theoldguardkinkmeme | Fills Post #2

From: (Anonymous)

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/5194.html?thread=1705034#cmt1705034

First parts: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/694.html?thread=1879478#cmt1879478

Let's continue this here now then!

_____________________

It wasn’t even supposed to be a mission. Nicky had medical training, and Joe was nifty with engineering, so when they decided to join in humanitarian efforts at a refugee camp, and Andy tagged along, Nile thought her absence wouldn’t be felt too deeply. That they uncovered a child trafficking ring was incidental; that it ran deeper than they first thought was enough reason to have her back.

It didn’t mean she wasn’t worried all through it.

Something about the way Booker saw her off made her feel on edge. No, not something: the kiss. She hugged him, as always, on the threshold of his old building, and then he chose that moment to pull her into a kiss. Not a peck in the cheek, as she was used to giving him, or a press of lips against her forehead, as he sometimes did. A full-on kiss that followed her through the days away, and made her anxious to return quickly, no matter how many times she made him swear he would get help if he needed it.

It takes her a second to place the faint smell drifting from a couple of plastic bags slumped by the flat's door, but when the metallic scent of blood registers, Nile panics. The flat is silent and still, and she's immediately pulled to the sight of Booker's broad back slumped on the bed.

"Book, what happe—oh, shit!"

A scrunched up little face watches her from the bed, unfocused and unaware that Nile held herself on her feet by sheer adrenaline.

"Shit, fuckin—Book!"

He doesn't quite notice her despite her bruising grip shaking his shoulder, attention drifting to the squirming baby beside him. Nile's stomach sinks at the softness with which he places his big hand over the baby's little belly, motion soothing and gentle. His mouth curving in a little smile looks out of place with the deep shadows under his eyes, the days old stubble covering his cheeks; he smells of exhaustion.

"Book?" She can't keep the waver out of her voice, and that seems to do the trick.

Slowly, slowly, he turns his head and smiles. "Hey," he sighs, voice small, face falling, "Please, don't cry."

"I'm not," she says, sniffling a little, running her hand through his greasy hair. "You agreed, Book. I left because you agreed you'd go to the hospital if you felt something. Why?"

“They would see,” he mumbles, eyes drifting closed at her touch, “Couldn’t let them.”

Rationally, Nile knows the risks of him having birth at a hospital, at someone seeing their abilities when he was alone and vulnerable; he would’ve survived it either way. The baby, on the other hand, wouldn’t have had the same luck had anything happened.

“You put the baby at risk.” Her voice comes out harder than she meant, and he recoils. Nile does her best to tamp down the panic bubbling up her chest. Standing up, she props him into a sitting position. “C’mon, we can deal with it once we sort out this mess first.”

"She can't be alone," he whispers, eyes vacant and lost now she pulled him away from the cocoon he'd entrenched himself for the last few days. "She's too small, she can't be alone."

"She won't be, I promise," Nile answers, doing her best to keep her voice steady, but she's one second away from spiralling. He still smells like blood. "I'll just pop you in the shower and then I'll go fetch her, alright? She'll be right where you can see her all the while."

Booker fixes her an indecipherable look, but nods in acquiescence, sagging a little more against her. She maneuvers his considerable weight into the shower, leaving him standing under the tepid spray. Hurrying back into the room, she finds the baby exactly how she left her, gurgling a little and completely oblivious to the rampant anxiety racking through Nile's body. She's pink and round-cheeked, with nothing about her that should set her apart from all the other babies Nile has seen in her life, and yet immediately she feels… something. A warmth coiling around her ribs, an intense desire to protect, to cherish. This is family, she knows from the first sight.

Her weight on her arms feels right, the little squirming bundle swaddled in the starry blanket molding itself perfectly against her chest. Oh, Nile thinks, running a fingertip along a chubby cheek, she's so fucked.

She goes back to the bathroom, sitting down on the closed toilet. Booker peeks a look at them, already a little more present and aware, only to suck in a strangled breath at whatever is it that he sees; pressing his lips, he goes back to washing his hair. Nile can't help but watch him, and how little his body gave away about what it just went through: apart from a little flush and swelling around his nipples, he looks just the same, even though she only caught a glimpse of him pre bump—it was hard to focus on anything else except his exposed guts at the moment. Still, the sight of him naked and wet, soft cock resting placid between his thighs, make her lower belly tighten, and at the same time she feels guilty.

His voice accusing her of being there on some misguided alpha instinct to defend the vulnerable omega echoes through her head as she fixes him something to eat, which he accepts one-handed while balancing the baby latched at his chest with the other.

"Careful not to slip."

"Uh?" she asks, blinking up at him from her food.

"You're about to drool a puddle on the floor," he says, his smile barely a quirk, directed at his food, "alpha."

Nile shudders, the tone of his voice along with the sight making her head spin and she recoils. What is going on with her? "I'm sorry," she says, "I didn't mean to—fuck, I'm so sorry—"

"It's ok, I'm just teasing," he says, eyes fond. "I know you're not like that."

The day slips by between caring for the baby and Booker. He loses focus more than a few times, voice trailing off in the middle of a sentence; other times Nile sees him staring at the baby looking lost. He doesn’t slip once while taking care of her, knowing when she needed something a second before she made a single sound of protest, but still the dazed look comes back once she settles, as if she were a puzzle piece he couldn’t quite find the fit. The entire situation left Nile restless, and she didn’t even know exactly why.

