#nicky and joe poke their head into the room and hear andy talking about her horse lester and immediately leave
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This is a not-so-serious fic about not-so-serious things. I call it: Snakes In A Can.
(Inspired partly by that post about Nile having her own apartment. I originally wrote for @raedear and figured i’d share it)
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Nile doesn’t tell them about her apartment until a few weeks after she buys it. They’re thrilled for her, naturally, and Joe immediately offers to help her decorate.
Nile waves him off with a smile, “The point of buying my own place is filling it up with all my old crap from famous dead artists, Joe.”
It’s another few decades before they’re able to see it for themselves. They’re running a mission in a neighboring country, and on the way to meet Andy and Quynh they need to stop so Nile can pick up a few things. ("At last," Joe mutters beside Nicky, quiet enough that Nile definitely can’t hear it but happy enough that Nicky smiles back and squeezes his hand.)
The apartment is homey and beautiful. There was never any question Nile would decorate it well, but seeing the touch of her personality in every choice is moving. Nicky tells her so - admiring the collection of records she’s amassed. Nile thanks him with a smile and the intense expression she gets when she’s focused on the thing at hand. “Make yourselves at home. I’m gonna grab a few things.”
“Take your time,” Joe says – already leaning in to study an old faded poster for a romantic movie. (The title of the film is about love and sports and Nicky shakes his head at the predictability of Joe’s interests. He makes a bet with himself that Joe will complain in the car about not having enough time to see all the art and the sketchbooks piled on the bookshelves.)
Nicky leaves Joe to the living room and wanders into the adjoining kitchen. He spends a few minutes poking around in her drawers and admiring her choice in cookware (La Crueset. She does listen when he talks about cooking) when Nile herself sails into the room with a bag over her shoulder.
He watches her rummage through a cabinet, saying something about her organizational system and something about time. He really can’t hear what she’s trying to tell him because he has spotted it: The 2 very large jars of Prego “pasta sauce” sitting innocuously on the shelves.
Nicky has taken bullets for his family, been tortured for his family, and he has witnessed their suffering when he could not prevent it. But right now, he feels like he is bearing a burden just as heavy by saying nothing while Nile continues to speak to him as though she is not aware of the horrors she has allowed in her home.
“Here it is,” She says suddenly, slamming the doors shut and waggling a thermos at him, “Give me another minute and we’ll get going.”
Nicky nods, still struck dumb with what he’s seen.
They take off in the car after another ten or fifteen minutes, and Nicky sits silently in the back seat – feeling no pleasure when he hears Joe’s complain that he was too distracted by the art and wanted more time with Nile’s sketchbooks.
By the time they get to the cafe he feels capable of smiling at Joe again, but the restraint he uses to stay silent must be visible, because Andy finishes hugging them all and then keenly observes, “Nicolo you look like you’re seeing Quynh for the first time all over again.”
“He saw my emergency food stash. I keep Prego in the cabinets,” Nile says easily, settling into the seat at the table and performing nonchalance with a traitorous dedication.
Beside Nicky, Joe lets out a loud laugh, and Quynh looks confused for a moment before smiling as Nile explains what Prego is.
Nicky shakes his head, muttering half-heartedly in Ligurian and finally allowing himself a small grin at the sly glance Nile shoots him.
By the time Booker joins them Nicky is once again laughing with them all, but his mind is elsewhere.
That is why Nile gets back to her apartment a month later to find a gift of Nutella on the counter. She lets out a very startled shout when she opens the jar and an old-fashioned accordion snake pops out at her.
It will take another 50 years before she figures out how Nicky got back to her apartment and in and out before her. And the year she figures it out is about the time that they all finally call a truce on the retaliatory prank war that had been raging all that time.
#the old guard#fic#mine#nicolo di genova#nile freeman#Yes that is a Love & Basketball reference. I saw a chance to reference Gina and I took it.#look me in the eye and try to tell me that Nile doesn't LOVE that movie. You cant.#also shoutout to of-scythia for the post that kind of inspired this#Nile's apartment is such a perfect idea and I think about it literally all the time
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there is not enough horse girl andy in the world
#i know in my heart she's a horse girl#but she hates equestrian shows#she's like 'why would a horse ever need to jump over a bar? where's the open field?'#'where the 'you the horse the field and the fear of god' '?#nile get's her horse socks and she wears them until they rip#booker got her a horse poster and she spends the next three hours regaling him with stories about her 1st horse#nicky and joe poke their head into the room and hear andy talking about her horse lester and immediately leave#they pretend not to see booker trying to get their attention#andromache the scythian#tog#the old guard#movie.rambles#she loves horse races though
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day 10
this is surprisingly light on the angst front but it’s still there!
[prompt: “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”]
[content warnings: mentions of grief/mourning]
Nile wakes up on her mother’s birthday and can’t find the energy to get up.
She’d thought she’d come to terms with everything she’d lost, but in that moment it hits her all over again: she can’t go home, can’t ever see her mother or her brother again. Not even once.
And she misses them so much it hurts.
“Hey, Nile,” Joe says, poking his head through the doorway, “have you seen the...” He trails off as he catches sight of her.
She wipes away her tears and looks up at him. “What’s up?” Her voice is frustratingly shaky.
“Can I come in?” he asks instead of continuing.
“Yeah, sure.” She looks up at the ceiling and blinks a few times.
Joe crosses the room to sit down on the bed beside her.
“You wanna talk about it?” he says softly.
“It’s”- she takes a breath to steady herself - “it’s my mom’s birthday today, and I just…”
Joe reaches out and pulls her into a hug, and - okay, she needed this. She starts crying again, but Joe doesn’t say anything, just hugs her a little tighter.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay.” She pulls back, wiping at her eyes. “It all just kinda hit me at once, you know?”
“It’s not the sort of thing that goes away overnight. I mean, I still get it sometimes, and I’m almost a millennium old.” He touches her shoulder, lightly. “But it’ll get better, I promise.”
“Andy said she didn’t remember her mom, or her sisters, and I don’t want that to happen to me, but it could, and that’s even scarier. I don’t want to forget them.”
Joe thinks for a moment. “Can I show you something? I’ll only be a minute.”
“Of course.”
He smiles at her and stands up, then runs out of the room, calling out in Italian to Nicky, who’s too far away for her to catch his response.
Nile takes a moment to breathe and collect herself before Joe reappears, holding a battered sketchbook. “Found it.”
He sits back down and flips through the yellowed pages. The contents, or what Nile manages to glimpse of them anyway, are mostly Nicky, but Andy and Booker make an appearance too, and occasionally a woman she doesn’t recognise. Quynh, probably.
“Here.” He tilts the book to show her. On the page is a woman’s face, smiling, with kind eyes that are somehow familiar. Then she makes the connection.
“That’s your mom?”
“Yeah.” He smiles down at the page, but it’s tinged with sadness. “Once we figured out we weren’t going to age normally, I started drawing them. To make sure I didn’t forget their faces. I did the same for- for Booker.”
He shows her more sketches - his father, his older brother, his little sister.
“How old are these?” she asks.
“These, specifically? Less than a century. I draw them again from time to time, just in case.”
“What were they like? Your family.”
Joe smiles again, tracing the sketched lines of his mother’s face. “My father was a merchant, and he’d tell us stories of all the places he’d been to, all the people he’d met. My mother used to sing us to sleep every single night. My brother was only a year older than me, and we had a tendency to get into trouble.”
There are tears in his eyes, and it’s Nile’s turn to place a hand on his arm. “It’s okay, you don’t have to.”
“No, it’s good to remember sometimes. We forget things easily, but saying them out loud helps. And we help each other remember things. I’ve forgotten half the lullabies my mother used to sing, but Nicky remembers them all.”
“How?”
“I taught him the tunes oh, hundreds of years ago. Before we were… well. Ask him to play the guitar for you sometime, he’s excellent at it.”
“Really?” She learns new things about these people every day.
“Yeah..” He looks at her. “But you don’t need to hear all that. You wanna tell me about yours?”
“Yeah.” Nile reaches for her phone. It’s not connected to anything anymore, and Andy, surprisingly, had let her keep it. She turns it on and pulls up the picture of her father in his uniform. “That’s my dad. Killed in action.” Like my family thinks I was.
She shakes the thought away and swipes until she finds the picture of her mother and brother, together on the day she’d graduated.
“Your mom and brother?” Joe asks.
She nods. “Yeah.”
She hands him the phone, and he holds it almost reverently, examining the picture before handing it back to her.
“When we were kids and we had nightmares,” she begins, “my mom would make us hot chocolate and talk them through with us. Sometimes she’d try to make them seem less scary, sometimes she’d just listen. And she always had this way of making everything seem safer, you know? Like as long as she was there, nothing could hurt us.” The memory makes her tear up a little, and Joe slides his arm around her. She leans into it, resting her head on his shoulder. “I just really wish I could see her again. Or speak to her. Or even just hear her voice. I know what Booker said, but…”
“I promise you, it will get easier,” Joe says gently. “And you can always come talk to any of us, okay? No matter what.”
“Thank you,” she says, suddenly a little overwhelmed. “For this. Everything.”
Joe smiles at her. “No problem. Now, I think this calls for special measures. Wait right here.”
He returns a few moments later with a tub of chocolate ice cream and two spoons. The ice cream has a post-it note tacked to the top with a message written in what looks like Arabic.
Joe grins victoriously as he hands her a spoon. “I knew Andy had some hidden somewhere. She usually does.”
“What does the note say?”
Joe pulls it off of the lid and reads it aloud. “Yusuf al-Kaysani, do not touch on pain of death.” He frowns. “Why specifically me?”
“Is that… something to worry about?” She doesn’t know Andy well enough to tell if it’s an exaggeration or if she really will murder Joe.
“She doesn’t mean it.” He scrunches up the post-it and tosses it into the trash. “At least, I hope not.”
They spend the rest of the day watching old Disney movies and eating ice-cream. Nicky joins them after a few hours, sitting on her other side.
When she goes to bed later that night, there’s a sketch of her mom, dad and brother resting on her pillow, another smaller piece of paper with a little smiley face drawn on it next to that. Nile picks up the sketch and traces the lines with the tip of her finger, then sets it down and runs into the kitchen where Joe is standing, leaning against the counter while Nicky washes the dishes from dinner. She barrels into him with enough force to knock him over if he hadn’t been leaning against the counter, throwing her arms around his neck, and then she’s crying all over again.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you so much.”
She feels Joe smile against her hair as he hugs her back. “You’re welcome, little sister.”
