R SLASH - Playlist - Joe/Nicky, The Old Guard
Title: The Old Guard Playlist
Author: Tarlan (
tarlanx)
Fandom: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Pairing/Characters: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Rating/Category: R SLASH
Word Count: 4951 (4319 is the ficlet word count)
Summary: A series of ficlets for Joe and Nicky set over the centuries of their existence inspired by a playlist of songs.
Written for
lands_of_magic R13.18: Drabble/Ficlet Playlist
The idea was to create a playlist and then write drabbles or ficlets inspired by each song.
Also meets numerous
allbingo PRIDE FEST 2024 prompts
1. Mars - Sleeping at Last
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
We were full of life,
We could barely hold it in.
We were amateurs at war,
Strangers to suffering.
We made our families proud
But scared at the same time.
We promised we'd be safe,
Another lie from the front lines.
Call to Arms
Memories faded over time and they had so many memories between them that they often found themselves mirroring Old Men sitting around a table recounting the spring and summer days of their youth. Although they both had earlier memories of life before their first death, those days seemed like a blink in time now. What was thirty years among the nine centuries and two decades that had past since?
Yet Nicky's memories of going to war had not faded, recalling being filled with righteous zeal, spurred on by a Pope who in hindsight had been ruled only by greed. At the time he was all fired up, eager to take off his priest collar and pick up his longsword. A child. An amateur who thought he was invincible, who was told his enemy was strong in number but weak in heart, who would run from their battle cries. As a third son his parents had sent him to join the priesthood, assuming he would have a long if frugal life. He promised them he would be still be safe and though they proudly waved him off as the Genovese fleet headed to war he had seen the fear in his mother's eyes.
He learned how to fight on the battlefield, witnessing the death and suffering of comrades at arms, of those who bonded to him as friends, as brothers. He knew hunger, thirst and pain. He recalled the long marches between battles and the long nights huddled round small campfires with an empty belly and cracked lips.
Joe's story was different. There was no call to arms by religious elders, only the knowledge that he was in the wrong city at the wrong time; a merchant forced to pull on armor and wield his saif against an enemy that was likely demented from heatstroke, thirst and hunger. He had followed the news over the past few years and should have heeded the warnings and got out of the city before the Christian soldiers arrived to besiege it. Instead he had relied on different rumors of a dwindling army rife with disease, force-marched from Antioch in the north with little to fill their bellies and only poisoned wells surrounding them. Anything that could be made into an engine of war had been cut down and brought into the city leaving the land outside the city walls with barely enough scrub for the Christian soldiers to build campfires to keep them warm through the colder nights.
He thought they would stop these Christian invaders here and send them back to their greedy overlords and Pope empty-handed. He was wrong.
Neither of them survived the fall of Jerusalem in 1099.
END
2. Stranger in a Strange Land - 30 Seconds to Mars
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
Joe:
Enemy of mine, I'll f*ck you like the devil.
Violent inside, beautiful and evil.
I'm a ghost. You're an angel.
We're one and the same, just remains of an age.
Nicky:
Enemy of mine, I'm just a stranger in a strange land.
Running out of time, better go, go, go!
Angel or a demon, I gave up my soul,
I'm guilty of treason, I've abandoned control.
Both:
The end is coming, everybody run now,
We're gonna live forever, gonna live forever tonight.
Tonight, Tonight.
Stranger in a Strange Land
Joe laughed as he indicated between him and Nicky, "We killed each other."
"Many times."
They played it like a joke now, an amusing anecdote, but Joe still remembered the first time they crossed swords outside the gates of Jerusalem. What made him more angry at the time was seeing the face of this most beautiful man with his powerful shoulders, slim waist and long legs, and with his piercing blue-green eyes and straight, dark brown hair turned almost bronze beneath the sun. Despite an almost skeletal frame from hunger and thirst, this Christian soldier was formidable. A devil or an angel fallen to Earth but on the wrong side of the battle as far as Joe was concerned. He watched him cut through the city defenders one after another with powerful sweeps of his longsword, body twisting like a dancer, kicking up sand that billowed in plumes beneath his feet so it looked as if he was dancing on air. Joe was incensed and cut his way through the battlefield to reach this enemy and face him head on. Those eyes were even more beautiful upclose but Joe could see nothing human behind them, just a terrifying cold insanity.
Nicky hummed, looking less amused as the memories came flooding back for both of them. "We were equally matched, though it took me several deaths before I realized it was still the same enemy in front of me. I was that far lost."
"We fought all the way from Jerusalem to the sea, where I tried to drown him to see if that made him stay dead!" Joe laughed and Nicky snorted adorably, those piercing eyes no longer dead like a fish but blazing with life and love.
"Eventually we both saw the insanity of continuing to fight and kill each other."
"It had come to the point where we would take a small respite while waiting for the other to come back from death. Even though that time span grew shorter with each death, the whole thing grew tiresome and by then I had vented most of my wrath."
"Most," Nicky echoed and Joe chuckled.
It would take Joe several more years before he lost the desire to see the other broken, bloodied and dead at his feet.
END
3. Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Green Day
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
My shadow's only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
Till then I walk alone
Read between the lines
What's fucked up and everything's all right
Check my vital signs to know I'm still alive
And I walk alone
Broken Dreams - Bets / dares
Conversely to what Booker thought, they did not have each other from the start.
