointedly ignores him for the rest of the trip.

He does fail their pop quiz though so it’s not like Nolan was wrong.

They asked what’s next and Nolan has a whole list, doesn’t even hesitate.

His set of Kemet plates are being held at an authentication house in Rome that works with Interpol to document evidence for trial. The three of them bounce a couple ideas of varying feasibility back and forth until Zara realizes that amongst their catalogue are some decommissioned mustard gas bombs from the first World War. After that, it’s embarrassingly easy for her to access their office intercom system and drop a faux-hysterical “I smell something weird—chemical I think? Gas maybe?” as Hartley tightens the straps on his very convincing bomb squad get up and waits to answer the redirected distress call.

They pull up, tires squealing, in their nondescript black car. Hartley jumps out and approaches the building in full performance mode—face serious but not panicked, credentials flashed as quickly as possible, a tense little nod to the people crowding outside the door, barking out clipped, clear orders.  Nolan has to flip down the visor of his helmet to hide his grin.

“He can be like that in bed too,” Zara whispers in his ear but Nolan is not going to let her make him flub the mission.

They find his plates sitting in an archival drawer labeled “misc. North or Central Africa, early dynastic period.” Which is basically a personal insult.

It’s not until the day is over and they’ve rendezvoused at their new base of operations, i.e. a swanky two story vacation home in the heart of historic downtown, that Nolan gets a chance to fully unpack the plates and notes the real insult. A brutal chip, two and half inches across, in one of the plates, labeled with an index card that says: DAMAGED ON ARRIVAL.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he snarls, low and sharp as a snapped violin string. And then, louder: “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

He barely notes the way Zara freezes in his peripheral vision, halfway through removing her gloves, the way Hartley turns immediately, reorienting on his position. His attention narrows, tunneling, on the ugly grey scar of chipped ceramic.

“Of course Interpol believes in the sanctity of art and history, priceless artifacts, right up until they have to pay the shipping costs,” Nolan snaps, flinging himself away from the counter, too angry to sit still, pacing in tight circles, knowing that nothing has ever been yelled back into wholeness and unable to do anything else. “Then suddenly they’re wrapping 5,000-year-old plates in one-ply toilet paper bubble wrap and patting themselves on the back for being the good guys. Goddamn it!”

He grinds his teeth together so hard that he hears the sound deep in his eardrums. He turns savagely on his heel, meets Hartley’s eyes mid-pace, and is suddenly reminded that there are other people in the room.

People who are looking at him like he’s some stranger, someone they’ve never seen before.

He turns away, using all his long years of lying to keep his shoulders from hunching inward. He reaches out to touch the chipped plate, sees how badly his hand is shaking and balls his fingers up into a fist instead. Pressing his fist hard against the countertop, watching the blood drain from his knuckles, Nolan feels sudden wave of exhaustion crash into him.

“The breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack…” he mutters, mostly to himself.

“Anthony and Cleopatra?” Zara asks and he’s surprised to hear her voice drawing closer, had thought that maybe—well. It doesn’t matter. “I never liked that scene.”

Nor did he, come to think of it. Nolan was never a fan of the tragedies but his serious boarding school education seemed to believe that the quality of a piece of literature was in direct proportion to the amount of suffering it described.

“You know your Shakespeare,” says Nolan, a sad attempt at lightening the mood. Tries to smile but it pulls at the muscles in his temple, throbbing with the threat of an incoming headache and he winces, rubbing circles against the spike of pain.

Zara props her elbows against the counter, tucking her dark hair behind her ears so it doesn’t fall forward across the chipped plate. She hums thoughtfully, inspecting the damage and looks at him side-long.

“I played Cleopatra once in a school play, you know.”

“Really?” Nolan surprises himself with a laugh. “So did I.”

As if the last bit of his energy has escaped with his laugh, like a balloon leaking helium, Nolan slumps forward against his crossed arms, resting his cheek against the cool marble of the counter, the headache twinging hotly in his temples. His groan is muffled and he closes his eyes, mumbling, “Sorry about that. Stupid of me to get so—“

A warm hand on his shoulder, big enough that it can only be Hartley. The touch is grounding.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hartley says. “If you can’t throw a fit about chipping a 5,000-year-old artisan plate, then what’s the point?”

“Ha ha,” Nolan grumbles, glad his arms are obscuring his face. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

“You know,” Zara muses from somewhere above his head, accompanied by the sound of a fingernail tapping cautiously on glazed ceramic. “We had this contact in the French Riviera who specialized in restoration…”

The whole night has been a string of stupid decisions—the entire cast partying at the karaoke bar across the street from the theater, singing too loud and drinking way too much given that their opening night is tomorrow—and so Nolan, nineteen, the perfect age for being stupid, decides to make one more.

He finds Hana sitting alone in one of the karaoke booths, watching her roommate sitting at the bar with some of the others, clinking shots of vodka so enthusiastically that half the liquid ends up on the floor. He leans in closer to her than he has been in a while and asks, “Will you forgive yourself if you don’t at least try?”

And maybe it’s selfish to ask a question like that as someone in the background butchers Mr. Brightside and the vodka glasses get tossed back and re-filled with shrieks of laughter. Maybe he wants her to cry or kiss him one last time or say she’s sorry, even though she doesn’t owe him an apology, not really. But mostly it’s this—the genuine wish that she gets the thing he wants more than anything.

“It’ll hurt more,” she says, so quiet he can barely hear her over the chorus. “If I actually try and it still doesn’t work.

He thinks about leaving it at that. It’s not really any of his business and he’s about two hours away from skipping town along with the director’s car keys and his collection of first and second edition Shakespeare manuscripts. They’ll be fine without him, Nolan’s understudy is going to do a great job.

Still, he’ll be gone. So what does it matter if he’s honest?

Nolan gently takes her hand.

“It’ll hurt anyway.”

“So, what now?” Nolan asks them, cracking open a pistachio shell, tossing the nut in the air and catching it between his teeth. “Our next sin is up to you.”

They’re sprawled out across the sun-warmed terrace of their vacation home—half-empty glasses sweating on the table, Zara barefoot and Hartley flipping through the pages of something glossy with an indolent kind of judgement, eyebrows quirking up every now and then.

He bites down, swallows, peels another pistachio.

Zara closes her laptop with a decisive click. “We need to stop by the El Dorado Villa auction.”

“Oh?” Nolan snaps another pistachio from the air. “What for?”

“It has to do with the thing we can’t tell you about,” she continues breezily, as if that’s a perfectly reasonable and non-infuriating thing to say. It is progress, sort of—not hiding the lie, just setting it gently between them like a loaded gun. Like a warning label: We are keeping secrets from you. Please enjoy your stay.

Nolan throws another pistachio in the air, buys himself time.

“The auction will be interesting,” Hartley assures him, setting aside what he was reading to lean forward, elbows on knees, completely earnest. Like he thinks that Nolan needs convincing, as if he wouldn’t help them rob an outhouse if that’s what they wanted. “El Dorado always has something worth acquiring.”

“Legally?” Nolan asks, mock-horrified.

“It has been a while,” Zara says, amused. “Could be a nice change of pace.”

Nolan pretends to feel faint, which is harder than it looks when he’s already lying down. “Tell me the truth, is our relationship getting stale? Do we need to spice things up already?”

They relax—he watches them, the way Hartley leans back, takes up his magazine again, and Zara shifts, tucking her bare feet under her, cross-legged while she works. The thing they won’t tell him about is glowing neon in the margins of his vision but he lets it be, at least for now. He knows the difference between a misdirection and a genuine invitation.  Still, it’s good to know they’ve prioritized keeping him close, even at risk of him being in close proximity to whatever it is they’re trying to keep out of his reach. Whether that’s a result of his honeypot plan working out or theirs, he can’t quite tell.

What a dangerous game we’re playing, he muses. Both him and Bishop. So many threads spinning, plans with plans within plans, plots running parallel and threatening to intersect, to crash.

A problem for later, Nolan decides, splitting another pistachio open with a crack.

They embark on a day trip to the ruins of Pompeii just for fun and because Zara insists that it will make their digital trail less suspicious to anyone who happens to investigate. They can’t steal something famous from every single city they visit, after all, that would be too much of a red flag, but Nolan does nick a fridge magnet that says “Pompeii was an inside job” because it makes Hartley smile.

It’s the time of year when the Spanish poppies are in bloom, bursts of red among the tall green grasses. The brightest color for miles, brighter than the restored tile work, the mural painted in the old bathhouse, the replicated tapestries. He bends down, letting Hartley and Zara drift ahead without him, and cups his hand around the base of a half-budded flower. Not plucking it free, just holding for a moment.

An elderly couple interrupts to ask him to take their photo, beaming underneath their brimmed hats at the camera, their arms around each other, matching sunburst soulmarks on the backs of their hands.

The husband offers to take his photo as well and Nolan realizes that his soulmates have lingered, waiting for him. “No,” he says, a little too quickly, and makes himself smile to soften the abrupt rejection. “No paper trail, right?” He says like it’s part of a joke they’re all in on, like this is a game they’re playing and not something his heart will drag behind it for miles.

Sometimes the pretending just cuts a little too close to the bone.

Nolan points out that if their goal is to be less suspicious, they’d better do some of the big tourist sites. It turns out that Hartley has only ever seen the outside of the Colosseum which makes the choice easy, although Nolan regrets it after fifteen minutes of standing under the direct, relentless sun. “Should’ve gone with the fucking catacombs,” he pants, unbuttoning his shirt as much as feels he can get away with while surrounded by a crowd of family-friendly tour groups.

He eventually beats a retreat to an air-conditioned bar across from the ruins, leaving the two of them to finish up the tour without him. Rude, given that it was his idea in the first place, but Nolan doesn’t feel too guilty. At least they have each other.

He pays for one iced lemonade and strikes up a casual flirtation with a bartender named Marie—she’s funny and he’s bored and his pick-up lines are better than most of the tourists and spring breakers that blow through here. He compliments her eyeliner, her tattoos, bets a second free lemonade on the fact that he can tie a knot in a cherry stem with just his tongue. He wins and then shows her how,  repeats the trick in slow motion, sprawled halfway across the counter to give her a better view.

“Having fun without us?” A familiar voice asks from behind him, that sugar-sweetness that means Zara is up to no good.

“H’y g’ys,” says Nolan, muffled around the cherry knot on his outstretched tongue. He plucks the stem from his mouth and tosses it in the trash can behind the counter.

There’s no fairness in the world because Hartley and Zara still look perfect, not sweaty or sunburnt at all, hand in hand like a snapshot for a lifestyle blog or a honeymoon travel brochure. Dressed in white linen and silk, silver jewelry, both of them wearing their red leather bags, the thrill of which squirms low in his belly every time he looks too long. Zara’s lips, painted a matching red, curve upward but the sweetness is dangerous, deceptive. Nolan isn’t sure who has pissed her off, if the tour guide was bad or if one of the aggressive taxi cabs tried to cut her off crossing the road, but he pities whoever it is.

“Marie, can we get another round of lemonades?” He asks, gesturing for them to join him, to sit down. He wants to know if they saw the hypogeum’s maze of chambers, if Hartley climbed anything he wasn’t supposed to, if they took that one shot where it looks like they’re picking up the Colosseum, you know, the forced perspective angle.

When they get ready to leave, Marie comps them the whole round of drinks. “Thanks for the lesson,” she tells him with a wink.

