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The first time it happened, they were in the steppes, far from any civilisation but they had finally found each other after long voyages that seemed to have led them across each other’s path but never to the same place. Once they had found each other, however, they could not imagine travelling in their previous arrangements. Andromache and Quynh were outspoken and blunt about the way they lay together and invited Yusuf and Nicolò to do the same. Whether it was for warmth or pleasure, they made no secret of their closeness.
Nicolò was ready to admit that it had its advantages to sleep close enough to Yusuf to flee the cold once their fire burned low and the cold crept through their blankets. Ever since they had moved past their initial struggles and the fights they got into turned into long talks and their attempts at killing each other had become something else, Nicolò had found peace in Yusuf’s arms, a peace that had eluded him before.
‘We won’t find another settlement for some time,’ Andromache stoked the fire with a branch off the pile they had collected earlier and pushed it deeper into the embers to be consumed by the embers, ‘there won’t be many opportunities to refill our water supplies. Did you find the waterhole?’
‘We did,’ Yusuf leaned back against his pack, ‘and we did tell you that as soon as we returned with them. Right, Quynh, tell her!’
‘The one I shoved you into? No, I wouldn’t drink that water anymore,’ Quynh plucked the leaves of a twig she had chosen from the firewood, ‘but he did have a wash, are you appreciating it, Nicolò?’
‘Oh, don’t ask him,’ Joe waved a hand through the air, ‘he thought I was crazy for knowing how to swim and he comes from a port town. He was outraged when I suggested going for a quick dip in that beautiful lake we found in this oasis near Damascus, as if I would drown him or raise the demons his hell is full of, it was a good thing you weren’t there, he allowed me to take a bath but would not even dip his feet in at the edge.’
Nicolò felt a blush creep up his cheeks, warm and embarrassing, similar to the way he had felt when Yusuf first confessed his love to him. It remained something he could not easily fathom, as if he was still struggling to understand why Yusuf remained convinced of their love. There had been a time during which Nicolò even doubted that, struggled to call it love as a bile-like taste crept onto his tongue whenever he thought of it.
Yusuf had made him change his mind, most of the time. He had showed him over and over again that he was serious and meant every word he whispered into his ears during late nights spent next to a dying fire as Andromache and Quynh were too preoccupied with themselves to pester them about it. It had taken him so long to accept Yusuf’s hands on his body, even longer to let himself enjoy the feeling of skin on skin but he still flinched sometimes when Yusuf took and caressed what he felt like cherishing. Nicolò tried to give in more often, he found that he enjoyed Yusuf’s attention on him every now and then, not that it was to be missed, he was very overt in his attentions. Whenever Yusuf wanted to show his affection, he made sure Nicolò noticed, maybe to keep the flinching to a minimum. Nicolò still felt the guilt weigh heavy on his shoulders whenever he found himself unable to reciprocate the words uttered into the unoccupied spaces between them.
‘I do wash,’ he heard himself say, looking up from the map in his lap that he had been studying, ‘you don’t have to bring it up every time we stop and have a moment of peace.’
‘Oh, but don’t you still shudder to think about immersing yourself into water up to your shoulders and over your head?’ Yusuf winked at him and nudged Quynh in the side to get her attention back on him, ‘he looks like a kicked puppy, every time, as if you’d told him he needed to cut his hair off.’
‘It took me long to grow it, alright? Stop the teasing already,’ Nicolò shoved him a little.
Yusuf burst out laughing, going with the motion of the push to the side and swayed for a moment before tipping back towards him, overbalancing and falling headfirst into his lap where he nestled himself in between his crossed legs and pushed the map aside. Nicolò knew Yusuf to be almost childlike in his need for attention and affection which he tried to provide as much as possible. He wove his fingers into Yusuf’s curls and let his nails scrape over his skull in what he had found out to be a favoured means of contact between them.
‘Are you sure it’s a good idea to keep it, though?’ Andromache looked up from the fire, the orange flames dancing shapes in her eyes, ‘No matter how long it takes you to grow it, we are far from anyone who could maintain its shape.’
‘You look like a very small, sad, furry animal climbed on your face and died,’ Quynh added, her voice void of any real bite but with a face innocent enough to make him feel the jab, ‘it’s a bold choice for a beard.’