And when Nile finally falls asleep, she feels a little lighter.
#neon writes#the old guard#yusuf al kaysani#nile freeman#joe!!!#nile!!!#joe and nile bonding is something that can actually be so personal#userhegel#usersimo#swquser#lazynbored#moonlightandromache#usertriz#i am actually very proud of this one and also i may or may not have cried a little writing the ending#interpret that how you will#we are all going to pretend I did not originally post this as day 9. that did not happen.
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The Taste of Home (Nile + team, gen, 1.2k)
A fic for the Nile Freeman week prompt “Nile + comfort”, liberally interpreted, and inspired by my post about Nile and the team doing Thanksgiving last week. In canon I fully expect that Booker and Quỳnh will be with them this far into the future, but I felt like doing a end-of-movie-team-only story, so...there we go. No major warnings, aside from a brief mention of canon-typical violence.
Nile crossed the Canadian-US border into the country of her birth for the first time in six years, late one November – not nearly as cold as it should have been in New England this time of year, thanks, climate change – and realised that two days from now was going to be Thanksgiving.
Andy said “What’s that?” and Nicky said “I think it’s a feast day” and Joe said “Yes, the one with the turkey!” and Nile said “Have none of you spent any time in the US before?”
“Oh, plenty,” said Joe, shifting uncomfortably; they’d crossed the border in a rental car on a back road, relying on Copley’s instructions to avoid the drones and patrols, and there clearly wasn’t quite enough room in the back for his long legs. Andy was driving, of course, and the boys had graciously ceded Nile the front seat. She was tired, and hadn’t argued. “We were first here in – 1582?”
“That was Mexico, it’s not quite the same,” said Nicky. “More than a hundred years after that, for Nile’s lands.”
The three older immortals started bickering about what counted as the United States of America, exactly, before Nile said “Okay, okay. My point is – have none of you ever had Thanksgiving?”
She knew they weren’t picky about holidays, just not consistent; in her years with them they’d celebrated May Day and Eid al-Fitr and Saturnalia. It depended where they were, and what they were doing, and the moods that struck them. Nicky had come to church with her for three Christmases in a row, three different churches in three different countries, and then last year said simply “No, not this time, thank you.”
“I think we lifted some extra rations off an American army unit in Vietnam, one November,” said Andy. “Apart from that? No.”
“Where’s Copley got us this time?” Nile asked.
“A house,” said Nicky. “Rented. We are being tourists again, until we get our local identities organized.”
“There’s a few missions we could do. We’ll talk about it later,” said Andy. “I figured we’d take a week off first. Nothing’s on fire…that we can help with.”
“Most of California’s on fire, right now, but okay,” said Nile. “Okay.”
“You wanna do Thanksgiving, huh?” Andy glanced over at her, with a sharp smile that made Nile feel known, but not exposed.
“Can we help?” Joe asked from the back seat.
“Uh,” said Nile. “Let’s see.”
*
Nile had never done anything like a full Thanksgiving meal before, partly because until she’d been deployed her job had mostly been to wash dishes and keep some of her younger cousins from getting overexcited, and partly because there had been a strict family hierarchy of who got to cook what, and she hadn’t yet been invited to join it before – before.
She decided to keep it simple, the real classics; after all, there were only four of them. Turkey, definitely. Green bean casserole. Mac’n’cheese. Yams. Pumpkin pie. She was fully prepared to buy the pie crust, too – she knew her limits – but Nicky put his foot down on that, having had to endure the purchase of ready-made cranberry sauce and canned pumpkin, so she let him take care of it.
Nicky was far and away the best cook of the other three, followed closely by Joe. Andy wouldn’t burn anything, but she just didn’t care enough to get creative. Nile had eaten a lot of re-heated soup when Andy was on cooking duty. Andy, Nile decided on the way back from the Big Y, was getting assigned to chop vegetables.
The holiday cabin Copley had found for them was much more comfortable than where they’d been sleeping for the last three weeks – Nile was getting a bedroom to herself, a rare luxury – but the kitchen was tiny, clearly intended for vacationers who weren’t the home-cooking type, and preparations spilled out onto the dining table. Nile had been half-hoping someone else would take over, unused to taking center stage for this, but they all looked to her for instructions and she did her best to rise to the occasion. She felt absurdly trusted.
The biggest problem would have been that both of the kitchen knives provided were absolutely terrible – Joe threw them aside, saying “No, and no” – except, what was she thinking, her family traveled armed to the teeth at all times. Andy chopped yams with a knife Nile was ninety percent sure she’d seen her gut someone with. She forcibly decided not to think about it.
“Don’t worry, this one’s new,” said Andy. “I have standards.”
“Uh-huh,” said Nile. She could hear Nicky chuckling behind her as he worked on the pie crust.
“I do!”
“Do you think these are halal?” Joe asked, holding up the bag of marshmallows.
“Wait, probably not,” said Nile. “Never mind, we can leave them out.”
“I didn’t want to criticize,” said Nicky, “but I didn’t think they were going to go very well with the pie.”
“They’re for the yams,” said Nile.
“The yams are for the sweet course as well?”
“No, they’re part of the main.”
“Put them in, I just won’t eat the yams,” said Joe, tossing the bag at her. “This is your holiday.”
“You eat marshmallows with the turkey?” Nicky said, his voice noticeably rising. “That is – that is very interesting.”
“My holiday, my rules,” Nile retorted.
“Yes, ma’am,” Joe said, and winked.
*
By the time everything was prepped, they were all ready to lie down on the couch for a bit; unfortunately, the couch wasn’t that big, so Nicky took one end, Joe stretched out with his head in Nicky’s lap, Nile compromised by wedging herself under Joe’s feet, and Andy just spread-eagled herself on the floor with a cushion from the armchair under her head.
“You could take the armchair,” said Joe, clearly enjoying his overlordship of the largest piece of furniture.
“No,” said Andy, who Nile had learned was mildly allergic to furniture. “This is better.”
“Someone give me the remote,” Nile said. “It’s football time.”
Joe perked up noticeably at that, and noticeably sagged when Nile found ESPN. “Oh. American football.” Nicky poked him in the shoulder. “Ow.”
“So,” Nicky said. “We eat all the food, and then…?”
“Then we watch some more football,” said Nile. “And before we eat, we say what we’re thankful for.”
“Huh,” said Nicky. “Okay. That’s easy.”
“Now?” Andy asked. “Or right before we eat?”
“Right before,” said Nile, which didn’t stop Andy saying “Because you know what I’m grateful for right now? Carpet.”
“That’s terrible.” Nile threw the other cushion at her. “You have about an hour to come up with something better.”
Joe was obviously composing a speech in his head already, drumming his fingers against his thigh. Nile decided not to interrupt him.
“And that’s it?” Nicky persisted. “There’s nothing else you need, for this to be Thanksgiving?”
Nile had half-expected, when they’d been in the supermarket, that this was going to turn out to be a terrible idea, make her homesick all over again, like the Christmas three years ago when she’d come home from church with Nicky – they’d been in Germany at the time – and cried into Nicky’s shoulder for an hour, soggy and miserable, while Joe brought her mulled wine and Andy dropped a box of tissues in her lap.
But it wasn’t like that at all. There was a good meal cooking; she was warm and safe and content; this wasn’t the family she’d grown up with, the one she would always miss, but they’d spent today telling her they loved her with every chopped vegetable and half-serious complaint.
“Nah,” Nile said. “I got everything I need. Thanks for asking.”
#the old guard#nileweek2020#nile freeman#tumblr fic#my fanfic#don't worry Andy's telling the truth about the knife#they are in Western MA because I said so
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Here Through the Dark and Beautiful
The third and final part of my What We Do For Family series is done! You can read it down below or over on ao3 here!
(Also, there’s a scene in a club and I definitely put together a self-indulgent playlist of what I wanted to play, so here that is as well.)
Five years into Nile Freeman’s immortality, her immortal family took a break from fighting and from each other. Well, sort of. Nicky and Joe went off to Malta, smiling profusely as they drove off. Andy and Quynh were going to stay right where they were, in the safe house in Greece, where if they looked out the window, they could see the glittering sea.
Which left Nile and Booker undecided on what they were going to do.
Nile didn’t even consider going somewhere on her own. She turned to him and shrugged. “I’ve never been to France?”
He chuckled, looking relieved. “Ma choupette, you will have to be a little more specific than that.”
She smiled, conceding the point. “The Louvre?”
“Nerd!” Quynh called from where she was sitting on the couch, her wife’s legs in her lap as Andy sprawled across the cushions.
Nile very maturely did not stick her tongue out at Quynh. She did wrinkle her nose at her, but that was not the same.
“Very well, Nile,” Booker said, smiling. “I will take you to the Louvre.”
After they packed their bags and headed out the door, Nile began to realize just what she had agreed to. The team had agreed to take a month off before they would reconvene at Copley’s house near London and get briefed on their new assignment.
So she would be spending a whole month with Booker.
Alone.
Which was fine! It was! It was just… once Nile had become an immortal and helped save Booker from Merrick, ever since that early morning conversation they’d had about taking care of their mental health, they had become friends. Surrounded by couples who loved them, they were the two loners. That morning’s conversation had been the first of many, spanning countless cups of coffee and missions. At this point, spanning years.
Nile loved her whole immortal family. She loved Nicky’s gentle warmth, his inability to let her go without food for a long period of time, his small, proud smile when she had finally disarmed him in a sword fight. She loved Joe, who painted with her and prayed with her, who would sleepily be there for her when she awoke with a nightmare. She loved Andy, her fierceness and her kindness, her mentor who listened when Nile spoke and asked Nile how to use technology. She loved Quynh, her fellow trickster, who clothes shopped with her and let her feel like a sister again when they did mischief together.
Nile loved Booker, who had been sober for four years now and worked every day to pull himself away from the darkness that had swallowed him five years ago. Whose scars on his heart were so similar to her own. Who understood when she gasped awake clutching her throat sometimes, even years after her first death, because he sometimes did the same. Who felt the ache of missing his family in a way that echoed hers.
She loved all of them.
The trouble was, she was falling in love with Booker. It had started slowly, based on their shared experiences and the friendship that they had built as the years had gone on, but she had felt herself start to fall for him about a year ago. A mission had gone bad and she had died very slowly. She had woken in the back of their escape vehicle with her head resting in Booker’s lap. His eyes, filled with worry and then relief, were the first thing that she saw. In that moment, she realized that she wanted to wake up looking at him, without having to die first, for the rest of her immortality.