“What now?” Nolan says as they step out onto the sidewalk, shading his eyes and squinting up into the cloudless blue sky. Hartley takes him by the elbow to pull him out of the way of a biker, and he lets himself lean briefly against the other man’s chest, twisting his head back to grin his thanks. 

Zara blows out a breath, hands on her hips as she declares, “We’re going to the catacombs.”

The catacombs are excellent, a relief from the oppressive midday heat, humbling as ever in their scale. Nolan personally can’t think of a worse afterlife than to be stacked into the tight vertical rungs of an endless stone ladder reaching into the bowels of the earth. But it doesn’t make the end result less impressive, the proof of what mere human effort and human belief can accomplish.

It helps that their tour guide is deeply invested and doesn’t mind any of Nolan’s obscure questions.

Nolan is good at obscure, at obsession. He imprints like a baby bird—on cities, on art, on scraps of historical trivia with no practical application. He went through a phase in school where he learned everything he could about the history of architecture and ancient stonemasonry and casually dropped phrases like merits of the arcuated system in lunchroom conversation. It made him exactly zero friends, and he spent half a semester being called Bob the Builder before he moved on to a new and more socially acceptable interest.

It isn’t until hours later, after the sun has finally set, when Nolan is curled up on the couch, his neck at a horrible angle as he hate-reads the DaVinci Code for the sixth or seventh time, that Zara plops down next to him and asks, “Hey, did you get Marie’s number?”

He blinks up at her. “Who?”

“Marie,” she repeats, adding. “The bartender.”

Nolan draws a blank and it must show because she shakes her head, standing up again.

“It’s fine,” Zara says. “I just lost an earring earlier so I thought—“

“Damn, the ones from Genova?” Nolan lets his book fall closed in his lap, sits more fully upright. “It might have been in the catacombs, I bet they have a Lost and Found. Want me to call?”

Zara looks at him oddly.

“Yes,” she says slowly. “The ones from Genova.”

There’s something heavy, laden with meaning in the way she says the words. Nolan wonders with a queasy lurch if it’s creepy that he remembered an off-hand detail from an unimportant conversation they had weeks ago but—he doesn’t know how to be normal about them. He’s imprinted already and this time it isn’t even his fault. It’s the universe.

“The earrings suited you,” he says with a helpless shrug. “It’d be a shame to lose them.”

She smiles at him then, small but genuine, her eyes crinkling up.

“It’s okay,” she tells him. “I’m sure they’ll turn up.”

Nolan sits bolt upright in bed. Naked, sheets mostly kicked off and tangled around his ankles, hair flattened on one side from losing a fight with his pillow.

Marie! he thinks, still half-asleep. The bartender!!

He drags a hand through his messy hair, across the pillow creases in his face, wincing as the memory clicks into place. Zara’s voice, pitched all sugary-cyanide, that “Having fun without us?” and him, smiling like an idiot around a cocktail garnish instead of seizing the moment. The judges are shaking their heads. The crowd is booing. One of the most basic strategies of honeypotting, chapter one: let them see you be desired, turn it into tension, into heat, into leverage. And he missed it.

He flops back, stares up at the ceiling. “Amateur,” he mutters.

What baffles him, genuinely, is the realization that they could feel threatened by other people. That they saw Marie and even for a second felt something as stupid and human as competition. When they’re in front of him, everyone else ceases to exist. It’s not even close.

This is good, Nolan tells himself, drumming his fingers on his knee. He knows exactly what to do with this—jealousy can be useful when applied correctly. Like jump-starting a car, it’s all about controlling the pacing. If he gets to the point where he needs them to make a move, it will be good to have one more tool in his back pocket.

They detour to Florence to visit a tailor before the El Dorado auction, renting a compact butter-yellow convertible, Hartley wearing vintage leather driving gloves and steering one-handed, easy and confident behind the wheel, the other hand on Zara’s knee, sitting in the passenger seat like a movie star with her hair wrapped in silk, oversized sunglasses, red lipstick.

Nolan in the back seat with his face tipped up into the wind, letting it run wild fingers through his hair, across his lips and nose and ears and the exposed bump of his Adam’s apple. Throws his arms out wide, laughing, as they take a corner a little too fast, the sleeves of his loose button-down billowing. Feeling like an angel, like a dog.

He sticks his tongue out, tastes the wind, the gasoline fumes, the scent of wildflowers.

“What are you doing?” Zara asks.

“Buckle your seatbelt,” says Hartley.

The place doesn’t have a sign, just a doorbell and an unmistakable vibe. Not the chrome and glass of upscale city boutiques but time-softened cobblestones, real wood furniture, the strong smell of leather and fabric dyes, an old man who greets Hartley with a kiss on both cheeks and a long-suffering sigh that means you again. Hartley grins, devilish, shockingly handsome, and kisses the old man back.

“I brought you a gift,” he adds and nudges Nolan, wind-swept and a little shy, forward for the tailor to inspect.

“Ah,” the tailor sighs happily. “You know just what I like.”

Over the next two hours, Nolan feels like he learns more about Hartley than in the previous two weeks. Speaking in such a rapid-fire Florentine dialect of Italian that he can barely decipher one word in ten, he watches as Hartley and the tailor argue in a spirit of passionate camaraderie over bolts of fabrics, color swatches, suit patterns. He’s always known that Hartley held himself to traditional rules—the kind of rules that he loved to break—always matching his belt and his shoes, keeping the bottom suit button undone, disdaining logos of any kind. Now Nolan can see where he gets it from, the direct philosophical comparison, like lining up family members to admire their underlying bone structure.

“He apprenticed with Matteo for a while,” Zara explains, her head propped in her palm, tracking the conversation with a lazy flick of her eyes. “In another life, I think this would have been enough for him.”

“And in this life?” Nolan asks, feeling strange.

“In this life,” Zara says, the side of her mouth curving up. “We made a promise not to settle for what we already had, if there was a way to get what we wanted.”

They’re taking their time with this, with him. With their approach, positioning themselves exactly so. A dozen moments where they could have kissed him, if they wanted to, if they wanted something as simple and straightforward as a kiss. If they’re pretending to be falling for him just to soften him up for a bait and switch, well, they didn’t need to wait so long. And he begins to think, maybe.

Maybe, for once, he won’t need the honeypot or the subliminal messaging.

Maybe, for once, he won’t have to work so hard to get what he wants.

And then Nolan is naked down to his waist, the slide of the measuring tape and Hartley’s hands across his back, his chest, his hipbones. He’s still wearing his silver necklace, can’t remember the last time he took it off, and he concentrates on the coolness of the metal instead of the way he is burning up in the wake of that simple touch. The way it makes him feel possessed, like he is a piece of art that Hartley is working on, arms up, arms down, turn right, turn left.

“Less structure in the shoulders,” Hartley murmurs, one hand still lingering on his hip, and Nolan, for once, is desperately glad for their height difference, that he doesn’t have to look at him directly.

“No see-through mesh?” He jokes, trying to keep his breathing even.

The grip on his hip tightens punishingly and Nolan is not okay.

“If you ever wear mesh in front of me,” Hartley promises, leaning close, and it doesn’t matter that Nolan isn’t looking at him, he’s sure that his entire body is flushed, on fire, a dead giveaway. Brief contact: Hartley’s lips to the shell of his ear, feeling the physical shape of each word. “I will make you regret it.”

El Dorado is built out of warm sandstone, stained glass, multiple tiered interior courtyards boasting tinkling fountains and lemon trees bowed heavy with fruit, the air thick with the syrupy perfume of wealth. The villa sprawls along the outskirts of Rome like it grew there by divine right, ivy tangled in the front iron gate, frescoes sun-faded into myth. A place built for indulgence, and then restored for profit.

Nolan steps out of the car feeling like sin itself in his new cream-colored three-piece suit, hyper-aware of the flex and slide of the material against his skin when he stands up, thinking horrible, indecent thoughts about it. How little of the suit they would have to remove in order to—

“The seating is all assigned,” Zara tells him and he tries to keep his eyes focused on her, to stay composed. She adjusts her earrings, the ones from Genova, one last time in the window’s reflection.

She’s gone for the femme fatal look tonight, something that makes him weak in the knees. She wields makeup less like armor and more like a weapon, emerging from the bathroom after two hours of effort looking not exactly different but heightened, each feature intensified. More elegant cheekbones, more plush mouth, more Zara. Nolan respects the craft. He dated a make-up artist in Las Vegas for three months, not for a job, although she did introduce him to several people he shamelessly stole from, but because she was cool and taught him a few tricks.

“Are you ready?”

“Of course,” Nolan says, trying not to think too much about his suit or the real reason why they’re here. “What could go wrong?”

“Don’t jinx it,” Hartley sighs, closing the driver’s door and handing the keys off to the valet.

“There’s nothing to jinx!” Nolan protests, trailing after him, tugging at his sleeve. “We’re not even doing anything illegal tonight. This is a totally normal date night, guys. Just your totally normal, run-of-the-mill spectacle of over-the-top wealth and generational privilege.”

“Date night?” Zara cocks her head, hair falling in dark waves.

“We’re keeping the spark alive, remember?”

Inside, the villa is already full, the crowd churning with the micro-currents of so many networking groups, and somehow his grip on Hartley’s sleeve has turned into the man’s arm looped around his waist, his other hand linked with Zara, as he escorts them towards their row of seats. They pass a wine bar with a miserably long line and Nolan warns, “You better grab me a glass of Barolo before you abandon me for your super secret hijinks or I will throw an absolute fit. I’ll pretend I’ve just uncovered your decade-long affair, and how could you, my own step-sister, betray me like this after my mother took you in like one of her own—“

“Yes, dear.” Hartley deadpans, pressing a kiss against the corner of his mouth, right over the dimple, deposits him gently in their assigned seat and then heads back to the wine bar. Nolan, surprised into silence, splutters, pressing fingers to his hot face.

“Go on then,” says Zara, not bothering to hide the sharp edge of her grin. “Why did your mother take me in?”

“Product of an affair,” he mutters, sulky. “Your mom ran away to be an actress, but later it turns out that she actually had amnesia and you re-unite. It’s the season finale, a real tear-jerker.”

“Of course,” she nods along. “I love a happy ending.”

Soon, he promises himself. I’ll deal with it tomorrow.

Smoothing the peeling edge of his soulmark patch into place. Washing his hands in the sink. Trying not to look at his reflection in the mirror, the way that his new suit drapes knowingly, lovingly, against every line of his body. The way that Hartley had helped him pull the jacket over his shoulders saying I thought so in that dangerous tone of voice, sounding so pleased, so self-satisfied, that Nolan had been so sure, so sure—

The auction begins the way these things usually do—too much velvet, too much pageantry, a long list of sponsors and thank you’s, a roster of who needed that year’s charitable write-offs. There is a live string quartet playing in the corner, which is neat, but the attendees are the same kind of people he usually sees at events like these. Strategically disinterested, like they woke up in their bespoke and wandered in by chance.  Since he’s not here for anything in particular, Nolan sips his red wine and tries to gauge the bidders first. Who is serious, who is swinging outside of their tax bracket.

The auctioneer, white-haired and with a voice like cashmere, is smart enough to let the event start slow, gathering momentum.

A Roman strigil used to scrape oil from the skin of a soldier, a groove worn in the handle where a thumb must’ve rested, again and again.

A set of Napoleonic dueling pistols in black walnut.

A gilt French reliquary box said to have once held the tooth of St Jude, the patron saint of miracles and lost causes.

