kyle can see red strings of fate.
gaz who can see red strings of fate has learned, by now, that not every string behaves the same way.
he knows the ones that pull taut and then go slack the second two people are close enough to touch. he's seen that a hundred times. soap and ghost's did it, eventually, even through all the denial and the danger and the things neither of them would say out loud. the string found its slack. found its gentle wrap around them.
nikolai and price's never does.
it's the first thing kyle notices, and the thing he can't stop noticing after. it's red. not blood red or poppy red. theirs is older. duller. like red left out in weather too long. brick red. like rust. the red of a flag nobody salutes anymore. and it's pulled so tight between them it doesn't look like a string at all. it looks like a wire.
kyle's seen unrequited strings. seen strings stretched thin by distance, by war, by bad timing. those ones breathe, at least. slacken in sleep, in safe houses, in the five minutes after a mission when everyone's momentarily tired of pretending.
theirs doesn't breathe. not once. not when nikolai pours him a drink price didn't ask for but always wanted. not when price calls—and he always calls nikolai, never anyone else—and nikolai answers before the second ring like he's been waiting by the phone his whole life. not even when they're sitting two feet apart, shoulders nearly touching, doing absolutely nothing.
the wire stays taut. like neither of them has ever once let it go slack on purpose. like they wouldn't know how.
kyle starts to understand it isn't a distance keeping it tight. it's their discipline.
nikolai survived things kyle knows better than to ask about. built himself into someone indispensable instead of someone known, because indispensable doesn't get sent back, doesn't get buried in a country that would've called him something uglier than what he is. he learned a long time ago that being needed is safer than being wanted, that you can stand close to a man for thirty years if you frame it as loyalty and never once as love. kyle watches him do this. watches him choose, every time, to be useful instead of honest. it's not cowardice, kyle wouldn't call it that. it's just old. older than kyle, older than soap and older than ghost or any of them will ever understand.
and price. price who runs because stopping means looking down, means noticing the wire's been there the whole time, humming under thirty years of every door he's walked through and walked back out of. price calls nikolai because nikolai is always there, and him being always-there feels less dangerous than being chosen, so price has never had to call it anything. never had to sit still long enough to ask why nikolai. why only nikolai. why does it have to be him.
kyle thinks: they could go their whole lives like this. wire pulled tight. never slack. never snapped. just held, perfectly, unbearably taut, by two men who are very good at surviving and not very good at staying, at living.
he doesn't pray for this one. doesn't beg fate to be wrong. he won't put his hands on this string. won't try to ease it loose before either of them is ready. not this time. not these two.
he watches nikolai pour a second drink before price even asks. watches price call, every time, no one else's number crossing his mind. watches the way they orbit each other, useful, careful, and always, always there.
and he lets himself hope. quietly. the wire finally going soft. nikolai's finally being wanted and price finally letting himself want.
he doesn't know when. but he hopes. he watches. and for two men who have spent their lives surviving instead of staying, kyle thinks that maybe just being hoped for is its own kind of mercy.
he won't touch the string. he'll just wait, same as them. and hope that one day, none of them have to wait anymore.
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