#;threads (nicky)

[monstcrmade]

       “Ah, grazie, Nile,” Nicky says as he takes a rag to wipe it off. He’s been baking up something of a storm today. They’re taking a break from missions for a time and well...idle hands and all that. Not to mention that Andy’s sweet tooth gives him an excuse for all of, well, this. The table is full of desserts, enough that it will essentially be dinner and breakfast and he’s still not done, it could very well turn into lunch too. Not exactly the healthiest of food options but then they’re immortal, it really doesn’t matter.

There’s a wide array of desserts spanning from all different continents with some favorites sprinkled in such an Andy’s beloved baklava, tiramisu which Nicky has a special fondness for, and Joe’s own favorite samsa.

“Is there anything you would like?” The kitchen is stocked with all manner of baking supplies at the moment—Nicky had made certain of that. “I do not mind making it.”

[monstcrmade]

     He should know better by now than to tell Joe to calm down when he’s this fired up. It does little to actually assuage the wrath of his other half. He’s not a particularly quick man to anger but he burns with all the intensity of the sun in everything he does and expresses and it is no different when he is brought to that breaking point.

Only this is a little different. Because Nicky is the one who has brought him here and this explosion of righteous rage is from a place of love and passion and though Nicky knows this and understands and he’s mostly keeping calm, he can’t help but prickle at the very subject of their newest argument.

They rarely fight but like any other couple they have their moments. It has been approximately six years since the last time they held such a verbose disagreement.

“Yusuf,” Nicky tries. “You would have done the same for me.”

They both know it’s true. Joe has died for Nicky, has put himself between their enemies and Nicky to protect him. They do it for each other constantly. Always have the other’s back. It is how they have been for near a millennia.

“I put myself in the way of that bullet to save you and I will do it again, you know this. I am not fragile, I have not lost my immortality. I am fine.”

[monstcrmade]

@sanguinemcinere || For Joe

He shouldn’t even be considering this, he knows that. He’s known for centuries that it’s not a good idea, that it’s impossible for them due to their immortality. But waking up and realizing that the baby they found was not part of some absurd dream, was not some cruel joke his mind had decided to play on him, it’s difficult not to latch onto the idea rattling around in his mind.

They had found her on the job, abandoned and cold with nobody to take care of her and they couldn’t just leave her there. After a mission they had to lay low and that meant no movement outside the safehouse. They were, essentially, on a self-imposed lockdown. Handing her off to the proper authorities was out of the question until the heat died down but Joe and Andy had managed to sneak out and get everything necessary to take care of an infant whilst Nicky and Nile stayed back to tend to the little one as best they could.

It had been three days now and Nicky was growing attached. He wasn’t even thinking of her as ‘the baby’ anyway, he had a name for her in his head that he didn’t dare to utter aloud. He didn’t need to hear from Andy what he already knew. But maybe, maybe they could. Even if it would hurt them in the end.

Nicky had fallen asleep on the couch earlier that day, the infant snuggled on his chest. Taking care of a baby was exhausting work, even for an immortal. The most fortunate thing was that she slept well, especially in his or Joe’s arms. She had grown as attached to them in such a short amount of time as Nicky had with her.

He brushes his fingertips lightly over her thick, red hair. Her eyes are closed, breath steady, tiny pink lips open slightly. She looks every bit what one might think a cherub to look like.

Nicky senses a presence in the chair across from the couch and he knows it’s Joe. He’s intimately familiar with Joe’s aura. Spending near a millennia by another’s side, loving them, and being the other half of their soul does that.

He turns his attention towards his husband and he might as well voice what’s been on his mind the last day and a half now. The worst Joe can say is no and Nicky will not hold any sort of grudge against him, will not curse him because he will be justified in saying so. Even if he knows Joe wants this too. They both do. It’s a discussion they’ve had at least once every century since they became more to each other. Whispered dreams muttered in the dead of night, a desire for a family they could never have conjured up in pretty little scenarios.

“I know we shouldn’t but...maybe we could keep her,” he says and that’s not the right way to word it. She’s not some bauble to keep on a shelf and admire, to only acknowledge when one remembers it is there. “We could raise her somewhere. Perhaps along the coast. This is what we have always wanted.”