They went their separate ways once the insanity of failing to kill each other permanently had faded as there was too much bad blood, too much damage between them. Too many innocent people had died at Nicolò's hands in the name of a greedy Pope rather than the God he believed in. The anger and hatred in the beautiful dark eyes of the enemy soldier was too much to bear especially when Nicolò slowly came to realize it was truly so well deserved. So he walked away alone with only the shadow of his growing guilt to accompany him, but every once in a while he dreamed of the other man.
Sometimes he dreamed of him sitting by a fire alone, staring out across the desert. Sometimes he was praying, and he seemed as lonely as Nicolò, making him wish this Yusuf Al-Kaysani could have been the shadow walking beside him. He wondered if this was natural, these intense feelings he was developing for the other man to the point where he started to look forward to sleeping in the hope he might see Yusuf in his dreams.
It was strange to still be alive after countless deaths and he wondered if this was God's penance, that he walk the Earth cursed like Cain for killing his brother. Yet he had found no mark seared into his flesh to warn others of his shame, or perhaps he needed no mark. Perhaps they could read his guilt as if it was etched upon his face. He had lost count of the number of times he had dared God to strike him down by committing shameful acts in those early days. He had lost count of how many times he had tried to force God's hand, facing numerous violent deaths at the hands of bandits and enemy soldiers.
Yet if this was his penance then why had God cursed Yusuf with the same fate? For he had seen Yusuf die many times too at the hands of others, making similar bets with his own God and always losing. It appeared that neither of them wanted this eternal damnation to walk the Earth, refused entry to even Hell.
In the quiet of this strange land as he walked alone with just his shadow, Nicolò dared to have different thoughts of Yusuf. Carnal thoughts. He wondered if Yusuf was dreaming of him too.
He bet he was.
END
4. Temptation - Vast
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
I went in the desert, I went searching for the truth
I stumbled across you and I know you're not the truth
You are my temptation, you are my temptation
To do what I knew is wrong, what I knew is wrong is you
Temptation - Wet Dream
Despite the vastness of the Levant and its deserts, mountains and plains, Nicolò was surprised to run into Yusuf in a small village just a little ways north of Antioch. Six years had passed and he looked no different to the man he had first met at the gates of Jerusalem. Six years of dreaming of this man, waking with his body either burning with want or already sated in his sleep like an adolescent in the first throes of sexual maturity. It was embarrassing and yet every night he fell asleep hoping this would be the night he dreamed of Yusuf again, of touching him, holding him, and of being touched and held in turn.
At first he wondered if this was a test of Faith, a temptation set by his God to see his worth, but nowhere in his God's words was there condemnation for finding desire with another man despite the stirrings of the monastic orders to forbid all carnal desire but for God himself. Perhaps it was a blessing that Nicolò was no longer a priest and subject to the growing demand for celibacy, twisting HIS words to suit their own hidden agenda.
However, this temptation was not simply for another man. Yusuf might no longer be his enemy but he was still a man who worshiped a different god in the eyes of Nicolò's people. A man who did not believe in the Holy Trinity. Yet with each passing year Nicolò had felt his resolve weakening as the temptation to turn his wet dreams into reality increased, and though he had tried to kill this temptation by allowing other Christian men to make use of his body, slaking the desire for another man's firm touch, the temptation to give himself over to Yusuf persisted.
Yusuf wet his lips, breath shallow as he looked across at Nicolò, eventually breaking the silence by speaking first.
"I've been dreaming of you... And I think you have have been dreaming of me."
END
5. Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
If I lay here, if I just lay here
Would you lie with me, and just forget the world?
I don't quite know, how to say, how I feel
Those three words, are said too much, they're not enough
All that I am.
All that I ever was is here in your perfect eyes
They're all I can see
I don't know where, confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all
Enemies to Friends to Lovers - Not my best friend
By unspoken mutual agreement they left the village together and stayed together as days turned to weeks then months and then years. They forged a new path together, helping others where they could even if it was just manual labor, helping with a harvest, fixing dwellings or digging wells. Sometimes they needed to fight to protect innocent people they came across along the road, but again, by unspoken agreement they never turned their swords on each other, unless speaking in euphemisms.
The first time they turned those wet dreams into reality was electric. The ghost fingers of their dreams were nothing compared to the firmer pressure of fingertips skirting across warm, perspiring skin, or the heat of a callused palm wrapping around hardened flesh. Their first kiss came much later, bringing a closer intimacy to their relationship until they were no longer simply best friends with benefits but so much more.
A century passed and eventually they met with the two warrior women who also frequented their dreams. Despite both being beautiful, Yusuf still only had eyes for Nicolò and he was relieved to know Nicolò only had eyes for him in return.
More centuries passed and sometimes it seemed as if the bloodshed never stopped with the innocent always falling foul of the machinations of the rich and powerful in their quest for more riches and more power. There were times when he and Nicolò had simply had enough of it, wanting to forget the world if only for a short time. Wanting to see wild flowers blooming in a meadow instead of blood and guts spilled across a battlefield. At those times they agreed to separate from Andromache and Quynh for just a few years so they could remember there was beauty in this world.
The first time Nicolò said those three words, I love you, was centuries ago in Malta. Though he had said them many times since and in many different languages, those three words had never grown old and yet they could not encompass all that Yusuf felt for him in return. Only in the love shining from Nicolò's beautiful eyes could he see the true reflection of the man he had become. Once his enemy, then his companion, his friend, his lover, his best friend, his husband. Nicolò was now his all and more, and Yusuf knew that would never change.