At night, she makes no comment when he settles on the bed with the baby, even if her skin itches to come closer; instead, she pulls a blanket and a pillow down to the floor, out of the way but within reach if he needs help.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting ready to sleep?”

Booker frowns. “Why are you on the floor then?”

“We won’t all fit on the bed.” His eyebrows furrow further. “It’s no bother, really.”

Sighing, Booker sits cradling the baby to his chest. “Don’t be silly, of course we all fit. Come up here,” he says, patting the mattress by his side. Nile hesitates, a protest sharp at the tip of her tongue. “I know I teased you about…” he continues, closing his eyes, looking so tired. “About your alpha instincts and all that but… It would make me feel better, I think. Hypocrite, I know.”

“Book…”

“Please.”

Later, with an arm thrown over Booker’s middle, his breath warm and constant against her temple, Nile watches the baby secure and fast asleep over his chest, and thinks she’s very, very fucked.

____________________________

Oh we're getting closer to a resolution, but this is definitely quite long already lmao.

From: (Anonymous)

original fill post:https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/694.html?thread=2121910#cmt2121910

prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/3653.html?thread=991557#cmt991557

direct link to original fill on ao3:
Come Be Satisfied
https://archiveofourown.org/works/27222301

***

Now with a sequel!

tell you my intentions, do the things that I mentioned
https://archiveofourown.org/works/27395245

Seven years later, Joe is swept off his feet by an older, and more confident, Nicky.

Featuring: Joe collecting on good orgasm karma, Nicky in edible body glitter, and the beginning of a relationship.

“I know a little about that, being wanted for the fantasy. I like wearing makeup now and then, but people expect it means I’m always soft and kind – feminine I suppose, waiting to be ruined under their touch.”

“And sometimes you just want to wear makeup and ruin a hot guy?”

Nicky squeezes Joe’s hand. “Exactly.”

From: (Anonymous)

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/4108.html?thread=1309196#cmt1309196

Direct link to fill on AO3:
you smell like coconut and bad decisions
https://archiveofourown.org/works/27408049/chapters/66989203

The new guy in Nicky's share house is upsettingly hot. Hot when he stumbles out of his room with bed mussed hair, when he's coming back from the shower glistening in a low slung towel, when he's cooking and nodding along to music in their kitchen. Nicky is dying and spends a lot of time hissing into the phone about it in Italian.

Joe is just trying to get through the last year of his masters and, while admittedly he's been having a little fun with it, knows it's probably time to try and weave the fact that he speaks Italian into a conversation with his hot house mate.

From: (Anonymous)

Fill for this prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/4108.html?thread=1382156#cmt1382156
Hope you like it!

For the fifth consecutive year, Nicolò di Génova has won the award for the least accessible person in fashion. Nicolò, thirty-year-old Italian, is a model for brands like Mr. Porter, Zegna and Burberry. His physical charms shine, in the absence of his conversation, forced and in the words of his companions, pedantic. The model has not been presented to receive the award, which we will be happy to keep with the other four […]