And that terrified her a bit.
Nile was surrounded by some of the greatest love stories in history, not that history would ever know that. She knew it. She saw it. A love so deep it could span centuries of disagreements and fights and deaths. A love that could go to the bottom of the ocean and back. And through all that, to still look at the person who was their everything with love and certainty.
It was awe-inspiring.
She just didn’t know if she could ever have that.
But with Booker, she wanted to try. And that was what scared her.
“You okay, Nile? You’ve been quiet since we left,” Booker asked as they flew towards Paris.
“Hmm? Oh, sorry. Got a lot on my mind, I guess,” she said, trying to shrug it off.
“Wanna talk about it?” Booker asked, leaning closer until their shoulders brushed.
Nile smiled softly, but shook her head. “Nah, just thinking of all the art I’m going to see soon.”
Booker looked at her like he knew that she was bullshitting, but didn’t call her out on it, for which she was grateful. Even though they confided a lot in each other, they knew when not to press.
“Ah, yes. What are you looking forward to seeing most?”
“You did not just ask me that.”
Booker chuckled, holding up his hands. “Sorry, you know art isn’t my expertise.”
“Oh sure, mister forger, I’m sure there aren’t any art replicas out there that came from you,” Nile teased, poking him in the side.
Booker ducked his head. “I plead the Fifth.”
“You’re not American.”
“You are, are you not?”
“Well… technically, I guess.” Nile looked out the window, melancholy lancing through her. “Don’t you have to go to your home country every once in a while to claim citizenship?”
She felt Booker’s hand on hers. “I’m sorry, ma belle, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Nile took a deep breath and shook herself, trying to dispel the tidal wave of emotion that had hit her. Her movement jostled Booker’s hand and he pulled away.
Damn.
“It’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting it.”
“I understand.”
She knew he did. Which is why she took a chance and slid a little closer, leaning her head on his shoulder. He was tense for a moment, then relaxed as she settled in.
“Sleep, Nile. I’ll wake you when we get there.”
“Thanks, Book,” Nile said, letting her eyes close and trying not to be obvious that she was breathing deeply, both to calm herself and to revel in the slightly pine-like smell that wafted off Booker’s neck.
________________________________________
Nile stood, ignoring the people walking around her, mouth open slightly as she stared at Nike’s statue.
“Isn’t it called The Winged Victory of Samothrace?” Booker asked from beside her, looking at the map in his hands.
Nile waved a hand at him, not looking away. “Nike means victory, Book. Keep up.”
“Ah. Of course.”
Nile couldn’t stop looking at the statue. “This has existed longer than Joe and Nicky. It’s older than Joe and Nicky combined.”
“Still young compared to Andy, though.”
Again, Nile waved a hand at Booker. “A lot of things are young compared to Andy, Book. That’s not a fair comparison.”
“True. I wonder if they have miniature versions of this in the gift shop,” Booker mused.
“Huh. Maybe,” Nile said, finally turning away to grin at him. “If not, I can just have you make one for me, huh?”
He laughed, throwing his head back. “You are overestimating my abilities.”
She laughed with him as they started moving again.
There was so much to look at that Nile had only ever seen in books before. It was almost overwhelming how much history they were looking at. She was happy that she could tell Booker about a lot of the art, to the point that he put the map in his pocket so he could just listen to what she was saying. Someone, another tourist, came up to her and asked her for more information once.
Nile was having the time of her life.
Then, as they were walking through a crowd to get to the next exhibit, she glanced across the room.
Standing there, unmistakably, was her brother.
Her hand shot out and grabbed Booker’s arm, gripping it tight.
“Nile? What’s wrong?” he said, going instantly on alert.
“That-” She couldn’t get the words out. She cleared her throat. “That’s my brother over there.”
“What?!”
Booker had turned to look too, but none of that mattered. Jordan turned, maybe sensing the eyes on him, and looked directly at Nile. And she got to watch as confusion, recognition, and devastation crossed over his face.
“NILE!” he shouted as he started to rush toward them.
“We need to leave,” she said through numb, unmoving lips.
“Go,” Booker said, putting something in her hand. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Quynh had taught her how to melt into a crowd and disappear her first year of being an immortal. Physically, it was so easy. Mentally, every step away from Jordan hurt her. But she couldn’t tell him the truth. She couldn’t come back to her family after five years of being dead and expect them to be okay. She couldn’t watch them get old, or sick, and die in front of her. Not while she didn’t age a day. It was better if she just stayed dead to them.
But God, it hurt.
She got far enough away to feel safe and ducked behind a pillar. She turned to Booker, only he wasn’t there.
“Book?”
But he was nowhere to be found. She felt something in her hand and looked down, remembering that he had put something there before she had left.
A comm earbud?
She quickly put it in her ear and heard her brother’s voice shout her name again. Nile sagged against the wall, a hand over her heart.
“Hey, man, can I help you?” she heard Booker say, only he didn’t sound like Booker. He sounded… American? What the hell?
“My sister, I just saw her here. Did you see her? Black woman, slim, with braids. Name of Nile Freeman?” her brother demanded.
“Nile Freeman? Wow, that’s not a name I’ve heard in a while.”
“You know her?” Jordan asked.
“I did. We were in the Marines together. We were on the same base. I’m really sorry, man. She was an amazing person.”
Jordan didn’t say anything. Nile strained her ears to hear anything. What was Booker doing?!
It sounded like Jordan let out a gust of air. “Yeah. She was. I’m sorry, I was sure I’d actually seen her this time.”
God, hearing that, Nile’s heart shattered.
“Grief sucks like that,” Booker said, and his voice was rough.
“Yeah, it really fucking does. I’m Jordan, by the way. Nile’s younger brother,” her brother said.
Booker huffed out a laugh. “Did your parents love rivers or something, to name both their kids after two?”
“My dad’s idea. My mom humored him.”
“From what Nile told me, she is a formidable woman. I’m Seb. Nice to meet you, Jordan.”
Nile jerked at Booker giving a form of his real name. Seriously, what was he doing?!
“Nice to meet you too. So you were on the same base as Nile?”
“Yeah, for what- eight months? I got shipped home just before... Well. You know. Heard about it from a buddy of mine. I’m truly sorry.”
There was silence, and Nile mentally begged Booker to keep talking. Luckily, he did.
“Nile was one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. She radiated that to everyone. Kept candy in one of her TAC vest pockets to give to the kids she met. Strong too, just like her mom. I was lucky to be able to work with her, however limited a time it was.”
Jordan let out a gust of air.
“Nile would have loved it here,” he said. “She wanted to go to art school after her deployment, did she tell you that? Was always into this stuff. My mom didn’t know much about it, but wanted her to chase her passion. Just, we couldn’t afford it. So Nile enlisted. Scared the shit out of Mom, not that she would ever admit it.”
“How’s she doing? Your mom,” Booker asked.
“She’s a fighter, just like Nile was. There are still hard days, but she can look at Nile’s photo next to Dad’s and keep going. We can talk about her a bit more, now.”
Nile knew where her dad’s photo was. On her mom’s dresser, so every morning and every night, she would see him.
Now Nile’s picture was next to her dad’s.
She couldn’t stop the sob that emerged from deep in her chest.
“Could I get a picture? My roommate will never believe that I ran into Nile Freeman’s brother otherwise,” Booker said.
It sounded like he was distracted, wrapping up the conversation.
“Of course!”
“Hey man, good talking to you,” Booker said, voice warm.
“Yeah, thanks for the stories. Gotta keep her alive somehow, right?” Jordan said and Nile focused on his voice as hard as she could. This would probably be the last time she heard it.
“Definitely. Someone as amazing as Nile should never fully die. Take care, Jordan,” Booker said.
“You too, Seb. See you around.”
And he was gone.
Nile couldn’t stop sobbing.
“Nile, where are you? Nile! Please, you have to answer me,” Booker said over the comm.
Nile looked around the column she was hiding behind and gasped out the closest piece of art’s name.
“I’m coming, don’t move.”
A hysterical laugh broke through the sobs for a moment. Where would she even go?
Then he was in front of her.
“Oh, Nile. Can I hold you?” Booker asked, his voice breaking.
Nile threw herself into his arms and truly let go. She buried her face into Booker’s chest, hoping to contain the sounds of her sobs. They were secluded enough to avoid awkward stares, but she was still aware of the spectacle she must be making of herself. She started to take deep breaths, trying to stop crying.
It was only when she started to calm that she could hear Booker’s soft murmurs of “I’m sorry, you’ll be okay, I know how you feel and I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, ma chérie, we’ll get through this together…”
It only made her hold him tighter.
Finally, she calmed and straightened from being hunched into Booker’s chest.
“I’m so sorry, Nile, I should have just come with you. I thought- well, it doesn’t matter. I’m truly sorry,” Booker said.
When she looked up at him, she saw his eyes were wet too, a few tears making their way down his cheeks.
She shook her head, reaching up to wipe his tears. “You gave me my brother back, Book, for however short a time. Thank you.”
Her hands were still on his face, cupping his jaw. She slid them over his jaw, to the back of his neck, and pulled slightly. Booker was almost half a foot taller than her, but he compressed himself to be shorter until their forehead met.
She closed her puffy eyes and just stayed there a moment.
“Thank you,” she said again, whispering this time.
“You’re welcome.”
She felt the puff of his breath against her face as he spoke. It would be so easy to lean a little bit more in, close that distance...
But she couldn’t. Not right now, when she still felt like she was dying a bit inside.
Pulling away, she said, “I think we should go. That okay with you?”
“Of course, Nile. You didn’t even have to ask.”
They got back to his flat, not talking as they walked in.
“You should know, I recorded the conversation with Jordan on my phone. And um, here,” Booker said, holding out his phone. “I thought you would want to have this.”
Nile took the phone, knowing what she would see. It didn’t hurt any less as she looked at Jordan’s face, smiling with his arm around Booker’s shoulder.
She was crying again before she even realized it.
“God, Book. I miss him,” she sobbed. Her legs gave out and Booker scooped her into his arms and carried her to the couch. He sat and pulled her close, starting to murmur comfort again as she lost herself once again.
It took much longer to even begin to pull herself together this time. It was dark out and she felt exhausted, mentally and physically. Booker’s leg had to be asleep underneath her, but he just kept brushing his hand up and down her spine, trying to soothe her.
“I think we should leave Paris tomorrow,” she said, her voice hoarse from crying.
