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In the 1430s, Joe was captured by over-industrious Ottoman soldiers, who had just finished slaughtering the small Albanian town he had been too late to warn.
Nicky later told him they’d had Joe for sixteen days before Nicky caught up, having been delayed by ultimately useless negotiations for Venetian military support. It was a week after that before Joe blinked at him in sudden recognition, having sunk so deeply into the fantasy that it was Nicky moving behind him that it was a surprise to find him at his side.
The nightmares never came. Reality had scared them away, so when Nicky tried to set up separate bedrolls for the fourth night in a row, Joe simply rolled his eyes and pulled him tightly to his chest, sinking into the safe blank space he had carved out as his home.
It was a handy trick, one Joe never saw fit to do away with. It got him killed in the 1680s when Nicky was off gambling and Joe slept through a petty thief prying open their front door, and again in 1918 when Andy had convinced him to go camping and a rabid raccoon got the jump on him. But time and time again, he would watch the circles under his love’s eyes deepen while Joe would simply roll over and let the sounds of gunfire lull him into a heavy sleep.
His Nicky could never pin down his own thoughts, unruly things that they were. He’d chase after them like a lasso pulling clouds for hours until Joe had finally had enough of his tossing and turning and would sling an arm over him, settling Nicky’s mind with his weight.
It used to bother him, that he could sleep so easily on his own when the reverse was not true. That changed after a spell in the 1560s when Nicky suddenly tried to move to a separate room, refusing to come to Joe’s bed until Andy showed up and asked Nicky who had given him those black eyes, and how slowly was she allowed to kill the bastard?
Joe’s soul is the smartest man he’s ever met, except for when he’s being a complete idiot.
The first night Nicky crawled back into their bed, assured that Joe didn’t feel that Nicky was too needy, and sentenced to a month of topping for his stupidity, Joe slept just as easily and dreamlessly as he had for the past months alone. But the bags under Nicky’s eyes slowly receded and for that alone, Joe found that sleeping close suddenly mattered to him very much.
Still, as much as Joe would like to say that he is attuned to his lover’s every movement, it’s not exactly a surprise when he wakes before dawn and finds their bed empty. Nicky liked a sunrise with his coffee, whereas Joe had always preferred whisky with the sunsets.
Joe groans, squinting at the sun coming in through the eastern window and thinking that they need to go out today and purchase some blackout curtains - one of humanity’s better inventions. He stares at the ceiling, mentally mapping out a mural he’s been considering adding to it, now that they’ve decided to stay here for at least a few months, and idly hoping that if he lazes about long enough Nicky will deliver coffee to him in bed. Nicky is normally extra indulgent the few days after a job and Joe is perfectly content to take full advantage.
It’s nearly a half-hour before Joe’s brain finishes booting and he starts processing the world as more than a series of passing senses. He hadn’t felt the need - Nicky would have habitually padded barefoot around the perimeter as soon as his coffee finished brewing and there’s a just-in-case handgun on the dresser. No one is coming after them, not here. They’re safe.
Except - well. Now that he’s actually thinking, instead of just passively operating on patterns and expectations, he realizes he can’t hear any of the normal sounds of Nicky. There’s no sizzling of eggs, no clink of a coffee mug as it’s set down on the end table between turns of the pages of a book. And - Joe double checks - no note on the pillow beside Joe’s head letting him know Nicky forgot something or other from the store last night, and that he’ll be right back.
Not worried yet, but suddenly alert, Joe forces himself upright and pulls on his boots over his flannels, picking up the handgun and clicking on the safety. Their lives have taught him to always be prepared for the worst, but even more importantly to take comfort where he can. If he’s about to get kidnapped in his PJs, then at least his jeans won’t chafe.
He relaxes as he steps into the living room, gun drawn. Nicky’s book is sitting beside a half-empty mug, exactly where Joe would expect. His own novel that he left face-down last night has been carefully shut and bookmarked with a receipt, courtesy of Nicky’s strong opinions about the respect even grocery store romances deserve. The new cast iron skillet they picked up last night is soaking in oil and almost guaranteed to have already received a verbal berating that it will never live up to the standard of Nicky’s favorite one in their Polish home, the poor thing. It can’t help that it’s just a baby.
The doors and windows show no obvious signs of disturbance, other than the armchair that Nicky, his bright-eyed lunatic, probably dragged out of the way to make room for some mild stretching in the morning sun. Relaxing, Joe flicked the safety back on, bringing his arm up to yawn into the muzzle and stumbling into the kitchen to look for his wayward husband. Also coffee.
Cross his heart, he wants to find Nicky more than coffee. Just in case Nicky asks. That’s his answer and he’s sticking to it.
(It’s not his fault his husband is always hot and coffee isn’t.)
(See, Nile? He can use English slang too. He’s hip.)
Luck is on his side, and as he walks around the kitchen island, he finds both of his favorite things at the same time. A mug of coffee, made just how he likes it, is cooling on the counter, and Nicky sits crossed legged below, staring blankly into the stash of canned goods they keep in the corner cabinet.