"Excuse me, Joe?" A voice interrupted him, and Joe looked up quickly, closing the magazine immediately. Nicolò “call-me-Nicky-please” di Genova was in front of him. Joe noticed the moment his eyes read the cover of the magazine, (a huge photo of Nicolò with an unflattering caption) and he smiled awkwardly, embarrassed to be discovered.
He was alone in the restaurant, the last night of his work. He already wanted to return to the landscapes and the ruins, after a week of long and uncomfortable silences with Nicolò. And it wasn't for lack of trying on his part, but after the fourth time trying to speak to him and receiving blank stares and scowls, he gave up.
At the end of the day, Nicolò vanished into his room, like every day, and Joe decided to enjoy the free hotel meal, before traveling the next day. He didn't expect Nicolò to show up there; he had ordered food to the room each time past.
"What do you need?" He asked, and immediately chided himself, because his tone came out harsher than expected.
"I was wondering if this is you." Nicolò slid an old magazine toward him, and Joe wished the earth would swallow him. The possibility of an analysis of the environment through pictographic evidence, by Yusuf al-Kaysani.
Nicolò looked perfectly serious, and for that alone, Joe dismissed the possibility that the man had searched through the most embarrassing evidence of him as revenge; he would deserve it. After the first day, Joe had been reading in every spare moment all those magazines that criticized Nicolò's behavior, like an immature, cretinous insinuation.
"Yeah, it's me," he admitted then, eager to put an end to it. Nicolò opened his mouth, and his eyes lit up like a child in a toy store. Shit, was it revenge? There was no other choice, he decided in the end. "Do you want to sit down?"
Nicolò settled into the chair in front of him, holding a notebook and a pencil as well, which he squeezed tightly. He looked… delighted? That was strange, a lot, but those days had been too.
"I wasn't sure if you were the author, I wanted to ask you for a week but ..."
"What were you going to ask me?"
Joe reread the first parts of the article. It was old, ten years old at least; he had written it in college, as part of the extra credits. He knew it had been published. That had won him a bet, but after leaving university and radically changing his future, he did not think to find that text again. He didn't even talk to his friends from that time anymore.
"Do you think an adaptation of the analysis is possible? I understand that you propose the use of paintings as a method to see the change of the environment through the eyes of painters, but I wanted to know if it is possible to use the same postulates with another type of art."
Joe was silent. Nicolò had spoken more at that time than in the rest of the week. He looked animated, with a smile that seemed to be seeking out of him through thin lips. He was obviously passionate about the subject.
"What other kind of art?"Joe asked, hungry to see more of those smiles.
"Graffiti, my advisor says that your analysis model cannot be used for works that are not “official” paintings. I had almost given up, but when I saw your name as a photographer, I thought maybe it was you."
Joe's ego was getting dangerously high with every word Nicky spoke. But he knew it wasn't fair for him to be wasting his time.
"Nico-Nicky, I have to confess something to you," he began, and he wished, not for the first time since the beginning of their conversation, he had never written that article. "That job ... I bet with some friends that they would accept me a job that I wrote drunk."
Oh. Nicky's face fell immediately, and the man bit his lip almost cruelly, frowning. Joe assumed the conversation was over before Nicky asked again:
"But can I use it? My advisor asks for the author's permission to do so."
"It's a drunken job, Nicky."
"It's a good job! I just need your permission, please."
"Convince me," Joe replied, suddenly anxious, almost, almost flirting with Nicky. "Academically."
Nicky talked and talked, his hands moving in fine detail, and Joe found himself enjoying the questions he asked Nicky, that were answered with an abundance of data. It was his bachelor's thesis, and although his advisor had told him that he didn't have to do microhistory because he was Italian, it was determined. The works in question were graffiti on the walls of a school that had previously been a barracks and long before, a convent. The paintings portrayed a vision of society in that small town, which went beyond the history that the city hall took as true.
The town in question was the birthplace of Nicolò di Genova. Joe suddenly came across a piece of information that no magazine had come up with up to that point; Nicky was very private, and Joe understood that the gossip gazettes would want more nonpublic information.
"Nicky, can I ask you something?" He dared, hours later, when they were already settled in the hotel chairs. They had switched to Italian, realizing that Joe spoke it well and Nicky was not able to express himself the way he wanted in English. Nicky nodded. "You don't want to be a model, do you?
Nicky smiled softly, and leaned toward him, his eyes sparkling knowingly.
"I hate it," he whispered. "But pays the bills and I'm saving to quit in a couple of years."
"How did you get into modeling?"
"I modeled for an art class in college, someone told someone, and a representative arrived. I've never seen so much money together and I accepted." Nicky laughed again and Joe stared at the pink lips and white teeth, pulling away when Nicky looked back at him. "But when I finish my degree, I would like to teach."
"Oh yeah?"
"As long as you give me permission to use your work. I have the previews in my room, if you want to see them."
Joe opened his mouth and found himself speechless in front of a frankly amused Nicky. Nicky's voice had grown soft, a purr that reached his chest and left his stomach in fire.
"You're flirting with me," he managed to say, and Nicky's smile grew bigger. "So that I give you the permission you need."
"Not just for that, Joe," Nicky replied, rising from the couch.
Following Nicky, Joe took the magazine and threw it in the first trash can he found.

From: (Anonymous)

What it says on the tin. Have you seen the photos Matthias with small children? I couldn't resist.

The first chapter is up on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27416758/chapters/67013359

From: (Anonymous)

Prompt here: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1106.html?thread=93010#cmt93010

“When Nicky is away on missions Booker keeps Joe’s bed warm.”

Re-prompted here: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/6085.html?thread=2200517#cmt2200517

“Even though Nicky/Joe is my indisputable OTP, whenever I wish to torture myself (and my favourite characters) I go looking for Booker/Joe because: 1) it’s extremely hard to find, and 2) whatever the nature of their relationship may be, it’s very likely that one or both of them will eventually get hurt.”

Everyone knows that Joe loves Nicky, but—realistically—they’re not able to spend every living moment together. Andy would never allow him to bring home some stranger to one of their safehouses, just so he could satisfy his need for a bed partner. So Joe settled for a compromise he thought they could all live with—convincing Booker to keep his bed warm whenever Nicky goes away.

“I don’t think I’m the man you’re looking for,” Booker said to Joe, trying to remind him of the commitment he’d made to Nicky before he was even born.

“He’s not here right now,” Joe murmured, easily brushing off his objection. “Even Andy’s gone out to seek her own satisfaction tonight. No one else is here, but us. No one else needs to know about this, if you don’t want them to.”

Read the whole thing here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27419755

From: (Anonymous)

Prompt here: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/5880.html?thread=1966840#cmt1966840

First time posting here! Please lmk if I did anything wrong! Sorry if this goes on way too long, sensual ASMR-ing starts in part 3 :)

If you would have told Joe, 3 months ago, that his new, unbelievably loud neighbour would be sitting in front of him, totally silent and pliant and ready to let Joe do whatever he wanted to him, he would have told you, politely, that you were crazy. And yet, there Nicky sat, his back to him, his shoulders relaxed, and yet anticipation thrummed through the perfectly quiet room. Joe glanced at the monitor where Nicky’s eyes blazed back at him, a soft smile on his lips. Joe swallowed thickly.

How could his mortal enemy have turned into this? To be fair, mortal enemy (or mortal enemy with those shoulders as Joe described him to Booker and Nile) was a strong epithet, but what else to call the man who moves in next door and insists on playing music at all hours of the day? And moving furniture back and forth for seemingly no reason? And seemingly inviting elephants over for midnight parties?

