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ongreenergrasses · 1 year

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Meaningful gestures prompts TOG joe/nicky

"Don't you dare wake them up."

hi anon 💖 i love this prompt, i hope you enjoy!

Joe doesn’t remember the last time he slept.

They’ve been moving around a lot, after Merrick. (Joe’s life has become temporarily divided, before and after Merrick. He didn’t ask for this.) All the different time zones and strange hours for travel have been messing with him. Joe’s even lost track of where they are, which normally he’s good about remembering.

“Copenhagen,” Nicky says when Joe asks him.

Their hotel room is too small and too white. Joe goes out and buys the first florid too-bright blanket he sees. It’s got a print of a tiger and some lilies, and it’s absolutely hideous. Nicky still smiles when he sees it, and that night he falls asleep almost immediately in Joe’s arms.

Joe waits until Nicky is fully asleep before he rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. He lies there like that for the rest of the night.

When Nicky gets up, he does as well. He’s sure that he must have slept for an hour, maybe two, but it doesn’t feel like it.

Nicky’s brittle at the edges and everything about him screams that he wants space. Joe can’t give him space, not in this hotel room. It’s so small that the two of them are circling each other until Nicky walks out, the door shutting slightly too hard behind him.

Joe goes to Andy and tells her that they’re leaving. She looks sad, but she hugs him and tells him that she and Nile will be all right.

The next morning when they get to the airport, it turns out that the four of them are on the same flight to Amsterdam. Nicky seems annoyed by it, so Joe braves the coffee line for both of them, which earns him a smile.

Joe doesn’t remember the last time he saw Nicky properly smile. Since before Merrick, to be sure. (And there it is, again. Joe hates having his life divided up by something so horrible.)

There’s something about airports that exhausts him. They have a connection on from Amsterdam, and Joe’s eyes feel so heavy he can barely keep them open. He finishes his coffee and before he can overthink it, leans his head on Nicky’s shoulder. Nicky slightly adjusts, then runs a hand down Joe’s spine to his waist, pulling him in closer.

Joe doesn’t know what happens, only knows that between one blink and the next, he’s asleep.

He only wakes slightly when he hears, or feels, Nicky speaking. “Don’t you dare wake him up. He hasn’t slept, Andy, not for days.”

Joe hears Andy murmur something in response, but it’s lost as he falls back asleep.

Joe sleepwalks his way through their flights, and getting to the house, and helping Nicky at least open the windows to get some of the dust out, before he collapses on the bed, with Nicky curled up next to him, and finally, blissfully, gets some actual rest.

meaningful gestures

#ask and you shall receive #lovely anon #prompts #the old guard #joe x nicky #yusuf al kaysani #joe al kaysani #nicolò di genova #nicolo di genova #i really should change my tag to nicolò al-kaysani bc yes i am that bitch lmaoookxkcnc #i am also rationalizing then flying by the fact that it’s better for them to move quickly #let the man sleep!!!

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