Nicky doesn’t look at him, not that Joe needed another sign something was wrong. The tightness in his shoulders gave him away at first glance. Joe silently sighs. He loves this man, but he sometimes wishes Nicky could wait till the afternoon to fall into his moods.
Setting the gun on the island, Joe slides past Nicky, kissing his love on the top of his head as he puts his coffee in the microwave, raising his eyebrows when Nicky doesn’t even make his automatic comment that putting it on full power will burn all his hard work. Joe pulls his boots off while he waits, looking over Nicky’s shoulder into the cabinet, trying to divine what transgression the canned goods have committed.
At a loss, Joe pulls his mug out of the microwave two seconds before the infernal thing beeps at him (why does everything in the 21st century have to beep?) and takes a big gulp so the liquid won’t slosh over the sides as he slides down to sit shoulder to shoulder with Nicky.
He makes a face as it momentarily burns his tongue. Maybe he does overheat it.
They stare into the abyss of the lazy susan together; Nicky with intensity and Joe in confusion. But with a patience born of long practice, Joe waits, knowing the best way to draw Nicky out is to give him the space to speak on his own terms.
Or, at least give him space until Joe reaches the bottom of this cup. 900 years of backlogged patience only goes so far, when Joe was born with a deficit.
“Do I like peaches?” Nicky finally asks.
Nicky came home with four jars of canned peaches last night, a grumpy conciliation to fresh fruit being out of season. He has plans to make streusel, something about a new coffee cake recipe he found, having finally admitted that consuming liquid caffeine wasn’t a good idea after 5pm - even for an immortal.
Joe hates peaches. But they still had leftover samsa from Nicky’s stress baking the night before they broke into that law firm, so he hadn’t complained.
Out loud.
It’s not his fault Nicky can read his face so well.
Point being, the peaches were, and always have been, Nicky’s idea, so Joe isn’t sure why he’s glaring at them like they've launched a one-fruit siege on his kitchen.
“My love,” Joe starts, trying to figure out the right words to validate his husband’s feelings, while also gently suggesting he might benefit from a few hours’ more sleep.
“I was going through your old notebook this morning,” Nicky says, “the one with the green cover that you stashed under the box of my recipes?”
Nicky has, and has had for the last eighty years, grand plans to publish a cookbook. The inaccessibility of large portions of his ingredient’s lists has not dissuaded him in the slightest, and he didn’t take well to Nile’s gentle suggestion that self-publication might be the route to go.
“Andy will kill you if you ever actually publish that,” Joe says absently as he bites his lip, thinking. “Oh! The one from Cyprus, right? In the…1720s? 30s?”
“40s, I think. Or teens?” Nicky corrects in agreement.
“There was that blue-eyed boy…” Joe remembers wistfully.
Nicky finally looks at Joe, smiling. “You did look pretty against him.”
“You did,” Joe says, tucking a lock of Nicky’s hair behind his ear. He’s been murmuring about it getting too long for weeks, ever since Joe accidentally forgot their clippers back in Rome.
“You are the most meticulous packer I have ever met,” Nicky had grumbled knowingly.
“We all make mistakes,” Joe smirked back, all innocence.
Nicky has been to the store six times over since then and yet still hasn’t replaced them. Like Joe said, his love is indulgent.
“You tried to teach me to draw again. Do you remember?” Nicky asks.
Now that Nicky says it, Joe does. Nicky gets the whim every few decades, before throwing in the towel a few months in and declaring that some skills God has not intended for everyone to possess.
Nicky regularly finds his faith when it suits him.
Still, the sum total of his intermittent practice had made him a fair hand, at least when it comes to copying an image before him. Joe is his favorite model, although he had never mastered Joe’s ability to sketch out of the corner of his eye, and stares at every line of Joe’s face with an intensity that makes him squirm.
Ah, of course. That was why Nicky always puts the pen down, eventually. The tempo Nicky’s artistic endeavors brings to their coupling is welcome in times of peace, but, eventually, there was always war. They’ve been caught horizontal and unaware one too many times with a sketchbook scattered beside them, and getting killed with his pants down is one of Joe’s least favorite ways to go.
Nicky leans back against the island, uncrossing his legs and shifting the lazy susan back and forth with his toes. “There was a sketch in it. I don’t remember drawing it, but definitely by my hand. You were on the beach, bare chested. You were eating a peach.”
Joe furrows his brow, suddenly equally invested in the mysteries of nonperishables.
“...huh.”
“I’m no artist, but -”
No point pretending that he doesn’t know where this is going. This is but a new variation on an old conversation. “I looked like I was enjoying it?” Joe finishes.
Nicky hums in agreement, reaching out to dip his finger into Joe’s coffee. “Madre di Dio, why must you always let yours get cold?” He steals the mug from Joe’s grip, ignoring Joe’s protests that it’s lukewarm at worst, uncoiling himself and making a disgruntled face at the microwave before putting the cup back in. He sets it at half power, Joe notes.
