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“I can’t decide if I love you or hate you,” Yusuf told the man sitting beside him in the cell. Though, in order to keep from being kicked, he said it in English, one of the languages he knew and Nicolo had yet to begin learning.
Not understanding, the man still shot him a glare. “This is your fault not mine,” he insisted, in Arabic.
Yusuf snorted. “No. You did this. You started that brawl.”
Nicolo waited until the sound of the guards was far away and then started wiggling, tugging at the ropes that bound his wrists overhead and the ones binding his ankles to an iron ring on the floor, just like Yusuf beside him. Yusuf watched with a smirk, wondering what the man thought he was going to accomplish. “The brawl was inevitable,” Nicolo insisted, still squirming, lifting his ass off the floor like he was trying to get his hips to his hands, fingers wiggling. “What was I supposed to do? Let them abduct those ladies?” His Arabic got sloppy with his squirming but Yusuf got the gist of it.
“Of course, not. But how is it my fault? You’re the one that punched that man.”
“And stabbed the other,” Nicolo added, a smirk in his voice that made Yusuf smile too. Love, he definitely loved this man. “But you let us get arrested.”
“Let us?” Yusuf asked.
Nicolo shushed him for being too loud and then sighed. “I have a blade in my waistband they didn’t take,” he finally explained his wiggling, lifting his hips up high again, shoulders pressed to the wall. “Can you?”
Yusuf shifted closer and leaned forward, straining his own wrist bindings. He nosed Nicolo’s jacket and shirt up his stomach and then mouthed the waistline of his pants, trying not to revel in the sensation of his skin against his mouth. It was impossible. He felt Nicolo’s skin jump under his mouth. He tongued the bit of metal out from his waistband, resisting the urge to linger there with his jaw along Nicolo’s hipbone. He mouthed the piece, caught it between his teeth and sat back, flashing his strange ally a grin.
Nicolo was trying not to look impressed but Yusuf saw the flush of his cheeks, hair fallen in his face from the knot behind his head. He wiggled his fingers. “Pass it here.”
Yusuf leaned up and Nicolo’s fingers took the blade from his teeth. He sank back against the wall, watching for the guards while the Italian cut himself free.
“Nicolo?” Yusuf mused while the other man cut himself free. “How did you end up in my lands? In that invasion?” He had wanted to ask many times before but held his tongue because he was not sure he could properly ask in Nicolo’s own tongue and Nicolo might not understand it in Arabic yet, and he thought he might have only one chance to hear the answer. He had also hesitated many times for fear he would not like the answer. How could he like it? But it bothered him. Nicolo was a skilled killer but he was not blood thirsty. He did not enjoy war and though he could at times be truly vengeful, there was nothing cruel in him. Nicolo was not what Yusuf had expected in an invader.
“Hm?” Nicolo was distracted, almost getting one wrist free. “Why the crusades?” he said in Arabic, checking the question.
“Yes. Why?”
Nicolo cut one wrist free. “We were told God would forgive our sins,” he explained and then paused. Yusuf saw the second his own words sank in, like he hadn’t understood what he was really answering until the words were escaping. He didn’t look at Yusuf but cut his other wrist free. “I thought if I died here, I would be forgiven and go to heaven.” He huffed, forcing a smile for Yusuf. “I am beginning to think it was a ploy…” he smirked, arms free and rolling up to his knees to start cutting Yusuf loose.
Yusuf watched him. Their friendship was a tenuous thing but they both worked hard to offer the other more trust and understanding than would usually be reasonable for an enemy that had killed them so many times. “You came here to die? For what sin?”
Nicolo tensed, shrugged, and kept cutting.
Yusuf had noticed how Nicolo had nicked his own wrists when he cut himself free, heedless of skin that healed almost as fast as it bled, but he took more care with Yusuf’s ropes. The blade never touched him.
They had built their alliance on that first promise, not to do the other any more harm. They had taken enough already. Yusuf wondered if Nicolo was so careful because of that pact, because to cut him now could break something even in an effort to set him free? He would not consider it so, but he could not yet read Nicolo’s thoughts.
He was sure the Italian had decided not to answer his question and Yusuf would not press it, not yet. Maybe he would wait another year or ten and ask again the next time they were in a prison?
When his arms were free, they quietly retrieved their weapons and snuck out of the prison through the back, into the night. Yusuf took a deep breath of clean, night-chilled air, and rolled his shoulders.
