mr. & mr. smith / sal & niho

The call comes twenty minutes after Niho's finished work for the day and he's having his customary cigarette on the back steps of the sprawling upstate New York special that had become his home.

The kids aren't supposed to know about the smoking and technically, they don't, but the one hanging crooked off his lips this time has Good job, dad scrawled along the side in Yale's juvenile handwriting.

The canvas in the sunroom is still drying when the phone rings, an unknown number. Niho puts the phone to his ear and says nothing.

"You have been compromised. Terminate project."

The receiver clicks.

He finishes his cigarette.

Sal met Niho five years ago at a benefit the Adroxis family was hosting for New York's state orphanage. Sal hadn't been Niho's job that night, there was a senator there that his employers were watching, but he'd made Niho laugh. After everything had finished, he found Sal on his way out and asked him for a drink.

It was only after his employers found out who Niho had married that things got complicated. As it turned out, the Adroxis family had an extensive file on it, so under wraps that even when Niho had done some preliminary digging, he'd found nothing. Turns out Sal wasn't as clean as he'd once thought.

But that was okay, neither was Niho.

Five years later and they're celebrating four years of marriage with a steak dinner cooked by Niho and a bottle of wine provided by Sal.

The steaks are resting by the time Niho hears the garage door opening. He turns the music up, humming along softly to the jazz channel on the old kitchen radio. Sal hasn't come inside yet. Niho's dicing the ingredients for a chimi churi sauce and Sal isn't in the kitchen yet. The knife feels natural in his hand, he hates that it does.

He turns to check on the vegetables in the oven, dusted in salt and paprika with a healthy drizzle of olive oil.

"Smells good," Sal says from the doorframe.

Niho turns around and smiles. It's genuine. Five years in and he still gets this electric feeling in his chest whenever he sees Sal after being apart for even a few minutes.

He dusts his hands off on the apron tied around his waist, then crosses the kitchen to his husband, "Welcome home, babe" he says, then cups his face and kisses him.

He knows what terminate project means, Niho's been in the game longer than most, but he figures they can talk about it later.

A night without the kids is pretty rare.

"Work was good?" he asks before slipping the merlot out of Sal's hands to open it.

He crosses the kitchen floor and opens the drawer with the corkscrew in it. There's an old ticket stub that must have fallen in there awhile ago, from a night they had together with Mourn and Esther at the opera. Sal and him had excused themselves so many times that they missed the whole last act.

He smiles down at it and shakes his head lightly.

"Uh-huh, Mourns on my case again."

Niho grabs the corkscrew and turns around to lean against the counter, opening the bottle with expert precision.

"Well babe, you do tend to get distracted easily," Niho says. He pours the wine into a decanter.

Something's wrong.

Sal's standing there like a kicked puppy when he should be trying to pin Niho against the counter. It's their anniversary after all, the food is just for show, it's not the meal, Niho is. At least that's what Sal says every time Niho cooks something special.

Maybe he knows.

"He just want to see you succeed," Niho says, "That's what brothers are for."

A tightness begins in the centre of his chest and blooms slowly. There's a funny look on Sal's face, something he's never seen directed at him before. Niho puts the decanted wine down carefully on the bar top before turning back to his cutting board. The knife lays across it, the chimmichuri already made.

He was so busy focusing on the second half of that message, he forgot to consider the first. There was a chance Sal already knew who he was connected to. His husband might have more than a knife on him.

The cast iron he used for the steaks is still on the stove top. There's a drawer full of cutlery to the left of Niho's hip and a knife block five steps away, beside the fridge, where the kid's photos are all stuck to the front.

And he's thought of six ways to kill their father in the last minute.

He puts the board and the knife in the sink.

"No paperwork here though," he says lightly, "Just your husband, who you've been married to for four years as of today."

Maybe the last few words are a little pointed.

It's a stupid choice to turn his back towards Sal. It's like laying down and exposing his neck, even asking for the blade to fall, Niho knows that. It's not like he entered his line of work because of a sense of preservation though.

Part of him is just curious. He wants to know if Sal is capable of killing him.

Skill has nothing to do with it.

He turns the tap on and watches water run over the cutting board. Sal's hands land on either side of him, then his husband is leaning into him, following Niho's script almost perfectly. His lips are against his skin then, Niho's stream of thought pauses, investigating the exact spot on his skin instead that Sal kissed.

He wonders if there was poison on his lips for the occasion.

"It's okay," he lies.

Niho's good at lying though, Sal isn't. Niho knows this through experience but also by reading his file. It's why when there's a delicate job to do, he never sends Sal. Sal's for making messes.

It's probably very bad in a psychological sense that Niho finds that endearing.

He lets himself settle into Sal still, they can still have a good anniversary, it's salvageable at this point. The steak should be perfect temperature for eating right now and those roast vegetables are definitely finished. Niho's about to turn around in Sal's arms, push him away lightly and serve them.

Then Sal's holding him in place and asking him something completely mundane for a couple on their anniversary.

Not mundane for Sal though.

The gala where they'd met, Niho had been completing a job for the Fenwicks, he'd been working. Sal either knows this or he's guessing but it doesn't matter, the knife is still in reach at the bottom of the sink. There's still time to grab it before Sal can react.