‘Oh come on, Quynh, it’s not that bad,’ Nicolò resisted the urge to stroke his beard which would only have encouraged her and Andromache in their teasing, ‘it’s the first time I got it to grow it out.’
‘It looks horrible, I don’t understand how Yusuf can look at you like that,’ Quynh dragged the rag she used to oil her bowstring across the shining, smooth wood of her bow with a shake of her head, ‘as soon as you open your mouth, move, do anything it’s almost like you were the one who hung the stars in the sky. It would make me sick, if you were anyone else and not the brothers in arms you have become.’
Nicolò cocked his head, not entirely sure whether he had understood her meaning correctly. Her intelligent and worryingly mischievous eyes flickered between his face and Yusuf in his lap, a meaningful, yet crooked smile on her lips that were twisted into a playful smirk more often than not.
‘Look and truly see, Nicolò,’ she sing-songed, finally looking away from them.
‘Leave him be,’ Yusuf drawled from his lap and let his hand come to rest on Nicky’s back in what seemed like a painful twist, snaking his arm around his back, ‘I do like the long hair and the beard, no matter how sparse it grows.’
Nicolò looked down into his lap and met Yusuf’s eyes. He looked straight up at him, focussing on the underside of his chin, watching as Nicolò continued to run his fingers through his hair. The smile on his face stretched out beyond his eyes, crinkling his cheeks with the wide, brilliant expression he seemed to have worn even before Nicolò had noticed his quiet watching. There was a warmth and wonder in his eyes, as if he had never seen anything as captivating or worth his attention as the man he used as a pillow that seeped into Nicolò’s cheeks again in a hot, surging blush. His fingers stilled in Yusuf’s hair, buried deep into dark, shiny curls that were soft against his skin, a physical reminder of how close they were and how easily Yusuf eased himself into his space. His eyes were an open book to anyone in their small group of fighters, they all knew how to read them but in that moment, as Nicolò lost himself in the dark pools shining with the fire’s heat, he read more in them than ever before. There was something in them, open and vulnerable, something waiting to be seen and recognised that Nicolò had never before cared to decrypt.
His stomach lurched violently with the urge to act upon what he had discovered. He let his gaze wander for a moment, trying to see whether Andromache or Quynh were paying them any mind whilst fully aware that there was nothing he could do that would slip their attention. Nicolò was, despite whatever they or Yusuf joked about, not completely unaware of his own feelings. With Yusuf in his lap and his eyes brighter than the stars above them, he knew what to name the sudden surge of emotions that took hold of him.
‘Love,’ he whispered into the fast cooling night air and tightened his grip on Yusuf’s hair.
‘What was that?’ Yusuf sounded sleepy, as if Nicolò’s fingers in his curls had almost put him to sleep.
Nicolò drew in a deep breath that filled his lungs beyond what he felt was possible and leaned forward, mirroring Yusuf’s expression, ‘I love you, too.’
‘I didn’t say –‘
‘You didn’t have to, not this time,’ Nicolò closed the distance between them, bringing their lips nearly together, ‘it was in the way you look at me.’
Yusuf arched up from his lap, pressing against his mouth hungrily. Neither one of them cared about them being upside down, instead, Yusuf brought his arms back around to his neck an pulled him in until Nicolò forgot about the cold night creeping closer, paid no mind to Andromache’s sighs and Quynh’s encouragement, and felt nothing but Yusuf.
When they broke away, Yusuf looked at him again, following his movement. The love in his eyes was still there, louder and brighter than ever.
-
Whilst Nile needed her playlists, Andy demanded a room to herself and Joe called dibs on the first warm shower ever since that first mission post-reorganisation, Nicky grounded himself. He busied himself around the save house with whatever small tasks needed seeing to and occupied the kitchen where he quickly washed his hands, arms and face, scrubbed the blood away from under his nails and held his head under the cold tap to get the dust and debris out of his hair that he had gathered when he had been pushed against a wall in the cellar they had washed out.
