#polarcell

[materassassino]

I am making unhinged whale noises right now. Thank you to the wonderful @polarcell for doing this absolutely wonderful commission for me. These are their looks in my WIP fanfic set in 1578 Rome (yeah, the depressing one)... so I now I guess I have to finish it, lol.

[pwnyta]

Really loved your andy& joe thoughts! Their frienship is precious to me and I feel like it is often underdiscussed compared to other one on one dynamics in the team, (like ones with booker for example. I also see more of nicky& andy discussions which is a dynamic I also love of course, but it is fun to see more of joe and andy for once!)

Thank you! And yeah! Theyre super cute its a shame.

I really love their shenanigans in the comics too! My favorite of course bein Joe introducing her as his wife in a gay bar and they watch the moon landing together (while Nickys on his little serial killer kick)! But its all good.

(also how good they look in this pic)

[linaxart]

💕 self-love time! talk about which ones of YOUR creations (edits, artworks, fanfics) you like the most then send to other creators to do the same 💕

hi polarrrr i already said it, these are always super hard! I tend to like almost everything i make (how can't I when it caters specifically to my interests lol) but imma try again

this nile's definitely a favorite, her pants gave me so much grief i swear but i had such a good time designing her outfit!

this Joe is without a doubt one of my favorite drawings of all time, i keep bringing it back all the time but i just adore how it came out

this one's the only time in my life i could make sense of color theory and i've been chasing that high ever since lol

this one was my laptop bg until recently :)

and a honorable mention of a traditional sketch, this Joe!

[wickedpact]

fun discussion here tonight! My personal opinion is that both joe and nicky have jocknerd energies. to me they're jocknerd 4 jocknerd and that's beautiful. Joe's jock energy is the adidas shirt type and nicky's is the scary guy who wakes up at crack of dawn to run 10 miles type. and like they're both nerds. thanks

oh yeah nicky is def the ‘goes out for a jog at 4:45am’ guy. his discipline and determination leans jock-wards but his presentation? direct opposite

[perenial]

Joe & Booker, 86 ?

86. “It’s just you and me.”

Montevideo, 1930

“We couldn’t have at least stopped for coffee?” Joseph groaned, dragging the cap from his head to tug at his hair. Booker, nose buried in a handbook he had swiped from the ticketing office, ignored him.

“Uruguay’s got a strong line-up,” he was murmuring, flicking between two pages with increasing fervour. “But I don’t like the look of Ballestrero - too green. Peucelle’s going to target his weak spots, you see -”

Another drawn-out moan, and Joseph’s forehead collided with Booker’s shoulder. “I don’t care,” he whined, pushing against him with his full weight. “It’s not even noon; why are we even here?”

Booker shrugged him off with ease. “The seats.”

That, at least, seemed to push the last lingering cobwebs of exhaustion from Joe’s mind. “What seats?” he asked incredulously, leaning back to squint at the oddly enthused man who had taken residence in his brother’s body. “These fucking seats? We can’t see anything, Sebastién, we’ll be watching a - a game for ants!”

Booker lowered his handbook just enough to shoot Joseph a wry glance. “We would have got better seats if you hadn’t drunk the entire minibar last night.”

“Oh, yes, laugh it up,” Joe muttered darkly. He snatched the handbook from Booker’s grasp and stared at it blankly, trying desperately to ignore the headache reaching its throbbing crescendo behind his brows. “You’re lucky I didn’t touch any of your stash.”

“If you had, you wouldn’t be alive to tell the tale,” Booker replied blithely. He turned in his seat, looking around at the crowd amassed; tens of thousands, by a conservative estimate, and more were trickling through the gates with every mounting minute. There was a palpable tension in the air, the growing hum of anticipation as the match inched closer, and despite the clear division between supporters, the unbridled excitement made the corners of Booker’s lips curl into a smile. Unity, sportsmanship, comradery: whatever you wanted to call it, a flicker remained after the war, stoked by survival and sheltered by hope, and it was enough to let him pretend, just for a little while, that this century might turn out alright.

Booker had been discharged after Gallipoli, an honourable concession for a man who should have died a hundred times over. Andromache wanted to stay in Turkey to gather intelligence so he wandered back west, across upturned soil and endless fields of poppies, eventually winding up in Belgium. Their rendezvous was gone - destroyed in a fire, windows smashed in and cupboards ransacked - and with no sign of Joseph or Nicholas, he made the most of the quiet. He rebuilt the house, charred timber to soldered nail; planted what little seeds he could haggle for; watched the sun rise and stretch and fall, over and over again, almost convinced for a few honest months that if he closed his eyes and lay back, the ground would crumble and welcome him with open arms.

Armistice was called. Nicholas came back alone. 