“That would probably be best,” Booker agreed. “Where would you like to go?”
Nile buried her face into his chest, overwhelmed. “Can I decide later?”
“Of course, Nile.”
“Or you could choose this time,” she said, voice muffled by his shirt.
He paused, thinking. “We have a safe house near Amsterdam. There are many art museums there, including the Van Gogh Museum. If you would like.”
This is why I love you. The words are on the tip of her tongue, but she keeps them there.
She pushed herself up so that she was able to look at him. His hair was flopping into his face and she didn’t stop herself from pushing it back in place. Booker’s gaze changed somehow, from caring to… a closed off kind of caring, where he wasn’t sure what was going on, but still cared about her.
“I would love that. Thank you, Sebastien,” she said. Then, before she could talk herself out of it, she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.
She pulled away quickly and didn’t look at him as she stood up. “I’m gonna go lie down, try to sleep for a bit. Can you make arrangements for Amsterdam?”
He grunted in affirmation and she fled down the hall. She couldn’t stop herself from glancing back before she left the room, only to see Booker staring at nothing, his hand on the cheek she had kissed.
Well, that’s promising.
It wasn’t until she was in bed that she realized she had called him Sebastien, not Booker.
Well...
Shit.
_____________________________________________
They didn’t talk much as they traveled to the Netherlands. Nile didn’t mind, she was too tired to tackle any of the emotional options that could have been topics of discussion. She could feel Booker glancing at her every now and then, but she just pretended to fall asleep against the train’s window.
She couldn’t consider falling asleep on his shoulder again. She was already feeling fragile. Putting herself out there was not in the cards right now.
They took a taxi to get to the safe house from the train station, paying the driver in cash when they arrived. Booker thanked him in Dutch, which was not a language that Nile had started to learn yet, and they walked up the steps to the front door.
“Booker, wait,” Nile said, grabbing his arm. She had seen a figure through the door’s frosted glass.
There was someone inside the house.
“It’s okay, Nile,” Booker said. “It’s just-”
Andy opened the door. “Hey, kid.”
Nile blinked at her. “You’re supposed to be in Greece.”
Andy shrugged. “All that sun wasn’t agreeing with me,” she said drily.
Nile turned on Booker. “Book…”
He held up his hands. “I just told them what happened. They wanted to be here for you.”
“They?!”
“Hello, little sister,” Quynh said, coming forward from behind Andy.
Nile swallowed hard at the endearment, emotion swelling in her chest. “Quynh…”
“May I?” Quynh asked, holding out her arms.
Nile could only nod as she stepped forward into Quynh’s embrace. Andy’s hand came to clasp Nile's shoulder as they hugged, and Nile took a deep, shaky breath.
She disengaged, wiping a stray tear that had leaked out. “I’m glad, I thought when Book said ‘they’ he meant-”
A car door slammed behind them.
“We’re here! Sorry we’re late, Nicky was driving for a bit and suddenly we were in Belgium,” Joe’s voice rang out from behind them and Nile turned to see him and Nicky coming up the walkway. Their car was parked haphazardly at the curb.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she muttered, tearing up against her will.
As Nicky and Joe got closer, she took a deep breath, overwhelmed. “I need a minute,” she said abruptly, darting past Quynh and Andy into the house. She went into the first room she could find and shut the door.
Turns out she was in the bathroom.
She gripped the edges of the sink, hunched over the basin.
Nile wasn’t entirely sure what she was feeling, the emotions were twisted inside her so much that she couldn’t parse them out. She made herself breathe and think.
Okay, Nile. What’s wrong?
She thought about the most obvious answer, her brother’s face as they made eye contact, and flinched away from the memory. She had missed her family for so long that the emotional wound had scabbed over. It was always there, she always felt the pain and some times were worse than others, but she was able to keep going. Seeing Jordan had ripped that scab off. She felt like she was bleeding internally. Even though she was glad she had been able to hear Booker talk to him… even that hurt. She was aching for her family.
So why was she not glad to see her immortal family?
She hadn’t asked them to come. Hadn’t wanted to bother them from their vacations. And she knew that she could handle this by herself. She had survived the pain of losing her brother and mom this long, why did they seem to think that she couldn’t get through this?
Oh.
Nile understood what she was feeling now.
She was sad, yes. But she was also angry.
When she had first joined Andy’s little band of immortal warriors, she had felt the difference of age between them and herself. Andy to this day called her “kid.” Thank God Booker had gone away from saying the same, that would have made any feelings she had for him incredibly awkward. It wasn’t like she wasn’t aware of how young she was compared to the others. But she was a goddamn adult. She had gone through loss before and knew she would go through more, but she also knew that she could get through that herself. For everyone to drop everything and come here made her feel like they thought she couldn’t.
That was what was rubbing her the wrong way here.
Nile took a deep breath and turned on the hot water. She found a washcloth in the cupboard under the sink and wet it once the water was warm. Slowly, gently, she washed her face, breathing deeply as she did so. She wrung out the washcloth and dabbed her face dry on the hand towel hanging on the wall.
Then she looked back into the mirror.
The anger had lessened, now that it had been acknowledged. The pain was still there, right below the surface. But she straightened her shoulders and nodded to herself.
She’s got this.
The other immortals had moved from the doorway into the living room. None of them were sitting, though, and they all turned immediately when she walked into the room.
“Sorry about that, needed a second to go to the bathroom. Hey guys!” she said, opening her arms and pulling Joe into a hug.
“Nile-” Nicky said as she turned to embrace him as well, so she hugged him extra tight, just to quiet him a moment.
“You guys didn’t have to rush here and ruin your vacations,” she said, making sure to keep the smile on her face, to keep the edge out of her voice.
“Nile-”
“You couldn’t have even gotten to Malta before you were turning around to come here,” Nile continued as she pulled away from Nicky.
“Nile, per favore,” Nicky said beseechingly.
Nile swallowed and looked at him hesitantly. His eyes were attentive and tired. “Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
Nile slumped into herself. She sat on the chair, away from the others and they followed suit, sitting around the room. Nicky, Joe, Quynh, and Andy squeezed onto the couch and Booker took the other chair, the closest seat to Nile.
“No,” she answered honestly, feeling weighed down with grief and anger. She forced her chin up, her shoulders square. “But I will be.”
There were nods around the room. Nile made eye contact with Booker and could see the understanding radiating from his eyes. She gave him a small smile.
“We should have asked this from the beginning. What do you need, Nile? What can we do?” Joe asked.
She considered. What did she want? There were hard answers to that question. She wanted to see her mother. She wanted to hug her brother.
She wanted to forget for a bit that she was immortal, and all the hurt that came with that.
Nile went with the easiest answer.
“I wanna go dancing,” she declared, raising her chin as she said it.
The others blinked.
Booker let out a chuckle. “We are in Amsterdam. I’m sure we can find somewhere to dance.”
“Don’t you think that we will stand out?” Nicky asked.
Nile shrugged. “Honestly, probably not. You just jump up and down all night, that would be enough. I’m sure you can figure out grinding in about two seconds or less, so that’s two dance moves right there, one for slow dances and one for fast ones!”
Andy shrugged. “Alright, but don’t get mad if we are bad.”
“We’re really going?” Quynh asked, looking excited.
Everyone looked around and nodded.
Nicky sighed. “For Nile, yes.”
“For Nile!” Quynh shouted, raising a fist in the air. Nile smiled, thinking how many times Quynh might have rallied that way throughout the centuries. She shook herself. No, tonight was to forget about immortality.
“Alright, we’re going to need supplies to do this right,” Nile said, pulling out her phone and starting to write a list. “I’ve got an outfit that’ll do, but I’ll need to look at your guy’s luggage to see if something works. Book, you brought that dark blue button down, right?”
He nodded.
Nile stared at her phone as she said, “Your eyes pop with that and it makes your muscles look fantastic, so that would be a good choice. The pants you’re wearing will be fine and your boots. Quynh, can you show me you and Andy’s options? Joe, I’ll send you the list. Get Nicky something that isn’t a cotton t-shirt when you’re out.”
Joe grinned at his husband who looked less enthused at the idea. “With pleasure.”
“Okay, let’s get going!”
Nile helped pick out Quynh and Andy’s looks as Joe and Nicky grocery shopped. Joe and Nicky brought back groceries, including alcohol, and outfits for themselves. The grey short sleeved button down did wonderful things to Nicky’s eyes and Joe went with a black tank top, which showed off his shoulders.
Sidling up to Booker as he helped put away groceries, Nile whispered, “Ten bucks that Joe and Nicky start defiling the dance floor?”
Booker laughed loudly. “I don’t make bets that I know I will lose, Nile. That’s Nicky’s job.”
Nile pouted, but soon rallied. “We are all gonna look so good, people are gonna be so jealous when they realize Joe and Nicky, and Andy and Quynh are together!”
“Ah,” Booker said, looking down at the counter. “Nile. If you wish to go home with someone tonight, I only ask that you keep your phone on you. Just in case.”
Nile blinked. She hadn’t even thought about that. Hadn’t planned to try to pick anyone up. She was trying to forget about her immortality, right? Just for the night? That could be a good way to help forget. But… she didn’t want to.
“Thanks, but that’s not what I want from tonight,” she replied, keeping her tone light.
Booker nodded. She did notice his shoulders relaxed as she walked away.
They had some down time before they should start to get ready, but Nile couldn’t settle. She ended up doing her eye makeup while she waited, wanting something to do.
Andy knocked on the open door of the bathroom to announce that supper was ready.
“Awesome, just gimme a minute and I’ll be good to go,” Nile said, curling her eyelashes.
Andy leaned against the doorway. “I’m sorry, for what it’s worth,” she said.
“For what?” Nile said, now putting on mascara.
“For treating you like a kid sometimes. When I first saw Joe’s drawing of you, I thought, ‘she’s just a baby,’ but you’ve proved time and time again that you can handle yourself. We should have considered that. I think,” Andy cut off, sighing. “I think we wanted to be there for you, the way we hadn’t been for Booker. To make up for not noticing how bad it was for him.”
Andy looked at Nile, who stared at her, shocked and touched. “We were thinking of ourselves and what we needed more than you. That wasn’t fair to either of you, and I’m sorry.”
Nile put the wand back in the mascara tube and dropped it on the counter, not caring where it fell. She hopped off the counter and hugged Andy. She felt Andy’s hand cup the back of her neck and relaxed into the embrace.
“Thank you for that, Andy,” Nile murmured.
She let out a breath and felt the last traces of her anger fade away.
