Fills Post #2
Mar. 7th, 2021 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theoldguardkinkmemeThis is where your fills go!
Fills can but don't need to be anonymous.
Start a new comment for each fill. Don't use threaded comments for new fills. Threaded comments are for fills that take up more than one comment field, or for feedback/squee/praise.
In your fill, please mention the prompt you are responding to, and provide a link to your prompt in the body of the text.
Please use a header with your character(s)/pairing and a title and/or keyword or short phrase. (For example: "Just you and me: Andy/Quynh, Make-up sex" or "Between a Rock and A Hard Place: Nicky/Joe/Booker, first time DP").
Please also comment with a link to your fill in the prompt post, under the prompt you are responding to. Your comment header should include the word "Fill" or "Filled", so that those checking out the thread can find your fic/art more easily (For example: "FILL: Re: Any/Quynh, Make-up sex").
If you end up cleaning up your fill and posting it elsewhere (AO3, your personal journal), feel free to link the posted fic/art here as well.
Fills can but don't need to be anonymous.
Start a new comment for each fill. Don't use threaded comments for new fills. Threaded comments are for fills that take up more than one comment field, or for feedback/squee/praise.
In your fill, please mention the prompt you are responding to, and provide a link to your prompt in the body of the text.
Please use a header with your character(s)/pairing and a title and/or keyword or short phrase. (For example: "Just you and me: Andy/Quynh, Make-up sex" or "Between a Rock and A Hard Place: Nicky/Joe/Booker, first time DP").
Please also comment with a link to your fill in the prompt post, under the prompt you are responding to. Your comment header should include the word "Fill" or "Filled", so that those checking out the thread can find your fic/art more easily (For example: "FILL: Re: Any/Quynh, Make-up sex").
If you end up cleaning up your fill and posting it elsewhere (AO3, your personal journal), feel free to link the posted fic/art here as well.
Fills on Pinboard: For a list of filled prompts on Pinboard, go here.
Fill - Ad Aspera, Joe/Nicky, CW:Torture
Date: 2020-12-19 01:40 am (UTC)"AU where there's no rescue or it takes much longer to get Joe and Nicky out. Kozak is at first intrigued/vaguely amused with Nicky's way of standing up to her and Merrick, but then she develops an obsession with seeing this quiet, self-assured man who dispenses moral judgement and predicts their deaths completely broken."
The demon in a woman's skin comes with the lights.
Joe does not trust that this makes it day. She is a great many terrible things but most of all, she is clever. Not like Merrick or the thugs who serve him. The doctor is clever. She knows how important it is to control everything she can. Merrick expects the world to reward him for existing. His bully expects the world to cringe from him. The doctor expects the world to explain itself to her when she inspects it and be grateful for her attention.
That is why Nicky galls her like a splinter lodged under a nail.
Joe knows the lies that people tell themselves, the excuses that they make for their crimes and they have seen monsters like her before.
The doctor does not like to be reminded that she is a monster. She thinks she is a hero. Every time she tries to hide the truth, Nicky seeks it out. If he were free, Joe would take his beloved in his arms. Nicky is kind beyond the deserving of this wretched world. His mercy is limitless. For others. Joe knows the old scars that haunt his dearest heart's nightmares. Nicky does not trust that evil actions will lead to good. Not any more.
They are helpless here but Nicky still will not let the doctor see them as mice. He watches her with those clear eyes that see through to her very soul. Joe had thought she was ignoring those eyes until the sixth day when she cuts Nicky's beautiful eyes out of his face. The nurses flinch and Joe howls curses. Nicky does not scream but his pained cries rend Joe's heart in his chest.
He hears every sound Nicky makes. How could he not? Nine hundred years have attuned his very being to the other half of his soul and he would have it no other way. He calls to Nicky, lets his savage cursing come in Ligurian so Nicky will know Joe is near and he is never alone. The doctor does not look at Joe once.
Joe is not satisfying. Joe's humanity is already half-erased by his faith and the colour of his skin. The doctor needs to do very little to convince herself that he is a thing. Joe would be suffering more if Nicky had not put himself between Joe and the doctor. The doctor forgets Joe is there and she leaves him in the hands of her assistants who are more squeamish. They wince when they put the needles in and Joe lets the pain of what they are doing show. They don't like that. They start taking smaller samples, skipping shots and spending more time with the samples they already have.
They don't like being in the room when the doctor is there. Two of them were sick when she cut Nicky's chest open over and over. One, a lean young man who hadn't come back, had to hold the stopwatch as she timed his recovery. Nicky made no sounds at all as she worked but he watched her face through every second of it with the steady focus of the sniper. The doctor lasted nearly two hours before she snatched up a scalpel and drove it into Nicky's exposed heart.