Once he felt like he was no longer leaving plaster crumbs and spider webs around the room, he got to work on something hot and tasty to put on the table for them before they went to bed and were likely to sleep long into the next day. He was comfortable in his space, absorbed in his new mission that kept him occupied until he got to have his turn under the shower eventually. It was little more than a flick of the wrist for him to prepare the greasy oven dish Nile liked to wolf down after missions that spilled her blood and even though there had been no unplanned deaths, it still took a lot out of them.
‘Nicky, you’re doing it again,’ he had not heard the door open as Andy returned and shot a quick glance back over his shoulder to where she leaned against the table and squeezed her hair dry with a towel, ‘can you, just once, not sing whilst cooking?’
He gave her a raised eyebrow and slipped the baking dish into the pre-heated oven, still humming under his breath, loud enough for her to still her it. Andy threw the towel at him, it hit him in the head when he straightened back up and dropped to the floor in a sad heap.
‘Always with the operas,’ she turned around and gathered the discarded clothes and bags from around the room, ‘you know, one of these days, you could just get these annoying pop songs stuck in your head like any other normal person.’
‘Oh, but he’s anything but normal,’ Joe sidled up to her and threw an arm around her shoulder, ‘Nile is in the bathroom now, Nicky, you can go in next.’
Nicky nodded his acknowledgement and turned to clean up the kitchen to get rid of any traces of his preparations, sweeping vegetable cut offs into the bin and placed the knives in the sink. He heard Joe and Andy move around the room, nagging each other with a passion as they tidied up what traces they had left when they returned to the house. The shower was audible from the bathroom and even though he knew that the water tank did not hold enough warm water for four showers, he finished off the aria he had started singing unwittingly as he worked without paying the thought any mind, moving to his own rhythm around the kitchen.
Once he had finished wiping down the worktop and set a timer for the bake bubbling in the oven, the water had stopped and they could hear Nile rummage around in the back. Nicky checked the surfaces a last time, dropped into a crouch in front of the oven and watched a cheese bubble burst whilst he hummed the last drawn-out note of the song that had carried him through the cooking process. When he turned around to face the rest of the room, both Andy and Joe looked at him with very different expressions.
Andy rolled her eyes at him through the curtain her hair provided, flopping into her eyes, a bottle in her hand already, although it looked like nothing more than water for once. Her sigh seemed bone-deep and tired but he took no offence at it, knowing that, as much as she hated Italian operas, she also knew he would stop again, revert back to silent glances and hidden smiles soon after he would have had his shower. Her looks, judgemental or annoyed, were no longer new to him.
Neither were Joe’s but he felt the corner of his mouth curl up nonetheless when their eyes met and he saw the softness in his features, the way he openly stared at him, half-hidden behind lidded eyes. He knew the love and affection in Joe’s eyes, had drunk it in ever since his disposition towards him had shifted and the warm fondness they had held for each other had been replaced by a blinding love that left little room for doubt. Nicky felt seen whenever Joe’s eyes glanced in his direction and knew that, if he looked, he would find love and adoration in them, no matter which silly thing he had been doing before.
-
Everything hurt, every movement, every twitching muscle, even blinking. There was no damage to overcome, no wound that could heal close and relieve him, only knowing that he had spent close to ten hours lying on his front, perched on his elbows, fingers loosely curled around his rifle and his eyes trained on the building complex he knew was currently getting an internal clean-out from Andy, Joe and Nile after he had convinced them that he could provide some back-up on his own and they would need the third person more than he a spotter. Joe had accepted it after a brief discussion and Nicky had made his nest on the flat rooftop of the building across from their target.
Every now and then, he had been able to catch glimpses of them through the broken windows, ducking around trying to find the entry point Copley had told them about. Nicky had taken out someone sneaking up on Nile and followed Andy’s encounters through the night-vision scope, ready to intervene at any point if it ever looked like she was in danger. It was this precaution that had been the final straw to Joe giving his consent.
It had also meant that Nicky did not get a break in his attempt to cover them, without Joe by his side to take over with the binoculars so that he could rest his eyes for a moment. It had taken longer than expected to retrieve the information they had been out for and by the end of it, the exhaustion had been a dusty, stale taste on his tongue that clung to him when he finally watched them exit the building and move towards the car they had left a few corners away. He packed his gear with clumsy fingers and got up, quietly wincing as his stiff knees took his weight again for the first time in hours.