END
6. Don't Panic - Coldplay
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
Bones sinkin' like stones
All that we fought for
Homes, places we've grown
All of us are done for
We live in a beautiful world
Yeah we do, yeah we do
We live in a beautiful world
All in all that I know
There's nothin' here to run from
'Cos yeah, everybody here's got somebody to lean on
Apocryphal Tale - Sneaking in / out
How were they to know that one of the few times when they decided to take a break from all the mayhem and killing so they could actually enjoy this beautiful world that their parting would be the last time they saw Quynh for many centuries. It was the lack of communication from their sisters that drew them from the home they had made in Malta. They followed the trail left by that last letter, leading them to England. It took weeks more before they overheard a traveler talking of witches that would not die and the terrible fate that befell one of them.
A coffin made of iron thrown overboard somewhere between a southern English port and the Americas. A vast, deep ocean that was impossible to search having swallowed their sister leaving no marker for them to find. So many had coveted their immortality while others saw it as an evil, yet never had they truly considered the possibility of having their immortality work against them in such an horrific way. The fear of discovery had him and Yusuf holding each other tightly, no longer able to sleep without one of them keeping their eyes open as they worked their way across England looking for their remaining sister.
They found Andy in a terrible condition both mentally and physically, constantly hurting herself as she tried to break free of her chains and gaining only a small respite when death occasionally took her. Despite her screams and protestations they forced her to escape from English shores, placating her with promises of hiring a boat to start a search along the probable course of the ship that took Quynh away from her. They spent the next sixty years following every clue, locating every crew member from its captain down to the cabin boy in the hope that one of them could give them something. Anything. All they knew for certain was that the iron maiden was not thrown into the English Channel, and that the ship had sailed for many days until there was no longer any land in sight before they disposed of the 'witch'.
Those years were troubled and out of compassion and respect for their older sister, Joseph and Nicholas as they were now known, kept their love making low key. They sneaked in and out of each other's beds, trying not to remind their sister of what she has lost. What THEY had lost. Some nights they lay in each other's arms and wept, taking small solace in the arms holding them, kissing away tears and trying to reaffirm that they were still alive and still together in this beautiful yet cruel world.
They took turns sitting with Andy, then known as Anne, as she ranted about all the things they had done for this world and how it had all come to nothing. Joseph had to intervene when Nicholas talked of God's plan for them because they had made a pact that they would never kill each other unless absolutely necessary. Beating his beloved to death was not going to bring Quynh back, especially as Nicholas became the one she confided and clung to the most in the centuries that followed.
In the end they had to lean on each other for support to get them through those terrible years as all sources of information dried up. Mortals aged and died leaving no trace of Quynh and her fate behind while THEY continued to live. After another two centuries had passed Quynh became an Old Wives' Tale. An apocryphal bedtime story for mortals and a warning to the new immortal, Sebastian, of the price of being captured with his immortality known. He provided them with an even greater horror story; he was dreaming of a woman drowning over and over and over.
For over three centuries they had prayed she had found an end to her immortality and suffering, but Quynh was still alive and their hearts were breaking anew for both her and Anne.
END
7. The Change - Garth Brooks
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
One hand reaches out and pulls a lost soul from harm
While a thousand more go unspoken for
They say what good have you done by saving just this one
It's like whispering a prayer in the fury of a storm
This heart still believes that love and mercy still exist
While all the hatred rage and so many say
That love is all but pointless in madness such as this
It's like trying to stop a fire with the moisture from a kiss
As long as one heart still holds on then hope is never really gone
Breaking Point - Breaking the rules
They had planned to spend several years apart after suffering through one war after another since before the turn of the 19th century; the Russian Revolution, The Great War, The Spanish War, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, The Gulf War, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Running alongside was so much civil unrest in dozens of different countries from the American Civil Rights movement to Peace marches to Stonewall to... The list was endless. Then there were the natural disasters. Hurricanes, earthquakes, famine, epidemics, volcanic eruptions, mining disasters. It was if the entire world had gone to Hell so Nicky understood why Andy had become even more despondent, no longer seeing a purpose in what they were doing.
Sebastian brought the four of them back together with a concern for a group of young girls who had been abducted from their school. These girls would end up as child brides, little more than sex slaves, to be used to bear children and likely discarded or killed as soon as their usefulness ended.
And then their worst nightmare came true. Someone knew about them and was actively hunting them down, and the person they relied upon to resolve this turned out to be the one who had betrayed them. If not for Nile then the future would have been bleak for who knew how long he and Joe would have been held together. Eventually they would have been separated, buried alive in laboratories where it might have taken centuries for them to find a way back to each other.
That first night after the escape they broke the rules they had set five hundred years earlier to limit Andy's pain at losing Quynh.
They clutched at each other as they showered together, rinsing the blood and brain matter from Nicky's hair. They held hands and refused to move more than a few feet from each other, even going to the bathroom together because they were scared to lose sight of each other for even a minute. It was ridiculous but Andy remained silent and Sebastian cowered in a corner. It wasn't a good impression on the new immortal but Nile smiled and for someone so incredibly young compared to them, she was a pillar of strength that first night.
They parted with Sebastian the following day on the banks of the Thames, and perhaps his punishment might not have been so harsh if they had allowed themselves more time to think it through. Instead they were still reeling from the betrayal, from the fear of a fate every bit as bad as Quynh's. Having held it together in Merrick's laboratory while being sliced open again and again, the weight of it all came crashing down as they raced away from London. They slept in snatches, holding on tight to each other, startling awake at every unusual creak, or crying out at nightmares of unending torture in the name of medical science.
