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Outside of armour, Nicolo is the shyest man Yusuf has ever known. So shy it takes an hour of wandering through the camp, ducking past guards, to find him.
When he does, Nicolo is sitting next to a small fire. It’s built with the kind of wood that doesn’t burn and Yusuf sighs to himself. Foreigners — of course they don’t know where to find better wood. Or maybe this overly large army is using all of it, leaving poor Nicolo to his smoking heatless campfire.
Yusuf comes closer, opens his mouth to shout a greeting, and realizes two things; the first is that the injury he rammed into Nicolo’s side with a blade two days ago is entirely gone. The second is that Nicolo is crying.
It takes a moment longer to figure out what to do with that. But Yusuf stands there and feels the tenderness you can only feel for someone you’ve failed already to kill, and aches.
“Nicolo,” he calls softly.
Nicolo startles and jerks to his feet, quickly wiping at his face. “Yusuf?” he says, mangling the name with his accent.
“Who else?” Yusuf says, determined to pretend he hasn’t seen a thing. “You’re a damned hard man to find, I’ll give you that.”
Nicolo blinks slowly, mouthing Yusuf’s words back to himself. When he’s done interpreting he frowns, this adorable little downward pull of his eyebrows like he still isn’t sure of himself. “The others are...celebrating their victories,” he says, carefully but with clear distaste.
“What victories? We trounced you.” It makes sense then that Nicolo is all the way out here. He doesn’t have the stomach for killing (yet) and he cares even less for his brothers-in-arms.
“You did not!” Nicolo protests, and then flushes. “Maybe a little.”
“Okay,” Yusuf says. “I trounced you.”
Nicolo sits down again and mutters something in his bastard language. He’s learning Yusuf’s tongue faster than Yusuf is learning his, and Yusuf is going to have to track down some poor Roman whore and pay her for the night to teach him everything Nicolo just said.
“Well?” Nicolo says petulantly. “Are you coming?”
“Yes,” Yusuf says. “Impatient boy.” He’s only teasing, but Nicolo ducks his head. He sits down next to him on the log, staring into the obnoxiously smoking excuse for a fire for a couple of seconds before yanking Nicolo to his feet. “We’re not sitting here, I want to be able to see you.”
They walk out of the periphery of the camp. Nicolo’s hands are rough but his callouses feel tender, like he hasn’t held a sword before these battles. Yusuf squeezes his hand gently.
It reminds him that he himself has been a soldier since he was old enough to shave. Everyone in his tribe learnt to fight since they were old enough, and Yusuf was no different. He was one of the better fighters, though, respected for his ability to work well with others and by himself. They walk so far out of the camp that its firelight is pinpricks in the distance, and the only light they have now is the half-moon and the stars over the desert.
He thinks, suddenly, that this is all the light they’ll ever have. When the last lamp and the last campfire in the world goes out, it’ll always just be the stars.
Will they be there to see it?
“They talk of killing people,” Nicolo whispers, picking up the thread of the conversation like it had been seconds ago. “Like it’s easy. Like it’s nothing.”
“And that bothers you,” Yusuf says. “Let me guess. Before the holy war your people decided to wage on us, you weren’t a soldier.”
“No,” Nicolo replies miserably, and doesn’t contest the rest. “I was a — what’s the word for it? — person who makes clothes. The son of.”
“You are not good at grammar,” Yusuf notes. “We’ll have to work on that.”
“If only someone didn’t keep killing me in the middle of lessons,” Nicolo snaps with a straight face. But it only takes a look from Yusuf for him to lapse into giggles. It’s such a lovely sound that it catches in Yusuf’s chest, dew clinging to the thorns of a desert plant. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he gasps.
“Tailor,” Yusuf says gently. Everything about Nicolo makes him want to be gentle. It’s confusing, which is also why Yusuf keeps killing him. “The word you’re looking for is tailor.”
Nicolo leans into him. “I can’t remember what we were talking about.”
“Usually how it goes with us,” Yusuf mumbles. Nicolo smells like smoky campfire. “Are you cold?”
“It gets colder than this back home,” Nicolo says vaguely. And then, “Yes.”
Yusuf wraps his arm around Nicolo, who snuggles in like he’s grateful for the touch and hardly aware of what it means. How someone can be so kind and so oblivious at once baffles Yusuf. If he did this with a girl from his own tribe her mother would be demanding a dowry from his father within a day and a half. He turns his head and pushes his nose into Nicolo’s soft hair.
I like the way you speak my language, Yusuf thinks suddenly, but he can’t just say that out loud. And he does like it; for all that Nicolo’s accent is terrible and his grammar is atrocious, he is earnest. He makes mistakes and he corrects them. I want to learn yours too.
“What’re you thinking?” Nicolo asks, and then yawns. “I can hear it, y’know.”
Yusuf shakes him. “Don’t go to sleep,” he warns half-heartedly. “I’d have to carry you back to camp, and I’m not going to do that.”
“I’ll just sleep in the sand,” Nicolo says guilelessly. Nudges him in the ribs. “Spill.”
“I was,” Yusuf starts. “Would you teach me to speak your language too?”
Nicolo straightens up, suddenly wide awake again. “Of course I would,” he says, with that damned earnest warmth Yusuf has come to hate and love. “Oh. Does this mean you’re giving up on killing me?”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Yusuf grumbles. “I’ll get you one day.”
Nicolo laughs. “I would expect no less of you.” And then he says something in his language, too fast and bright to catch.
“What does that mean?”
“You’re going to have to learn Genovese to find out,” Nicolo tells him, eyes sparkling with mirth.
“I’ll get you,” Yusuf threatens, and then leans down to kiss him.
Nicolo kisses back, always kisses back as long as Yusuf gives him a chance, throwing his arms over Yusuf’s shoulders for leverage and then dragging him down so they’re both on their knees in the sand. His mouth is soft and the delicate skin of his neck is soft where Yusuf cut him once, except now Yusuf is putting his mouth on it like a promise and an apology blurring together. Nicolo’s warmth spreads through him, and over their heads the stars burn bright and distant forever.