Zara wrinkles her nose, leans over to whisper, “How can they charge extra for something that’s not even there?” He shrugs, secretly thinking of a half dozen things that become more valuable after they’re gone, as Hartley leans in from the other side. “Must have been the patron of the blind too,” he whispers back, in his bitchiest tone of voice. “The thing is hideous.” Nolan has to smoosh his face into his auction paddle to muffle his snickering laughter and even still some people sitting in the row in front of them turn around to glare.

“My husband is very devout,” Hartley tells them with a straight face as Nolan tries to turn his laugh into something more like a heartfelt sob.

Like a burst dam, the three of them can’t seem to shut up after that. Countless jabs back and forth, jokes on the items and the people bidding on them, their attention more on each other than anything on display. Then the auctioneer announces, “Next up on Lot B, we have the piece that inspired a generation of poetry… the Grecian Urn.”

Nolan makes a sound like he’s been stepped on. Feels like he’s been stepped on and smeared, reduced to illegible charcoal in the margins, like he’s twenty-three again and tripping over alarm wires, frantic, filled up with a painful, overwhelming hope.

Zara nudges him, doesn’t even need to ask the question out loud.

“No,” he says, a little too quickly. “No, it’s not—not important.”

Hartley narrows his eyes as the bidding starts, focusing for the first time on the stage. “I think we stole that once,” he realizes.

“Yeah,” Nolan says, trying not to squirm in his chair, hotly aware of all the points of contact between the three of them, knees and thighs bracketing him in, an arm around the back of his chair. He can’t suppress the irrational fear that they can hear his pulse begin to race. Doesn’t know whether he should explain, if it will push them in the right or wrong direction.

“It—um.” He bites at his lip, tastes a hint of red wine. Hartley looks from the stage back to his mouth.

“It was the first time that you… stole something from me.”

Nolan can’t stop himself from watching the old couple walk away across the red-dotted fields with joined hands, their knuckles knobby and brittle with age but pressed together divot to divot as if they’ve been carved out for each other over time, their sunburst soulmark in the open for anyone to see. He presses his own fist helplessly against the divot of his hip, feeling fractured, barely held together, a mosaic of broken glass. Such a mess of sharp, cut-up emotions that he can’t pull them apart. Yearning, he thinks, and a sort of burning, bittersweet jealousy.

“You okay?” Hartley asks, forehead creased in lines of concern, reaching out.

Nolan can’t stand it, knows it’ll send the pieces of him tumbling. He flinches away from the touch, trying to smile. Knows he doesn’t quite succeed.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I’m fine.”

Hartley lets his arm drop back to his side, fingers twitching. Follows Nolan’s line of sight, his mouth twisting into a frustrated downward slash.

“It’s their fault, you know,” Hartley says, sudden and a little awkward, not smooth like he usually is, like he hasn’t had time to work these words out in his head and practice them. “If your soulmate didn’t give you a chance to make them happy. Not yours.”

“Oh,” he says, soft. The syllable wrung out of him.

He sits abruptly on one of the low stone pillars, the world spinning around him a little.

“Hey,” says Nolan, feeling hot and dizzy. “When’s the last time I drank water?”

The bidding gets expensive fast. Not ruinously so, but enough to make Nolan dig his nails into the meat of his palm, enough to make his fingers tremble around his auction paddle but he doesn’t need to lift it, not even once.

“For my beautiful step-brother,” Zara announces loudly, kissing him on the other corner of his mouth as the patrons in the row before them stare with scandalized expressions, before she sweeps away to give her details to the auctioneer. For a price tag of that magnitude, they’ll have to verify her banking info first.

She leaves a wet mark behind on his cheek but when he goes to wipe his face with the hem of his sleeve, Hartley catches his wrist, clicking his tongue in disapproval.

“This kind of Tuscan linen stains easily,” he explains, drawing out his pocket square.

“You’re gonna make me swoon again,” Nolan warns and, stupidly, finds himself on the edge of tears.

It’s why he insisted, isn’t it? Why Nolan had to have a house on the water?

The myth of Aphrodite.

Love has always has a little salt in it, a little sting.

As nice as it would be to pretend, the Grecian Urn is not the reason that Bishop is here.

Nolan can tell they’ve been trying not to leave him alone, unsupervised. Hartley following him to the bathroom, Zara staying with him instead of joining the line for the wine bar. Subtle, sure, unintrusive. But there’s a moment when Zara is still caught up with the auctioneer and Nolan hears that tell-tale trilling ringtone.

“You’ll stay right here?” Hartley asks, with a grimace that means I know it’s unreasonable but please do it anyway.

“I won’t even stand up.” Nolan makes a show out of lounging back in the seat. “How much trouble could I get up to stuck in one place?”

Hartley grimaces again, this one meaning please for the love of god stop jinxing us.

“I’ll give you ten minutes,” he promises, laughing. “Then all bets are off.”

“We plan on telling you eventually,” Hartley tells him, abruptly serious, taking his hand. Tucking the pocket square into the crease of his palm with a look in his dark eyes that Nolan suddenly can’t face head-on.

“Yeah,” he says, mouth gone dry—the worst part is, he’s starting to believe them. “Only nine minutes now.”

Hartley leaves, not looking back, not that Nolan expects him to. And for the record, he keeps his end of the bargain perfectly. Finishes his glass of wine and fiddles with the buttons on his watch, making the second hand whiz by as if that will make the real-life minutes feel faster. He’s not expecting a tap on his shoulder, for a sincere “I’m sorry to bother you—“ coming from what looks like a young humanities professor-type. Round glasses, a suit jacket with elbow patches and a clip-on bow tie.

“When old age shall this generation waste, thou shalt remain in midst of other woe.” Nolan quotes, unable to help himself. “Which is it: Classic Lit? Drama? Philosophy?”

“Ah,” stammers the professor. “Yes, I—I rather look the part, don’t I?”

“You don’t look like the usual person who comes to these things, no.” Nolan agrees, smiling to soften any potential insult. He plucks playfully at the lanyard tucked behind the tweed lapel of the man’s suit with the sort of casual flirtation that’s second nature to him and pulls the name tag free to read: Dr. Marvin Cushway.

“It’s a pleasure, Dr Cushway,” he says, flashing his most disarming don’t-be-mad-at-me smile, dimpling, remembering the warm kisses put there. “Did you come over here to make sure that the Grecian Urn ended up with an appropriately reverential owner?”

“I wouldn’t dare to—I just—“ the professor goes a blotchy red, flustered. “So much money was spent that it made me hope that the recipient would be—oh no, I don’t mean to mention money, they told me specifically not to do that—“

Nolan lets him off the hook, places a reassuring hand on the man’s upper arm and realizes that he’s still holding onto the crumpled-up pocket square. He smiles stupidly at his own hand, at the scrap of balled up fabric, at the professor who blinks back at him.

“You don’t have to worry,” he confesses in a rare flash of complete and unqualified honesty. “This piece means more to me than I can say.”

“How gratifying to hear,” cuts in a voice, sugar-sweet and dangerous. No step-brother this time, he notices, as Zara reclaims her seat beside him. It gives him an idea. Maybe not a good one, but Nolan is suddenly tired of waiting. The adrenaline is still buzzing in his system, the prickling under his skin that he associates with a successful heist, and he feels giddy, like he can do anything, do the impossible.

If they need a last little push, he’ll give them one.

“I could show it to you later,” Nolan suggests, letting his hand linger on the professor’s arm, letting his voice slip to something just a shade too casual. “Since you’re such a fan, I mean. I could arrange a private viewing.”

In his peripheral vision, Zara’s lovely mouth compresses, crushed to an angry line.

“Yes!” The professor agrees. It looks for a moment like he might lose his nerve under Zara’s glare but he rallies valiantly, fumbling in the inside pocket of his jacket. “Yes, I can—here, that’s my card. I teach three classes a week but, ah, anytime that is most convenient for you, of course—“

When he leaves, Nolan makes sure to tuck the card into his wallet as she watches.

“Making friends?” Zara asks, turning in closer, their knees accidentally knocking together.

“No reason not to, right?” he replies with an easygoing shrug. He watches her mouth compress once more, brief, and then she smiles at him. The wicked, femme fatal smile that she’s finally figured out he’s weak for.

“None,” she says, pressing their knees closer together.

Zara catches sight of Hartley first as he pushes through an exit door near the stage. The two of them exchange a look across the crowd that’s too quick for Nolan to follow but the bow string of her spine loosens, so he assumes whatever they needed to do went well. The seats are emptying out now that the auction has ended but the aisles between are clogged with people, everyone trying to leave at the same time. Hartley jumps a row of seats, works his way back to them, the energy buzzing around him triumphant.

“Did I miss anything fun?”

“Just more people flirting with your husband,” Zara sighs, shakes her head sadly, all what’s the world coming to these days.

Hartley slides back into his vacated seat, slides his arm around Nolan’s waist in a single, effortless movement. The heat of him bleeding through the Tuscan linen almost immediately, like Nolan’s wearing nothing but tissue paper, defenseless. His body curving into the touch, blooming, like they’ve rehearsed this, done it a million times.

“People keep doing that,” Hartley slips his thumb through one of his belt loops.  “Any advice?”

“Better take him home,” Zara says, fanning out her painted fingernails as if to say what else?

They look at him then—that beautiful, matched-set look. Something new in their expression this time, something he’s never seen in them before. Dangerous, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, making him shiver. A hunger, he thinks, saliva pooling under his own tongue, his belly twisting.  Like everything else, greed looks good on them. They turn avarice into an art form.

“Well…” Nolan swallows, pretends to think about it, pretends his pulse isn’t visibly hammering in his throat. He stands up, his legs mostly steady.

“Shall we?”

They don’t say much on the drive home. Zara chooses the channel, cranks the music until the seat vibrates under his thighs, a string of old-school Italian crooners, slow and over-sentimental but Nolan wants to soak it up through his pores, wants to drink the syrup, wants to be sick with the sweetness of it. He catches Hartley watching him in the rearview mirror, the sheen of the stop lights reflected in his dark eyes. Red, then green. A beat too long before the car starts to go.

Nolan has to look away, feeling hot, feeling breathless, like he’s something divine, like he’s a dog, tongue lolling, the wind in his open mouth. Gasoline fumes, the faintest taste of coconut oil. Psychosomatic, maybe, but he swallows, swallows, throat working.