For over nine centuries they had lived through hundreds of wars and disasters both natural and man-made. They had seen the trauma written across mortal faces time and again but it took Nile's patient understanding for them to realize that they were the ones with post-traumatic stress disorder this time. They were the ones worn down by countless deaths and horrors until Sebastian's betrayal, Andy's sudden mortality and Merrick with his cruel doctor became the breaking point. The final straw that broke the camel's back.
By rights they should have killed James Copley simply for knowing who and what they were but Nile convinced them to speak with him before they made a decision. She wanted to show them something.
"I've seen the good you've done."
And now Nicky could see it too, spread across the boards in aging photographs and old newspaper. In written records yellowed with age and in stories handed down through generations. The single soldier carried from the battlefield going on to father a child who would save countless lives. Another prevented a nuclear catastrophe, another made life-changing discoveries to improve the lives of thousands. There were too many instances to be coincidental and perhaps this was why that had not seen their true worth. It wasn't in the big picture of preventing a war and personally saving hundreds or thousands. It was in side notes of history, in the one hand that reached out and saved a single life with the ripple effect spreading out across the years.
He and Joe decided to break the rules a second time that night and slipped away to their bedroom together, spending the night curled around each other, kissing and caressing. Between bouts of lovemaking, as they reaffirmed each other's living presence in the most basic human way, they lay wrapped in each other's arms talking of those they had saved in the distant past.
When they came down for breakfast, feeling a little sheepish at leaving Andy and Nile on guard all night, Andy was the one who smiled this time. For the first time in five centuries her eyes were not shadowed in despair but with renewed hope for the future.
END
8. Wherever You Will Go - The Calling
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
So lately, I've been wonderin who will be there to take my place
When I'm gone, you'll need love to light the shadows on your face
And maybe, I'll find out the way to make it back someday
To watch you, to guide you through the darkest of your days
I know now, just quite how my life and love might still go on
In your heart and your mind, I'll stay with you for all of time
Promises - sex on the beach
Although Joe knew about Lykon and how one day he had simply stopped healing, dying in battle, it was not something either he or Nicky had personally experienced until they learned of Andy's mortality. In the past it had felt so abstract, something that was real but which he could not truly define or relate to except for adding an additional fear every time Nicky was fatally injured, watching over his beloved husband until he saw him heal and come back to him. Now it terrified Joe to the point where he had started to stick a pin in Nicky every day just to make sure the tiny wound closed, and Nicky was just as bad because Nicky had never been THAT clumsy around him with knives and other sharp implements in the past. A nick here, a scratch there.
"Nicky, my beloved, this has to stop," he sighed, wiping away the latest small trickle of blood to reveal not even the slightest pink of scar tissue beneath. "Let's go to Malta and relive THAT time."
Beyond them Andy snorted while Nile questioned, "That time?"
"You really don't want to know, kid," Andy replied but she was smiling. "But Malta sounds good."
A day later they were back on an island that still retained so many visible reminders of past centuries. Nile loved the villa with its carefully tended garden and swimming pool. They owned the place but it was mostly rented out for decades at a time lest anyone remember them and wonder why they had not aged. It had happened once or twice when a mortal had known them as a child and recalled their faces when seeing them again almost a century later. Mortal life expectancy had more than doubled since the time of their birth due to the advancement of medicine and good health practices.
He and Nicky simply remarked how much they looked like their grandparents or great uncles or some other family connection, which sounded far more plausible to mortals than the truth.
The greatest beauty of this villa, other than its remoteness, was that it had two separate living areas so even though Andy and Nile were there, Nicky and Joe were still ensured complete privacy until they wanted the extra company. It also had a private beach where two promontories jutted out far enough at each end of the small cove to dissuade any uninvited guests.
They had barely dropped their bags off in their bedroom before Joe shouted out, "We are heading to the beach."
Nile opened her mouth but Andy put up a hand. "Believe me, you don't want to join them there today. Race you to the pool instead."
Joe and Nicky walked hand in hand down to a beautiful white sand beach, enjoying the shifting sand beneath their feet as they made their way across to a secluded spot that was hidden from the villa behind a large almost flat rock. They fussed about at first, laying down a blanket and then several towels on top before stripping off completely, reveling in the pleasure of being naked beneath what was only a mildly hot sun at this time of year. A race into the sea left them both breathless and laughing in the cold water and they played for a while, splashing and trying to duck each other under the water until their touches became more intimate, more demanding. The towels had warmed under the sun and Joe stretched out, smiling as Nicky straddled him, lowering himself to kiss him sweetly at first but with slowly growing passion until they were grinding together, losing each other in the pleasure of skin on skin.
Afterward a quick dip into the sea to clean up they lay side by side, letting the peace steal over them as a breeze off the sea cooled their heated skin.
"Do we need to have that talk again?" Joe asked quietly.
Nicky sighed. "No."
They both knew a day might come when one of them did not return from death... or met a worse fate. They had talked about it after learning about Lykon, and after what happened with Quynh. They had made promises that while they lived they would try to find a way back to each other and if one of them should meet their true death then the other promised they would find a reason to go on, to get them through the darkest days in the hope of finding some light and peace until they could be reunited in the afterlife.
"I promise to stop accidentally cutting you if you promise to stop poking me with needles every day."
Joe laughed. "I promise."
Joe pulled Nicky into his arms, pillowing his damp head against his shoulder. They had spent over nine hundred years together and, God willing, they would have at least nine hundred more.