It would’ve been manageable (if annoying), if it wasn’t for the fact that half of Joe’s income depended on total, complete silence. His ASMR channel had gained a loyal following and he had a community of people who depended on his soft voice and soothing words and the minute movements of his warm dry hands to find some comfort in what was an increasingly scary world.

So, two weeks after being totally unable to film a video without some interruption, Joe worked up the necessary amount of courage and marched next door.

He was taken aback when Nicky opened up. The man was not what he'd expected from what he’d only seen from afar and from behind (Those shoulders! He’d complained to Nile who was looking out over the balcony with Joe at the man struggling to carry a giant load of groceries. It’s not fair that a man so loud should have such nice shoulders. Nile had laughed, craning for a better look. Among other assets… Nile wiggled her eyebrows. Joe scowled at her. Judas.)

But this man, the one who opened the door, looked unimaginably...soft. There was no other word for it. His hair flopped over his forehead, just long enough to curl around his ears. A bit of downy scruff lined his jaw. He was wearing a giant holey sweater, an olive tea-towel draped over his shoulder, a pair of worn-in denim, wool socks. How could someone who wore wool socks make so much noise?

“Hi,” He answered with a wary smile.

“Hi, listen, I live next door… I…” Joe got distracted. The man’s eyes. His nose. The shape of his cupid’s bow. Joe’s fingers itched for something to draw with. Traitors.

“Nice to meet you,” The man smiled wider. It finally reached his eyes which lit up, an ocean glinting with the sun. “I was wondering if anyone lived there -- it’s so quiet!”

Joe squinted, all thoughts of oceans and suns gone. “Right, well, about that. Um.”

“I’m Nicky,” The man held out his hand. Joe huffed impatiently and took it.

“Joe. Look --”

“Sorry, I just have some risotto on the stove that really needs my attention, would you like to come in?”

And that’s how Joe found himself in the apartment of his mortal enemy, hearing all about Nicky’s perilous move -- he had no bed, it had gotten lost somewhere. How does one lose a bed? Joe asked. Exactly! Nicky exclaimed. Joe didn’t tell him that he was confused how Nicky lost a bed whereas Nicky was confused how the universe conspired to misplace it.

Joe surveyed the apartment around him. The layout was almost the same as his but covered in someone else’s minutiae. Piles of paper everywhere and so many books, Joe tried to read the titles but most were in Italian. There were plants in various states of decay -- Nicky explained most didn’t like to be moved but they would bounce back.

The kitchen was similarly chaotic, spices, beans, legumes, pulses, sauces, utensils, and strange appliances Joe couldn’t for the life of him imagine a use for. Nicky noticed his eyes roaming over the mess.

“Everything’s just… waiting for a home,” Nicky gestured vaguely with his hands.

The risotto simmered on the stove next to a pot of stock and Nicky tended to it carefully.

“It’s almost done,” Nicky smiled, taking a deep breath of the rich earthy aroma. He grabbed some thyme and started picking the leaves off carefully, while asking Joe how long he’d lived in the building, what was the deal with the garbage chute, and other minor neighborly small talk.

Joe answered in a bit of a daze as he watched Nicky maneuver around the kitchen. He was sure he came over with a point but what seemed important now was to watch this man elegantly tend to this small pot of rice. Gradually adding stock, adding salt, pepper, grating parmesan. His movements were fluid and easy in a way that made Joe wander idly if he was a chef or just extremely Italian.

“Ah,” Nicky sighed finally, after gingerly dipping a fresh spoon into the pot and taking a small bite. “Perfetto. Can I interest you in a bowl?”

“Uh.” Joe wasn’t sure. Was it okay to eat with a handsome mortal enemy? There wasn’t really a handbook on these things.

“It’s a truffle risotto, lemon, thyme, parmesan,” Nicky described, as if Joe’s hesitation was based on a dietary restriction.

“Okay,” Joe shrugged. Surely taking advantage of your mortal enemy’s cooking was a good thing. Ha! No leftovers for you! He tried to think evilly, but he could already tell his heart wasn’t in it.

“Great!” Nicky produced two bowls from a stray cardboard box and loaded them up, topping them off with some shaved mushrooms and cheese. Only then he realized he didn't have anything resembling a kitchen table or chairs.

“Uh, is the couch okay for you?” He asked, a small blush creeping up his face.

Joe cursed internally as he found it stupidly charming.

“Great,” He took his bowl and sat down at one end, Nicky at the other.

Joe held back an audible groan as he took his first bite. The rich, earthy flavour of the mushrooms melded with the bright flavour of the lemon and the balancing freshness of the herbs. Fuck, Joe thought simply.

“So what do you Joe?” Nicky asked.

Joe was snapped back to reality. He put his bowl down carefully between his knees.

“Actually, that’s sort of what I came here to talk to you about,” He winced as Nicky’s brow knitted together. Joe realized he much preferred the calm, relaxed version of that face. He decided to get it over with quickly.

“I’m, um, a freelance artist, and a lot of my work requires total silence and, um, actually I came to ask, if you wouldn’t mind, keeping the noise to a minimum, at least during the day.” He said, tripping over his words. “If you don’t mind.” He added, redundancy deflating any pride he had left.

Nicky put his bowl down on a cardboard box.

“Joe, I apologize,” He said, his tone totally serious. “I really didn’t know anyone was living there and I had some friends over to help me paint and things. I really didn’t know.”