And then, the keys jingling in the front door, the yellow-tinted glow of streetlights just enough to outline fuzzy shapes, stumbling a little over the corner of the thick-pile rug he always forgets about and Hartley’s hand around his arm to steady him, pulling him close and he is so sure, so sure, this time as he feels Zara’s fingers moving in the dark, the scritch of her fingernails along his Tuscan linen, twisting up in the fabric to drag at him, sudden, shocking, even though he’s been aching, been waiting for it—

Drags him in and he expects a crash, a collision, for it to hurt at least a little, but then, orbits shifting, gentling, she tilts up to catch his mouth with hers and—

Oh, he thinks, it doesn’t hurt at all, it doesn’t—

And warm fingers sliding up his arm, his back, cupping the base of his neck, rough calluses catching at the fine baby hairs there, the damp spot where he’s begun to sweat, the angle tilting—

Can’t think at all past the press of her open mouth, the slide of her tongue on his and Hartley biting at the hinge of his jaw, like they want to break him open, crawl inside—

Goes on like that for years maybe, losing track of things and finding them again, existing only in the places where they connect, overlap—

Finds himself somehow toppled backward on the floor, Zara half-way in his lap, his back against Hartley’s chest, his mouth a damp smear, huffing needy little breathes, can barely figure out how to shape his numb, kiss-swollen mouth into words, out of practice, like all he’s ever done is use his mouth to kiss and kiss—

But he has been practicing, tried so hard to find the right words and even now, half-tumbled, he manages to gasp out, “Wait, wait, maybe we shouldn’t complicate…” before he runs out of breath as Hartley pulls him in tighter, voice rough, “It doesn’t have to mean anything” and Zara bites, vicious, sucks a mean bruise into the hollow of his throat, tells him, “It’s just sex, Nolan, we’re all adults, it’ll be fine” and Nolan—

Feels scooped out, like nothing at all—

Laughs a little bit, licks at his numb lips, says “Yeah, yes, you’re right” and then, sitting up, “Let me just grab something from my room, I’ll be right back”, knows from the way they look at him that they think he means condoms, pulling him in for one more kiss and it burns, prickles at his nose and the backs of his eyes—

Doesn’t look back, doesn’t—

Nolan alone in his room, bent over, fisting at the roots of his hair. Feels half in, half out of his body. A minor setback, he tells himself. A pep talk. He just needs a little pep talk and then he’ll turn around, go back out there, enjoy himself. See how long it lasts. See if they make it to the bed. Makes himself stand up straight, smoothes down the line of his jacket, goes to readjust his pants, thinks, oh fuck. His peeling soul mark patch, thinks fuck fuck fuck—

Just needs a little air, sticks his head out of his bedroom window, wind in his mouth, tastes like nothing, nothing but air. Needs more of it, still light-headed, dizzied, is halfway out of the window before he even thinks about what he’s doing, hears the Tuscan linen catch and tear as he squeezes through, blunt fingernails scrabbling painfully on the brick, lands hard, ankle twinging, rolls with it and then—

And then he’s gone—

Chapter Text

Nolan sleeps in uneasy, fifteen-minute snatches, his head rattling against the window of the train, his cheek sweat-welded to the glass. His dreams are soft and surreal, the make-believe twisted up with real memory.

The plastic rim of a water bottle pressed to his parted lips, Hartley’s hand cupping the back of his neck, Hartley standing in the pressed-open V of his thighs, Hartley’s low voice whispering “That’s it, sweetheart, just like that, don’t rush” as the sun-warmed water overflows and trickles down the side of his mouth, down his neck, swallowing, swallowing, throat working. Zara’s thumb pressed to his wrist to check his pulse as he tries to catch his breath, tries to tell them that he’s fine, that they don’t need to worry so much about him, and Bishop, their faces melting together in the hazy summer heat, murmuring, “Someone should.”

Nolan wakes up with a start, his phone ringing again.

He has no idea where he is, the landscape outside a smear of blue-black shapes. He feels feverish with the lack of sleep, hollowed out. The bones of his eye sockets throb when he presses a hand over his face.

He dreams again—the aerialist who performed in the sex club on special occasions leading him up into the rafters where her bands of black silk are anchored to the ceiling, grinning at him over her shoulder. “The trick,” she tells him, and suddenly it’s Zara’s face smiling back at him, sharp and sly, her dark hair sliding silk-soft around his wrists, “The trick is to let it run through your fingers.”

The lack of motion jerks him awake again. The muffled French repeats the same announcement over and over.

End of the line, all passengers please disembark.

Little baby Nolan, five and chubby-cheeked, still small enough to sit in his mother’s lap, putting sticky kid fingers on the page of the storybook she is reading to him and the pictures there: a stylized stiletto made of glass lying at the bottom of a staircase, the wicked point of the heel glinting in the midnight moonlight.

Cinderella’s bare foot, the black soulmark on her heel exposed as she runs away.

“Mommy,” he asks, pointing, “What’s that?”

Nolan is nineteen and giddy with success, going nearly double the speed limit in his stolen car with his stolen Shakespeare manuscripts in the back seat. His phone is ringing in the backseat but he cranks the radio up until the speakers threaten to blow out, singing, “Girls just want to have fun!” as the highway unspools before him like a film strip, endless, looping.

He doesn’t know why they’re still trying to call him—that’s what the understudy is for.

They don’t really need him. No one ever does.

(“I’m not asking you to care about me, Booth.” Hartley had said, but it was already too late. “I’m asking you to help me.” And then, that little word please squeezed out and rough—no, Nolan hadn’t stood a chance.)

His roommate pleads with him for three straight days to join him in breaking out of juvie, white-faced, white-knuckled, more terrified of what was waiting for him at home than of getting caught.

“As soon as we make it over the wall, we’ll split up, make it harder for them to catch us both. Fifty-fifty are pretty good odds,” Ellis says, hopeful in a way that breaks his heart a little.

“It’s a bad plan,” says Nolan sternly, trying not to look like he’s given in already.

Still hanging upside-down from his bunk, Ellis sticks out his tongue. “So make it better.”

Annoyed, Nolan resolves to do just that. Only it turns out that when he actually sits down to show Ellis up with a better plan, the process is easy. Unlike lock-picking, where all the gears seem to do is fight him, this feels natural. He’s always noticed things, small and innocuous details, and, most importantly, he knows how to fit them together or play them off each other, a deliberate cause-and-effect. It’s a different kind of leverage, of lock-picking, and the thrill of it—of what he will later call the con—shakes his entire stringy, thirteen-year body.

His plan almost works.

It rains that night. Nolan wants to wait but his roommate is skittish, less than a week away from his release date, the looming proximity making him stupid with fear. They’re drenched by the time they make it to the outer wall, both of them shivering and numb with cold, and Ellis fumbles his backpack, drops it straight down onto concrete, his metal canteen rattling loud as gunfire on contact. They freeze for a long, horrible moment, not daring to breathe or even blink, rain smearing the darkness into gibberish. The dark has been kind to Nolan and he hopes… but then, the bright unforgiving beam of a flashlight and a guard’s voice shouting.

Ellis is already climbing, backpack abandoned, his movements clumsy with panic and not nearly fast enough. Nolan has a split-second to decide before the light of the flashlight reaches them and he presses one hand against the wet bricks before launching himself away.

He runs. Heart pounding in his ears, the echo of heavier footsteps gaining on his own. Runs and runs and—

Stumbles, his knees weak, body betraying him, and Nolan goes crashing into the slick false turf where they get to play baseball on weekends. Someone yells. There’s a sharp crackling sound of a taser, and the damp pool at the back of his shirt feels like it catches fire. He convulses, weak and helpless, bangs his chin against the ground and tastes hot blood in his mouth. He looks up, squinting through the rain, the dark, his own tears, and sees the faint smudge of his roommate’s receding back as he crests the top of the wall to freedom.

It’s okay, he thinks, his vision tunneling with blackness, don’t look back.

Nolan knows he would.

He has Orpheus’s own weakness and he looks back every time.

Nolan takes three steps into the damp heat of the jungle, lets the canopy shade close over his head, feels the touch of the sun fall away, and stops. Takes a long breath in and out, hears water droplets rattling in his lungs. There’s sand under his tongue, gritty when he tries to swallow, and the golden egg is heavy under his arm, still ice-cold to the touch from its long imprisonment in the underground bunker—that must be the reason, since Nolan is too old to believe in curses.

He knows he needs to move, to run like hell and get away from the scene of the crime before it’s swarming with officers. He’s got no plan, no resources, nothing except for this slim head start.

He doesn’t owe Hartley anything. Going back would only complicate things, put himself at risk.

But Nolan never really learns his lesson, does he?

The phone rings again but Nolan can’t make himself answer or even look, doesn’t want to see WIFEY <3 blinking at him from the screen. He feels fragile, emotionally hungover, is gripped with the animalistic instinct to stay hunched over and frozen in place. If he doesn’t move, the bad emotions won’t see him, right?

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” A woman across the aisle asks him, the edges of her Italian turned crisp with annoyance. The whole group of women is glaring at him and he wonders how long the phone has been ringing. He wonders if he’s about to get cursed out. He’s always thought Italian was a good language for anger, emotional and expressive without turning brutal.

Nolan shakes his head, blinks his blurry eyes to bring her into focus. He tries out a pathetic smile; it’s easy.

“My ex,” he explains. “I don’t…”

The glares melt into sympathetic looks and sounds of understanding. Someone offers to answer the call for him and tell his ex to fuck off. Human life is full of unexpected universal experiences. Nolan can’t help feeling a little touched, smiles a little more genuinely, but he merely shakes his head and fumbles, without looking, for the button to turn the phone off.

The ringtone cuts out abruptly and the silence rings in his ears instead.

Negative space, he thinks, a little nonsensically, remembering what his art professor used to say. The absence of a thing is often stronger than the thing itself.

His stomach flips over, ties itself into a knot. Still, he knows that even turned off, Zara could hack into his phone and track his location if she really wanted to. He thinks, seriously, of throwing his phone out of the window and going somewhere they’ll never think to look. Liverpool. Zadar. Paris, Texas. He can’t decide, in the moment, what would hurt him more—if they look for him, or if they don’t.

“You’re really overreacting,” Nolan complains, mostly to have something to do with his mouth that isn’t pressing warm, open-mouthed kisses to the sensitive skin behind Hartley’s earlobe. He knows it must be sensitive—remembers, vividly, the way that Hartley had shuddered and licked deeper into his mouth during their kiss on the rooftop when his clutching fingers had accidentally grazed that spot. The sound he’d made.

“I’ll let you down when Zara says so,” Hartley answers, hitching him a little higher, arms flexing around the backs of his knees in a way that makes him feel hot and breathless. Nolan can’t remember the last time he got a piggyback ride, but surely they aren’t supposed to be so erotic? He tries not to think about the broad stretch of Hartley’s shoulders under his fingers, the warm summer scent of his skin, or the fact that he isn’t even a little short of breath after carrying Nolan uphill for a good fifteen minutes.

To distract himself, he stares out across the red-dotted fields, at the distant bunches of preserved buildings, brick and plaster rounded by wind and weather.

Real people lived here once, he thinks. Loved here. Worked in the same fields, under the same dizzying sun, picked the same flowers and shyly handed them over to the people they hoped might carry their mark. Got their hearts broken, maybe. Drank too much alcohol and let their friends tell them it would get better, said yeah yeah you’re right I won’t think about it anymore. And maybe they really would have, day by day, let the vice-grip on their heart ease away, the grief fading, maybe they would’ve woken up eventually and felt no pain at all, except that, suddenly, the sun had disappeared and the sky was falling in on them, a smothering blanket of ash and they were running, running, not away, but into the darkness, hand outstretched, thinking, if the world is ending, let it be with you.

The imprint of a soul frozen that way for nearly two thousand years as the bones crumbled slowly to dust, a sort of purgatory, so perfectly preserved that someone like Nolan can pass through the museum and see a plaster cast of their body, of every fingerprint whorl.

The hand still reaching out.

“Your pulse is too fast,” says Zara, concerned, her red-tipped thumb pressed into the soft underbelly of his wrist.

With his heartbeat pressed against Hartley’s back and pinned beneath Zara’s finger, he feels strung out and exposed, if only they knew what to look for. Nolan can’t tell her that the problem isn’t the sun anymore, but that the muscles of his heart feel enflamed; overworked, tenderized. He doesn’t know what to do when they’re nice to him. When they—god, he can barely make himself think the words, hopes fervently that Zara puts the redness of his face down to dehydration—when they take care of him.

“Tell me honestly…” Nolan begins with a pout, kicking his feet like a little kid, trusting that Hartley won’t accidentally drop him into the dirt. Trusting that he won’t drop him on purpose either.

“Do I look ridiculous?”

