#yes this is how I'm handling the sudden transition to cold weather
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I’m back on my bullshit with more TOG fluff, have fun :)
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Joe stumbled into the kitchen, soaking wet and wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. He looked around frantically before making a beeline toward the countertop. He lunged for the notebook lying there.
Behind him, Nicky yelped. “Yusuf!”
Joe turned around to find his husband carrying a package of flour in his arms, which he’d apparently been retrieving from the pantry while Joe barged into his workspace.
“Hmm?” Joe said distractedly, already starting to feel the lines slipping. Damnit, why did the perfect words for his poems always only occur to him in the shower? Meter, alliteration, emotion… he’d had it all at the tip of his tongue moments ago. He just needed to write it down before he-
“Hayati, you better have a good reason for standing dripping wet and half-naked in my kitchen. There’s soapy water everywhere! You’ve made such a mess, Joe, and I just mopped…”
Nicky’s lamentations continued, and Joe tried desperately to listen while mentally reciting what was left of the lines he’d composed in the shower.
“Joe?” Nicky’s fingers snapped impatiently in front of his face. “Are you even listening to me?”
The last vestiges of his beautifully crafted words evaporated from his brain, and Joe sighed, shoulders slumping forward. “I’m sorry, Nicky. I’ll clean it up.”
He turned to grab a spare dish towel from the cabinet, shivering slightly as a wayward breeze hit his damp skin. Before he could take two steps, Joe felt a gentle hand around his wrist.
Nicky maneuvered the flour package onto the table and leveled him with a mortifyingly discerning look. “What happened, love?”
Joe remained silent, unsure of how to go about explaining the absurdity of his current presence in the kitchen. The whole endeavor seemed rather stupid in retrospect. And it wasn’t like he had a line or two of breathtaking poetry to show for it, either.
Nicky’s eyes widened a little at his hesitation. “Are you alright, Joe? Are you hurt?” He ran his hands fretfully up and down Joe’s arms and chest, feeling for traces of an injury. Joe’s eyes snapped up guiltily, and he took hold of Nicky’s wrists and brought them to his lips.
“I am alright, amore. I mean it. Not at all hurt. Please do not worry.”
“You’re trembling. Go dry off and wear something warm, I’ll take care of the floor. Then you can tell me what’s going on.”
Minutes later, Joe emerged from their room in one of Nicky’s large, fleece-lined hoodies. He found Nicky in the kitchen, wringing out a towel into the sink. As soon as he saw Joe, Nicky walked over and pressed a warm mug of hot cocoa into his hands.
“Let’s sit on the couch?”
Joe nodded, following his husband to the living room and curling up next to him on the cushions. A small blaze was starting to catch in the fireplace. Outside, rain poured with a vengeance. Nicky had closed the window but left the curtains open. Joe smiled to himself. He had never met anyone who loved the rain as much as his Nicoló.
“Drink, hayati. We can’t have you catching a cold. See, I even added those tiny marshmallows you like.”
Joe took a large sip from the cup, sighing softly as the chocolate-covered notes of nutmeg and cinnamon floated over his tongue. He nuzzled closer to Nicky, feeling a little overcome with warmth and love.
Nicky wrapped his arms around Joe and pulled him closer. “So, are you going to tell me what prompted you to run out here mid-shower in the cold of winter?”
“I thought of the right words,” Joe mumbled into Nicky’s holiday-green jumper.
“Hmm?”
“For a poem I was writing. I’ve been struggling for days with a particular section and it suddenly came to me while showering. I wanted to write it down before I forgot.”
A comfortable silence blanketed them for several minutes. Joe took another sip of his drink, savoring it gratefully.
“You didn’t, though.”
“What?” Joe asked.
“You didn’t write anything down. You came into the kitchen, but you never even opened your notebook.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot the words. They never stay for long.”
“Was it because I yelled at you?”
“No! No, amore, that was well-deserved. And you didn’t yell at me, you just…emphatically expressed your displeasure at having to mop again. Which is fair, honestly.”