“That’s okay, I understand,” Joe, bashful, picked his bowl back up again. Suddenly he felt like the annoying neighbour and that was just unfair. How had that happened?

“I promise to keep it down. I have some good headphones for music and after the bed gets here I will commit to furniture placement, I promise. I hate to think that I was disrupting you.”

“It’s fine, I get it,” Joe took another bite.

“What kind of art do you do?” Nicky asked.

“All different types,” Joe said. He always hated this conversation. Most people didn’t really know about or understand ASMR and to explain it always came out weird and slightly creepy. Yes, new hot neighbour, I make videos of myself whispering and sensually caressing random objects for strangers on the internet so they can relax. He stuck with his tried and true. “I do some illustration work, some audio recording stuff, whatever pays the bills.”

Nicky nodded. “I’d love to see it sometime.”

“Sure,” Joe agreed before even thinking about it. Nicky just seemed an easy person to give in to.

“I’m a grad student, so usually pretty quiet,” Nicky explained, even though Joe hadn’t asked. “Usually I spend the day reading old Italian literature. It doesn’t get more quiet than that.”

“I feel like Swedish literature has got to be more quiet than Italian literature,” Joe mused.

Nicky smiled brighter. Joe felt something in his stomach flutter.

“I think the Moomins would disagree with you there,” Nicky replied.

Joe giggled, he actually giggled? When was the last time that noise came out of his mouth. Nicky smiled even brighter and continued on to tell Joe how his mortal fear of the strange Swedish fairytale creatures turned into a bit of an embarrassing obsession. And Joe listened, enjoying the dramatic telling, getting distracted by the way Nicky’s lips seemed to cling to vowels, the way his mouth opened to the right when he was about to smile. Joe wanted him to talk forever. He longed for an easel, a piece of paper, a napkin, anything to draw on.

Nicky asked him about his most feared cartoon and suddenly day had turned to night. The sun set through Nicky’s window and a soft orange glow surrounded them. They continued chatting aimlessly, though their bowls were eventually clean. The sun retreated behind some buildings. Joe wondered if he should leave but Nicky offered seconds and Joe happily accepted. As Nicky refilled their bowls with the now room temperature risotto, Joe looked at the clock on the stove and gasped.

“It’s not one in the morning!” He said, in a sudden panic. Not that he had anywhere to be or anyone to worry but, how had he come over to scold a neighbor and lost an evening?

“No!” Nicky said quickly. “I haven’t figured out how to change the time.” He looked at the unassuming watch on his wrist. “It’s only 8:30.”

Joe let out a relieved sigh. Sure, it was a little late, but this man hadn’t literally stolen his ability to measure time.

“I can do that for you.” He got up and knelt down in front of the stove. In one swift motion, Nicky kneeled next to him. Joe was suddenly aware of how close they were -- their shoulders (those shoulders) almost touching as Nicky watched Joe go through the very involved process of changing the time.

Up close, Joe could see the details of a small beauty mark on Nicky’s cheek, where it was hidden in his smile and facial hair. Joe had the oddest sensation that he wanted to bite it, just nip at it. What. The. Fuck. He thought to himself. Just be normal.

But it was difficult with Nicky so close. So close, Joe could finally identify the source of the intoxicating scent he’d smelled earlier. Woody, herbal, earthy, like the sweet smell of a forest after a rainfall. And something deeper, muskier. Joe tried not to think about it. He needed to get out of there.

He left quickly after that, much to Nicky’s quickly hidden disappointment. After multiple promises of dead silence and many thanks for fixing the clock Joe rushed back into his own place and tried to calm down. It was surprisingly difficult without the ambient noise coming from next door.

From: (Anonymous)

Prompt here: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/6403.html?thread=2262787&posted=1#cmt2311427

Summary/teaser:
It’s going on three days since the gang had taken Nicky, and the concern amongst the team is reaching a fever pitch.

Joe is beside himself. He blames himself for the capture, distraught that he had been across the property with Booker at the time, rigging crates of illegal weapons with explosives. He’s pacing now, hat in his hands, hair wild, going out of his mind with an anxiety that Booker has never seen in him, but one that he knows intimately: the soul-ripping fear that accompanies a loved one in peril, made sharper and more jagged by uncertainty. Booker has lived with this time and time again, and the sight of Joe in torment makes his heart ache.

It also gives him the tiniest thrill of schadenfreude. Good. Maybe it’s finally time for Joe to suffer this, to fear the loss of the one he loves most, to gain an inkling of understanding of what it’s like to stare down the prospect of eternal solitude. Maybe it will make him more human.

He hates himself for the thought, but it curls around him like smoke, suffocating his compassion.

Read the rest here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27424117

From: (Anonymous)

For this prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/6403.html?thread=2278147#cmt2278147

_________________________________________

Nicky’s hand catches Joe’s eye.

They’re doing the washing and desperately trying to scrub the gore off of several favorite garments. Dabbing gently at the sleeve of a woman’s sweatshirt, Nicky’s hand looks especially broad.

He catches Joe staring.

“What, do I still have blood on my neck?”

Joe swallows. “No. Just, ah…your hands.”

Nicky glances down, then back up at Joe. Joe can tell Nicky knows what he’s thinking by the way his jaw clenches. He flexes his fingers and Joe bites his lip.

Nicky smirks. “This is the part of me you lust for?”

“It is a part of you I haven’t had in some time.” 
Nicky’s pupils dilate when he grasps Joe’s meaning. He lets the sweatshirt drop to the floor and closes the space between them.