Zara slants that sideways, teasing look at him. The one he loves.

“Ask me something else,” she answers, in a tone of voice that means you’re the most ridiculous person I’ve ever met. She smiles at him too, the one he loves and can’t stand. The one that hooks under his breastbone, that makes him feel fragile and skittish, slanted, skewered.

He makes himself look away from her, squints up into the bright, cloudless sky, and pretends to think about his next question.

“Is there something you haven’t stolen yet, something that you really, really want?”

“Yes,” she says, her thumb rubbing a gentle circle over the thump-thump-thump of his pulse. “But we’re working on it.”

Nolan is twenty-seven, gorgeous, euphoric, on a win streak (if you don’t count a desperate manhunt across three international borders and a broken collarbone, which he doesn’t) and a total, shameless flirt. He scoops some more pistachio chocolate mousse into his little dessert spoon and does something absolutely obscene with his tongue that results in the chocolate getting more onto his face than into his mouth.

“Still no?” He asks, grinning, eyes crinkling up at the corners. “I can also—“ and he mimes shoving the little spoon into the back of his throat.

Pablo’s face is absolutely impassive, a masterclass in milquetoast.

“You know I’m married,” Pablo says.

“Invite them,” he says, winking obnoxiously. “I’m more than enough for two.”

Pablo makes a humming sound in the back of his throat, unconvinced or maybe just thoughtful. He takes a dainty scoop of his own chocolate mousse—pinky raised at the precise angle as always, Nolan notes with more fondness than he maybe should feel about someone who is rejecting him again, but that’s nothing new—and takes a neat bite.

“Five percent,” says Pablo, after a considering pause. “And it would’ve been seven, if it weren’t for the peep show.”

“I could also—“

“Four percent,” says Pablo in a foreboding tone, but the light in his eyes is amused.

Nolan sighs, giving it up, and eats the rest of his mousse in big, careless gulps, talking with his mouth still half-full, so giddy with excitement over his soulmate’s latest triumph that he can’t resist bragging about the details. Normally, Marcel DuChamp wouldn’t be enough of a household name to warrant national coverage but the circumstances of the heist are interesting in a way that plays well on late-night TV. His lesser-known abstract painting Portrait of Chess Players had disappeared from the Philadelphia Museum of Art without a trace, and instead, his infamous Fountain—the signed urinal—was put in place of the painting, right under the silver plaque.

“That’s a dig at me,” Nolan explains happily, scrapping the last of the chocolate from the bottom of his glass. “DuChamp once said, ‘all artists are not chess players, but all chess players are artists’. Bishop is critiquing my stealing of Klee’s Superchess, which yeah, alright, the symbolism was a bit on the nose. Uninspired of me. I’ll have to do something big next time. Hit up the Louvre maybe. It’s been ages since the Mona Lisa was stolen and people still talk about it.”

“The Louvre is not a one-person job,” Pablo tells him sternly.

“Awwww,” Nolan coos, carelessly waving this very sensible point away. “You do care. Come on, come on, just give me one little hint.”

Pablo’s sigh is long-suffering. “Bishop has paid generously for a full information blackout on anything related to their identity, jobs, or movements. As you know.”

“Very sexy and mysterious of them,” Nolan agrees, his own sigh rather dreamy. “It’s terrible.”

“You could level the playing field,” Pablo points out. “It might not be a bad idea to pay for a blackout of your own, given this dangerous little back and forth you’ve got going on.”

Nolan doesn’t know how to reassure him. It isn’t dangerous, not like that. But for all that he likes Pablo, he’s not about to tell one of the most well-known and active information brokers alive who his soulmate really is. That he is not, of the two of them, the person who knows his soulmate’s real name is, well. Something he’s working on fixing, okay?

“Don’t worry,” he says earnestly, spreading his arms open wide, knowing how the gesture pulls open the loose, unbuttoned collar of his shirt, showing off the naked expanse of freckled skin and his mostly healed collarbone, “You know me, Pablo. I’m an open book.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” says Pablo with prim distaste, sounding for once exactly like the old man he is, that Nolan can’t help laughing, tipping back onto the back legs of his chair. “You shouldn’t sit like that,” he adds, which sets Nolan off worse than ever.

“You sure you won’t give me a hint?” He teases, rocking back further, precarious. “Any minute now, I could plummet to my death on these cold tiles, and as I lay dying in your arms, won’t you think: if only I had answered his questions, this wouldn’t have happened, he was such an angel, taken from us too soon, he lit up every room he walked into, he always—“

“Alright, alright, fucking hell,” Pablo cuts in, not rolling his eyes precisely, but giving the impression of it anyway. He cocks his head at an angle, regarding Nolan with a hint of that bottomless curiosity beneath the cool mask, that overpowering hunger to know which is what must drive people into this line of work in the first place. It’s the one genuine emotion that Nolan can reliably coax out of him, at least.

“If I could tell you one thing about Bishop, what would you pick? Their age, gender, next target, bank account number…?” Pablo holds up an admonishing hand before he can work up too much excitement. “I won’t answer, of course. I’m simply curious—and you owe me for emotional damages.”

“Alright,” Nolan concedes with a laugh, sitting down properly, all four legs of the chair back on solid ground as he considers the question fully. His fingers tap a restless rhythm against the side of the empty dessert glass to stop himself from reaching for that spot at the divot of his hip; one of his tells he’s still working on getting under control, a compulsion he can’t always resist. He licks at the corner of his mouth where he missed a bit of chocolate mousse, and shakes his head. It’s too much, too big a question. Easier to list what he didn’t want to know.

Pablo is watching him quietly, probably figuring out a dozen things that he doesn’t want the other man to know. Nolan shrugs, thinks, fuck it.

“I’d ask… would they like to live by the water?”

Pablo’s face is suddenly very blank. The expression he only wears when he’s masking harder than normal. Nolan bites at his lip, forces himself not to blink or look away, to incriminate himself further. Has he really said something so shocking, so out of line? Probably. He doesn’t think straight, not about Bishop.

“Admit it,” Nolan smiles so wide that his mouth starts to hurt. “I know Bishop must be smoking hot—it’s my sixth sense, my conman tingle. Just set us up with a secret rendezvous by the ocean, a little love shack, come on, dude, you gotta wingman me on this one. I’ll send you pictures.”

Pablo wrinkles his nose. “Don’t call it your tingle, Nolan.”

“Fine,” he laughs, “But only if you promise to tell Bishop that I’m great in bed.”

The atrium of the Gallerie dell’Accademia has become warm with body heat, almost stifling. But the police are winding down their investigation and the museum, despite a lack of answers, won’t be able to detain their guests for much longer.

In a bit of unexpected luck, the officer in charge is an unpleasant man with a condescending sneer permanently affixed to his heavy-set features. He manages to offend almost everybody of importance within the hour, and Nolan is pleased to imagine that botching this case might set back his career. It’s not that the man looks like his father, particularly, and he’s not half as competent—sadly, Nolan had to admit that if nothing else, his father was good at his job—but something about his demeanor itches at him. The clipped way of speaking, the dismissive flick of the wrist.

Not that it matters.

Mr and Mrs King are doing their best to seem distraught at the sudden break-in and outraged by the incompetence of the museum security and the Venice police force, acting more for each other than for their audience. Mr King first turns pale with horror and then blotchy red as he lectures the police investigators trying to interview him on the historical importance of the Vitruvian Man up to the present moment. “If we don’t recover it post-haste, we could be looking at public riots!” He says, face shining with complete sincerity. “Think of the art students!”

As they’re dismissed from questioning, Mrs King valiantly holds back her tears, shaking the lead police investigator’s hand and saying in a choked voice, “We know you will do your best,” as one of the attending junior detectives looks like he might burst into sobs too.

Nolan bites hard at the inside of his cheek not to break character. He tucks Zara consolingly under his chin, and she hides her face, her delicate nose pressed against his throat. Her shoulders visibly tremble.

Pressed together, he feels every tiny shift, feels her secretly transfer something into his pocket.

“There, there,” says Nolan soothingly, patting her hair, carefully not to mess up the artful arrangement. His belly feels tight with anticipation, all his nerves pulled taut. Zara makes a show of composing herself and steps away.

They are released back into the crowded atrium. Nolan can’t risk taking a peek into his pocket but when he smoothes a hand surreptitiously along his suit jacket, he feels a hard lump. He wonders what it is—this thing she has decided to take besides the principal target. This extra bit of greed.

God, isn’t she fucking glorious?

“Well?” Nolan asks, twitchy and delighted. “Don’t leave me waiting.”

Zara doesn’t let herself smile, doesn’t let herself break character. She tugs Nolan’s black handkerchief—the disguised ski mask—from his breast pocket without unfolding and revealing its true shape. She dabs at the corner of her painted eyes without smearing the makeup. Her full red lips are tilted down into a tragic expression, the picture of beautiful sorrow. He wants to bite at the corner of her mouth.

“I liked that man’s watch,” she says, and in contrast to the rest of her, her voice is coy and velvety. Pleased with herself. “I thought it would suit you better.”

Nolan feels his breath catch. He feels tongue-tied, stupefied. Like the stage lights have been turned on blast, blinding, and he’s only just now realizing he doesn’t know his lines. It’s a shock, every time, to realize that they have come to know him in return. That they’ve stolen a hundred thousand details about him too.

“Well?” Zara asks him, sliding her gloved hand up his arm. “Shall we go?”

Nolan exits the train station in a daze, following the flow of people up out of the train tunnel and onto the busy streets, feeling that emotional pins-and-needles numbness that comes from shoving too many things too quickly into that little black box in the back of his mind, and he blinks sleep-blurred eyes at the sight of the Eiffel Tower lit up brightly against the nighttime sky.

Oh, he realizes. Did he come here on purpose?

He thinks about going back to the Louvre. But you can never really go back.

Paris in the spring is a different place entirely. Hot, crowded, muggy even at night, pungent with the scent of human sweat and piss, trash tumbling in the gutters, oil residue glittering on the tops of small puddles. A cacophony of overlapping voices, street musicians, car horns.

He’s not quite sure how he gets from the train station to Gabriel’s restaurant, isn’t even sure that he’s awake. The next thing he knows, someone is taking him by the shoulder, forcing a mug of something warm and aromatic into both hands, a familiar voice clicking his tongue in disapproval until he starts to drink. It’s delicious, some kind of spiced mulled wine, and the flavor bursts on his parched tongue, making him feel human again, less like the ransacked matryoshka doll with its inside pieces scooped out. His stomach rumbles and he realizes with a jolt that he’s hungry.

“Ah, mon cher,” says Gabriel, regretfully, refilling his mug and handing him a plate of puffed pastries. “What did they do to you?”

It feels like one of the pastries gets suddenly stuck in his throat, cuts him up with its sharp, brittle edges. Nolan scrunches up his face, trying not to cry.

“It’s not like that,” he says, swallowing hard. It hurts. “I left first.”

The story pours out of him in garbled bits and pieces, out of order, half-censored out of habit and probably mostly incomprehensible, but Gabriel doesn’t ask any questions, just keeps making encouraging sounds while he talks himself hoarse, keeps refilling his mug and his plate until Nolan finally, full to bursting, pushes himself away from the table with a groan.

“Stop, stop,” he begs, slumping so far down in the chair that he’s practically on the floor. “I’m gonna be sick.”

Gabriel gets an arm around him, helps him wobble back to his feet, says in a threatening voice, “If you dare to vomit up the Époisses de Bourgogne, I will eviscerate you myself. My knife skills are very good, there would be nothing left for your friends to collect.”

