I’d love to request joenicky “you can’t scare me like that, okay?” for the ask game! I really adore your writing and thank you for everything you’ve made ♥️♥️♥️
I had to change the dialogue a little bit, to fit it better with the style (I refuse to put "ok" in a fic set before 1900, sorry). But the gist is there. Absolutely not what you were looking for, probably, lol.
Yusuf returns to an empty home.
His first thought is violence, some intrusion that has snatched his Nicolò from him.
(His? Do not be absurd, Yusuf.)
He knows pirates stalk these shores, a man alone would be a good catch, especially one as robust as Nicolò. He is already half-forming a rescue plan when he notices all is well within the house: not a pot out of place, not a cushion strewn about, no sign of some vicious struggle.
Nicolò, then, must be out. Yusuf had not seen him in their garden, or in their sorry excuse for a barn when Yusuf had stabled their donkey. And yet he cannot have merely been spirited from the face of the Earth, can he? Yusuf doubts for a moment, something wary and childish, but then shakes his head.
Their chosen home is naught but a rickety shack on the clifftop, surrounded by carob and sweet acacia. There is the town within half a day’s walking distance, further down the coast, but around them there is nothing more than the sea. The cliffs create an impervious wall, except for a single trail down to a stony beach. It is there that Yusuf thinks to look first.
Sure enough, he finds Nicolò there. He stares out to sea. Yusuf has become well-acquainted with Nicolò’s long moments of stillness, even finding it comforting, but there is some wrongness here. He is unmoving but for the stroking of his thumb over the wooden beads of his Nazarene rosary, and yet he is not praying, for there is no sound but the waves.
Yusuf approaches. Nicolò still does not move, does not turn his head to him.
Nicolò is as a statue, hewn from the rock around them, but for his hand, and the sea breeze shifting his hair. Yusuf swallows.
“Nicolò?” he tries again.
This time, he moves. He turns his head slightly, yet keeps his eyes downcast, not lifting them to Yusuf’s face.
Yusuf does not know what to do. Should he leave Nicolò to whatever cold meditation has seized him? Or should he stay, and beg for explanation?
Then, Nicolò speaks. His voice is distant, and yet so matter-of-fact in his tone that the words strike more painfully than they would had they been spat like fire.
“What has become of me, Yusuf?” he asks. “What grace of God remains in me? I have let you in, you and your heathen poison, and now what is left of who I was?”
Yusuf flinches, stepping back. It has been many years since he has felt the cruel edge of Nicolò’s sword, yet these words cut deeper than any wound inflicted upon his physical form.
“What do you mean?” he says, his voice shaking.
Nicolò finally looks at him. For a horrid, gaping moment, there is nothing in those beloved eyes, hollow holes in Nicolò’s face. But then, as if like clouds parting for the sun, he blinks, and he sees Yusuf again. His fist clenches around his beads, his other hand coming to his chest.
“I mean…” He shakes his head, reaching out and seizing Yusuf’s hand. “I mean forgive me. I do not know what took hold of me.” He presses Yusuf’s hand to his forehead, eyes now tightly shut, a look of pain across his face. “Some darkness.”
Yusuf realises he is trembling, his legs weak, and so he kneels on the bare, unbearable rock.
“You should not scare me like that,” he says, his voice cracking. Nicolò looks at him, swallowing, and there is fear in his eyes. Not of Yusuf, no – of himself.
Yusuf is almost afraid to touch him, but he does. He presses a hand to Nicolò’s cheek. “You truly think such things?” he murmurs.
Nicolò shakes his head again. “No! No, oh, Yusuf, my friend, my life is all the better for you in it! And yet…” He stares at his rosary. “Some part of me still fears this change, this… this bitter voice in my head. I silence it as best I can, but today… today it would not be quiet. It seized me like some madness, caused me to doubt everything.” He presses a hand to his face. “I have no reason to doubt anything. I have found certainty at last. And yet…”
Yusuf sighs. “Do you think I do not doubt?”
“You always seem far surer than I,” Nicolò replies, more admiration than bitterness.
It is Yusuf’s turn to shake his head. “No, I doubt always. There is a voice in me, like yours, that speaks cruel things, that treats my happiness with you as some betrayal.” He takes Nicolò’s hands, cradling them, and the rosary, in his own. “And yet I cannot surrender to it. I cannot allow myself to listen to its forked tongue and venom. This… friendship we have found, I cannot believe there is something wrong there.”
He strokes Nicolò’s palms with his thumbs.
“It must be some miracle,” Yusuf continues.
Nicolò is quiet for a long moment, but it thoughtful, not distant. “Are good things worth having ever easy?” he says. “God gives us tribulations so that we might overcome them.”
Yusuf looks upon his face, and there he is, the Nicolò he has come to know best, returned to him. Warmth in those sea-green eyes, hope on his brow, determination in his jaw. Familiar and…
And most certainly beloved.
Yusuf cannot help but tilt forward, their foreheads meeting. Nicolò does not shy away, and the warmth they share through that point of touch must be enough. He cannot change their shape of their friendship, not now, not when their foundation is still so tenuous.
One day, perhaps, but not today.
2087
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