“You want me to split you open on my hand?” he murmurs.

“Yes,” Joe hisses.

“Hmm.” Nicky bites his earlobe. “Then you’ll have to earn it.” He pulls away and resumes wiping the viscera from Nile’s hoodie.

“Nicky, how?”

Nicky doesn’t so much as look up. “Patience, my heart,” is all he tells Joe.

———

Nicky avoids him the rest of the afternoon. Joe isn’t even sure where he’s gone off to when he wanders into the kitchen, where Nile is stirring some pasta.

“Not mac and cheese again?” he groans.

“Not for you,” Nile tells him, defensively. “Nicky said you two were going out?”

Joe frowns. “Have you by chance seen Nicky?”

“Last I saw, looked like he was heading for your room.”

Joe thanks her and scurries off.

Their room is unfortunately Nicky-less, but Joe spots a note on the bed.

My love, it reads. Put on your best clothes and meet me at our favorite restaurant. Do not bother with underwear.

Joe’s “best clothes” at this particular safe house are tailored grey trousers and a navy blazer over a button-up. (He takes care to leave the top two buttons undone.)

Nile looks him up and down and whistles when he comes back down the stairs.

“Enjoy your macaroni,” he calls on his way out.

———

He’s already feeling a little worked up at the maître d’ him to their table. Nicky’s fondness for playing games of passion often gets neglected due to limitations on their time and energy, but when given the opportunity, he devises some truly tormenting scenarios.

Speaking of torment: Nicky looks devastating in a fitted shirt and jacket. He’s even wearing a tie.

“You look particularly ravishing this evening,” Joe says as he sits down.

Nicky smiles over his glass. “As do you, my heart.” The wine has stained his lips red, adding greatly to the overall effect.

“But,” Nicky continues, “I’d rather see you on your knees.” 
“That can certainly be arranged.”

“I meant now.”

Joe feels his eyebrows shoot up. “Now?”

“Yes. Under the table.”

The restaurant is fancy enough to have relatively long tablecloths, and it doesn’t hurtled that their table is tucked into a corner, but—

“Now,” Nicky tells him calmly. “Hurry, while no one’s looking.”

Joe ducks under the table. He only needs to shuffle forward once before he’s between Nicky’s knees.

With one hand, Nicky undoes his pants, and with the other, he guides Joe’s head to his crotch.

Joe takes him in his mouth. Nicky pushes both of his hands behind his back. Joe takes the hint and clasps his wrist, already frustratingly hard.

He takes direction from the tugs of Nicky’s hand, now tangled in his hair. He can feel his face getting messy from his own drool and Nicky’s leaking.

Joe starts a little when the server comes to take their order, but Nicky keeps him from moving away. He orders for both of them, somehow managing to sound completely calm even though he’s virtually fucking Joe’s throat.

Order placed, Nicky pulls him off. He nudges Joe’s knees with his foot and Joe takes that as his cue.

He resurfaces on the other side of the table. Nicky is a little flushed, and his pupils are blown wide, but he still looks impressively composed.

Joe doubts the same can be said for him, something Nicky confirms with a satisfied little smirk.

“Wipe your chin,” he says casually. “You look a mess.”

From: (Anonymous)

prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/5880.html?thread=2091512#cmt2091512

When travelling, Yusuf stops the daughter of the royal family from being killed or kidnapped. In thanks, the royal family take Yusuf and Nicolo in and offer Yusuf whatever he wants.

The Queen has seen how Yusuf looks at Nicolo (they aren't together yet), and that night when they are shown to their rooms, the guards grab Nicolo and take him to the Queen. She orders him to be prepared for Yusuf. This involves him being washed and oiled, with the hair removed from his body. They give him an enema to wash him out, and put kohl under his eyes and colour on his lips. They also pierce his nipples, and put a plug in him to open him for Yusuf. They put Nicolo in a collar and some cuffs.

They drug Nicolo with aphrodisiacs that make him desperate to get fucked.

The Queen then delivers him to Yusuf's room.

Yusuf doesn't want to take advantage of Nicolo, but Nicolo is saying that it hurts and please, Yusuf, fuck him...

When they fuck, top!Yusuf only, please.

originally i posted this here (https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/694.html?thread=2241206#cmt2241206) but i ended up rewriting and expanding part 1 in the process of writing part 2. so i'm posting the new part 1 here as well as part 2. whoops.

cw: kidnapping, dubcon due to magical aphrodisiacs

+++++

“Is something wrong?”

“Hm?”

“You look like you’re thinking about painting,” Nicolò says, gesturing to Yusuf and his untouched handful of seeds. In contrast, Nicolò’s almost finished eating his half of the pomegranate. His fingers are stained pink now; he must have liked it.

“I was thinking,” Yusuf says, “that I would like to take the place of one of those seeds.”

Nicolò glances down at his palm, halfway to his lips. Yusuf waits to speak, hoping that Nicolò will look at him, but he does not.

“I heard once that a pomegranate becomes blood,” he went on. “I would like to become the blood in your heart—be with you every heartbeat—be spilled the moment you die.”

Nicolò tips the last of the seeds into his mouth. Yusuf hears him swallow.

“Do you want the rest of them?”

“You were the one who wanted to eat them,” Nicolò says.