Children. They have always longed for children. So often after a war—for war always leaves a slew of children bereft and alone—they would consider taking in as many children as they could, wishing beyond everything to give them a loving, warm home where they would always be well fed and finely clothed and never want for anything again. But always their immortality and lifestyle brought those dreams to a screeching halt.

But maybe now they could have this. Even for awhile. Even for, hopefully, eighty or so years. Yes, the inevitable death would make their hearts ache, but they would have given a child a home, they would be able to live the life they’d like for themselves, even for awhile. Perhaps it’s selfish but did not everybody deserve to be so at least once in their lives?

[monstcrmade]

@sanguinemcinere​

The water cascading from the shower head acted as a sort of noise dampener. Combine that with the fact that Nicky was paying no mind to his surroundings - for once he was allowing himself to drop his ever present guard, feeling content enough to do so. He didn’t hear the door to the bathroom open, now the curtain being pulled back. And then arms were circling around his hips and he leaned back into Joe, the touch not startling him for even a moment. He knew the other’s touch in an instant.

“Luce dei miei occhi,” Nicky says as he brings one hand up to rest against Joe’s cheek, he turns his face to press a kiss to the side of the other man’s mouth. “I didn’t think you would be joining me. This is a-” Nicky trailed off for a moment as he attempted to conjure up the word in English, he gave up after a few seconds of wracking his brain, even after all these years sometimes English simply refused to come to him at times, “-piacevole sorpresa.”

[monstcrmade]

@lexpxrdus || For Lykon

They happened infrequently. The dreams. But when he did have them, they were nearly always the same. A man tending to a farm in some countryside with rolling hills and not a house around for seemingly miles. They were pleasant dreams, peaceful, and Nicky had never thought much of them. That was until he mentioned them in an off-handed way and Joe had brought up that he’d had the very same dreams and for just as long as Nicky.

And then that cemented it, it was another and they both suspected who it might be but it baffled them to even think Lykon had risen from the dead. It couldn’t be possible but they had to make sure.

Nicky had offered to find him while Joe hung back to protect Andy and Nile should anything go South again. Even if they knew they could trust Copley, there was always that worry that they might be sold out again at any moment.

Andy earned the excuse of Nicky going to check some leads elsewhere for a job and though the leader of the small family had tried to insist she’d come along, Joe had managed to convince her to stay put. Joe could be a miracle worker.

Nicky took the car and it ended up being a two day journey before he managed to find the very hills and massive expanse of land from the dreams. It had occurred to Nicky that his dropping by suddenly might be incredibly odd or even startling but then, wasn’t that how it always was when they found each other? Even Andy and Quynh had startled Joe and Nicky all those centuries ago.

The man was outside when he parked the car. The damn thing was old as sin and it was a miracle it had even brought him here. He wasn’t entirely certain it’d make the trip back and luckily Nicky had taken money with him. Hopefully it’d be enough to pay a mechanic to make sure it got him back to the safehouse. Truthfully, he wasn’t the best with how much things cost. One could thank Nicky’s privileged upbringing for such things. Joe tended to worry about all that.

“Sorry to disturb you,” he said after offering the other a ‘hello’. “But I believe you know a friend of mine.”

He felt the need to start this as gently as possible.

[monstcrmade]

@lexpxrdus || For Nile

It was nice to have Nile around. Whilst it was sad that she had to leave her mortal family behind, Nicky hoped they could be worthy, in her eyes, of being considered a secondary family. Nothing would ever replace her mother and brother, of course, but perhaps they could give her some sense of familiarity.

They didn’t have many jobs in the late Fall and throughout Winter. Those months were mostly spent uneventfully with the occasional break every now and then. Nobody really complained. Whilst they had no issue with serving as silent protectors of others, it was still nice to have some prolonged downtime. Everybody needed a break, even immortals.

Christmas wasn’t as big a part of Nicky’s life anymore as it once was. Though he was still a Catholic and still observed the Christian holidays, he was much more engaged with Joe’s own. Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr, Eid Al-Adha, and so on. He even prayed with Yusuf, using those times as counting towards daily prayers.

Now, Christmas was still a ways off but as the seasons turned and winter grew closer, seasonal depression was sure to sink in and Nile must be missing her family. Nicky remembered his first Christmas after becoming immortal. Even with Joe there it had been sad.

“Nile,” he speaks up one day as he comes into the main room where she’s sitting. She’s alone as Andy is sleeping and Joe is in the armory - it was his turn to clean the weapons. Nicky would have helped but they were both stubborn about handling it alone as Andy and Booker did when it had been their turns. “What did your family do for Christmas?”