Nicky chuckled, and Joe felt his heart fill with warmth all over again. He set the empty cocoa mug aside and tenderly pressed his lips to Nicky’s.
The next morning, Joe found a whole set of brand-new children’s bath crayons in the shower, stacked neatly next to their soaps and shampoos.
___
The crayons turned out to be a life-changing convenience. This became clear just three weeks after they arrived, when Joe found himself in a position to send a completed manuscript of his current poetry book to his publisher ahead of the deadline.
“This has literally never happened before,” he told Nicky in awe. “I’m always late, if anything. You are a genius, my love, thank you so much for the pre-Christmas present.”
Nicky all but preened. “Had you told me earlier, I would have gotten the crayons for you ages ago.”
“Ah,” Joe replied a little bashfully, “I didn’t actually know such a thing existed until you got them.”
It was when Joe returned from a brief meeting with his publisher the following day that he and Nicky had their first actual fight in several months. It started, like most of their fights, with empty stomachs and a grocery trip oversight.
“Joe, there’s no fresh garlic in this bag!”
“There was none at the store. Use the minced garlic in the fridge.”
“What?!”
Joe rolled his eyes. “It’s the same thing, Nicky. Better, in fact, since it’s saving you the trouble of having to chop it yourself.”
“Have you ever heard of making roasted garlic cloves using minced garlic?”
“I have not,” Joe conceded. “We should make something else.”
Nicky knew he was being impractical. Obviously, there was nothing Joe could have done if they were out of stock at the store. But Nicky had been planning this dish for days, and had already promised Nile he would send her some as part of his ongoing campaign to refute her claim that “any form of garlic except garlic bread is gross.”
There was no way Joe could have known about that, either, but Nicky was in no mood to admit any such thing.
“Joe, you had one job! I gave you a grocery list!”
Joe turned from where he was stocking the refrigerator, brow furrowed. “I don’t know what exactly you expect me to do about the store being out of garlic.”
“I don’t know, maybe check another store? Was that the only grocery store in this city?”
“Nicky, I think you should go to your room.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s just…you’re hungry. And you’re clearly not prepared to cook without fresh garlic. So let me do the cooking, and you, uh, do something else. Outside of the kitchen.”
“Are you kicking me out of my kitchen?”
“Our kitchen, madre de dio, Nicky! I’m trying to help you!”
“Maybe you could help me by actually getting the stuff I asked you to get from the store!”
“You know what, if you need whole garlic so urgently, get it yourself. It’s dark and below freezing outside. There is no way I’m wandering from store to store at this hour to fulfill this baseless whim of yours.”
That, Nicky knew, was a completely justified response to his unreasonable anger. But it hurt nevertheless.
“Fine,” he whispered, grabbing his coat and storming out the front door before Joe could see the tears prickling in his eyes.
Joe stared at the door, astonished. Part of him wanted desperately to follow Nicky outside. Of course he could check a couple more stores. If Nicky genuinely wished for something, Joe would go to the ends of the Earth, scour Heaven and Hell, to get it for him. No amount of ego was worth knowing his beloved was out there, hungry and alone, in the frigid wind.
But Joe was also well aware that he wasn’t at fault here. And Nicky, his Nicky, rarely reacted like this to their disagreements; perhaps he just needed some time for himself. It wouldn’t be right for Joe to impose his company when his husband clearly didn’t want it.
Joe sighed in frustration. A hot shower would clear his head, he hoped, heading for their bedroom.
Twenty minutes after he had stormed out, Nicky was coming around to the realization that this had been a profoundly stupid idea. Moments after leaving the house, he had realized that he’d left the car keys behind. Foolishly, he’d boarded a bus for downtown, too irked to return home. Now, with the bus routes closed for the night and taxis staying off the road as snow clouds threatened the city, Nicky quietly admitted to himself that he was stranded.
The first weak snowflakes began to fall. Then the wind picked up, blowing several icy droplets into his face. Nicky shivered. Fuck this, he thought, pulling out his phone. His pride wasn’t worth causing Joe to worry, and it definitely wasn’t worth getting sick from the cold and creating loads of extra work for his husband. He was going to call Joe, apologize profusely, and beg him to come pick him up.