“I want you to eat them, my heart,” Yusuf says. He holds out the handful of seeds. “Then I want to kiss you and see how they taste.”

+++

The bandits are barely a threat; he kills the three of them without being wounded once, and helps their captive—a young woman with a long dark veil over her face—out of her bonds. The woman does not speak as Yusuf lifts her off the bandit’s horse and unties her. Once her hands are free, she reaches up and throws back the veil.

The sight of her face makes Yusuf’s stomach turn.

She is beautiful, yes, but it is an unsettlingly perfect beauty. She has not one stray hair, not one imperfection in her ashen skin, not one point of asymmetry in her features. She is wearing a dress made of a fabric that Yusuf, once a textile merchant, has never seen. It has a sheen like an insect’s, reflecting the moon’s light in red. Worst of all are her eyes: yellow-green, like withered leaves.

It hurts to look at her.

“Good evening,” she says.

“Good evening,” he replies. What are you? He bows his head respectfully. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” she says, and she laughs. “Thank you for your help, traveler. I am the princess.”

The princess of what, she does not say, and Yusuf does not dare ask. His headache, unlike every other he’s suffered since becoming immortal, has not faded. He has forgotten what pain is like; he can feel the hair on his arms stand up in fear.

“It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“The pleasure is all mine.” She leans forward, so close he can feel her breath against his face. It is cold. “Tell me, what is you desire most?”

(The bandits did not catch him unaware; Yusuf was dreaming of Nicolò, of lying between him and the fire, close enough to hear Nicolò whisper his name. The sound of hoofbeats in the distance woke him up before he could hear it.)

“Nothing,” Yusuf says. He would never give this dangerous, inhuman creature Nicolò’s name.

“Very well.” She smiles at him, as if he has just made a joke. “I must return to my party, but follow the road and you will find our palace. My mother and I will receive you for the night. Consider it my thanks for your assistance.”

Yusuf is glad that Nicolò is not with him tonight, for he knows he cannot refuse her, and Nicolò—foolhardily stubborn, eager to protect Yusuf—would have tried. “Of course,” he says, keeping his eyes fixed on the sand. “I thank you for your hospitality.”

“Do not thank me until you have received it,” she replies. “Very well. We will be expecting you, Yusuf.” Then she takes hold of the bandit’s horse by the bridle and swings herself onto it somehow. With a whistle the horse takes off, and once Yusuf can no longer hear its hooves, he dares to raise his eyes.

His meager camp, with the remains of his fire and his pack, is still there. But now there is nothing but endless sand as far as the eye can see in every direction. And when Yusuf looks up, he discovered that he no longer recognizes the stars.

He swallows. At least his headache has faded. Sword sheathed, he packs his few belongings, and sets off down the road. As he walks, he prays.

+++

Nicolò is dizzy. He thrashes against the guards holding him in vain. Their helmets and breastplates have spikes that cut into him, but he barely feels the pain; he only knows he’s been wounded because he can see the spatters of blood.

His thoughts run wild with panic. Where is he? Why is he here? Why isn’t he healing away whatever poison clouds his mind?

“Hold him down,” someone is saying, in a language he does not recognize yet does understand.

They pour warm water over him as his hands are chained.

+++

The princess’s words are true; the road leads Yusuf to a palace that might have been plucked from a dream.

it is made of white marble, topped with a dome so black it makes the sky above look blue. There are no windows. It reminds Yusuf of a tomb. A stone wall encircles it, with gates of silver that open soundlessly at Yusuf’s touch. The path between the gate and the palace doors is lined on both sides by gardens.

The fountains are carved from crystal into human heads; their open mouths endlessly vomit water. The flowers are a riot of color, every single one in full bloom, every stem covered in thorns. Oranges, figs, grapes, dates, they all grow on the same trees; the branches have bowed from the weight of all the fruit.

A pomegranate dangles at eye level, so that Yusuf nearly steps off the path to avoid it. The smell of the fruit makes his mouth water. (He thinks about the color of Nicolò’s mouth.) Against his will his hand twitches towards the knife in his pocket.

The palace doors are already open when Yusuf reaches them. So far he has yet to see a single guard or servant or courtier. He has yet to see a single insect, or reptile, or bird. The hall he enters is the same white marble, polished so well that it hurts to look at. All the doors before him but one are closed.

Yusuf goes through the open door and finds himself before the Queen.

“Good evening,” she says; she is seated on a throne cobbled together from what looks like human bone. Unlike the surrounding marble, it has not been polished, or even cleaned. She throws back her veil; her face is identical to her daughter’s, with the same eyes. “Welcome to our humble home.”

“Thank you for inviting me.” Yusuf bows his head.

“For your service to my daughter, who is dearer to me than my own life,” she says, “I thank you. Rest assured that you will be repaid as you deserve.”

Yusuf does not reach for his sword, but it is a near thing. “No repayment is required.”

“Nevertheless, debts must be paid.” The Queen gestures to a door on her right which was not there before. “You will wait in the room at the end of the hall. When your gift has been prepared, I will send for you.”

The gift is likely to be his own death. Yusuf can only hope that his ability to heal will be a match for whatever sorcery this woman, whatever she is, wields.

+++

Nicolò’s skin burns to be touched, and yet he struggles against his captors’ hands.

They wash him. Nicolò remembers Yusuf’s long-running complaints about his hygiene, then Yusuf’s skin wet from the river. The thought of Yusuf makes his chest hurt.