END
If this is a fiction post then please comment on AO3, otherwise I'd love to hear from you on https://tarlanx.dreamwidth.org/1422095.html. You can comment there using OpenID.
Author: Tarlan (
tarlanx)
Fandom: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Pairing/Characters: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Rating/Category: R SLASH
Word Count: 4951 (4319 is the ficlet word count)
Summary: A series of ficlets for Joe and Nicky set over the centuries of their existence inspired by a playlist of songs.
Written for
lands_of_magic R13.18: Drabble/Ficlet Playlist
The idea was to create a playlist and then write drabbles or ficlets inspired by each song.
Also meets numerous
allbingo PRIDE FEST 2024 prompts
1. Mars - Sleeping at Last
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
We were full of life,
We could barely hold it in.
We were amateurs at war,
Strangers to suffering.
We made our families proud
But scared at the same time.
We promised we'd be safe,
Another lie from the front lines.
Call to Arms
Memories faded over time and they had so many memories between them that they often found themselves mirroring Old Men sitting around a table recounting the spring and summer days of their youth. Although they both had earlier memories of life before their first death, those days seemed like a blink in time now. What was thirty years among the nine centuries and two decades that had past since?
Yet Nicky's memories of going to war had not faded, recalling being filled with righteous zeal, spurred on by a Pope who in hindsight had been ruled only by greed. At the time he was all fired up, eager to take off his priest collar and pick up his longsword. A child. An amateur who thought he was invincible, who was told his enemy was strong in number but weak in heart, who would run from their battle cries. As a third son his parents had sent him to join the priesthood, assuming he would have a long if frugal life. He promised them he would be still be safe and though they proudly waved him off as the Genovese fleet headed to war he had seen the fear in his mother's eyes.
He learned how to fight on the battlefield, witnessing the death and suffering of comrades at arms, of those who bonded to him as friends, as brothers. He knew hunger, thirst and pain. He recalled the long marches between battles and the long nights huddled round small campfires with an empty belly and cracked lips.
Joe's story was different. There was no call to arms by religious elders, only the knowledge that he was in the wrong city at the wrong time; a merchant forced to pull on armor and wield his saif against an enemy that was likely demented from heatstroke, thirst and hunger. He had followed the news over the past few years and should have heeded the warnings and got out of the city before the Christian soldiers arrived to besiege it. Instead he had relied on different rumors of a dwindling army rife with disease, force-marched from Antioch in the north with little to fill their bellies and only poisoned wells surrounding them. Anything that could be made into an engine of war had been cut down and brought into the city leaving the land outside the city walls with barely enough scrub for the Christian soldiers to build campfires to keep them warm through the colder nights.
He thought they would stop these Christian invaders here and send them back to their greedy overlords and Pope empty-handed. He was wrong.
Neither of them survived the fall of Jerusalem in 1099.
END
2. Stranger in a Strange Land - 30 Seconds to Mars
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
Joe:
Enemy of mine, I'll f*ck you like the devil.
Violent inside, beautiful and evil.
I'm a ghost. You're an angel.
We're one and the same, just remains of an age.
Nicky:
Enemy of mine, I'm just a stranger in a strange land.
Running out of time, better go, go, go!
Angel or a demon, I gave up my soul,
I'm guilty of treason, I've abandoned control.
Both:
The end is coming, everybody run now,
We're gonna live forever, gonna live forever tonight.
Tonight, Tonight.
Stranger in a Strange Land
Joe laughed as he indicated between him and Nicky, "We killed each other."
"Many times."
They played it like a joke now, an amusing anecdote, but Joe still remembered the first time they crossed swords outside the gates of Jerusalem. What made him more angry at the time was seeing the face of this most beautiful man with his powerful shoulders, slim waist and long legs, and with his piercing blue-green eyes and straight, dark brown hair turned almost bronze beneath the sun. Despite an almost skeletal frame from hunger and thirst, this Christian soldier was formidable. A devil or an angel fallen to Earth but on the wrong side of the battle as far as Joe was concerned. He watched him cut through the city defenders one after another with powerful sweeps of his longsword, body twisting like a dancer, kicking up sand that billowed in plumes beneath his feet so it looked as if he was dancing on air. Joe was incensed and cut his way through the battlefield to reach this enemy and face him head on. Those eyes were even more beautiful upclose but Joe could see nothing human behind them, just a terrifying cold insanity.
Nicky hummed, looking less amused as the memories came flooding back for both of them. "We were equally matched, though it took me several deaths before I realized it was still the same enemy in front of me. I was that far lost."
"We fought all the way from Jerusalem to the sea, where I tried to drown him to see if that made him stay dead!" Joe laughed and Nicky snorted adorably, those piercing eyes no longer dead like a fish but blazing with life and love.
"Eventually we both saw the insanity of continuing to fight and kill each other."
"It had come to the point where we would take a small respite while waiting for the other to come back from death. Even though that time span grew shorter with each death, the whole thing grew tiresome and by then I had vented most of my wrath."
"Most," Nicky echoed and Joe chuckled.
It would take Joe several more years before he lost the desire to see the other broken, bloodied and dead at his feet.
END
3. Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Green Day
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
My shadow's only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
Till then I walk alone
Read between the lines
What's fucked up and everything's all right
Check my vital signs to know I'm still alive
And I walk alone
Broken Dreams - Bets / dares
Conversely to what Booker thought, they did not have each other from the start.