At their home, Joe let the steaming water soak through to his tired bones as he scrawled passionately on the shower walls. He was a little hurt and, if he was being honest, more than a little worried. But for once Nicky wasn’t here for him to talk to, so he threw his words at the wall in brightly colored crayon instead.
He almost didn’t hear his cell phone ring. Contorting his upper body out of the shower, he wiped his hands on his towel and reached around for the phone in his pants’ pocket. The called ID flashed his husband’s name. Joe picked up without hesitation.
“Hello?”
“Joe, I fucked up. I’m s- so sorry. I should never- never have spoken to you like that, h- hayati. Please- please forgive me.”
Over the line, Joe could hear Nicky’s teeth chattering as he struggled to get the words out. Joe shut the water off and clambered out of the shower.
“Nicky, what happened? Where are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m f- fine. It’s just cold.”
“Come home. Please.”
“Yeah, that’s- that’s the problem. I took the bus here. The c- car keys…”
Joe had put the phone on speaker and was already getting dressed. He shouldered into a coat and seized a large throw from their bed, striding into the living room.
“I’m coming. Where are you?”
“Uh, Mira Mesa Transit Station. S- sorry, kind of far.”
“Nowhere in the universe is too far.”
“Joe-”
“Just sit tight, I’m on my way.”
Joe drove like a madman. Luckily, no one else was insane enough to be out in this imminent blizzard, so at least the roads were clear. In just under ten minutes, he reached the station.
A figure sat huddled under the overhang. Joe barely managed to stop the car before jumping out.
“Nicoló!”
Nicky struggled to his feet. “Joe, grazie a dio-”
“Shhh, amore mio, I’ve got you,” Joe soothed, pulling a shivering Nicky towards the car and bundling him into the passenger’s seat. Once he'd climbed in himself, Joe turned up the heater and divested Nicky of his too-thin, snow-soaked windbreaker. “Wear this,” he coaxed, whipping his own dry jacket off and wrapping it around Nicky’s shoulders.
“No, hayati-”
“Shh, love, it’s okay. It’s okay.”
Joe wrapped the throw over the jacket, dusting the snow from Nicky's collar and tucking the blanket in. The whole way back, he drove with one hand on the wheel, intertwining the other with Nicky’s and rubbing his knuckles to warm him up.
“Shower,” Joe decided as soon as they stepped into their home. “You’re so cold, my heart. Go stand under warm water until you can feel your toes and fingers again. I’m going to make us some hot soup, okay?” Joe leaned forward and kissed Nicky’s nose gently.
Nicky nodded, too cold and tired to insist on helping. He had an inkling sense that Joe might still be irritated with him, after all. It would not be undeserved.
He made his way to their bedroom, draping Joe’s jacket over a bedpost and discarding his own clothes as he stepped into shower. Exhaling deeply, he turned his back to the stream of hot water- and froze.
A red bath crayon lay fallen on the floor, clearly left behind in haste. Joe must have been showering when I called, Nicky thought with a pang of guilt. But what had caught his attention was the shower wall in front of him. There, written in his beloved husband’s flowy cursive, was a poem.
If I could only read your heart
When your lips cannot translate
I wouldn’t let it break, my love
Yet if it does
Take mine
An eternity alone I’ll wait.
The warm water poured down Nicky’s back, relaxing his aching muscles even as tears sprung into his eyes at Joe’s tender, longing words. Nicky stared and stared until the steam blurred the writing beyond perception.
A knock at the bathroom door snapped him out of his reverie.
“Nicky? Are you alright? Almost done?”
Nicky cleared his throat. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
He shut off the water and dried off. He found the bedroom empty, and slipped into the pajamas and fluffy sweatshirt that Joe must have laid out for him earlier. Dry and warm and very cozy, Nicky felt his eyes well up again at the care Joe put into something as minor as picking out some clothes.