He took the stairs back to ground level, groaning with every step he took as his joints remembered how to move smoothly and without cracking every time he set a foot to the floor. By the time he reached the backdoor he had used to make his entrance through, his elbows burned with relief.
Joe leaned against the car door, his arms crossed over his chest as he waited with Andy and Nile in the car already, ‘There you are, we were waiting for you.’
Nicky put his gear in the back, letting his eyes wander over the women seated in the car in a quick inventory. Neither of them seemed really hurt beyond a couple of scratches and Nile was in the process of showing Andy something on her phone, laughing and pointing. He closed the door and turned around to Joe.
‘You’re driving?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Get us somewhere safe and let me stretch my legs a little, please,’ Nicky sighed and rubbed at his strained eyes, ‘That was a little longer than usual.’
Joe gave him a curt nod and held the passenger door open for him and helped him fold his stiff legs into the car, cupping his head for a moment to let his fingers glide through his hair, ‘I’m going to try and get us home in record time, habibi. If you’re lucky, I might even throw a massage for your sore joints into the mix but I’ll be alright to take you on a walk to get you moving before, anyway. We have the rest of the night to get you relaxed and mobile again. Andy might probably want to join us, actually, she’s been a bit wound up, I think.’
‘Are we ready to go yet?’ Andy leaned over and knocked into Nicky’s shoulder.
‘I see what you mean,’ Nicky gave Joe a smile and buckled his seat.
The promise of an opportunity to stretch his legs sooner or later made him endure the narrow seat in the car with Andy’s knees digging into his back. Joe drove them through the night and Nicky leaned his head against the window, torn between curling up and trying to stretch out as much as possible.
‘Can we have some music?’ Nile rose from the depths of the backrow, ‘I don’t wanna fall asleep yet.’
‘If you put on music, Andy’s going to be the one falling asleep,’ Joe grinned and dodged the swat coming for him, ‘are you okay with that, boss?’
‘Just do it and be quiet.’
Joe switched on the radio to let music wash over all of them. Nicky could imagine that Andy still wanted to discuss intel and findings but was relieved when she curled up in the back and tucked her head beneath her jacket. Within minutes, she was asleep, no matter how hard she tried to keep her eyes open and fought to stay in the conversation that happened over the music.
He felt his own awareness slip and glide as the car engine roared and the landscape passed them by outside the windows. The soft song from the speakers seemed vaguely familiar to him, as if he had heard it at some point before. With all the melodies he had heard throughout the centuries, it was hard to tell but the one currently playing felt even closer, even awakening a few memories that took him to an underground club that had been filled with smoke and people who had given up on pretending like they were not interested in their own gender. It had been a relief, at the time, to find those places where Joe and he could go and disappear between others who felt the same. The music had taken them to a different place, the melodies catchy enough to have them in their heads for days afterwards. His constant humming of the newest tunes that got stuck after their evening out had annoyed Andy tremendously but Nicky was not willing to miss these moments.
A warm hand wrapped around his, fingers sliding over his pulse point. The sensation brought Nicky back out of his doze and made him squint against the passing streetlamps. Joe looked over at him, his eyes glinting in the dim light. Nicky returned the look, allowing himself to get lost in the tenderness with which Joe took him in, squeezing his hand in the space between them where it rested on the centre console before lifting it up between them to press a quick kiss to his knuckles without ever taking his eyes off him.
Nicky wanted to give him a smile, a recognition of the gesture but his muscles still ached and the paralysing weight of exhaustion claimed him after all. He tried to hold on to Joe’s hand and drag it into his lap, determined to curl up around it, taut tendons and tired limbs be damned. Still, he could feel his eyes on him, watching and drinking in the sight.
‘Hey, lovers, eyes on the road,’ Nile leaned forward between the seats and tried to get Joe’s attention on her, ‘you can make heart eyes at Nicky when we’re home!’
A moment later, Nicky felt the distinctive pressure of Andy’s boot kicking him in the back long enough to scold him before going back to sleep, ‘Stop with the singing already.’
Nicky mimed zipping his lips shut to Joe who chuckled and tore his gaze away from him and back onto the road. Their hands remained entangled with Joe’s thumb rubbing patterns into his skin to ground him until they arrived back home.