___________________________________
Nile was decidedly tipsy as they made their way to the nightclub that Booker had found for their night out. With her fast healing, she’d had to pregame a lot more than back when she was younger and well, mortal - no, she wasn’t thinking about that - and had drunk about half a bottle of vodka to feel as loose and happy as she did right now.
Booker himself hadn’t touched the alcohol and Nile felt a stab of guilt for getting so much, when he had been so good at staying sober.
He must have noticed her expression, as he shook his head at her. “It’s fine, Nile. I want you to have a fun night, and if you wish to imbibe, I understand.” He gave her a crooked grin. “I won’t give in to peer pressure.”
She was suddenly overwhelmed with pride and affection for him and didn’t stop herself from going up on tiptoe and kissing him on the cheek. “Proud of you, Book,” she murmured as she pulled away.
Everyone else in their immortal family saw it, but no one said anything, for which Nile was somewhat grateful.
She also really wanted to talk to someone about Booker. She was relieved when Quynh leaned against the doorway, much like her wife had done a few hours ago, and asked Nile as she was doing her contouring, “So, you and Booker, huh?”
Nile bobbled the brush she had been using but caught it before it could truly fall. She turned and closed the door, then turned on some random playlist on her phone, then turned back to Quynh.
“Quynh, I don’t know what to do,” she said honestly.
“Talk to me, little sister,” Quynh said, reaching out to hold one of Nile's hands.
Nile took a deep breath. She hadn’t ever said any of this out loud and the prospect of it being out there, acknowledged by someone else, was terrifying and exhilarating.
“I love him, Quynh,” she said in a rush. Her eyes grew wide and she felt tears start and covered her mouth with her free hand. “Holy shit, I haven’t said that out loud before.”
“How’s it feel?” Quynh asked with a small smile, like she was holding it in until she heard Nile’s answer.
“Amazing,” Nile said, lowering her hand so that Quynh could see her teary, but wide, smile.
Quynh’s smile mirrored her own.
“I love Sebastien le Livre,” Nile murmured, looking at the door.
“Do you have a plan?” Quynh asked.
Nile shook her head. “What if… I mean, he was married before. I don’t even know if he feels the same. Or if he does, if he’ll let himself start anything.”
“Well, Nile,” Quynh said, “it sounds like you should sit down and talk with him. Talk about what you want. See if he wants the same. At least after that, you will know.”
Quynh’s grin returned. “But maybe do that later. Tonight, we dance!”
The atmosphere in the club was exactly what Nile needed as they walked in. It was dark and the lights flashed often enough to give people momentary identities before they were mostly cloaked in darkness again. The music was pumping out of huge speakers.
The other immortals didn’t look as enthused as Nile was, but they dutifully followed her onto the dance floor. It was just EDM playing at the moment, so Nile took the time to show a few moves that Quynh took great pleasure in replicating.
Soon though, a new song came on and Quynh’s eyes lit up with an idea. She grabbed Andy and they started to swing dance, right there in the club. It fit strangely well with the music, even though it was very much a modern song. Joe and Nicky started to do the same, grins on their face. Booker held out a hand to Nile and she took it eagerly. She replicated the steps that Andy and Quynh were doing and followed Booker’s lead, laughing loudly when they got off from the beat and Booker swore as he spun her out and back to reset them.
By the time that song faded out, Nile was breathing heavily and her cheeks hurt from smiling so much.
The next song came on and it was slower, at least at the beginning, and Nile heard the lyrics, “I pray to God, I just don’t know anymore,” and felt like a sledgehammer had hit her over the head. That had happened that time in-
No, tonight was about forgetting! She wasn’t going to think about that!
She danced noncommittally to that song, even when it picked up. The next song started up and Nile recognized it instantly. “Turn Down for What” had been featured at far too many dances for her NOT to know it.
Nile took great pleasure in shaking her hips from side to side as the song continued.
“TURN DOWN FOR WHAT?!” she roared along with most of the club.
The moment that the next song’s first notes came on, the club went wild.
People all around the world went crazy for Beyonce.
Nile wrinkled her nose at the line about Monica Lewinsky, cause she was a cool lady it turned out, and didn’t deserve to be turned into a synonym for a blow job. Otherwise, she rolled her body and even let a guy come up behind her and grind with her. The moment that the French section of the song came on, though, her concentration broke and she looked for Booker. He was bobbing from side to side and as the French section continued, his head cocked to the side and his eyebrows went up. He looked over at her and she smirked at him, gesturing to the part of the dancefloor that Nicky and Joe were currently defiling, just as she had predicted.
He looked over, then back at her, and shook his head. She could tell that he was laughing, his shoulders going up and down even though she couldn’t hear him from this far away.
She broke away from the guy she had been dancing with, giving him a small smile, and made her way to Booker. As she moved, the song changed and she grinned.
“You know when I said you just jump up and down? This is a great example of that!” Nile shouted to her little group.
The entire club was bouncing as the chorus rang out. If Nile didn’t heal, she knew her calves would be sore tomorrow.
No, she wasn’t thinking about it!
Nile let herself dance mindlessly through the next few songs, not understanding one song as it was in Italian and willfully ignoring the next one that sang about being lonely together. She didn’t want to think about why she was lonely.
Then the next song came on and she started jumping along until she heard the lyrics, “Party til we die!”
Except she couldn’t die. She was immortal and she had lost her family just as much as they had lost her and God, it hurt.
She didn’t realize that she was just standing there, staring into space, until Joe’s hand brushed against her arm. Nile shook herself and shouted, “I’m gonna go get another drink!”
She made her way through the crowd to get to the bar before any of them could respond. Once she got there though, she ended up just asking for water. She didn’t want to follow the path of self-loathing and self-destruction that Booker had taken before he had nearly destroyed himself entirely. While it might be melodramatic to think that a drink in a club would lead down that path, Nile didn’t want to push herself.
She did, however, block out the rest of the song until it finished.
“I love my friends and my friends love me. Like all the time, they’re right beside me. We’ve got each other for eternity. Like all the time, they’re right beside me,” the new song sang.
Nile let out a shaky breath.
She wasn’t alone.
She turned and saw her new family across the room. They looked back at her with love in their eyes, and suddenly, there was too much space between her and them. She pushed gently through the crowd until she was back in their little bubble.
They closed rank around her and wrapped their arms around her. They swayed slowly to the song even though it was fast paced and Nile felt so loved.
“Thanks, guys,” Nile said, smiling around at her immortal family.
They broke apart for the next song and Quynh grabbed Nile’s hand so they would dance together. Nile ended up cackling at the exaggerated come hither faces that Quynh made at her and pulled Quynh in for a hug.
“Thank you, Quynh. For being my big sister and for just. Well. Being here.”
Quynh’s arm wrapped around her and pulled her in tight.
The song that came on next was slow and beautiful and as Nile listened to the lyrics, she knew she had to find Book. He was watching Nicky and Joe sway back and forth with a small smile on his face. She walked up and tapped him on the shoulder.
He looked at her and his smile gentled even more.
“Wanna dance?” she asked.
“Yes, ma belle, I would love to dance with you,” he answered.
“I never thought in a million years, in a million years, oh It would be you,” the song rang out.
Nile hands ended up on the back of Booker’s neck, as Booker’s hands stayed firmly on her waist. She did see his eye flutter shut as her fingers scratched through the short hairs there, and she smirked.
“I just can't get you out my mind, So infatuated.”
Okay, the lyrics were a bit too on the nose, but she just pulled Booker closer and let them sway. She could hear his heart from where her head rested against his chest, and was suddenly so glad that their immortality existed because there was no other way that they would have been able to meet.
She couldn’t stop thinking about it. Immortality was a fact of her life, like the fact her dad was dead and the sky was blue. Some things couldn’t be changed and fighting her immortality would only hurt herself and her new family. She had seen the worst of what fighting his immortality had done to Booker.
She would make a different path for herself.
It would be painful and there would be days that she would feel like she was dying inside. But she knew that she could do it. She was strong. She had already been through so much and she was still here. And she had her family to reach out to.
Nile had Booker to reach out to.
The song wound down and Nile placed a kiss where she had just been resting her head. Booker’s hands tightened minutely, then he let go.
“Forever young, I wanna be forever young.”
Okay. Who had chosen this song. Nile started laughing and she couldn’t stop. Her hooting attracted some attention but she didn’t care. The irony was just too much.
“You good?” Andy asked, smiling slightly as she raised an eyebrow.
“Yes! Sorry, I just - ahahaha - this song!” Nile answered incoherently.
She calmed as the song continued, though giggled as Joe busted out some truly ridiculous disco moves. Nicky looked at him with love in his eyes, even as he too, laughed at his husband.
Nile looked around and felt suddenly content. She hadn’t been expecting it. But as she watched her little family indulge her need for normality, or what used to be her version of normality, she felt okay again.
She reached out and grabbed Booker’s hand and squeezed. He looked startled at first, then saw her smile and returned it without thinking.
“Home we’ll goooooo, home we’ll go.”
Nile turned her grin to the entire group and nodded.
“I’m ready to go home.”
_____________________________________
It didn’t take long for Booker and Nile to be the only ones left in the living room when they got home. Nicky and Joe were up the stairs in a flash, and Nile definitely saw a little ass grabbage as they made their way up to the main bedroom. Quynh and Andy had some water, then Quynh gave Andy a look and they were off to the spare bedroom.
“The couch is a pullout, by the way,” Andy threw over her shoulder as they went.
Nile laughed. “Cheers.”
She turned to Booker, still laughing, but he was looking at the couch with trepidation.
“I can take the floor,” he offered.
“Book,” she huffed.
“It is the gentlemanly thing to do,” he insisted.
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t remember asking you to be a gentleman, Sebastien.”
His eyes darkened at her use of his real name. He swallowed and looked away.
Dammit.
“If that’s what you want, Book, I’m not gonna stop you,” Nile said, going to her bag. “I’m gonna get ready for bed.”
She emerged, clean and without makeup, about half an hour later. The bed was out and Booker was sitting at the dining table, a cup of untouched tea in front of him. Nile settled in the chair next to him and stole the tea, taking a sip.
“Talk to me,” she said.
She had said the same thing so many times over the years that they had known each other. They had been there for each other while they were both going through therapy, on anniversaries of things that made it hard to get out of bed that day, and in so many other ways.
He let out a gust of breath. “Tonight was fun for you, right?”
Nile considered. “It was hard at times. I had gone to forget about immortality and my family, only to realize that there was no forgetting. But you guys being there helped. It was nice to dance. So yeah, I had fun.”