Joe hates peaches, he’s pretty sure. They’re slimy, made worse by their fuzzy skin, and they make your fingers sticky no matter how much you try to lick them clean - not even in a fun way. The last time he ate a peach was in…the 1770s? Probably. When Nicky went through that phase where Joe couldn’t sneeze without Nicky putting a peach in front of him, because -
Because Joe loved peaches.
Well…shit.
“You started getting up early to brew that peach tea that you hated,” Joe says to the corner cabinet.
“It was awful,” Nicky agrees, passing the newly warmed coffee back down to Joe.
“I loved it.”
Nicky runs his hand through Joe’s curls, which is a sign that Joe needs to wash them. Joe stopped bothering to count the days when he realized Nicky did; he now marks the time by how aggressively Nicky messes them up.
“You did,” Nicky confirms. He hoists himself up to sit on the kitchen island, wiggling over so he can drape his feet over Joe’s shoulders. Joe wonders if the higher vantage point provides any more answers.
They sit in silence, Nicky’s feet knocking gently back and forth against Joe’s shoulders. Joe always processes Nicky’s body as an extension of his own, but he’s uncomfortably aware of it this morning. Why is it he feels an absence of self when Nicky’s heels float away?
“How much of us,” Nicky finally murmurs, “is each other?”
Joe rubs his hand back and forth across his mouth, considering. He was right; it is too early for Nicky’s moods. Joe’s most uncomfortable with his immortality before 10am.
“More than we realize, most like,” Joe sighs. It’s a beautiful and horrible thought.
Well, Joe figures, he could spend another nine-hundred years poking at the patchwork of himself to try and figure out that unanswerable question, or he could enjoy what was shaping up to be an unseasonably beautiful day. It’s not that he doesn’t understand the discomfort inherent in being unable to unravel himself from Nicky even if he wanted to, but, at the end of the day, he doesn’t want to, so the lack of possibility is just something he has to live with.
If he knows Nicky, which he does, his love will spend at least two more hours trying to self-actualize by way of the open cabinet, before giving in and making the streusel he’s been craving all week. It’s not Joe’s fault Nicky pavlovian’d himself into enjoying that infernal fruit some centuries ago.
Joe catches Nicky’s foot, gently kissing the top of it. The heel was dusty from his morning patrol, and Joe doesn’t love him that much.
“You should get started, my love,” Joe says. “The dough needs time to rise.”
Joe smiles at how he knows Nicky purses his lips, even though he can’t see him.
“Though,” Joe goads. “If you’ve changed your mind, you could always make that carrot cake -”
Nicky smacks Joe’s cheek with the side of his foot, then hops down from the island with a huff. “If you want that infernal creation,” he says, “you are more than welcome to make it yourself, but I will not be enabling that kind of masochism.”
A whisper of a memory of Nicky moaning around a carrot cake in the 19th century tugs at Joe’s brain, but - the day really is lovely. “What about other kinds of masochism?” he chooses to say instead. That, he is sure, has been a constant from the start.
“Out,” Nicky snaps a towel at him, and Joe gives an exaggerated moan where it hits him on the side, thrusting his hips up.
“More, baby. Please.” Joe grins, because there’s nothing Nicky hates more than that pet name.
Carrot cake possibly excluded.
“Three years, Joe,” Nicky mutters darkly, as always refusing to take the endearment anything other than literally. He snaps the towels again. “Out.”
Joe gives in, getting up and stretching his hands above his heads, intentionally flexing his bare chest. Nicky rolls his eyes before pulling him in for a long kiss, smiling softly against Joe’s lips. They rest their heads together for a moment, breathing each other in.
“If I am to be anyone but myself,” Nicky says, “I’m glad it is you.”
“If I were to be anyone but myself,” Joe says back, “I would choose me too.”
It gets the reaction he was hoping for. Nicky groans long-sufferingly and pushes Joe back by his shoulders, rolling his eyes. “You are incorrigible,” he says fondly.
“True,” Joe gives in easily.
Nicky grabs a whisk from the counter, brandishing it threateningly. “Go. Shower. Read. Jerk off for all I care. But if I see you before this strudel is in the oven, you will regret it.”
“Promise?” Joe asks cheekily, eyeing the positioning of the recliner and calculating how likely he is to be able to sell jerking off in it as “not bothering” Nicky.
Well, the only way to find out is to try.
Nicky is already pulling cans of peaches out from under the cabinet and Joe takes that as his cue to leave, because whatever his 18th century self had to say about them, he has no intention of revising his opinion today. And in this mood Nicky is liable to make him try one again, just to see.
A shower is highly preferable to a force-fed journey of self-discovery. At minimum, Joe would like to avoid that fate until the fruit is fresh.
He muddles his way into the bathroom, forcing himself to finish the once again cooled coffee after a quick mental calculation of how much trouble he’ll be in if he tries to microwave it for a third time. It’s not until he’s already in the shower that he remembers he hasn’t yet unpacked his toiletry bag. Not wanting to clean up the mess if he drips water all over the floor, he grabs Nicky's shampoo and then stops, incredulously, to laugh.
It’s peach scented.