[monstcrmade]

@sanguinemcinere || For Joe

A roar erupted inside the bar, telling Nicky exactly who scored the latest goal despite him not even paying any mind to the game that was currently being broadcast on the television. Sports was more Joe’s thing, not his. Oh, he would listen to Joe talk teams and play-offs and the like fine, that’s what one did for the person they loved, but Nicky held no interest in watching it. The one game he had watched was when Italy beat France in the 2006 World Cup. A bet had, of course, been made and Booker had wound up owing both Joe and Nicky three hundred euro each.

With no more Booker, there was no one for Joe to watch the games with and he simply hadn’t been watching them period. It bothered Nicky and so he had coaxed Joe out of the safehouse and brought him here, to some pub with an enthusiastic crowd who might lift his husband’s spirits and allow him to enjoy something he had liked to engage with before Booker’s betrayal.

He could only assume it was going well, after all, he wasn’t in the pub. He was outside of it, a pint of half-warm beer in his hand, barely touched. The glass was emblazoned with the Guinness logo though the beer wasn’t itself Guinness. No, it was something else, something the bartender had picked out for him herself when she heard his accent. It tastes vaguely like some Italian beer but it’s too watered down to pinpoint which one. It was a bit ridiculous that she’d chosen it solely because of his accent. Just because he was Italian didn’t mean he always wanted something Italian. But people make assumptions all the time.

The worst, by far, is people who call Joe ‘Arabic’. It grinds on Nicky to hear it as the continent of Africa held many different ethnicities and it was not simply split up into black and Arabic. It had so hit Nicky’s nerves time and time again that one time he had snapped on somebody and informed them why they were wrong and how their ignorance was aggravating. Nicky was kind but he was not a pushover and he hated ignorance. He had been ignorant once and he was still punishing himself over it even if the Crusades had brought him and Joe together.

Pushing that all away, Nicky thinks about the fact that he’s somewhat impressed though that the bartender even figured his accent out, most people can’t pinpoint the accent when he speaks in English as not many hear it. It’s just one of those things.

He’s messing around with his phone, something he never does but he’s trying to look busy, especially after being flirted with by no less than three people - two women and a man. He turned them all down gently and they seemed put out but not only was Nicky not interested in women like that, the man was about a thousand years too late. Also not Nicky’s type.

The raucous noise dies down after a victory chant and Nicky pushes away from where he’s leaning against the building, just outside the doors. He places his mostly untouched beer on one of the outdoor tables and waits, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He watches a stream of very drunk individuals spill out of the bar, some slurring about some plays made during the game, others loudly singing and celebrating. Joe is one of the last to emerge.

“How was the game?” he asks and though Joe is smiling, Nicky knows him well enough to notice the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. That the smile is forced, muscles pulled too taut to be genuine. Nicky keeps a frown from coming to his face. He had hoped this would work. Instead, he pulls his own forced smile. “Tell me about it,” he says as he takes Joe’s hand and begins to lead him back to the safehouse. He will have to find another way.

[monstcrmade]

@furyfcrged

There’s a knife to his throat and legs straddling him, keeping him pinned to the ground and he knows from this position all the ways that knife can kill him in seconds if not instantly. He can’t throw Noriko off, she’s always been a better fighter than him. Than all of them save Andy. She’s been at this longer, had taught Joe and himself how to fight in a multitude of different ways. She knows all their moves. And besides all that, he doesn’t want to fight her. Noriko was his friend, or had been, she’s not the same anymore and he can’t blame her. Such a fate would change anyone. But still, he doesn’t want to fight her even if he knows he has to. She’s been hurt enough.

And yet they were in this position because he had tried. Because she had hurt Andy and shot Joe and nobody harms his family, especially not the love of his life. He can’t reach his own knife, his arms trapped between Noriko’s knees. He lets out a sigh. “I’m sorry,” he says and he means it because truly he is sorry for everything that has happened. “I wish it had not come to this.”

In a perfect world they would have found her. In a perfect world they all would be working together, would be a whole family again. But the world isn’t perfect and it is often an unfair mistress but still Nicky hopes that somewhere in there is the Noriko he remembers. It’s a fool’s hope but still a small part of him refuses to let it go.