Joe cursed her again.
He curses the doctor whenever she is present. Not because she cares. He doesn't care about that. He uses curses because what is happening is an abomination, blasphemy. The noise annoys her and Joe might do it for that alone. He fights his bonds because Nicky will never blame him for what he cannot do but Joe cannot risk his love forgetting even for a second that Joe is fighting to reach him.
When the doctor leaves them, she turns off the lights. It is such a petty thing to do; as if the machines do not light the gloom better than a dozen candles would! As if Joe needs their beastly lights to see his beloved. Joe saves his softer words for the dark hours. He is careful in what he says, no details that the cameras can record because they will be free again and Joe will not let them be captured again.
Still, the doctor and her monsters will not have anything more of them. Instead Joe falls back on the old ways. His poetry is clumsy for the first few days, the metaphors clunky and the rhythm appalling. He makes Nicky laugh again, the snort-chuckle that is the best that can be hoped for in the lab.
"The seas are endless in the night," Joe tells him on the third night as Nicky breathes through his teeth and his fingers painfully reassemble themselves. "All life fled with the light. I am a ship alone amid the waves that do not notice me. The stars shine for me alone and warm me better than the fires of my hearth. Kings and emperors could not pay the price of my joy."
"Blue is the colour of the Divine," Joe recites on the eighth night. He has to blink to keep the tears from blinding him. Nicky whines. His bones grate against each other and the probes, the nails, jingle on the floor as his exhausted flesh forces them out. "For the sky is blue at rest, the sea reflects it and the eyes of my beloved eclipse them both."
On the tenth night, Joe has no poetry. He chants Nicky's name, the ten thousand permutations accumulated over their long life, and his voice lasts until he hears Nicky's first gasp of air. Joe sees the tears in those beloved eyes and he finds a smile amid the shards of his heart. Nicky's smile is faint but it glows in his eyes.
On the twelfth night, Joe cannot speak. The doctor cut his throat so deeply, he thought she might be trying to dismember him. On the twelfth night, Nicky speaks to him. His Arabic is still flavoured by his mother-tongue but no poet ever made a language so beautiful.
"I followed my faith into hell and it made me a demon," Nicky tells him. "I followed you into eternity and it brought me joy. Every day is Paradise because you are there and I could live nine hundred lifetimes thus and I would wish for ten thousand more."
"Romantic," Joe accuses before his vocal cords have healed.
"I am a shadow cast by your radiance," Nicky tells him, smiling with his eyes.
Joe doesn't get the chance to reply. The doctor comes through the doors and her expression sours as soon as she looks at Nicky. She pulls on her gloves with a snap and tells one of her assistants to fetch the gas.
"Doctor Mengele would be proud," Nicky says and she slaps him.
Joe is left alone. The doctor doesn't want him distracted by his own pain, he thinks. As if there was anything they could do to him that would approach the agony of watching his soul being tortured. Gas is the worst. Nicky's always been susceptible to it though they've never known why. (Nicky is the doctor, the one who learned to tend too-fragile mortal flesh because he could not stand by while innocents bled.)
Suffocation is a bad death. Gas is suffocation and pain as the tender organs burn from within. (The gas had taken them twice in the Great War before Joe took Nicky away and they saved those who could be saved in other places. Andy had been irritated, Booker furious but Joe had been adamant.)
She kills Nicky twice before she remembers what she is supposed to be testing for. Her assistant has fled. Joe hears them being sick just outside the door. The doctor has to find her tablet and her stopwatch and Nicky shudders back to life before she is ready. He opens his eyes, showing none of the torment he must have felt, and the doctor flinches. Her hand tightens.
"Nothing you do will hasten our time," Nicky tells her. "Or delay yours."
"Well, we'll just see about that!" she spits and Joe laughs at her fury.
It gets the skin peeled from his forearm and four different acids sloshed on the raw flesh. Neither hurts as badly as the waver in Nicky's voice when he calls to Joe. The doctor straps the mask onto Nicky's face tight enough to bruise and this time, she takes notes. She still leaves with a pinch of dissatisfaction between her brows. Nicky is limp in his cot, oblivious to Joe's increasing desperation.
"Nicolo," he implores. The straps that hold him are a fraction looser and Joe fights like a raging demon. Nicky does not move. The machines attached to him whine in a shrill monotone that makes Joe want to scream.
He is crazed by the time Nicky starts to twitch and the shrill tone stutters. Nicky jolts, eyes flying open and Joe has just enough reason left to call his name.
"Sono qui," Nicky chokes, voice raw and broken.
Joe sees how he shakes and oh, how he rages. He could tear this building apart brick by brick and still his rage would burn the city that birthed it to ash! Nicky reaches for him, the strap drawing blood from his desperation and Joe's fury peaks.