-
Nicky came slowly back to consciousness for once, slower than usual. He was warm, wrapped into enough blankets to drown him and propped up on a few pillows. There was another pillow in front of him that he tugged into his chest since he did not sleep on a backpack or another supplement.
‘Yusuf?’
‘Yes, my love?’
‘I’m awake.’
‘Believe me, I can tell,’ Joe chuckled behind him and let his hand sink into his hair.
Nicky hummed quietly and let his arm wander behind his back to find any part of Joe to hold onto. He found a leg and squeezed it to acknowledge that he really was awake, only to be repaid in kind as Joe tugged on his hair a little and leaned down to press a kiss to the spot behind his ear and breathed in deeply.
‘You still smell of sleep,’ he murmured and nuzzled into Nicky’s hair, ‘all warm and huggable. There cannot be a greater bliss but having you in my arms, hayati.’
Nicky smiled into the pillows for a moment longer as Joe’s nose slid through his hair before turning around and pushing himself onto his elbows. He took a moment to enjoy seeing his man for the first time in the morning, leaning against the headboard and with a brilliant smile on his lips as the sun fell through the window and painted his face in soft hues of orange.
They moved towards each other, drifting into each other’s space and finding a new position to rest in. Joe arranged the blankets around them and leaned against Nicky’s chest once he sat up, tucking his head in under his chin, giving Nicky a new angle to wrap his arms around him. He had a sketchbook close and ready to get started on a few images he had on his mind early in the morning.
‘What do we do now?’ Nicky held Joe closer and let his fingers wander over Joe’s soft sleep shirt.
‘Now, I draw and you can watch over my shoulder,’ Joe grabbed the pencil from the bedside table and twirled it around his fingers.
He wiggled his legs a little under the blanket, bunching it up in his lap before resting the sketchbook against his knees. Nicky knew that he would not be able to get a response once the pencil touched the page and grabbed his own book from the other side of the table, opening it back up to the page he had been on last before falling asleep with Joe curling around him.
Throughout the centuries, he had read many books he had forgotten about immediately, a few that stuck to his mind for a little longer and one or two that he would count as his favourites, books he read at least once a year, books that made him feel anchored and reminded him of all the times he read them before. It did not take him long to immerse himself in the plot again and continue reading where he left off. Every now and then, as he turned the pages, he looked to the side and watched Joe sketch out a scene from memory.
Nicky enjoyed watching him sketch. There was a beauty in the soft, careful strokes of the graphite on the paper, the way Joe added seemingly rogue dashes to a structure he created and filled in the spaces between them. It was in the small movements of his fingers and his scrunched up nose when he tried to get the details just right, the softly blown breath to get the graphite and rubber particles off the pages and the critical look with which he checked his drawings over before he declared them finished.
He noticed the pencil stilling on the page and turned to look at Joe, curious to see what had stopped the progress of his drawing. Dark, twinkling eyes met his with a question and Nicky closed the book in his lap, adamant not to show the brief moment of embarrassment he had felt at getting caught, no matter how natural these looks were between them.
‘How long have you been watching me?’
‘Not watching, admiring,’ Nicky set the book aside, back onto the bedside table where it would remain, ‘I love seeing your fingers create all these moments, these memories.’
He placed his hand on Joe’s, aligning their fingers. Joe’s eyebrows twitched, an amused grin on his lips as he turned around to face Nicky.
‘And you only look at my sketches in these moments, there is nothing else your attention is drawn to, no one to catch your eyes?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Nicky followed the lines on Joe’s hands with a finger, ‘there’s just your drawings, not much more.’
Joe merely lifted an eyebrow, ‘Is that so? Well, must have been someone else I caught making heart eyes at me, then.’
‘Someone who’s not me?’
‘Mhm, good-looking fella with these soft eyes that watch every small move you make.’
‘He sounds like a creep,’ Nicky nuzzled into Joe’s neck, pressing small kisses to his hairline, ‘you should get rid of him.’
A hand came to rest against his cheek, leaving his own folded over Joe’s thigh, ‘Never, Nico. Not when he looks at me like I’m the centre of the world. Not, when he makes me feel seen like no one else does.’