Nicolo finished buckling his belt and sword back around his waist as they walked toward the center of the city and the endless bustle there. When they neared the lights there and the people, Nicolo pulled his hood up, hiding his hair and obscuring his face. He took a step closer, walking at Yusuf’s side but not bumping into him. “When I was a boy, I had feelings for another boy. It was very innocent but my father realized and questioned me. I was given to the priesthood to make amends, to better my soul, but it didn’t change how I felt. I could spend my life not acting on my feelings for other men, but it would not change the truth. I did not want to die, unloved by even God, so I came here.”
He said it all in Arabic, quickly but clearly, voice low so that no one else could possibly hear. In seconds they would slip into the crowded streets up ahead and Yusuf knew Nicolo would step away from his side and be absorbed by distance and sound. He was delivering information and a way to escape the conversation. He had waited to tell him until they were out of peril. Had he expected him to react poorly? Was that why he hadn’t told him when they were in the prison and Nicolo was cutting at his ropes? Like he would push him away or turn on him?
Yusuf stopped walking, catching Nicolo by the arm to pull him to a stop too before they reached the embrace of the crowd. He felt the muscles in that arm tense, saw his jaw tick and his fingers twitch, but the man did not reach for a weapon or curls his fist. Yusuf might not yet be able to read Nicolo’s mind, but after fifty years of killing each other and a handful more surviving together, he could read his body. Nicolo anticipated the possibility of violence, of a break in their alliance, but he wasn’t going to draw a weapon or defend himself. It was as infuriating as it was beautiful.
“You came here to die for the sin of wanting men instead of women?” Yusuf clarified, using Nicolo’s Italian.
Nicolo stared back at him, expression hard and unreadable. He nodded once.
Unloved by even God. That was how he had put it—how Nicolo had seen his fate. “That was a stupid reason to die,” Yusuf said.
Nicolo smirked a little and shrugged.
“And now? What happens now that you do not die?”
Nicolo’s smirk turned into a smile. “I do have a theory on that.”
Yusuf did not doubt that. It had been many decades, he had plenty of time to think on it. He took a comfortable stance, facing him and waiting. His hand was still on the back of Nicolo’s arm, linking them. And Nicolo had relaxed, that moment of waiting to be judged and rejected passed easily.
“It can only be one of two options now. Either, I have been blessed and God loves me as I am and I have purpose.”
Yusuf nodded along. He liked that one.
“Or, I am damned. God has found me unforgiveable and rejected my death.” He took a breath and nodded to himself. “The result is the same, yes? I am here. I am who I am. And I will still do what I can for the people around me.”
Yusuf stared at him, awestruck.
“So, how long before the ship gets here?” Nicolo changed the subject.
Yusuf released his arm. It was night now so… “Not this upcoming morning, but the one after that.”
Nicolo nodded.
“Perhaps we should have just stayed in the prison and waited to break out until closer to boarding. Now we have to dodge the guards for another day and night.”
Nicolo smiled and it was brilliant, cunning and youthful. Would he always look like that or would their endless time eventually change his eyes? It had to, didn’t it? Some part of him would have to age. There would be a knowing there instead of a curiosity. Wisdom in place of wonder.
Yusuf reached out without thinking, his palm brushing Nicolo’s cheek. Surprise lit those blue eyes and his easy smile vanished, stolen by confusion. “There were no mistakes made when you were created, Nicolo di Genova.” He watched the surprise in the other man’s eyes change, from being stunned by the gentle contact to deeply stricken by his words. To think that Yusuf had that power—to cause that reaction just by speaking the truth. He stroked under Nicolo’s bottom lip with his thumb. He was surprised by his own desire to kiss Nicolo. He had thought about that for months now.
Nicolo’s hand touched his side, the warmth of his fingers felt through his tunic, soaking into his ribs as though seeking his heart.
Yusuf leaned in slowly. Just because Nicolo liked men did not mean he liked Yusuf for such affection, but he knew that was just caution speaking. He knew Nicolo’s body language above all other languages. He knew he was wanted before he ever touched the other man.
The first kiss was soft—delicate like the truce between them. And then Nicolo sighed into it like something had been unleashed in his chest, his arm curling around Yusuf’s waist and Yusuf’s hand wrapping around the back of his neck—both drawing each other closer because no matter how much time they had, no matter how well they learned the other, they would never be close enough.