24: the moment before a first/passionate kiss
16; “there’s nothing to be scared of, okay? I’m right here.”
(I did this as Joe/Nicky’s first kiss .... during the Great War ... bc they’d been pining for however many centuries!) cw: blood/violence/temporary character death
The sky was torn to shreds overhead; bombs whistled down and glutted holes in the earth. It was as though the world were ending.
The world might as well have ended.
Yusuf had not opened his eyes for six and a half minutes.
His legs had grown back — thank the Virgin for that — but his miraculous eyes had not yet opened.
As another shell ripped the air apart, Yusuf gasped. Nicolo sobbed, clutching him closer, fingers spasming as he reached for Yusuf’s bloodied face.
“I thought — I thought —“ Nicolo was hysterical with it.
“Nicolo.” Yusuf covered Nicolo’s trembling hand with his own.
He dropped his forehead to Yusuf’s and gasped as though he had been the one to take a bomb to the hip. “I was so afraid.” So afraid — and he’d never said —
“I am here, tesoro.” Yusuf stroked a thumb over his cheekbone, and Nicolo shuddered, reborn, rebaptized, on the battlefield. “There is nothing to be afraid of; I am right here.”
He was not sure, nor would he ever be sure, of who bridged the final inches between them. Yusuf would claim for decades that they had moved as one, celestial bodies fated to collide.
All Nicolo knew was the sweet taste of blood and dust and life, made holy on his Yusuf’s lips.