They went their separate ways once the insanity of failing to kill each other permanently had faded as there was too much bad blood, too much damage between them. Too many innocent people had died at Nicolò's hands in the name of a greedy Pope rather than the God he believed in. The anger and hatred in the beautiful dark eyes of the enemy soldier was too much to bear especially when Nicolò slowly came to realize it was truly so well deserved. So he walked away alone with only the shadow of his growing guilt to accompany him, but every once in a while he dreamed of the other man.
Sometimes he dreamed of him sitting by a fire alone, staring out across the desert. Sometimes he was praying, and he seemed as lonely as Nicolò, making him wish this Yusuf Al-Kaysani could have been the shadow walking beside him. He wondered if this was natural, these intense feelings he was developing for the other man to the point where he started to look forward to sleeping in the hope he might see Yusuf in his dreams.
It was strange to still be alive after countless deaths and he wondered if this was God's penance, that he walk the Earth cursed like Cain for killing his brother. Yet he had found no mark seared into his flesh to warn others of his shame, or perhaps he needed no mark. Perhaps they could read his guilt as if it was etched upon his face. He had lost count of the number of times he had dared God to strike him down by committing shameful acts in those early days. He had lost count of how many times he had tried to force God's hand, facing numerous violent deaths at the hands of bandits and enemy soldiers.
Yet if this was his penance then why had God cursed Yusuf with the same fate? For he had seen Yusuf die many times too at the hands of others, making similar bets with his own God and always losing. It appeared that neither of them wanted this eternal damnation to walk the Earth, refused entry to even Hell.
In the quiet of this strange land as he walked alone with just his shadow, Nicolò dared to have different thoughts of Yusuf. Carnal thoughts. He wondered if Yusuf was dreaming of him too.
He bet he was.
END
4. Temptation - Vast
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
I went in the desert, I went searching for the truth
I stumbled across you and I know you're not the truth
You are my temptation, you are my temptation
To do what I knew is wrong, what I knew is wrong is you
Temptation - Wet Dream
Despite the vastness of the Levant and its deserts, mountains and plains, Nicolò was surprised to run into Yusuf in a small village just a little ways north of Antioch. Six years had passed and he looked no different to the man he had first met at the gates of Jerusalem. Six years of dreaming of this man, waking with his body either burning with want or already sated in his sleep like an adolescent in the first throes of sexual maturity. It was embarrassing and yet every night he fell asleep hoping this would be the night he dreamed of Yusuf again, of touching him, holding him, and of being touched and held in turn.
At first he wondered if this was a test of Faith, a temptation set by his God to see his worth, but nowhere in his God's words was there condemnation for finding desire with another man despite the stirrings of the monastic orders to forbid all carnal desire but for God himself. Perhaps it was a blessing that Nicolò was no longer a priest and subject to the growing demand for celibacy, twisting HIS words to suit their own hidden agenda.
However, this temptation was not simply for another man. Yusuf might no longer be his enemy but he was still a man who worshiped a different god in the eyes of Nicolò's people. A man who did not believe in the Holy Trinity. Yet with each passing year Nicolò had felt his resolve weakening as the temptation to turn his wet dreams into reality increased, and though he had tried to kill this temptation by allowing other Christian men to make use of his body, slaking the desire for another man's firm touch, the temptation to give himself over to Yusuf persisted.
Yusuf wet his lips, breath shallow as he looked across at Nicolò, eventually breaking the silence by speaking first.
"I've been dreaming of you... And I think you have have been dreaming of me."
END
5. Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
If I lay here, if I just lay here
Would you lie with me, and just forget the world?
I don't quite know, how to say, how I feel
Those three words, are said too much, they're not enough
All that I am.
All that I ever was is here in your perfect eyes
They're all I can see
I don't know where, confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all
Enemies to Friends to Lovers - Not my best friend
By unspoken mutual agreement they left the village together and stayed together as days turned to weeks then months and then years. They forged a new path together, helping others where they could even if it was just manual labor, helping with a harvest, fixing dwellings or digging wells. Sometimes they needed to fight to protect innocent people they came across along the road, but again, by unspoken agreement they never turned their swords on each other, unless speaking in euphemisms.
The first time they turned those wet dreams into reality was electric. The ghost fingers of their dreams were nothing compared to the firmer pressure of fingertips skirting across warm, perspiring skin, or the heat of a callused palm wrapping around hardened flesh. Their first kiss came much later, bringing a closer intimacy to their relationship until they were no longer simply best friends with benefits but so much more.
A century passed and eventually they met with the two warrior women who also frequented their dreams. Despite both being beautiful, Yusuf still only had eyes for Nicolò and he was relieved to know Nicolò only had eyes for him in return.
More centuries passed and sometimes it seemed as if the bloodshed never stopped with the innocent always falling foul of the machinations of the rich and powerful in their quest for more riches and more power. There were times when he and Nicolò had simply had enough of it, wanting to forget the world if only for a short time. Wanting to see wild flowers blooming in a meadow instead of blood and guts spilled across a battlefield. At those times they agreed to separate from Andromache and Quynh for just a few years so they could remember there was beauty in this world.
The first time Nicolò said those three words, I love you, was centuries ago in Malta. Though he had said them many times since and in many different languages, those three words had never grown old and yet they could not encompass all that Yusuf felt for him in return. Only in the love shining from Nicolò's beautiful eyes could he see the true reflection of the man he had become. Once his enemy, then his companion, his friend, his lover, his best friend, his husband. Nicolò was now his all and more, and Yusuf knew that would never change.