“He won’t come back,” he had said, wringing his hands until they were rubbed raw. “He won’t come home.”

Booker had sighed, poured him another glass of brandy. “Not yet,” he replied. “Not now.”

Joseph returned; of course he did. He laughed at Andromache’s stories from Egypt and kissed Nicholas like there wasn’t a single other soul in the room but there was a heaviness in his movements, a weight to his gaze that wasn’t accustomed to lingering. He wouldn’t speak of the Somme; Booker didn’t ask. He offered his flask and Joe drank every last drop.

The trip to Uruguay had been Nicholas’ idea. New York had been good for them, he wrote, but Joseph grew melancholy the longer he spent secluded in the dark underbelly of the city. I love him, and I must let him go. He needs you in a way he cannot need me right now.

Booker had kept the letter tucked in his breast pocket from the moment Joseph arrived. He raised a hand, self-conscious, and rubbed at the spot where it rested above his heart.

“Fifty pesos on Argentina,” Joseph said abruptly. Booker sat back in his seat, eyebrows steadily rising as Joe unearthed a handful of bills and started to count them out.

“Nico rubbing off on you again?”

“Fifty on Argentina,” Joseph repeated, holding out the bills, “and if I win, you give me that bottle of spiced rum you’re hiding under the floorboards.”

A roar erupted from the stands, spectators leaping to their feet; the players were filing onto the field. Joe was looking at him, jaw clenched, shoulders hunched as if the only sound for a hundred miles was the whistle of a mortar round.

Booker grasped his hand. “Fifty on Uruguay,” he replied, low and steady beneath the clamour of the crowd. He squeezed Joe’s palm. “It’s just you and me, hey?”

“Yeah,” Joseph said, the barest hint of old laugh lines creasing the corners of his eyes. “Just you and me.”

[knoepfchen]

3 & 12 !

Tuisku my love! 🥰

I already answered 12 here :)

3. favourite line or scene you wrote this year

(this has been very difficult to choose, but i think probably this bit)

Nile wiped away a tear that had fallen onto her phone screen with her thumb, clicked on a link to a news article.

A fire broke out beneath the roof of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral just before half six on 15 April 2019. Parisians and Catholics around the world are in mourning, as—

She didn’t read any further. Couldn’t read any further, because that date—that date. Her thoughts didn’t stumble over it, they came to a screeching halt.

Never in her life would she forget this date again, or if she did, she couldn’t imagine it now. The day her life came to an untimely end, and then didn’t.

The effort to rebuild the cathedral began virtually the next day, Nile learned. She put her phone away. When her hands stopped shaking, she approached the little table and lit a candle.

If the wind didn’t blow it out, it would burn for maybe fifteen hours. Notre-Dame had burned for nine before they’d extinguished the fire. Experts said they expected the work to take twenty years, maybe more. It was nothing in the grand scheme of the cathedral’s history.

Nile breathed in and watched the tiny flame of her candle flicker in the wind.

Notre-Dame had been built and burned and restored over and over again for nearly a millennium, and it would stand to survive another.

And so, and so, and so would she.

(end of year fanfic asks)

[of-scythia]

*crashes through the door* someone mentioned a slutty nicky apologist fanclub??

NOW TAKING APPLICATIONS 

[aphroditestummyrolls]

@polarcell I have been INSPIRED by your mermaid!Nicky AU. Here’s the beginning of your oneshot ❤️💕 this is Joe’s POV. Next is Nicky’s.

TW: graphic depictions of “drowning”

“Joe—“ Andy’s voice crackled through to his earpiece, “Okay, that’s enough. You’ve had your time to look for that thing— if it’s not there right now, that’s all the better. We need to get a look at the starboard side of the wreck.”

She was trying to come off as her usual self. She wanted to sound as if it was a relief that whatever that thing was, it was gone, like getting more time with the barnacled and briny Roman ship was all she cared about. Joe could hear the sharpness in her voice, though. She was scared, and she wanted him out of the water.

It was unlike Joe to be uneasy in a divers suit, especially in the waters he’d grown up in— even if it was the opposite shore from home in Tunis— but the hammering of his heart was starting to take hold. It took more effort than usual to keep his breathing even. He mentally grasped at his training, his years of experience, his degrees.

After how many years studying the Mediterranean— its creatures, currents, conservation— and they’d stumbled on something that Joe had never seen before.

Was it a shark? A squid? It was big. The size of a creature you’d find on the open ocean. But, it was here? In a sea like this?

Whatever it was, it was living in the shipwreck, and it did not want them coming any closer.

This was a problem.

Joe liked Andy. He liked the whole archaeological team, really— Quynh and Andy and Nile, even Booker was a fun drinking buddy. The archaeologists themselves weren’t the issue.