He could have his husband bleeding out onto their restored hardwood floors in a matter of seconds.

And then what?

"Actually, I never told you this, but I was there with someone," he says after a moment. Then he takes Sal's right hand in his and runs his thumb along the back of it. It's not fully a lie, he'd been there with someone briefly anyway. Senator Carlin, a man Mourn Adroxis had wanted in his pocket for months.

Drugging his drink had taken mere moments though and he'd had the rest of his evening free for Sal.

"After I ran into you though, I couldn't stop thinking about you so I left him, right there at the gala and went to find you."

Niho turns then slightly to look at him.

"I don't regret it."

He's got the side of his hip now pressed into Sal' groin, his free hand braced against the edge of the sink. One wrong move and Niho can buy himself some precious time.

"Do you?" he asks sweetly.

Before Niho met Sal, he didn't belong to anyone or anything.

He thought that he liked it that way. Fenwick had recruited him when he was a teenager, a month after his parents had disowned him when his school counsellor had decided it was her duty to inform them of their son's sexuality.

They held a funeral for him, as if he was dead, they would have preferred him that way. It made him the perfect candidate for the program, hand-picked recruits for a ghost program that on record, didn't exist.

Word gets out though, strangers come to know you better than you know yourself and Niho learns young that anyone he touches with kindness might as well just turn to dust in his grasp. People like him don't get to have normal lives, something will always come along and ruin it in the end, weather that's a new enemy or your past showing up at your door to haunt you.

Niho knew this five years ago, for Sal, he looked the other way.

Mistake. Might as well of taken a gun and shot himself in the foot, Niho put himself here in this situation, no one else. His handler had warned him against it and Niho hadn't listened.

He knows.

Sal knows, he has to.

Niho stands there silently in his husband's embrace and watches his life begin to crumble at his feet like it always does. Men like him, they've never been allowed to live a happy life, his fate was sealed from the day he was born. Thing is, he thought for a moment that he'd somehow cheated the system, that he'd earned his happy ever after.

Stupid.

After a moment, he sighs and leans into Sal's touch. If this is the last time that he's going to be held like this by the person that he loves, he might as well enjoy it.

"Don't you think that's funny?" Sal asks him.

But he's not laughing. That's kind of the funny part actually. Niho doesn't like this though, he's seen this version of Sal before, not that Sal knows about that. Followed him on a job once, just to confirm that what he'd read in his file about him was true.

Sal gets dangerous when he stops laughing.

"You know what they say, Fate's a comedian," Niho says softly.

Pathetic really that part of him fully believes that Sal and him were fated. Sal's always felt a little bit like a gift for him, someone up there felt bad about the cards he'd been dealt and sent him his way.

God, he can be such a fucking idiot sometimes.

Niho uses his hip to push them both off the counter, a tender little bump, he turns to fully face Sal and smiles sadly at him. "Baby, you feeling okay?" he asks, "We can always celebrate another time, put a movie on or whatever, wine's already open so..." he trails off.

Niho sighs again and tips his forehead agains Sal's shoulder, using the moment to wrap his arms around his husband, slide his palms down his back, searching.

"Talk to me," he whispers.

Bingo.

The tip of his finger grazes hard metal.

He has seconds.

There's a brief moment in every interaction where the tension breaks and Niho's found it. He lives in the silence of that second for longer than he should. He should be moving, beelining for the small room he paints in because there's a loaded gun taped to the bottom of his work bench.

It's not the only place to find a stashed weapon though.

Niho had never fully settled, especially once he found out just who he was in love with. He knew a day might come when Sal would bring work home with him and he'd always wanted to be ready. He just hadn't known that the job he would be bringing home was Niho himself.

If he could freeze time then he would, not to give himself a head start, not so he could hurt Sal before Sal hurt him, it was already too late for that. He'd freeze time so that he could stay like this, safe in his husband's arms for forever.

"I let you near the kids."

Funny. Niho's heard that before, not because of his violence but because of who he was attracted to. It's just funny to hear it again in a different context. Now he's got two dimes.

And somehow it hurts more than any wound he's ever received, to hear that come out of Sal's mouth.

Let him near the kids.

Their kids. How dare he.

Time lurches forward and Niho's back is against the sink from where Sal pushed him off. His husband is backing away, hand going for the gun, Niho sees it, moves on instinct. The cast iron is beside the sink, cool now, he grabs the handle, holds it in front of his face and nearly hits himself in the head when a bullet bounces off of it to smash right through a vase Esther had gotten for them at an auction last year.

He goes low, silent, slipping around the kitchen corner into the living room. Bullets are still flying, Niho saw one hit their cupboard full of glassware and heard everything within shattered. There was an old Oscar the Grouch cup that Yale liked to drink milk out of in there, Niho knew, he'd emptied the dishwasher. Yale was going to be so upset.

Sal could be so fucking thoughtless sometimes.

Niho reaches under the sofa and slips his hand into a hole he cut through the bottom three years back. A handgun comes out a two- no, one? smoke bomb. He'd have to have a talk with Nowles.