Booker nodded. “I noticed, there was that man you were, uh, dancing with. You didn’t change your mind? Want to go home with him?”
“Nah,” Nile said. She decided to take a chance. “Even when I was dancing with him, I started thinking about you.”
He stared at her. “Me?”
“Yeah, Seb. I don’t think that going home with that guy would have been very fulfilling. I think...” she said slowly as she stared down into Booker’s cup of tea, slightly anxious, “I think that no one out there could compare to who I came home with anyway.”
She plucked up her nerve and looked right at Booker when she finished speaking. He was staring at her, eyes wide.
“Ma chérie, you don’t believe-”
“You calling me a liar, Sebastien?” Nile said, raising an eyebrow at him.
“No, I would never, but- I mean - I’m just. Nile,” he said, flabbergasted.
She leaned towards him, putting a hand on his arm. “You’re worth a whole lot more than you think, Book. I see how hard you try to be better, for yourself and for everyone else. I see how much your demons cling and how you still get up every day and keep going. I see you. And I think you’re worth everything.”
Her heart was pounding. This was as close to a declaration of her feelings as she had ever come to. Though he had given promising signs in the past, there was no actual guarantee that Booker felt the same towards her.
“Nile, mon ange,” Booker breathed, pulling her close and resting his forehead against her. “Forgive me, I am a little overwhelmed.”
“Take your time, Book,” Nile said sincerely, closing her eyes and listening to her heart beating and his breathing.
They sat there silently for a while, forehead to forehead. As time passed, Nile calmed and all she felt was content.
He reached up and stroked her cheek as he pulled his head slightly away from hers. “I think that I started to fall for you the moment that you pushed Merrick out of the window and fell to the street with him,” he admitted. “I fought it for a long time, because of shame. Shame in myself. Shame at what my family would think. And then,” he stopped, looking away from Nile and took a breath, blowing it out in a gust. “I finally talked about my feelings for you with the therapist that you helped me find.”
Book turned to look her in the eye and Nile felt like she could melt at the warmth in his gaze. “She said that loving you wasn’t replacing the ones that I had loved before. That I could love them and love you. I don’t have to choose between one and the other. And suddenly, I heard my Marie’s voice in my head for the first time in a century.”
His eyes filled with tears and Nile reached up and cupped his cheeks, wiping a tear that fell. He smiled gently at her and pushed on. “She told me that I was the love of her life, but I will live many lifetimes, and she didn’t want me to be alone. I used to hear her all the time, before. She was my conscience and my guiding light. Ever since I lost her, and our boys, I’ve been lost. I love our immortal family, please don’t mistake me. But I used to feel alone, even when they were all in the room. That feeling led to terrible things. And then you led my new family to me and saved me. And since then, I’ve found a new source of light.”
Nile’s eyes filled with tears too. “Sebastien…”
“Mon dieu, Nile, I love when you say my name,” Booker breathed.
She grinned. “You gonna kiss me, Sebastien?”
“Mon bonheur…” His eyes were wide and she could see his heart in them.
“I don’t know that one, Seb. You’re gonna have to translate.”
“My happiness,” Sebastien said with a small smile.
Nile smiled and her eyes crinkled, it was so wide. The tears that had collected in them spilled over and she realized that Sebastien was crying too.
His hand cupped her cheek gently, almost reverently, and they closed the distance between them. At first, their lips only pressed together. Then Nile’s hand came up to the back of Booker’s neck to pull him closer and the dynamic changed. It was still slow but their mouths moved together. Booker’s tongue laved at her lower lip. Nile trapped Booker’s lower lip between hers and sucked it into her mouth. She remembered how much he seemed to like it when she ran her fingers through the short hairs at the nape of his neck and did so again, then gave a soft pull.
He shuddered.
“Seb,” she whispered, kissing his cheek and then leaning closer to speak into his ear. “We don’t have to do anything tonight, but do you want to go lie down?”
Booker nodded eagerly.
The pull out bed wasn’t very comfortable. But Nile lay half on top of Booker and he pulled her close, kissing behind her ear, down her jaw, and back to her lips. And then everything else didn’t matter.
She woke up the next day still in his arms. Remembering the thought she’d had, realizing she wanted to wake up looking at him for the rest of her immortality, Nile smiled.
This morning was the start of an eternity of waking up together.
She kissed his chest before extracting herself from his arms. He grumbled in his sleep, then settled.
Quynh and Nicky were already in the kitchen when she stumbled in. Quynh smiled widely at her and Nicky raised an eyebrow.
“Hi guys…” Nile said warily. The look on their faces made her want to go crawl back into bed.
“So, do you want us to clear out today so you can start your sexcation?” Quynh asked with a shit eating grin on her face.
“Oh my god,” Nile said. She hadn’t even had coffee yet.
She filled a cup and chugged it. Nicky’s eyebrow joined its fellow near his hairline.
Nile set the cup down. “Maybe. We aren’t there yet. But I’d rather not get there with you guys in the next room.” She refilled the cup and started drinking again, slower this time. “Not like you don’t have sexcations to get to of your own.”
Quynh nodded and Nicky’s eyebrows finally went down as the corners of his lips curled up.
“Also, that pull out is made out of lumps and I’d rather have a better bed for our first time. Though I don’t really care about the location that much. Just that it’ll be him,” Nile said thoughtfully.
There was a sound of someone choking from the hallway. Nile turned to see Booker standing there, his face going a deep red color.
“Good morning,” she said, ignoring the fact that he had heard her. “Want some coffee?”
“Nile,” he said, his voice rough from sleep and emotion.
“Yes, Sebastien?”
“I- You- Merde,” he hissed, taking two steps and leaning down to kiss her where she sat. She met his lips gladly. This was no gentle press.
Well. It seems once she got passed the gentlemanly facade, they could really have some fun.
She pulled away from him long enough to look at Quynh and Nicky and raise an eyebrow. “Don’t you have somewhere to be? People to get out of bed, woo, and get into a different bed at a different place? Please?”
Quynh laughed. “Subtle, little sister.” She stood and flapped her hands at Booker until he took a step back. “Sisters before misters,” she teased before she gave Nile a hug. “We’ll be out of the house in less than a half an hour. Think you can wait that long?”
Nile giggled, then nodded. “Thank you, Quynh. I love you.”
Nicky was next, once Quynh pulled away. He kissed her forehead. “We’ll see you in a month, Nile,” he said, his eyes smiling at her.
“Enjoy Malta.”
He smirked. “We will.”
Nile stayed at the table and Booker made her toast and eggs. Quynh and Andy were out the door first, Andy stopping to give both of them hugs on the way out. Joe took longer to rouse, so Nicky was going to drive first.
“We’ll call you for directions when we end up in Lithuania,” Joe said with a sleepy smile as they said goodbye.
Nile laughed. “See you soon. Love you guys.”
“Love you, our little river!” Joe called as he got into the vehicle.
She shook her head at them but waved as they drove away.
Closing the door, she found Booker doing the dishes from breakfast. She came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his stomach.
A sudsy hand rested against where hers were clasped.
Nile let out a huge sigh.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, nuzzling his back. “Sometimes it just shocks me the extremes of emotions that people can feel at once.”
“Talk to me,” he said and she smiled and pressed a kiss against his spine.
“I love this family. So much. And they exasperate me and challenge me and take care of me and I love them.” She took a deep breath, then forged on. “I love my family. I miss them so badly sometimes it makes my chest ache, and I know that pain will never fully go away. But I’ll carry it with me cause otherwise, I can’t carry my love for them too.”
She paused and raised on tiptoe to kiss his neck. “I love you,” she said. “And that feels a bit like a miracle still. Maybe someday it’ll feel as naturally as breathing like it seems to be for the others. But for now, I just want to revel in it.”
Booker was shaking. Nile could feel it against her chest.
“Seb? You okay?”
He sniffled. “Oui, mon bonheur. Ça va bien,” he murmured.
He turned in her arms until she could see the tears on his face. “You just put how I feel into words. I love our new family. I miss Marie and our boys.” He took a deep breath and looked down at her. “And I love you. I love you so much.”
“Seb…”
They pulled each other close and Nile let her own tears come.
Immortality would bring with it times that were hard and times that will be beautiful. She knew she could handle them. Especially with her family by her side. Especially with Sebastien with her.
“Oh, by the way,” she said, pulling back from him a bit. “I think I’m finally going to go to art school.”
She grinned. “Wanna model for me?”
Translations:
Ma choupette - my little cabbage, in an endearing way
Ma belle - my beautiful
Per favore - please
Ma chérie - my darling
mon ange - my angel
Mon dieu - my God
Mon bonheur - my happiness
Merde - shit
Oui, mon bonheur. Ça va bien - Yes, my happiness. I'm okay
#nile freeman#sebastien le livre#aka booker#book of nile#booker x nile#yusuf al kaysani#aka joe#nicoló di genova#aka nicky#andromache the scythian#andy#quynh#nile and quynh brotp#fanfic#my fic
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prompt, if you'd be so kind: remember the scene where booker found out andy is mortal and freaked out? let's say she got her immortality back somehow, but booker is still TERRIFIED that her, joe, nicky or nile will lose their immortality and die. and one time on a mission either joe or nicky get shot and the wound oozes blood like crazy and booker completely panics and freaks out that he doesn't even notice that the wound is already closing? and the team has to calm him down?
okay so this has been sitting in my asks for a while so im sorry, also im sorrynotsorry i made this OT3 bc i lowkey wanted it to be and you didnt say otherwise xD hope you like it!
~
As sniper, Nicky was usually away from the gunfire, keeping watch over the team as they infiltrated the buildings that contained the bad guys. Usually, he had one of the team beside him being his spotter so he could focus on aiming and pulling the trigger, - taking someone’s life for the betterment of the world - but not for this mission. An uncanny amount of guards were reported to be inside this particular encampment, meaning that the others had to be on the inside while Nicky and his scope patrolled the perimeters.
Meaning he was also unprotected from most angles, his only cover being his all-black clothing and tactical gear.
~
This particular mission required a certain amount of stealth, and Booker felt out of place. Being the tallest and biggest in build out of the team, he couldn’t help but feel like he would screw this up. Arguing that he should be with Nicky as his spotter to stay out of the way, Andy gave him this look that would have terrified a normal being, but Booker’s been on the end of those looks for over two hundred years now.
