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The morning sun slants in through the window rousing Joe earlier than appreciated. He’s always been a light sleeper; a millennia of being the living embodiment of a soldier does not lead to peaceful sleeping habits. When they get this precious time off to laze about in hidden villas and drink each other in Joe always tries to shut the curtains, but last night, frenzied touches and the warm buzz of too much champagne did not put Joe in the right frame of mind to think of something as little as curtains when he had Nicky in his hands.
His Nicky. Who sleeps so loose and easy in Joe’s arms. Who Joe wakes up to find more beautiful with each passing day. Who is so unafraid of anything and nearly impossible to shake out of sleep when he knows Joe has his back. Who, to Joe’s amusement, also has his hand wrapped around the handle of a gun that remains trustfully stuffed deep under his pillow.
It will forever mystify Joe that everyone, upon meeting the duo, always assumes Nicky is the sweet one. Deep down Joe thinks it is some remnants of priesthood the church beat into him. An aura of ‘I’m listening and I’m praying for you’ that still surrounds Nicky to this day and endears him particularly to old women. On one very memorable occasion in Venice a few years ago Nicky had to out run a very forward group of American tourists who couldn’t get enough of his pinchable cheeks and open face. Nicky had pouted while Joe laughed and laughed. Nicky had then refused to join Joe for dinner that night until Joe thoroughly kissed all of their unwelcomed touches away.
‘Sweetheart’ and ‘baby’ they had called him not knowing Nicky’s a trained soldier who sleeps with a loaded gun at his head, and a just as dangerous soldier at his back.
Nicky stretches then shaking Joe out of his reverie. Sleep warm and stuck in that hazy world that rests between slumber and awareness, he rolls over to face Joe. With the golden light of the morning slanting over his sharp cheekbones he looks like an angel, and has Joe itching to draw. Joe ghosts a hand over his face reverently and thinks about how he could worship this man this morning.
“Mmm,” Nicky mumbles. “I can hear you being an incurable romantic you know.”
Joe laughs low in his throat, and then leans over to kiss the tip of Nicky’s nose because it’s the morning, and it’s peaceful, and no one is trying to kill them, and because he can. “Just thinking about all the people you trick into thinking you are no more harmless than a mouse Niccolo.”
“Do you know what I was thinking of just now?” Nicky asks, lacing his fingers into the wandering hand that’s now making tracks down the ticklish skin of his sternum. “I was thinking about how much I love you. How safe I felt this morning. How much I never want to leave this bed. Never want to part with you.”
Nicky raises the captured hand to his mouth and kisses each of Joe’s knuckles delicately. The same exact knuckles that blackened just for a moment the other night when Joe punched out a drunken homophobe that decided to make his hate known in their vicinity. They are both a little bit protective of each other; a side effect of an eternity getting to love one another and an eternity getting to watch each other die.
“You know what else I was thinking,” Nicky continues, “That I want to start making music again. I could write ballads about you: a thousand dedicated to the way you smile, the way you touch me, the way your hair falls when you first wake up. I’d write another thousand for the way you think, the way you draw, the way you fight. I’d write until the world grew tired of it, but I could never grow bored of making music if it was about you, my love.”
If Joe were a lesser man he might consider blushing but after 900 years of knowing each other both he and Nicky have almost become used to unabashed declarations of love. Nicky might call him a sap in public but he is just as guilty of them.
“Why don’t you get started then?” Joe teases. “I always love listening to you sing. You could join the opera again and get me the good tickets, my beautiful Don Giovanni.”
“Because then I’d have to get up from this bed and admit the day is starting,” Nicky sighs. “And going to practice would take away my time to lounge in bed every morning”
Joe pulls Nicky closer and tucks his nose into his shoulder. “Well we can’t have that. I guess your plan will have to wait. Good thing we have nothing but time”
“It won’t wait forever though.” Nicky promises. “If anyone deserves to be immortalized it would be you.”
“I can think of three painters and one sculpture who thought it was your face that deserved to be plastered across the art world.”
“Well, there is no accounting for taste then.”
The two are silent for a moment. Drinking in the rising sun of a lazy morning, curled tightly into one another unwilling to let go just yet. Nicky hums some ancient hymn against Joe’s neck that he feels the vibrations of more than he hears. It’s a piece Joe remembers from way back when he first met Nicky. Walking for miles under the hot, beating sun talking and arguing and sometimes singing in languages the other couldn’t understand, but knowing deep down they were somehow intrinsically connected. Looking back Joe realizes that he loved this priest from Genova even then. Even when this life of immortality was so new and scary having Nicky there made it bearable and worth it.
Whether it be souls or destiny or just plain stubborn love Joe will never regret living a thousand lives with this man next to him. Nicky’s song trails off and he shifts in Joe’s arms.
“Did you call me a mouse earlier?” He asks, peeking up from his warm spot at the hollow of Joe’s throat.
“I said other people thought you were a mouse.”
“I’ll show you a mouse,” Nicky growls, rolling over onto Joe and pinning his hips to the bed. Nicky leans over him, pushing Joe’s wrist into the bed, and playfully nips at his neck before pulling back to appreciate the man beneath him.
“I was going to draw you this morning, but I guess this will have to do,” Joe says smiling, running his hands up Nicky’s thighs and bops his head up searching for a real morning kiss.
Nicky ponders the request for a moment. “You can draw me after, while I make you a nice breakfast” he concedes, and swoops down to kiss Joe.