“Ahh,” says Nolan, hiccuping a little from the sudden change in orientation. He can’t tell if he’s tipsy or just really, really tired. “That’s what I should have done from the beginning—should have hired some nice, reliable criminal to attack us, could have played the hero and taken a simple stab wound to the upper thigh, had a proper dramatic reveal when they take my clothes off to dress the wound, and fainted from the blood loss to avoid the consequences. What do you think, Gabe? Know anyone willing to stab me a little bit?”

“Don’t be stupid,” the other man says, annoyance making his accent more pronounced than usual. “It is very hard to stab a moving target just so. And then you would be dead.”

“The French are supposed to be all for romantic gestures,” Nolan complains.

Gabriel mutters something unflattering under his breath, struggling a bit to walk side-by-side up the narrow winding staircase that leads from the main restaurant to the floor upstairs. They pass by storage racks filled with the ingredients that don’t need to be kept refrigerated: bags of flour and sugar and salt, jars of marmalade, an entire wall stacked with crates of wine. His overfull stomach lets out an uneasy gurgle and Nolan hastily averts his eyes.

There’s a room at the back, outfitted with a comfortable cot and a small bathroom. A stack of paperback books sits on the ground by the mattress, topped by a dog-eared copy of Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. Gabriel dumps him unceremoniously on the end of the bed and kneels on the floor, grumbling, to help unlace his shoes.

“Nice place,” says Nolan, hiccuping again. He can’t tell if the ceiling fan is really moving or if the world has started to spin.

“Sometimes the kitchen staff sleeps here, after a long night,” Gabriel explains and gestures towards the bathroom door. “There should be extra toothbrushes under the sink.”

“Aww, Gabe,” says Nolan, softening, propping himself up on his elbows to look fondly across at one of his oldest friends. Remembers being twenty-two and half in love, keeping one ear open for the scrape of the key in the lock at three in the morning, waiting to help Gabriel practically sleep-walk into bed, to help him undo his shirt buttons because his fingers were so stiff and swollen from overwork that he couldn’t manage them, carding gentle fingers through his sweaty hair as he mumbled a string of curses and threats, face half-mashed into his pillow, a long sigh as the tension left him, promising, “When I’m the boss, I won’t be such an unrelenting prick.”

“Shut up,” Gabriel says, turning red and shoving at his face. “Don’t look at me like that.”

Nolan just grins, undeterred. Neither of them could ever take a genuine compliment.

“It is a nice place,” he says again, softer.

Gabriel clears his throat, shrugs, and then—because he’s still an asshole—he yanks Nolan’s shoes off hard enough to send him tumbling, elbows akimbo, flat on his back. Wind temporarily knocked out of him, Nolan grins up at the ceiling fan until Gabriel’s face looms over his, blocking the view, his expression as serious as he’s ever seen it.

“Do you know why we didn’t work out, Nolan?”

Nolan blinks up at him, surprised.

“You weren’t ready for something serious,” he answers. The words are easy, the hurt long since faded. “Not with me, at least.”

Gabriel shakes his head slowly side to side, looking—not regretful exactly. Resigned.

“No,” he says, tucking Nolan’s shoes beside the bed with care and standing up, grimacing when one of his knees pops audibly. “No, you weren’t ready for something serious. You were looking for it, yes, but you weren’t willing to actually let it in.” Nolan sucks in a sharp breath, feeling like he’s been knocked flat again, feels gutted, but Gabriel continues, steadily, ruthlessly, “Everything I know about you, I learned against your will. Maybe that’s the kind of thing they can handle, but I couldn’t.”

He watches, stunned, unable to think of a single thing to say, as his friend carefully pulls the blanket up over him, crosses to the doorway and flips the switch, plunging the room into darkness. Gabriel’s silhouette hesitates in the threshold, his face turned sideways, the glow of lights in the hallway behind him illuminating the bridge of his nose, the shape of his mouth as his lips part, hesitating, and then:

“It’s unfair to try and love them without letting yourself be loved in return.”

“That’s not—“ his voice sounds weak, cottony, far-away. “That’s not what I—“

Oh, he thinks, swallowing hard.

The chiaroscuro shape of Gabriel’s mouth gentles, lifts up at the corners. “Take care of yourself, alright?” He smiles, turning away, the light winking off the familiar chip in his tooth, “Or, at least, consider letting someone else do so.”

The door closes behind him with a quiet click.

Nolan, at twelve and three-quarters, takes his place in the line of hungry boys snaked down the hallway, each of them waiting for their chance at the corded telephone, waiting for their meager ration of affection, their And how are your grades, sweetheart? Oh, I’m so proud. The hallway echoing with the ringing of the phone line. Unforgiving acoustics. No secrets, no silence, no shadows to hide in.

He picks nervously at the raw mess of his nail beds, wondering if his mother will forget again or if she’ll pick up this week. That bitter seed already planted in his heart, the lump in his throat, the little voice dripping its slow poison, whispering next time, I’ll leave first as the phone rings and rings.

The second-story room of Gabriel’s restaurant has no windows, and he dreams himself underground. A snake in the dark underbelly of the world, curled back on itself, writhing desperately inside of its own loose skin. Half-in, half-out of his own body, mouth open, panting with the effort, trapped somewhere between what he is and what he wants to be, thinking: Help. Help, I can’t get away from myself.

Nolan wakes in a half-blind panic and bolts on instinct. That’s the nice thing about running, it takes up too much space. He doesn’t have to think about anything else in the process.

It’s past midnight of the next day when he finally arrives at his house, and, in the darkness, Nolan stumbles over a small delivery box sitting on the front step. He hears the rattle of metal spoons as the box tumbles away and he has to sit down suddenly and crush his palms against his eye sockets until he sees whirling stars. The spoons will be fine, he tells himself. It will take more than that to break them.

The Grecian Urn arrives at his house a few days later, delivered straight to his door by a team of professionals with the utmost care and solicitude. He signs for the package on the front steps, striking up a friendly conversation, innocent questions about inventory and delivery routes. Nolan is a consummate professional too, you know? Out of the corner of his eye, he can see where the box of spoons is still lying tumbled in the dirt, in the shadow of the stairs where weeds would grow if he let them. But Nolan is a very responsible homeowner.

The delivery team offers to bring the package inside for him and help with unboxing but Nolan declines with a smile, telling them he’s been looking forward to doing all the decorating himself. It’s been so nice to finally have a place all to himself. His alone.

“I wish,” the driver agrees with a laugh. “Between my partner and three kids, I don’t have an inch of space to myself.”

Nolan’s fingers tighten around the package. He smiles. He shifts the weight to one hip and raises a hand to wave goodbye as the delivery team gets back into the truck and drives away. He wonders if Zara regrets putting down his address at the auction house now that they didn’t get anything out of it. If they would have done things differently, if they knew the outcome. If they meant to be cruel.

He waves until the truck has backed down the long driveway and disappeared around the corner but he doesn’t unbox the Grecian Urn, or even bring it inside. He still has the professor’s card in his wallet, after all. Two weeks later, delivered not by a team of careful professionals but by the local postman with no return address, the package arrives at his campus office with a scribbled note that merely says On Loan.

The February rain hammers against his bedroom window, unceasing, determined to drown Venice from both directions. Not expecting anyone else to be awake, Nolan sneaks out of his room to grab an ice pack for his puffy eyes, wearing only his boxer shorts and Hartley’s oversized blue sweater. The cashmere is soft against his skin, broken in by wear and wash cycles. This isn’t something new, bought in the moment, but an old favorite. The lingering scent of Hartley is almost overwhelming.

His bare feet are silent on the tile floor, his toes scrunched up involuntarily with the cold. In contrast, his face still feels hot and itchy from his earlier outburst of tears.

There’s a single yellow-tinted light on over the kitchen sink and Nolan comes to an abrupt halt, about to beat a hasty retreat, when Hartley cocks his head, hearing something, and turns around. “Trouble sleeping too?” Hartley asks, sympathetic, keeping his voice low so as not to break the quiet, and then seems to do a double-take. With just the sink light illuminating the space between them, Nolan can’t make out the expression in those dark eyes, can only follow their direction.

“Ah,” says Nolan, a little self-conscious, fiddling with the loose drape of Hartley’s sweater falling across his bare thighs, “Sorry, I didn’t think anyone else would—I’ll return it later, after I—“

His voice catches, trails off because… is Hartley blushing? Nolan dares to draw closer, curious, but it’s hard to tell for sure in the dim, yellowish light.

“It’s fine,” says Hartley, clearing his throat, looking away. “Did you need something?”

They’re close enough to touch. Nolan could reach out to press a finger against his cheek, could check if his skin is overheated. But then, Hartley always runs hot. Absurdly, Nolan is feeling hot too,  overly aware of the buttery cashmere against his naked skin, the soft rub of the fabric against his nipples, which have already gone hard from the contrasting chill of his bare legs. He feels—he—

“Ice cubes,” Nolan blurts.

Hartley looks back at him, which is both better and worse.

“I’m an ugly crier,” he gestures ruefully at his swollen eyes. “My mom was the same.”

Nolan takes a careful step away, intending to go around him to the freezer but Hartley is faster. He digs up a small ice pack and wraps it carefully in a thin dish towel.

“Thanks,” he says, reaching out.

“I’ll do it,” Hartley offers, and, taken by surprise, he agrees. The other man steps closer, and Nolan instinctively tilts up his face, his outstretched hand settling instead on the curve of Hartley’s upper arm. Maybe his body remembers the last time. He shivers.

“Sorry,” Harley murmurs, sympathetic, one of his warm hands coming up to cup the back of Nolan’s neck. “I know it’s cold.”

“Y-yeah,” Nolan manages. He thinks he might be blushing now, which feels deeply unfair. There’s nothing safe to look at—those expressive eyes, up close, or the expressive mouth which is smiling faintly at him, or the familiar jawline, or the broad shoulders.

“Thanks,” he says again, just to fill up the silence. It’s not an uncomfortable silence, not at all, but cozy, inviting.

“Of course,” says Hartley, like it’s that easy. Like Nolan could take this much, at least, for granted.

He is still trying to find somewhere safe to look at, trying to think of something safe to say when Hartley continues, voice soft and low, his thumb rubbing gentle circles against the knotted muscle at the base of his neck, and so it takes a long moment for his brain to focus on the words. To realize the danger.

“You don’t really talk about your mom. The same kind of way you don’t really talk about your soulmate.”

Nolan makes the mistake of glancing up at him, knows he must seem pathetic with his red-rimmed eyes and the helpless look in them. The look that says don’t make me talk about it. Hartley wipes away a drop of melted ice before it can trickle down his cheekbone.

“You don’t have to,” Hartley answers, softer still, looking back at him like—like he is a deep pool of warm water that Nolan could sink into, dissolving. No judgment in his voice at all, not even the knife-edge of curiosity that Zara possesses which cuts and compels him in equal turns, just an open invitation to unburden himself made without ulterior motives. “But sometimes, talking helps.”

A quiet sigh escapes Nolan, the whine of tension releasing. He feels wrung-out, feels himself sinking by slow degrees, tilting forward to rest his head on Hartley’s shoulder and closing his eyes. He hears the crinkle of the ice pack being set aside and then a pair of strong arms come up to encircle him, so warm that he can’t help but sigh again, letting Hartley hold him up, letting him take the weight for a little while. He knows Hartley won’t drop him.

“I’ll consider it,” he whispers and thinks he might even be telling the truth.