Even during their worst fights, Nicky never doubted their love for each other; their hearts had been one far too long for any such lingering uncertainties. But it never ceased to amaze him how quickly Joe forgave. How despite taking Nicky’s hurtful words to heart, Joe went above and beyond to make sure he didn’t suffer.
He took a deep breath to regain his composure, and walked out. But the moment he entered the kitchen, the fragrance of creamy red pepper tomato bisque reached his nose, and he very nearly broke down in tears again. His favorite soup. It was a recipe he and Joe had perfected together through the years. Watching Joe quietly ladle it into two bowls, Nicky felt something clench in his chest.
“Hayati.”
Joe spun around. “Nicky! Are you feeling better, my heart?”
“I am.”
“Oh, good. Are you, uh…” Joe’s eyes flickered to the floor. “Are you still angry with me about the garlic thing?”
Nicky crossed the distance between them in two strides and threw himself into his husband’s arms. Joe stumbled back, a little startled, but quickly pulled Nicky close and buried his face in Nicky’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Nicky.”
“No. No, Yusuf, please. You did nothing wrong. It is I who should beg your forgiveness, having treated you as I did. You've shown me nothing but kindness, and I’ve done nothing to deserve it.”
Joe shook his head in protest, nuzzling his nose into Nicky’s neck.
“I saw what you wrote in the shower,” he continued. Joe stilled in his arms. “I- I don’t know if you meant for me to see, but…”
“I forgot to erase it. But everything I write is for you, Nicolò. It’s yours.”
“It was beautiful. Beautiful, and heartbreaking. Forgive me, my all. Forgive me for raising my voice at you, for making you feel alone. Forgive me for walking away insteading of talking to you. And forgive me for dragging you out into that storm at this hour to come searching for me, it was beyond cruel to make you drive so far-”
Joe pulled back, eyes round with tears, and gently pressed his palm to Nicky’s lips.
“Stop it. Please. Don’t apologize for calling me when you needed me. Where would I rather be than at your side? I meant it, earlier. Nowhere in the universe is too far.”
Nicky held Joe’s hand to his lips and kissed his palm. A tear slipped down Joe’s cheek as he swallowed a sob. Nicky wrapped a hand behind his neck and rubbed soothing circles into the tense muscles there. After a few minutes, Joe's breathing evened out, and he lifted his eyes to gaze at Nicky with unguarded adoration. It would be so easy to just let this go, Nicky thought. But the knowledge that he had hurt Joe stood like a wall of glass between them, and Nicky felt it would drive him mad.
“Joe, I- I need to hear you say it. If you forgive me, that is. I don’t know, tonight has just been a lot. Please, hayati, I-”
“You are forgiven. You are always forgiven.”
Nicky exhaled, feeling the glass wall shatter. He kissed Joe’s temple softly. “Thank you, my love.”
Joe tilted his head slowly, dragging his lips up Nicky’s jaw until he could capture his mouth in a melting kiss. Nicky responded with ardent devotion, backing Joe up against the refrigerator and holding him there as they kissed again and again. It was only when he grew light-headed from lack of oxygen that Nicky pulled back. Still, Joe whimpered at the loss of warmth, reaching out for his husband.
“Nicky…”
“Joe, you have no idea how much I want to stand here kissing you all night. But you’ve prepared this wonderful dinner. I’d hate for it to get cold.”
Joe laughed, a joyous thing that swept Nicky off his feet just like it had the very first time he'd heard it.
“Alright, let’s eat. But after dinner we’ll cuddle on the couch under the heated blanket and I’ll hold you to your promise.”
Nicky smiled fondly, unable to help leaning in and placing one more kiss at the corner of his beloved’s lips. “Please do.”
#the old guard#joe x nicky#kaysanova#fluff#fanfiction#tog fanfic#kavi writes#I love feedback feel free to drop a note!#hurt/comfort without the hurt#so yeah just comfort mostly#hot chocolate#comfort food#blankets#yes this is how I'm handling the sudden transition to cold weather#author: is a grown ass adult#also author: makes *heart eyes* at bath crayons#all my ideas happen in the shower what can I do
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