So now here he was, sleuthing his way into the building alongside Joe feeling unsure of himself and also worrying about Nicky. Theoretically and practically, Booker knows that Nicky has enough experience in the field that he can look after himself, but he just had this feeling that would not leave him.
“Stop thinking too loud,” Joe murmured as he sidled up to the corner, peeking his head around the wall to look for guards. “Nicky will be fine.”
“I know that,” Booker huffed, tugging his beanie more securely over his head. “I don’t like it when he doesn’t have cover, and this is the worst mission for me to be on.”
Joe quickly drew his suppressed weapon and fired a few shots, dropping three guards at the end of the hall before turning back to Booker, cupping the back of his neck and tracing lightly over the skin behind his ear with his thumb. “Book, Nicky will be alright. He’s gone solo before, so calm down and focus. He’ll be waiting for us when we get out of here.”
Booker sucked in a breath and nodded, mustering up the confidence to continue on and not let his worry get the better of him. “Alright, sorry. Let’s go.”
Joe grinned and removed his hand from Booker’s neck before raising his weapon once more. They moved in silence until they met up with Andy, Nile, and Quynh, who had already dispatched the head of the organisation and were rifling through the papers that scattered the room. Exhaling but not relaxing, Booker took guard at the door while the others took photos and filed away any useful information they could find. The feeling of unrest was sitting deep inside his gut, and would not leave him no matter what he told himself.
“Are we done?” Booker asked gruffly, shifting his gun. Joe glanced at Andy before shaking his head slightly, walking over to the Frenchman and placing his hand on his shoulder.
“Do you want to go back to Nicky? The girls can finish up here,” Joe asked, smiling when Booker nodded. Squeezing his shoulder, Joe picked up his own gun and turned towards Andy who was already looking at him. “We’ll meet you at Nicky’s post.”
She smirked, shuffling some papers so they were neat and placing them in a separate pile to the others. “Don’t get distracted on the way.”
Booker was already out the door when Joe turned around, and he rolled his eyes fondly at the Frenchman. Jogging lightly to catch up, he took Booker’s hand to slow the man down.
“Book,” Joe whispered as he tugged, forcing Booker to a stop. “What’s gotten you so worked up tonight?”
“I just have a bad feeling,” Booker mumbled, looking away. “I don’t think I’m over what happened with Andy.”
“That was twenty years ago, Andy is fine now you know that,” Joe reasoned as they continued their walk, not wanting to get caught. He watched as Booker struggled to find his words, so he simply squeezed the man’s hand gently. “It’s alright to be worried though. I don’t want you to think that I’m putting you down for feeling like this.”
“No, it’s fine,” Booker replied as they neared the exit. “I know that Andy is okay and I know we don’t know why she regained her immortality-”
“Get down!” Joe said suddenly in a low, harsh tone, pulling Booker by the arm out the exit and towards cover. Crouching down behind a dumpster, they listened intently as the gravel road crunched under tyres and then under boots. Booker checked his mag for ammo and reloaded, handing Joe one knowing he was empty as well.
“How many?” Booker whispered.
“At least five, we can take them out easily,” Joe replied, peeking his head out to double check. “Three are heading for the door, two are still on the other side of the car.”
Booker nodded and they waited, watching the three guards walk towards the entrance. Joe made a signal and they set off, Booker heading towards the trio of guards with his gun raised and Joe sneaking around the car, slicing down the guard with his scimitar. Shooting the members of the group another two times each to ensure their lives were now in the hands of the ferryman, Booker turned and glanced at Joe who looked lost.
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s only one over here. I’m missing the other,” Joe replied, turning to his lover who glanced up to Nicky’s post. Frowning, Booker slung his rifle to his back and started running towards the hill, ensuring to stay hidden and keeping his eyes and ears out as this lone enemy was nowhere to be seen.
And that terrified Booker.
With Joe right behind him, they reached Nicky’s post just in time to spot the gun poking out from the bushes, time frozen as the shot went off and hit Nicky in the neck. Booker screamed and ran to Nicky as Joe shot the assailant multiple times, emptying the clip in the rifle and returning to where Nicky was set up to find Booker frantically shrugging off his jacket and pressing it to Nicky’s neck with shaky hands.
“Non, non, non, non, Nicky! Allez, non! S'il vous plaît!” Booker choked back a sob and watched as his jacket soaked up the blood. Fuck. That was a lot of blood. Too much blood. Booker knew that was too much blood. His eyes were bleary with tears as he kept pressure on Nicky’s neck, not registering that the bleeding had ceased, nor the words coming from Joe’s mouth.
“Book! Booker!” Joe gently pulled the man into his arms, wrapping them around the Frenchman as he shook with tears, the pair falling backwards. “Sebastien! Look, he’s fine. He’s fine.”
Booker sobbed and shook his head. There was so much blood gushing out of Nicky’s neck, and he couldn’t handle the possibility of losing Nicky, not now. With his eyes closed and leaning heavily against Joe, who was running his hand up and down Booker’s bicep to calm him, the Frenchman failed to notice Nicky suck in a breath and groan, a hand reaching up to trace the skin that had been penetrated by the bullet.
“Nicolo,” Joe whispered to his lover as he sat up. Nicky frowned at the sight of Booker breaking down so catastrophically and crawled his way over to the pair, removing the firearms and taking the Frenchman’s hand.
“Sebastien,” he spoke, voice cracking. He reached up to the man’s face and wiped away the tears that fell down his cheeks. “Sebastien, open your eyes for me.”
Nothing was registering in Booker’s mind. He could faintly hear voices and feel himself against a hard body, but he was so overcome with grief for Nicky to notice the man sitting right in front of his face, watching as he sobbed his eyes out.
“What happened, Yusuf?” Nicky whispered as he began to remove the bulkier items on Booker’s person, gently pulling the beanie off the man’s head. “Why..?”
“I don’t know. He’s been worried about you the entire time we were inside,” Joe replied and ran his fingers through Booker’s now free hair, gently pressing a kiss to the man’s head. Nicky frowned and turned his attention back to Booker, who’s tears had stopped streaming down his face. Cupping the man’s face once more and wiping away the salty tear tracks, Nicky leaned in close and pressed their foreheads together, noting the shakiness that radiated off the other man.
“Sebastien, come back to us,” Nicky whispered. “I am fine, I am alive. You need to calm yourself, Booker. Please.”
They sat there for a while, so long in fact that the others had caught up to them. Booker had only just stopped shaking uncontrollably, and had cracked his eyes open slightly. Sucking in a breath, he pulled away from Nicky’s embrace and did a double take before surging forward and wrapping his arms around the Genoan, hugging him tight and letting out a strained laugh.
“Hey, Book,” Nicky smiled and pressed a kiss to the man’s temple. “It’s alright, I’m alright.”
“I thought- I thought-,” Booker mumbled, slightly panicky. He pulled away slowly and looked down, embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”
“Nonsense,” Joe whispered from behind him, the steady wall keeping Booker from completely falling backwards. “Do you want to talk about it?”
At the shake of Booker’s head, Nicky slowly moved away and started to pack up his sniper rifle, making sure to keep within vision of the pair. Turning to the women who had given them some privacy, he signalled that they were good to go and he helped Booker to his feet, together they collected the items that had been stripped off the Frenchman, including the bloodied jacket that was by his post.
The entire walk to the getaway car was silent bar Joe softly whispered confirmations into Booker’s ear and Nicky humming in agreement.
They had to have a talk about what just happened but for now, getting to the safehouse was top priority.
~
Booker sat on their large bed wrapped up in his favourite woolen jumper that was stolen from Joe. He played with his shaky fingers absentmindedly, a blank stare on his face as his mind ran rampant.
He felt foolish at how he overreacted at Nicky being shot.
Images of Andy bleeding out in Copley’s living room flashed across his vision, the result of a bullet from his own gun. The consequences of that moment still haunted him, and the thought of losing Andy still made his breath hitch.
Feeling the mattress dip on either side of him pulled Booker out of his thoughts and he glanced up at the pair who had joined him. Joe grabbed his hand and brought it to his lips, pressing a reassuring kiss to Booker’s knuckles, and Nicky ran his fingers through Booker’s freshly washed hair. Each touch made Booker feel grounded and secure and safe and loved.
“We have to talk about it,” Joe murmured as he faintly brushed his lips over Booker’s knuckles. “But we don’t have to do that now.”
“No, not right now, please,” Booker replied softly and closed his eyes, leaning into Nicky’s hand massaging his scalp. They maneuvered themselves under the covers with Nicky in the middle at Booker’s insistence, as that way he would be safe. Nicky smiled and shuffled back into Joe’s arms, opening his own for Booker who gladly slotted into them and pressed himself close to his lovers.
Booker knew he would have to open up to the men about his reaction to Nicky’s death, but for now he was going to hold both of them close and not let go.
~
AO3 Link
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1. Joe: I've been fighting so long
A face of stone and marble,
proud bridge of sculpture resting.
When Nicky announces that he is going to bed, Nile's look speaks volumes and she gasps in shock. "What? Nicky you can't just go to bed now! The best scene is yet to come!”
Under his hands, Joe feels Nicky's abdominal muscles tense uncomfortably for a split second before his partner shakes his head with the gentle smile that Joe doesn't have to see to know it's there. It's that soothing smile that is little more than the subtle curling of the corner of his mouth and underlines the mute apology in Nicky's eyes. Just like Joe himself, Nicky can hardly refuse their new sister anything and although they have only known Nile for almost three weeks, Joe has already taken the strong, young woman into his heart.
Especially now that they have to recover from the past, all changing events that still cast a shadow over the day, her youthful, easy-going manner is a welcome gift. Of course, Nile isn't replacing Booker, but she eases the dull ache the Frenchman's absence causes in Joe's chest.
Joe hasn't put his name in his mouth since they left him on the banks of the Thames and refuses to talk about him because he doesn't want to think about the fact that he failed his younger brother somehow. That he had let Booker down so much that the latter had even handed over his family in the prospect of finally being able to end his infinite life. That Joe's love for his best friend wasn't enough.
Nicky is not happy about his behavior, but he gives him time and doesn't force him to deal with it any more than Joe himself wants to, for which he is infinitely grateful. His soulmate also suffers from Booker's betrayal. Nicky still puts a plate on the place Booker would sit on, but Joe is certain that Nicky's anger and disappointment will last longer than his own anger. And for this very reason Nicky is the last person who would accuse him of being so mad at Booker that Joe refuses to have a conversation about anything that has to do with Booker for now.