He rolls onto his front, gun held out in front of him and takes aim back into the kitchen, calmly shooting out the lights above the island, short circuiting the whole thing.

"Baby?" he calls out after a moment, "You still there?"

Niho moves again, on his feet with his back against the solid wood doorframe leading to the front entrance.

"You sure we can't talk about this?"

Because Niho loves him, in spite of his stupidity.

Damn.

Strange how adrenaline does that, he thinks, as his hand comes away from his side painted red. It's not a bad hit, he knows that at least as he feels around gently. Niho's got practice with wounds in the field. He finds the entrance and the exit, bullet went clean through. Could have been worse, definitely.

But his shirt's ruined.

Just one of many things in disrepair this evening.

Silence reigns from the kitchen and Niho leans there, listening hard for Sal. His husband isn't the type to play games, he's slippery, sure, but he's the type to barge through a wall rather than open a door. Something isn't right, unless- he looks to his left. The room across the hall is empty, no stupid lanky husband stalking him from the shadows to be seen.

Why is this sort of fun?'

"Baby?" he calls out again, then listens.

There's a sharp, cascading sound from the kitchen as glass shifts across hardwood. Then his name follows, spoken funny, like Sal can't quite get it out. Niho goes still. He hadn't shot to kill, he'd aimed at the lights to give Sal less visibility, every move he'd made had been in defence, he hadn't- a clattering, something heavy falling.

Niho slips around the corner, gun at his side.

It's a trick, dumbass, don't.

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Sal's hurt.

"Sal, honey, I'm coming in," he says into the dark kitchen, announcing his location like how an absolute idiot might. He puts the gun down on a side table, "I'm unarmed."

Why are his hands shaking?

His foot hits something, it goes skidding to the left, rattling as it goes. Niho bends down slowly, gaze ahead and grimacing slightly from the hole in his side. His hand falls on the object, he picks it up, glances down and-

Sal's weekly pill box, all the days flipped up except for Friday, today. Oh. That's why' it's been shoot first, ask never.

He slips the container into his pocket and places a hand on the edge of the island to get down on Sal's level. There's blood on the floor, pooling around his knee, dripping down a palm, Niho winces in phantom pain for him. He'd thought shooting the lights out was a defence tactic, but all he'd done was make shrapnel to hurt Sal. His heart hurts.

And Sal's gaze is broken, not all there, he's seen him like this before, on another anniversary. The day Ruin died. Nothing had really worked until he called Buck so they could talk.

He wished then that he was enough to help Sal but he knows that some fractures never fully heal.

"Hey," he whispers, then kick's Sal's gun away with the side of his foot. It goes sliding off into a corner.

Niho doesn't really know what to feel right now. The kitchen is a disaster, there's probably bullets in the steak and Sal just tried to kill him. On one hand, he should be so angry but on the other, when he said his vows, he'd meant them.

His hand finds Sal's cheek and he cups it lightly, sinking down slowly until his knees are resting on Sal's for balance.

"I've got you."

From the moment he touched him, Niho knew it was the wrong move. Actually from the moment he found that pillbox on the floor, he should have turned around and gone into hiding for a couple of days.

Another mistake, his vision clouded by the fact that Sal is- was?- his husband. Anyone else, any other moment like this one and he would have turned around and left but that's not what in sickness and in health means. Niho's parents disowned him because they looked at their son and decided that he could never know how to love without sin. They looked at him and saw a perversion, a mistake and they cast him out.

Before tonight, Sal looked at him like he was a human being. He looked at him like maybe he was more than that and no one had ever looked at him like that before, not in the way that Sal could.

With their knees touching, Niho can clearly see the way that Sal is looking at him now.

And it's bad. He's sixteen years old all over again.

His wings are being torn from his back, he's falling, arms held over his face to protect it from Sal, words falling heavier than blows and Niho can't even hear them. His ears go empty, the pain of glass shards digging into his back through the shirt sending a shock through him. God, he forgot what this was like, he forgot that anything could hurt this badly.

He coughs, struggling under Sal but it's all made him weak, Sal has made him weak. Five years of playing house and only taking the odd job here and there, five years of 'undercover', of staying up late sewing costumes, of helping with school projects, of pretending not to know about all of the danger that Sal was always, always in.

And it's a kindness really that he knows now that Sal is off his meds because now he'll never be sure if his husband could do this to him if he was thinking rationally. He wants to believe that there's no way in hell but he knows that's naive.

Men like them, they don't get happy endings, no matter how many lies they tell themselves.

He raises a hand, runs his fingers feebly along Sal's arm. Wake up.

His body bucks upwards beneath Sal in an effort to shake him off. You're having a bad dream again, baby.

He lands back down hard on glass shards, and his mind compartmentalises that sensation to suffer through later. That night again?

Sal's fist comes down and Niho catches it in his palm, Sal's strength sending his elbow back to hit the floor. Come here, I've got you.

His free hand goes for his pocket, finger hooks around the pill box and he pulls it out, shakes it once, "Take-," and it falls from his grasp, pops open when it hits tile, scattering pills all around them.

For some reason, they smell faintly of oranges.

"Sal."