It was the money bags that wanted to get this creature out of his site. It was all Merrick and his grand museum plan— Andy hated the posh, British bastard. Anytime she had more than two shots in her, she was bitching about how he didn’t even want to study the context of the wreck. It was for some stupid art exhibit.

They all had the distinct impression that Merrick wanted this creature out permanently.

As the resident marine biologist on site, Joe wasn’t about to let that happen.

“Joe, get up here right fucking now.” Andy’s voice cut in again, “We don’t know what it’s capable of— and the weather’s starting to really turn up here.”

He could feel it, too. The water had been warmer than usual the moment he started his dive. Even before that, he could feel the coming storm on the wind.

He thought they had more time.

But the waves were getting stronger now, and he felt the tug of the water as he swam on. If he could spare a glance upward, he knew there’d be a swirl of gray and white, shadowed with wave breaks, the sun clouded overhead.

He knew he should head back. He knew it.

Joe checked his oxygen levels as he swam around the perimeter of the ship, past the hull and into the shadowy cavern of the wreck itself. He had time. He had to see this creature for himself— if they could figure out what it was, Joe could maybe figure out how to get it to leave. He could maybe figure out a way to protect it from Merrick and his money.

He didn’t make any signals back to Andy— not a word. He couldn’t spare the brain power, not when any nook or cranny could hold that unidentified creature. Possibly dangerous creature.

He resisted the urge to bolt for the surface, breathing slow and steady as he scanned the water for anything strange.

The water at the surface was starting to get more tumultuous, and the effort it took to keep swimming on course was starting to drain his oxygen tank and zap his muscles.

He should’ve known things were about to get bad.

There was a flash of a dark shape from the other side of the wreck— a long, glimmering shape, the same color as the storm-tossed sea above and around them. It was only there for a moment, then gone. Joe raised his underwater camera, poised for another sighting.

He waited.

And waited.

It seemed like it might have been some benign little shadow, and Joe was about to write it off, when it suddenly drifted by him again.

It was closer now. It was big. It was as big as a man, easily, maybe longer. Its tail whipped around, and he could’ve sworn he saw… arms? They were pale— it’s tail was long and dark, up over its back, too, but the fins and the belly and the face of it were different. It was pale and luminous, and a halo of darkness hovered around its face. Joe lifted his camera, and paused.

It looked almost human.

There was a sweeping current just then— a huge wave on the surface must’ve built up and crashed above— and Joe was lifted by the force of it. His hand jerked and the camera went off, even as it dropped from his grip. The oxygen tanks on his back slammed up into the roof of the ancient ship, something sharp stabbing into his thigh. He wanted to scream— whatever it was, it was deep. It was deep and it burned, and he was bleeding. A cloud of red swirled up and around his body, all the way up to his goggles where he could still see this strange, shark-like, mysterious creature in the near distance.

Joe was trapped. He tried to reach down, to inspect whatever was impaling his leg, to get out, but something had caught on his tanks and pinned him to the ceiling.

The panic set in. He jerked and twisted, his training flying out the window into a haze of blood-tinged terror as he tried to kick out. His leg— his entire body — burned. For oxygen, from the agony, with the sudden clench of adrenaline flushing through his veins as he struggled to keep his mouth around his oxygen and not waste the precious little he had left.

He was going to die here. He was going to drown. Yusuf al-Kaysani— Champion distance swimmer with 20 years of diving experience all over the world, ocean conversation activist, marine biologist at the forefront of his field— was about to be buried in the sea he’d fought his entire life to protect.

There was poetry in that that Joe would’ve maybe appreciated if this was a story. If this wasn’t the end of his own damned life, if it didn’t hurt so damned badly, if there weren’t a hundred things he still wanted to do and say—

Andy was yelling in his ears, blurred to a desperate fever pitch with his hammering heart. He couldn’t make out the words, but he was sure he was out of oxygen by now. If he could see it all from the outside in, he would’ve been shocked that he was even able to keep the useless tube in his mouth, able to keep from screaming outright and inhaling the salty water right into his lungs—

He couldn’t remember what his last thought was about as the world started to go into a dark tunnel. Maybe it was about his family, maybe it was about work, maybe it was cursing taking this stupid job in the first place— he definitely sent out some desperate prayer. He definitely felt the Arabic in the depths of his soul, begging Allah for something that he didn’t know what…

The last thing he saw, though, he would always remember. There was a flash of dark scales and glowing pale skin, the feeling of someone gripping his shoulders, and the sight of huge, bright eyes staring up at him.

They were the color of the sea after the clouds cleared, and Joe wondered if this was Allah’s way of calling him home. If this was an angel, telling him the storm was finally over.