"Really, Nicky," Joe says teasingly and pokes Nicky in the side with an index finger, takes a quick look at the television, where Aragorn with a stylish hairstyle is holding a captivating battle speech. "How can you want to miss the best scene?"
The question is which scene Nile considers to be the best scene, but Joe can already guess which one it is. He may be centuries old, but he and Nicky were in a movie theatre for The Return of the King after they both had read the books and that night is associated with sweet kisses under the lantern for Joe. Very pleasant, then.
"When you talk about the scene where Aragorn says to the hobbits, 'You bow to no one', I can still remember it very well," Nicky says and starts to part from Joe against whose chest he was leaning on the sofa. If Nicky can resist Nile's puppy look, he must be really tired. So, Joe releases him without reluctance, although he lets his fingers linger longer on Nicky's hips.
"Spoilsport," Nile grumbles, but good-natured humor lurks in her open face and she gives Nicky a firm, warm hug, which shows Joe that Nicky's real fatigue has not escaped her either. "Good night, Nicky."
"Good night, Nile,” Nicky wishes her with a smile and gently strokes her shoulder as they end the embrace.
While Nile sinks back into her armchair and soaks up Aragorn's fight scene enthusiastically, Andy throws popcorn at Nicky from the huge bowl in her lap, which the warrior has already emptied three-quarters of the way. “You are much younger than me. Actually I should go to bed earlier, old man!”
Because of the crumbs from the popcorn that land on the floor, Nicky subtly wrinkles his nose and the expression he gives Andy makes clear that he expects her to sweep the floor before they go to bed afterwards. "I'm just setting a good example."
"Lame excuse," Andy snorts and throws another handful of popcorn into her mouth. But she leans slightly in Nicky's direction when he bends down and kisses her head.
"Breakfast waffles tomorrow?"
Andy shamelessly pats him on the bum as Nicky walks past her to wish Joe a good night. "You can bet on it."
"Hey, only I am allowed to touch Nicky's ass," Joe complains, grinning, ignoring Andy flipping him off and stretching a little to shorten Nicky's way for a kiss. He gently cups Nicky's cheek and kisses him again. "I'll be coming soon too, habibi."
Nicky's gaze is warm. “Enjoy the rest of the movie. And don't rush yourself. I know how much you like the ending. Nile will surely be happy to rave with you about it.”
“Did I hear 'the movie' and 'rave about it?'” Nile calls from her spot without taking her eyes off the screen. "Count me in.”
Nicky's silent chuckle sounds like music to Joe's heart and he laughs too. "You know me too well. I will try to...how do you say? To keep my fangirling about Aragorn's coronation outfit in check.”
"You have never managed that before, tesoro." Nicky gifts him with one of his rare winks and Joe continues to melt into the pillows like a sugary puddle.
"I'll see you in my dreams,” Joe calls after him as Nicky leaves the room and avoids laughing at Andy's thrown popcorn.
Continue reading on AO3 ;)
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This is some Nile!POV Joe/Nicky cuteness that is also the start of the sequel Brother of My Heart and Sono Qui (and Feed My Soul, but there’s no smut here). I wanted to have this posted today, but I’m depressed as fuck and have about 1500 words to go on this lil ditty, so I’m posting a snippet. For shameless validation purposes. Let me know what you think <3
Joe led the way into a cozy back room, flooded with morning sunlight. The back doors were flung open, and Nile could glimpse the trees that she had seen poking out the top of the garden wall before. They were heavy with orange fruit that matched the bowl on the kitchen counter.
The walls were a soft white, reflecting the sun’s rays and turning the whole space to gold. The dark wood of the rafters reminded her of Provence, and she smiled.
“Did you build this one, too?” She asked while the coffee percolated. Joe hummed, shaking his head.
“The foundations of this one might even predate us.” He replied, choosing a tangerine from the bowl and digging his thumbs in to peel it. “We didn’t buy this place until after the Second World War.”
“From the way you guys talk about it, I thought it must’ve been your oldest place— your first place together, or something.”
“Nicky had a hell of a time in the Pacific theatre. And then as a medic in France through the end of the war.” He popped a segment of fruit into his mouth, “We were separated for a long time— longest ever, actually.”
“You didn’t serve in World War 2?” That didn’t sound right to Nile. They fought for what they thought was right, they were an army of four— but Joe skipped out on the biggest war in modern history?
“Joe and I worked in intelligence.” Andy cut in while Joe chewed, “More covert work.”
Nile just nodded, swallowing the thousands of questions bubbling up her throat and filing them away. It was too early.
You ask one question, and suddenly everything‘s a story— she thought, How do people not immediately know you guys are old people? I feel like I’m talking to my grandma.
Not that she was complaining. She had loved her grandma’s stories— it was why she loved history, and wanted to study art. Her stomach clenched, and not for the first time, she remembered what Andy had said— I don’t remember what my mother looked like… or my sisters…
Nile didn’t want to forget her grandma. She didn’t want to forget a minute— the Sundays in the kitchen after church, the smell of earl gray and Werther’s caramels, the peace lily she watered every day after Dad’s funeral.
Hearing stories of all the things they remembered was reassuring. At least they didn’t forget everything.
“Nile?” Joe’s voice shook her out of her thoughts, “Coffee?”
“Yeah. Yeah, thanks.” She took the mug with a deep breath, “Sorry, I’m still a little tired. You were a spy?”
Joe smiled like he understood something unspoken, nodding “Yes. Many times in my life— but I’d never been away from Nicky like that. Three years, it was Hell.”
“It was Hell to listen to your pining.” Andy nudged his shoulder, smiling into her mug.
“You barely even saw me!” He tsked, wagging a finger at her before turning back to Nile, “Anyway, a couple years after the war was over, we decided we needed a break. We picked Malta simply for its position— smack in the middle of the sea between Italy and Tunisia. We didn’t expect to love it as much as we did, but it was a buyer’s market, and…” he started out shrugging, looking down at the orange in his hand, but when he glanced up, he did a double take.
At first, she thought he was looking at her, but he couldn’t be. His gaze was too soft, his smile too charmed, his quiet laugh seemed too practiced for it to be for her. Andy snorted into her mug, her eyes doing that thing that you would expect of a person seeing a baby animal.
“Good Morning, my heart.” Joe cooed, his smile beaming.
Nile looked over her shoulder, and sure enough, Nicky was at the foot of the stairs on the other side of the living space.
He was a sight, all ruffled and tanned, blinking sleep out of his eyes. He was wearing thin shorts and a singlet tank top that must have been Joe’s. It was stretched out just the littlest bit too much for his lanky frame, but what really made Nile choke on her coffee was his hair.
“Finally!” Andy greeted as Nicky plodded his way through the living room to the kitchen, “After 196 years, the long hair returns!”
Joe grinned and Nicky chuckled, running a hand down his face like he could scrub the sleepiness away. “Yes, and it needs to be washed.”
He came up beside Nile with one of his big, warm hands and squeezed the back of her neck, wrapping her into a hug that smelled like detergent and Joe’s sandalwood cologne. She squeezed him around the waist, her smile curving her lips without a thought. He shuffled around the room to Andy, murmuring something soft and Italian that made her smile before hugging her too.
Andy curled her hand around the back of his head, petting through the long strands and humming in contentment. Joe grinned, his eyes catching Nile’s across the counter.
“When my Nico first cut his hair, I think Andy was more bereft than I was.” He said it like a stage whisper, making Nicky snort, unwinding from his friend’s arms while Andy lazily flipped Joe off.
“Don’t worry, Andy, Joe made a very persuasive argument for keeping the hair.” Nicky grinned, turning to the man in question and pressing a soft kiss to his lips. He slipped around him behind him, looping his arms loosely around his waist. Nicky sandwiched himself between Joe’s back and the kitchen counter, making the other man hum and lean into him. He peeled off a slice of tangerine and held it over his shoulder for his love. “And yet, now I am the one who wakes up alone in our bed,” he tsked, even as he took the offered bite, “very rude, Yusuf.”
“And what did you expect of me? We have guests, Hayati.”
“You could have woken me and told me we had guests.” He shook his head at Nile in a universal gesture that said can you believe this guy? Even while Joe did the same thing, rolling his eyes in a long suffering way toward Andy.
There was some grumbled Italian kissed into Joe’s neck. It made his eyes crinkle as he laughed, holding out another orange slice.
Nile rolled her eyes fondly, sipping her coffee and wondering how these two soft, sleepy men could possibly be the hardened warriors of epic battles and old paintings.
“I was just telling Nile about how we came to own this palace.” Joe said, slipping out of Nicky’s arms so he could pour another cup of coffee. Nicky hummed, nodding.
“You told her how much I hated it here at first?” He smirked, just a tiny flicker of a thing as the other man pressed a mug into his hand.
Every few minutes with these people, Nile felt like she heard a record scratch. There was always something deeper with them, even in a nondescript little house on the edge of the sea.
“You hated it?” Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline, “But I thought this was your spot.”
“It is now, but there was baggage for me in Valletta that we didn’t know until we got here.” He shrugged, “By then, I figured it must be fate— God telling me that it was time to fight that particular demon.” He looked over at Joe, whose smile had gone tender. Andy nodded at the dregs of her coffee, leaning into Nicky’s side. “The core of this life is learning to change, Nile.”
The silence hung heavily for Nile, but she had the feeling that this was normal for the others— it had been in Provence, too. Every once in a while, something jogged a memory and pulled a feeling or a thought right out of the depths of them. It didn’t matter what time of day, or where in the world they were, sometimes things just hit them. Like Chicago.
It was weirdly comforting.
Times like this usually meant a story, and Nile wanted to hear this one. She needed to hear this one.
“But how d’you keep changing without forgetting?” She finally asked with a voice that was smaller than she wanted it to be.
Nicky smiled. Like Joe, he looked softer than he had in the church or the lab or in Provence. There was an ease in the set of his shoulders, and the circles under his eyes were less like bruises. He smiled at her, and she almost believed that he was just a 30 year old man.
How did they do that? Act their age, while also being indescribably ancient? Being her friend, while also being like her brother, and her grandma all at once?
“I’ll trade you a story for an onion.” He said. Andy snorted, and Joe choked on his orange slice.
“What?”
“I’m going to make omelettes— chop half an onion and mince some garlic for me, and we can chat about Valletta.”
She smiled, “Deal.”
#joe x nicky#nicky x joe#kaysanova#the old guard fanfiction#the old guard#my writing#continuation of the To be Human series#Nile freeman#im writing but im depressed#hahaha fun
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