Eighteen and self-sufficient. Eighteen and lonely, Nolan can’t remember the last time he’s been home for the holidays. It’s the first time he’s been in his father’s office since he stole his father’s watch, and in all the years between, nothing has changed. The same purple-red Persian carpet, the same heavy wooden desk, the same shuffle of paperwork as he talks to his son, barely glancing up.

“The school tells me you made valedictorian,” says his father, in his cold, clipped way. “I’m proud of you.”

Nolan smiles, tasting bile.

“You don’t get to be proud of me, sir,” he replies, in the same cold voice. “Since you had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

His father pauses, puts down the sheet of paper, and caps his pen. Finally looks at Nolan head-on. The office window is winched open but even if someone stood outside on tiptoes, straining, they would catch only the polite, even-handed cadence of conversation, never once suspecting the bloodbath within. But despite the veneer of civility, their words are vicious, deeply personal, each of them fighting to bruise and break, and despite the barren field that is their relationship they both know each other too well not to do real damage.

“If you had paid more attention to Mom instead of your petty obsessions, she would still be alive. Anyone could see she was sick.”

His father gets abruptly to his feet, white-faced, chair upended with a dull thump on the carpet. Something terrible moving behind his eyes, some killing intent. “My wife,” he says, drawing out the word, possessive, “Never wanted children. It took me years to talk her around to the idea. She had you only out of love for me.”

His white, bloodless lips curve up into a smile, the look of hawk that has the field mouse gutted on its sharp, savage talons.

“I’m the one who wanted you.”

Nolan makes a small, hurt sound and presses the back of his hand to his mouth. They stay like that for a long moment, father and son staring at each other over the uncrossable divide, over the rotting carcass of their relationship. The stink of it filling his nostrils, making his eyes burn.

“I would rather get my diploma rescinded than have you in the audience when I pick it up,” Nolan says, his voice trembling with effort. “I’m never going to see you again.”

His father scoffs, righting his chair and taking a seat again, “It’s time for you to grow up.”

Nolan turns, literally blind with a tumult of grief and rage, fumbling his way out of the office, shoulder clipping the door frame on his way out. His entire body throbs with pain, his ears ringing, fraying apart along every seam, loose sloppy stitching. He takes one step and then another until he is out of the house, down the street, the next, the next, until he finds himself in a train station, nothing on him but one hundred in crumpled bills and a packet of his gum in his back pocket.

Well, he thinks, pulling hard on all his threads, pulling himself together, I’ve never been to Amsterdam.

Completely naked, Nolan sits in the lathe of the ocean, the glow of lights from his house behind him casting strange shadows across the rolling surface of the water. Fragments of light reflected and fractured, the surf an endless breaking and coming together. It’s too early in the year for the water to be comfortable, but he sits in an unblinking silence, hypnotized, watching the tides push-pull at his peeling soulmark patch, at the loose fraying threads. The water first up comes up to his ribs, then his belly button, then lower still, the tide pulling away from him, leaving his wet, chilled skin exposed in the colder air. He begins to shiver and then can’t stop.

It’s easier to descend step by step into the underworld than to come back out of it. The dark has always been kind to him, has allowed him to pretend whatever he wants. What terrifies him is that first step out into the golden sunlight—the moment of truth, the cards all laid out on the table. Nolan is a liar and a card sharp for a reason, after all. He’s never been very lucky.

It’s only a matter of time, he thinks, watching the frayed edges of the patch flutter with the receding tide. Balanced on the last step out of the underworld, not leaving but not turning around. Balanced on that knife-edge, hesitating. Schrödinger’s poisoned gift box—to have and to have not.

Teeth chattering, Nolan drags himself upright and back inside.

Nolan towels himself dry and sits at his kitchen counter. Grimly, he pours himself a measure of whiskey just under the threshold of alcohol poisoning. It’s a stupid idea, unhealthy, but he does it anyway. He doesn’t have another answer—knows of no other way to take down his own walls but sabotage, a Trojan Horse of his own making. He puts on some music in the background to drown out the silence and drinks like he’s going to work, one burning sip after another, steady, methodical, like taking step after step open-eyed into the dark. The heat of the whiskey rises into his head, the contrast to his chilled body making him feel drunk almost immediately. The world goes blurry, haloes of light and color. No edges to cut himself on.

Nolan gropes for the phone, dials by rote, muscle memory.

The phone rings. Rings.

Nolan’s breath catches, stalls out. He grits his teeth and feels the ache in the tooth, the hollowed-out pain. The points of pressure. Feels himself smearing, the colors run together, the threads unravelling, feels—feels too much, every time—

“Nolan?” A tinny voice on the other end, breathless or just bad connection. His heartbeat pounding so loud in his ears he can barely hear anything at all.

“Hi,” says Nolan. He hears puffs of static, a sharp crackle. “Is now a bad time?”

Or tries to. His voice is slurred, clearly drunk. His body blushes, feeling embarrassed, but Nolan is at a distance, disconnected, floating a little above himself.

“Don’t worry about it, we—“ Another puff of static and then Zara’s voice, more clearly, “We’re glad you called. Are you okay?”

Nolan means to say yes. His body, somewhere beneath him, makes a wet, snuffling sound.

“No,” he admits, “No, I—I’m not—I’m not—“

The world around him blurs further, tearful, softened.

“Have to tell you—about my soulmark, I’m sorry—wanted to be honest—tried so hard to—“

“Shh, it’s okay,” Hartley this time, warm voice pressed against the receiver, crackling, so close Nolan wants to put his lips to the sound, “It’s okay, sweetheart, we know. We didn’t mean to push you.”

Nolan makes a high-pitched keening note, so raw it scrapes the back of his throat, grounding him painfully back inside his body. He shakes his head side to side, swaying with the motion, seasick.

“Don’t—” he pleads, dizzy, “Don’t be nice to me right now.”

“Why not?” Zara again.

“Don’t know,” he shakes his head side to side, sick with it, “Don’t know how to—I—“

“Nolan,” she says, gentle, “Have you eaten?”

He shakes his head, remembers she can’t see him, mumbles, “No.”

“How about water? Do you think you could drink some?”

Nolan slowly stops shaking his head, looks over the vast expanse to the kitchen sink, grips the countertop and stands. The world sloshes, spins a little, then stabilizes.

“Yeah,” he says, carefully making his way to the sink. He fills a glass after a few tries and manages a sip. The cool water slides like heaven down his parched throat. He clutches the phone to his ear, tries again to say, “I need to tell you—it’s my fault, okay? Did it all backwards, messed up, I always—I want things too much and I don’t—I don’t know how to stop.”

“They’re lucky, then,” Zara sounds terribly sad on the other end. He doesn’t know why but he wants to reach through the phone and comfort her, wants to fold the distance between them like origami paper, pressed to nothing between them. He hums a few disjointed notes of an old lullaby, trying his best.

Another puff of static and she continues, more brisk, shaking off the melancholy. “I’m ordering some Indian food for you, the delivery should be there in about fifteen minutes. Can you stay on the phone with me until it arrives?”

Nolan’s glass of water wobbles in his hands, threatening to spill.

Oh, he realizes finally, inescapably. They wouldn’t have been cruel to him in Rome, not on purpose. Mean, yes, in that way he likes. But never cruel. So why did they say it?

“Nolan?” She asks, a note of worry.

“I miss you,” he blurts out, shaking, water overflowing in the sink.

He hears the sharp hiss of her inhale of breath. “I—both of us… we miss you, too.” Her voice as unsteady as he’s ever heard it, cautious, feeling the words out as she goes along. “We’re, ah, in the middle of getting you… well, an apology gift now, I suppose. We were originally planning to stop by and give it to you in person but if you’d rather not—“

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I—soon?”

“As soon as we can,” she promises.

He wakes up the next morning feeling like a sewer.

Nolan cracks one eye open and hisses, regretting it immediately. Eventually, he fumbles his way to the bathroom, going by touch and memory, both eyes squeezed tight shut. He dry-heaves half-heartedly over the toilet for a little bit but when that doesn’t make him feel any better, he crawls into the bathtub and cranks the shower on, as hot as he can stand it. The heat and steam revive him somewhat, enough for him to uncurl, sprawling his long legs out, tipping his face up into the spray. Eventually, he gathers the energy to stand up, to soap himself up and let the grime and bad decisions of last night spiral down the drain.

Nolan wonders what soon as we can means exactly. Wonders if he’ll feel ready.

His soapy fingers catch at the divot of his right hip, nails snagging in the rough, fraying fibers of his soulmark patch. Nolan lets the hot water run through his fingers, clearing the soap, lets himself grab the edges of the patch between his thumb and forefinger. Lets himself apply a steady pressure as the adhesive separates from the pale sensitive skin, a fresh molt. Lets his thumb glide over the tender black lines of the soulmark.

Such a small thing, he marvels.

The last time he sees Gertrude, they go for a walk along the shining white steps of the Getty together to the gardens. Purple wisteria drips like grape clusters from the arched fence and even the circular maze of hedges has turned mostly pink with blossoms. She points out the different flower varieties to him, tells him which parts of the garden are impressive—from an arborist’s point of view—and which are mundane. He’s doing his best to give her his full attention but his birthday is coming up soon and he can’t help his thoughts being drawn continually back to his soulmate. Will they get him something this year? He doesn’t need a gift; he can get himself almost anything he wants, after all, but if he could only get another newspaper headline, another chess move in their game, another clue.

“Gertrude,” he asks, when their conversation lulls. “How did you… with your soulmates, how did you know what to do?”

“Silly child,” she shakes her head at him. “Nobody knows anything in this life. We’re all idiots, stumbling around in the dark, figuring it out.”

“There should be answers,” he insists, a little sulky.

She tilts her wrinkled face, her years and years of laugh lines, up into the sun. “You figure it out together,” she tells him, still smiling. “That’s the only answer.”

As soon as we can turns out to mean three days.

The warm spring morning has turned slowly, lazily into a spring afternoon; still warm and mellow, crickets humming in the tall grass, the gentle lapping of waves, the smell of sun in the air. The sort of perfect day that little children, locked behind the glass windows of their school prisons, imagine for themselves. Nolan is enjoying the weather to the fullest, sprawled out in his new hammock with a floppy hat and oversized sunglasses, absorbed in a book on the evolution of urban architecture, that, while fairly dry, is nonetheless giving him all kinds of interesting ideas for how to break into historical buildings, and he almost misses the buzz of his phone—once, twice—except that it’s slipped under his back, pressed uncomfortably against his spine.

He digs out his phone, most of his attention still on the book, and nearly capsizes the hammock in shock at the unexpected text messages.

H + me r here

is now a good time for u? 

Nolan types out a message, deletes it, types again. Knows they must be watching the ‘…’

Sure!

Nolan hits send before he can overthink it. He looks blindly down at his book, heart ricocheting in his chest. Somehow, he thought he’d have more time. His brain scatters in a hundred directions, freezing him in place, undecided. He thinks about staying where he is, playing at nonchalance, or running up to the house so he can meet them more formally at the front door, but before he can choose, he hears the sound of a car pulling up. Nolan sits upright, trying to make the move look cool, effortless, but the hammock doesn’t care about his dignity, threatening to upend him again.

They get out of the car and—god, they’re beautiful. He drinks the sight of them in, parched, the two of them as perfect and well-matched as ever. Hartley in his pressed linens and leather sandals, Zara in a breezy lemon-yellow sun dress. They see him too and hesitate, a flicker of uncharacteristic uncertainty. Somehow, that eases the knot in his own chest, and he knows what to do next.