The door flies open. Joe nearly topples his cot as he thrashes to be free. Andy comes through; almost as familiar as Nicky. Axe in one hand, pistol in the other. She is so familiar that Joe thinks he has gone mad.
"Joe? Nicky?" She sees them immediately and crosses to Joe. Nile is on her heels, cradling her gun like a holy talisman and Booker skulks behind them. He looks long enough to see Joe's fury, Nicky's shaking and then he looks away, shoulders curled to his ears almost. Joe notices it but he has other concerns.
Andy gets the strap off his waist and one arm free. Joe tears himself the rest of the way. He snarls her back when she would have gone to Nicky, his numb fingers clawing at the straps and shaking with his need to touch his beloved. He's still more than half-mad and Nicky, his beautiful valiant Nicolo, is shaking. He clings to Joe, foreheads pressed together while Nicky gasps a desperate breath. Joe cradles his head, trying not to hear the lingering gurgle as Nicky breathes.
"I have you," he promises. "We are free."
Nicky's eyes close tight and his heart shudders once in Joe's arms. Then he breathes out, opens his eyes and Joe kisses him lightly. A promise to tend the pain and fear now banked in that beloved gaze. Andy throws them some shirts from one of the tables. The marks of what was done to them must be obvious. At least to her.
Joe sees Nile tilt her head to read the label on the canister by Nicky's cot, lips moving as she sounds out the name, and he sees her gaze follow the tubing to the mask. Joe does not try to soothe the horror that fills her eyes. He takes a gun from Nicky who had it from Andy. Andy is the only one who dares to step past Joe, hand coming up to cradle the back of his head.
"Nicky?"
"Bene, boss," Nicky says. Andy's lips purse but she knocks their foreheads together and lets him go. She catches Joe's eye and he nods once. The doctor dies. They escape. Nicky is stronger than any steel. Joe lets Andy take the lead, Nile follows and divides her attention between watching for threats and watching Joe and Nicky. Booker looks at Joe but his whole body cringes away from Nicky.
Joe looks at him.
Booker won't meet his eyes.
Andy hisses and Joe turns his attention to her. They are past words and Joe's rage carries him out into the corridors. He keeps Nicky at his back, tossing the weapons of the fallen back where he can and they cut through Merrick's thugs. Joe is too old to take pleasure in their deaths but he feels no remorse either. The world is better with them gone. There are enough monsters in the world.
He cannot give his full attention to the task before them; his fretful heart will not allow it. Part of Joe's attention clings to Nicky. Being more than a step away from him makes terror tighten his chest. He shoots the one guard who almost gets between them until his gun clicks on an empty chamber.
"Joe!" Andy barks.
Nile is staring at him. Booker is worrying at the collar of his shirt. Nicky cups his cheek, touches their foreheads lightly together and hands him a fresh gun.
Joe swallows down the icy terror and focuses on getting past their enemies.
They are on the third floor when one of the office doors opens and the doctor steps out. Joe can feel the heat of his rage burning in his gut. He shoots her kneecap out. She screams. Joe hears Nicky's desperate gasping for air and something ugly stirs in his heart. All the rage and hate that has festered for the too-many days they spent on those cots boils like a volcano. The things that Joe wants to do to this woman scare him but he barely feels it past the howling fury.
The bullet punches through her head. Right between the eyes.
Joe looks down at his gun. Then he looks back. Nicky lowers his gun and Joe reads every thought in those gorgeous eyes.
"She does not get to hurt you, hayati," Nicky says hoarsely, voice pitched for Joe's ear alone.
"My heart," Joe says and Nicky's hesitance melts into a smile as beautiful as the rest of him.
Joe spits on the body and as they go down the last few flights of stairs, he reaches back. Nicky catches his hand and, hand-in-hand, they leave Merrick Pharmaceuticals to burn.
Re: Fill - Ad Aspera, Joe/Nicky, CW:Torture
Date: 2020-12-19 02:29 am (UTC)bello
Re: Fill - Ad Aspera, Joe/Nicky, CW:Torture
Date: 2020-12-19 04:55 am (UTC)Re: Fill - Ad Aspera, Joe/Nicky, CW:Torture
Date: 2020-12-19 05:05 am (UTC)Re: Fill - Ad Aspera, Joe/Nicky, CW:Torture
Date: 2020-12-19 08:05 am (UTC)Re: Fill - Ad Aspera, Joe/Nicky, CW:Torture
Date: 2020-12-21 05:17 am (UTC)Re: Fill - Ad Aspera, Joe/Nicky, CW:Torture
Date: 2021-03-10 12:31 am (UTC)