END
6. Don't Panic - Coldplay
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
Bones sinkin' like stones
All that we fought for
Homes, places we've grown
All of us are done for
We live in a beautiful world
Yeah we do, yeah we do
We live in a beautiful world
All in all that I know
There's nothin' here to run from
'Cos yeah, everybody here's got somebody to lean on
Apocryphal Tale - Sneaking in / out
How were they to know that one of the few times when they decided to take a break from all the mayhem and killing so they could actually enjoy this beautiful world that their parting would be the last time they saw Quynh for many centuries. It was the lack of communication from their sisters that drew them from the home they had made in Malta. They followed the trail left by that last letter, leading them to England. It took weeks more before they overheard a traveler talking of witches that would not die and the terrible fate that befell one of them.
A coffin made of iron thrown overboard somewhere between a southern English port and the Americas. A vast, deep ocean that was impossible to search having swallowed their sister leaving no marker for them to find. So many had coveted their immortality while others saw it as an evil, yet never had they truly considered the possibility of having their immortality work against them in such an horrific way. The fear of discovery had him and Yusuf holding each other tightly, no longer able to sleep without one of them keeping their eyes open as they worked their way across England looking for their remaining sister.
They found Andy in a terrible condition both mentally and physically, constantly hurting herself as she tried to break free of her chains and gaining only a small respite when death occasionally took her. Despite her screams and protestations they forced her to escape from English shores, placating her with promises of hiring a boat to start a search along the probable course of the ship that took Quynh away from her. They spent the next sixty years following every clue, locating every crew member from its captain down to the cabin boy in the hope that one of them could give them something. Anything. All they knew for certain was that the iron maiden was not thrown into the English Channel, and that the ship had sailed for many days until there was no longer any land in sight before they disposed of the 'witch'.
Those years were troubled and out of compassion and respect for their older sister, Joseph and Nicholas as they were now known, kept their love making low key. They sneaked in and out of each other's beds, trying not to remind their sister of what she has lost. What THEY had lost. Some nights they lay in each other's arms and wept, taking small solace in the arms holding them, kissing away tears and trying to reaffirm that they were still alive and still together in this beautiful yet cruel world.
They took turns sitting with Andy, then known as Anne, as she ranted about all the things they had done for this world and how it had all come to nothing. Joseph had to intervene when Nicholas talked of God's plan for them because they had made a pact that they would never kill each other unless absolutely necessary. Beating his beloved to death was not going to bring Quynh back, especially as Nicholas became the one she confided and clung to the most in the centuries that followed.
In the end they had to lean on each other for support to get them through those terrible years as all sources of information dried up. Mortals aged and died leaving no trace of Quynh and her fate behind while THEY continued to live. After another two centuries had passed Quynh became an Old Wives' Tale. An apocryphal bedtime story for mortals and a warning to the new immortal, Sebastian, of the price of being captured with his immortality known. He provided them with an even greater horror story; he was dreaming of a woman drowning over and over and over.
For over three centuries they had prayed she had found an end to her immortality and suffering, but Quynh was still alive and their hearts were breaking anew for both her and Anne.
END
7. The Change - Garth Brooks
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
One hand reaches out and pulls a lost soul from harm
While a thousand more go unspoken for
They say what good have you done by saving just this one
It's like whispering a prayer in the fury of a storm
This heart still believes that love and mercy still exist
While all the hatred rage and so many say
That love is all but pointless in madness such as this
It's like trying to stop a fire with the moisture from a kiss
As long as one heart still holds on then hope is never really gone
Breaking Point - Breaking the rules
They had planned to spend several years apart after suffering through one war after another since before the turn of the 19th century; the Russian Revolution, The Great War, The Spanish War, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, The Gulf War, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Running alongside was so much civil unrest in dozens of different countries from the American Civil Rights movement to Peace marches to Stonewall to... The list was endless. Then there were the natural disasters. Hurricanes, earthquakes, famine, epidemics, volcanic eruptions, mining disasters. It was if the entire world had gone to Hell so Nicky understood why Andy had become even more despondent, no longer seeing a purpose in what they were doing.
Sebastian brought the four of them back together with a concern for a group of young girls who had been abducted from their school. These girls would end up as child brides, little more than sex slaves, to be used to bear children and likely discarded or killed as soon as their usefulness ended.
And then their worst nightmare came true. Someone knew about them and was actively hunting them down, and the person they relied upon to resolve this turned out to be the one who had betrayed them. If not for Nile then the future would have been bleak for who knew how long he and Joe would have been held together. Eventually they would have been separated, buried alive in laboratories where it might have taken centuries for them to find a way back to each other.
That first night after the escape they broke the rules they had set five hundred years earlier to limit Andy's pain at losing Quynh.
They clutched at each other as they showered together, rinsing the blood and brain matter from Nicky's hair. They held hands and refused to move more than a few feet from each other, even going to the bathroom together because they were scared to lose sight of each other for even a minute. It was ridiculous but Andy remained silent and Sebastian cowered in a corner. It wasn't a good impression on the new immortal but Nile smiled and for someone so incredibly young compared to them, she was a pillar of strength that first night.
They parted with Sebastian the following day on the banks of the Thames, and perhaps his punishment might not have been so harsh if they had allowed themselves more time to think it through. Instead they were still reeling from the betrayal, from the fear of a fate every bit as bad as Quynh's. Having held it together in Merrick's laboratory while being sliced open again and again, the weight of it all came crashing down as they raced away from London. They slept in snatches, holding on tight to each other, startling awake at every unusual creak, or crying out at nightmares of unending torture in the name of medical science.