“Hey,” he says, grinning, waving at them. “Come help me up, I think I put this hammock together wrong.”

In the end, he manages to topple all three of them into the thick carpet of grass, Hartley laughing so hard his balance is compromised, barely scooping him and Zara up against himself to soften their landing, the breath knocked out of him in a spluttered oomphf. It’s shockingly normal, the three of them falling into their easy orbit. He doesn’t know when things changed, exactly, when they shifted to make room for him.

Nolan props himself up on his elbows, surveying them both, flicking the floppy edge of his sunhat out of his eyes.

“So, he says, a little shy, “What brings you to my humble abode?”

Again, that flicker of hesitation, Zara shooting an uncertain glance over at Hartley, a look that says you first. Maybe they don’t have to talk about it at all—maybe nothing has to change. Isn’t this nice? But Hartley sits upright, brushing grass from his elbows, his expression determined and calm, except for the nervous tick in his jawline, “Come on, we have something for you.”

Hartley pulls both of them to their feet. There are fresh calluses on his palm, Nolan notices, the rough drag of skin and skin, over in a flash. He wonders what they’ve been up to.

“Close your eyes,” Zara commands.

Nolan does, lets his eyelashes flutter once, then squeezes them tight shut.

He hears the click of the car door, rustling, a quiet grunt of effort, hears his own breath quickened in anticipation. His hands, restless, ball up into fists.

“Alright,” says Hartley, “Go on.”

Nolan opens his eyes.

The Kiss shines golden back at him in the late afternoon light, a world within a picture. The decadent tenderness, the intimate stillness, the delicate touch. The thing he’s been looking for: the moment when the slanted I yearn— resolves, the wish fulfilled.

He stands rooted, transfixed.

Another flicker of uncertainty in them, an exchange of glances. Hartley holding himself perfectly still, Zara shifting impatiently from foot to foot, growing sharper as the silence stretches. He should say something, anything—thank you, probably—but the words escape him.

“The truth is,“ Zara snaps, a flash of teeth, then cuts herself off with a shake of the head, a cascade of dark hair. She takes a deep breath and starts again, trying to be gentler, “The truth is, I didn’t want to give this to you as an apology gift but as… I wanted—want—“

She breaks off, frustrated, another flash of teeth, looking imploringly at Hartley.

“We wanted it to be an official courtship gift,” he finishes.

Nolan looks at them helplessly, utterly speechless.

“Yes, we know you’re still in love with your soulmate,” Hartley assures him with a self-deprecating laugh, rubbing at the back of his neck. “We had planned to seduce you first, trick you into a serious relationship later. It seems like the best strategy at the time. But you saw right through us, didn’t you?”

Nolan looks back at The Kiss. The shining, irrefutable proof.

“I am,” he says, voice hoarse, “I’m in love with them.”

Zara turns away, the sharp snap of her loose hair behind her, her tone almost normal, a valiant attempt, “Well, then. Hartley says this used to hang in your bedroom, right? A full apology means putting it back in the same place.”

“If you want us to,” says Hartley, looking at him steadily, earnestly.

He manages a nod.

Manages to trail after them in a daze, through his home. He directs them to the primary bedroom, through the door and into the west-facing wall of windows, the radiant, golden bowl of sun poured out across the room in waves, illuminating everything—the two wooden nightstands, and the wooden Tuscany bed frame, the Alaskan king-sized mattress, and the percale sheets, the empty wall.

“Go on,” Hartley gestures towards the bed. “Tell us when it looks right.”

So Nolan goes, kicking off his shoes and sinking back onto the bed, back onto his elbows, looking up at them as they work in tandem, one on each side of the painting. First down, then up, then to the right. Left corner tilted just a little bit, a little more, a little, too much, a little more…

“Now you’re doing it on purpose,” Zara accuses, short of breath.

“Of course not,” Nolan lies, and then, swallowing, “Why did you pick up a phone call in the middle of stealing something so important?”

“Because it was you,” says Hartley, like the answer is easy.

Oh, thinks Nolan, swallowing again, throat clicking and feeling something dislodge, some old blockage, finds himself taking a deep, clean breath, and, suddenly, it really is that easy. He realizes that all this time he’s been waiting for the truth to be tricked, to be torn out of him. He’s been guarding himself out of a reflex, out of an expectation that the moment of revelation will be bloody, dramatic, out of his control. But maybe love doesn’t have to hurt.

“The two of you are my soulmates,” he says, off-hand, casual, relaxing back into an easy sprawl, because it doesn’t matter, because they would’ve chosen him anyway, “Of course, if I’d known from the start that there were two of you, I would have approached the situation a little differently, but—“

Zara makes a choked-off sound, a scream of outrage and something like joy, dropping her side of the painting to launch herself onto the bed, Hartley left to wobble dangerously, trying to keep the unexpected weight of The Kiss in place by himself, as Nolan laughs full-bellied and trembling, scolding “Careful! We just got that in the right place!” while Zara snarls, pouncing, telling him to shut up, pinning his wrists viciously over his head, the sharp points of her nails pressed to the racing pulse, and kissing him, kissing him, kissing him. The dip of the bed as Hartley joins them, warm hands sliding up his waist as Zara holds him in place, voice rasping, agreeing, “Yes, in the right place,” and him glowing under their touch, the three of them moving together like the sweet, slow spill of honey, the slant of skin to skin, reveling. Nolan feels like he’s swallowed the sun. Feels burning-bright, full to bursting.

Feels, at last, irrevocably, loved.

.

.

.

Epilogue: One Year Later

Linnie Cooper stares, disconsolate, down into her overpriced Martini, chasing the sad, shriveled-up olive around the glass with her toothpick. She’s being a fucking idiot. Budapest is turning out to be more stunning than she dared to hope for, and she’s getting paid—paid!!—to attend one of the most respected archeological conventions of the year, and, yet, here she sits, sulking alone at her hotel bar instead of out networking with her new colleagues or exploring the city or doing pretty much anything less pathetic than checking her phone obsessively, just on the off chance her ex has decided to text her something like I was wrong to break up with you before your big trip, I’m sorry, I take it all back…

She stabs viciously at the misshapen olive, hoping that’ll make her feel better.

“Long day?” A sympathetic voice asks.

Linnie glances up and then has to quash the urge to look around the otherwise empty bar to double-check that this gorgeous stranger really is talking to her. He looks like the kind of celebrity crush she had as a teenager, all warm honey-brown eyes, boyish dimples, a hint of stubble, a friendly boy-next-door kind of charm. He’s wearing a white button-up with the sleeves rolled up and black slacks, the same kind of thing that half the attending academics, herself included, are wearing, but there’s a sheen to the fabric that makes him look expensive, or maybe that’s simply the effect of the crisp tailoring and the lean body beneath.

“I’m Nick,” he says, flashing his dimples at her and holding out his hand. “Nick Bishop. Are you here for the convention too?”

“The convention?” Linnie says, stupidly, taking his hand. It’s a nice hand, she thinks, surprisingly strong. Maybe he’s not an academic after all.

“You’re wearing a lanyard,” he reminds her, helpfully.

She looks down at her official ICA badge in a stupor, can almost audibly hear the gears in her brain grinding. She finally manages to pull herself together, releasing his hand with an embarrassed laugh, and takes a sip of her drink to fortify herself.

“That’s right,” she says, rallying. “I’m a part of the team presenting the newly discovered fragment of the Law of the Twelve Tables. Um, that is, the early Romans—“

“I know,” he cuts in, but not unkindly, in that odious way she’s used to during these conventions, being short and female and generally overlookable, “I’ve been following your discovery, actually. Not to be embarrassing, but I’m a bit of a fan. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? A lot of questions, even?” He flashes his dimples again, signaling for the bartender. “Only if you don’t mind talking about your work, of course.”

Oh no. Linnie can’t ever shut up about her work, it’s part of why her ex—anyway. She feels her knees go a little weak.

They lose track of time. The Martini glasses pile up. The olives aren’t sad and shriveled when he orders them, but she doesn’t complain. Linnie wouldn’t want to give a man who smiles like that subpar olives either. She wants to give him, hmm, delicious squishy cupcakes with star-shaped sprinkles like Clara sometimes leaves in the break room, wants to, maybe, kiss him a little bit, just on the cheek, just to see if he’s real. Linnie realizes, belatedly, that she may be rather drunk.

“Cupcakes,” she tries to explain to him, very seriously, “Clara could bring you cupcakes. She brings me cupcakes whenever I—hiccup—get dumped.” Damn, that makes it sounds like she gets dumped all the time which is, well, ‘all the time’ is not a scientifically useful categorization of measurement and should therefore be discarded. It’s hard to date as a unplaced academic at the whim of temporary postings, okay? Last time, along with the cupcakes, Clara had tried to offer a bit of friendly advice, glancing up at her nervously through her fringe of blonde hair, a mumbled “Maybe you should date a fellow academic, you know, someone who understands…” But what did she know—she’s so pretty, so kind, so patient, anyone would date her, she doesn't understand how difficult it is out there.

“Are you an academic?” Linnie asks, glancing side-long at him. He’s sprawled back in his chair, playing with his half-empty glass, tipping the dark liquid side to side, the innermost dip of his wrist still shiny where he licked at the skin, chasing a drop of spilled drink. 

She can’t stop staring at it. The pale skin dotted with cinnamon freckles, the faint blueish veins visible beneath, finds herself sliding closer, hypnotized, a sudden bolt of courage, wondering if maybe this could be…

But before Linnie can close the distance, someone slides between them, neatly cutting her off. Not one person, she realizes, blinking, but two of them closing in on either side of him.

A man and a woman, both of them looking like—

“Wow,” she says, eyes widening. Looking like the kind of celebrity crush she has as an adult. Sexy, dangerous, expensive. Completely out of her league, not that they spare her a glance. Linnie is glad of that, of small mercies, her mouth still hanging open in surprise.

The woman slides her delicate hand along the shiny skin of Nick’s wrist, dragging her red fingernails along the blueish veins, and tangling their fingers together.

“Sweetheart,” she clicks her tongue, a flash of pink. “You’re not wearing your ring again.”

On the other side of Nick, the man leans in with exasperated affection, untucking a necklace from beneath his collar to show off the glint of a diamond pendant, the chain strung with a ring made of a dark, unusual-looking metal.

“I had to take it off to climb the scaffolding,” Nick explains, leaning into the touch. “I didn’t want to scratch it.”

“We went with tungsten for a reason.”

“Still, I might—“

The woman leans forward suddenly to kiss him, cutting him off. Linnie immediately feels hot, like she’s shoved her whole face in boiling water. She knows she should probably look away; the kiss is really too much, a bit of a show, a deliberate re-possessing. When Nick finally emerges for air, his lips as wet and shiny as that patch of skin at his wrist, dazed and gasping, she can’t blame him. Linnie feels the same way just from watching.

“You won’t,” the other man promises, tenderly, pressing his fingers to the necklace.

Linnie does look away then. The raw, vulnerable look on Nick’s face feels even more private than the kiss.

She quietly gathers herself up, her dignity, her purse, the phone she’s forgotten to check for hours now, still feeling a little wobbly but not bad, not heartbroken, not anymore. Her ex never kissed her like that and maybe, someday, someone will. Maybe Clara is right, and she’s been looking in the wrong places. Smiling only a little wistfully, she tiptoes away, although when she can’t resist a backward glance at the door, she realizes that she needn’t have bothered being careful—they haven't noticed her leave, their eyes seeing only each other.