For over nine centuries they had lived through hundreds of wars and disasters both natural and man-made. They had seen the trauma written across mortal faces time and again but it took Nile's patient understanding for them to realize that they were the ones with post-traumatic stress disorder this time. They were the ones worn down by countless deaths and horrors until Sebastian's betrayal, Andy's sudden mortality and Merrick with his cruel doctor became the breaking point. The final straw that broke the camel's back.
By rights they should have killed James Copley simply for knowing who and what they were but Nile convinced them to speak with him before they made a decision. She wanted to show them something.
"I've seen the good you've done."
And now Nicky could see it too, spread across the boards in aging photographs and old newspaper. In written records yellowed with age and in stories handed down through generations. The single soldier carried from the battlefield going on to father a child who would save countless lives. Another prevented a nuclear catastrophe, another made life-changing discoveries to improve the lives of thousands. There were too many instances to be coincidental and perhaps this was why that had not seen their true worth. It wasn't in the big picture of preventing a war and personally saving hundreds or thousands. It was in side notes of history, in the one hand that reached out and saved a single life with the ripple effect spreading out across the years.
He and Joe decided to break the rules a second time that night and slipped away to their bedroom together, spending the night curled around each other, kissing and caressing. Between bouts of lovemaking, as they reaffirmed each other's living presence in the most basic human way, they lay wrapped in each other's arms talking of those they had saved in the distant past.
When they came down for breakfast, feeling a little sheepish at leaving Andy and Nile on guard all night, Andy was the one who smiled this time. For the first time in five centuries her eyes were not shadowed in despair but with renewed hope for the future.
END
8. Wherever You Will Go - The Calling
LYRICS used for inspiration and FICLET
So lately, I've been wonderin who will be there to take my place
When I'm gone, you'll need love to light the shadows on your face
And maybe, I'll find out the way to make it back someday
To watch you, to guide you through the darkest of your days
I know now, just quite how my life and love might still go on
In your heart and your mind, I'll stay with you for all of time
Promises - sex on the beach
Although Joe knew about Lykon and how one day he had simply stopped healing, dying in battle, it was not something either he or Nicky had personally experienced until they learned of Andy's mortality. In the past it had felt so abstract, something that was real but which he could not truly define or relate to except for adding an additional fear every time Nicky was fatally injured, watching over his beloved husband until he saw him heal and come back to him. Now it terrified Joe to the point where he had started to stick a pin in Nicky every day just to make sure the tiny wound closed, and Nicky was just as bad because Nicky had never been THAT clumsy around him with knives and other sharp implements in the past. A nick here, a scratch there.
"Nicky, my beloved, this has to stop," he sighed, wiping away the latest small trickle of blood to reveal not even the slightest pink of scar tissue beneath. "Let's go to Malta and relive THAT time."
Beyond them Andy snorted while Nile questioned, "That time?"
"You really don't want to know, kid," Andy replied but she was smiling. "But Malta sounds good."
A day later they were back on an island that still retained so many visible reminders of past centuries. Nile loved the villa with its carefully tended garden and swimming pool. They owned the place but it was mostly rented out for decades at a time lest anyone remember them and wonder why they had not aged. It had happened once or twice when a mortal had known them as a child and recalled their faces when seeing them again almost a century later. Mortal life expectancy had more than doubled since the time of their birth due to the advancement of medicine and good health practices.
He and Nicky simply remarked how much they looked like their grandparents or great uncles or some other family connection, which sounded far more plausible to mortals than the truth.
The greatest beauty of this villa, other than its remoteness, was that it had two separate living areas so even though Andy and Nile were there, Nicky and Joe were still ensured complete privacy until they wanted the extra company. It also had a private beach where two promontories jutted out far enough at each end of the small cove to dissuade any uninvited guests.
They had barely dropped their bags off in their bedroom before Joe shouted out, "We are heading to the beach."
Nile opened her mouth but Andy put up a hand. "Believe me, you don't want to join them there today. Race you to the pool instead."
Joe and Nicky walked hand in hand down to a beautiful white sand beach, enjoying the shifting sand beneath their feet as they made their way across to a secluded spot that was hidden from the villa behind a large almost flat rock. They fussed about at first, laying down a blanket and then several towels on top before stripping off completely, reveling in the pleasure of being naked beneath what was only a mildly hot sun at this time of year. A race into the sea left them both breathless and laughing in the cold water and they played for a while, splashing and trying to duck each other under the water until their touches became more intimate, more demanding. The towels had warmed under the sun and Joe stretched out, smiling as Nicky straddled him, lowering himself to kiss him sweetly at first but with slowly growing passion until they were grinding together, losing each other in the pleasure of skin on skin.
Afterward a quick dip into the sea to clean up they lay side by side, letting the peace steal over them as a breeze off the sea cooled their heated skin.
"Do we need to have that talk again?" Joe asked quietly.
Nicky sighed. "No."
They both knew a day might come when one of them did not return from death... or met a worse fate. They had talked about it after learning about Lykon, and after what happened with Quynh. They had made promises that while they lived they would try to find a way back to each other and if one of them should meet their true death then the other promised they would find a reason to go on, to get them through the darkest days in the hope of finding some light and peace until they could be reunited in the afterlife.
"I promise to stop accidentally cutting you if you promise to stop poking me with needles every day."
Joe laughed. "I promise."
Joe pulled Nicky into his arms, pillowing his damp head against his shoulder. They had spent over nine hundred years together and, God willing, they would have at least nine hundred more.
END
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