They rinse his hair as Nicolò remembers Yusuf helping him wash away the blood from the places Nicolò couldn’t reach. They smear scented oil on every inch of his skin; he remembers Yusuf helping him shave after Nicolò decided to cut off two of his own fingers. Yusuf scolded him for it, running the edge of a blade that had once cut Nicolò’s throat down his jaw.

They hold him down, pouring oil between his legs. They penetrate him—he remembers Yusuf lying against his back at night, both of them making excuses about the cold—with something long and slick and unforgiving.

She grabs his face as they collar him. Her skin on his skin stings. “You’ll do,” she says, smearing something red and sweet and familiar across his lips. Her eyes are wrong; they mock him as he tries to bite her fingers.

He’s tired from fighting. He still struggles as they drag him away.

From: (Anonymous)

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/4108.html?thread=1374476#cmt1374476

“We are very pleased to receive you,” the queen of Tunis tells Nicolò, when he arrives at her court, “but I am afraid I have poor tidings as return for your journey: my son is not here.”

“Is he...expected back soon?” Nicolò asks. It is more than poor tidings; he is entirely taken aback. He has journeyed here to marry the prince.

“I could not say,” the queen replies. “He did not leave word.”

“May I assume it is in response to our marriage?”

“Well, I certainly am.” The queen sighs. “Please do not take this to heart, Lord Nicolò; he has never even laid eyes on you.”

“I did write,” Nicolò says, shuffling, trying to remember if there was anything in that letter that could possibly have persuaded a prospective fiancé to flee him like an oncoming army.

“See,” his brother Marco says. “I told you that was a mistake.”

“There was nothing wrong with the letter, I read it,” says the prince consort, his fiancé’s father. “It was very polite.”

“My belief is,” says the queen, “that my son objected less to marrying in principle, and more to this proposal that you would rule Malta, at least for the meantime – he feels it is very small, and far away – and also...” She shakes her head. “It does not matter. In the meantime, you are welcome here on your mother’s behalf, and I expect Yusuf will return in some short time. He is not undutiful.”

“I did not expect romance, when my mother and you arranged this marriage,” Nicolò says, “but I cannot marry someone entirely unwilling.”

The queen’s eyebrows rise. “And I will not force my son, so we understand each other; but I doubt this is so final a refusal. He is occasionally impulsive.”

*

Nicolò has known that he is to marry Yusuf of Tunis for more than a year now; it has been agreed between their mothers, one a queen in her own right, the other the countess regent of Genoa ever since Nicolò’s father died when he was still in the womb. His oldest brother Godfrey is Count now, but twenty years of their mother’s rule has accustomed him to her counsel, and so he has approved this alliance.

“It’s not so important you couldn’t turn it down,” he had told Nicolò, “but I think it would please your mother very much; she and the queen are old friends, since that business in Sicily.”

“I don’t object,” Nicolò had said. “I am the youngest; I never expected to stay in Genoa. I only hope he is amicable.”

The plan is that they will live on and rule Malta, until Yusuf takes his own throne, whenever that may be. Nicolò has only visited the main island once, but it seems pleasant enough, and he would rather be there than away from the sea.

Apparently Prince Yusuf would rather be nowhere near Nicolò at all. He cannot help but feel it a little personally. This is in part because his next-oldest brother Marco, who has accompanied him to see him married, thinks it is hilarious.

“I know it isn’t you,” he says, still choking down laughter, “but the look on your face! When you have half of Genoa sighing over you, and then this prince runs away from you, sight unseen!”

“I don’t have half of Genoa sighing over me,” Nicolò says, baffled.

“Yes, you do,” Marco insists. “It isn’t your fault, and I know you don’t do anything to encourage it, with your priestly ways.”

Nicolò says nothing to that; he is perhaps not so priestly as Marco appears to think, although it is true he had considered the Church very seriously for a time, when he was younger. But his sister Bernadetta had already been allowed to take the veil, so his mother had gently discouraged it.

“We will have to decide how long we wait,” Nicolò says. “We cannot kick our heels here forever.”

“A week or two?” Marco suggests. “If he is not found by then, his mother is wrong, and it is a serious discontent; in that case we may as well depart until she has ordered her household better.”

“A week or two,” Nicolò agrees.

They wait. The prince does not reappear. His parents are obviously, and increasingly, concerned, but they do not confide anything in Nicolò about where he may have gone. Nicolò does overhear two of the princesses discussing the matter, through a screen separating areas of the gardens.

“I tell you,” says one of them. “He’s gone away to hide with that lover of his, live in a cottage and write poetry. He told our mother he was in love with him.”

“Would he, though?” says the other. “Wouldn’t it be better to try and meet the Genoan, and decide if he could stand the marriage?”

“Not if he’s really in love,” says the first. “You know our brother. He’s so good at being in love. But I think he really was, with this one.”

“Mother is going to scold him for years, when he’s found.”

“Mother has other things to worry about, with the Almoravids –” Nicolò loses the thread of the conversation as they move away.

“What’s that about the Almoravids?” Marco wants to know.

“It’s difficult for them here,” Nicolò says. “Empires on either side; that is why the sea-trade and this alliance are so important to them, I think. And just as good for us, which is why I will make this marriage if I can.”

“Perhaps you will be offered one of the princesses, instead.”

“Perhaps,” Nicolò says. He doesn’t really want a princess. Marco, annoyingly, notices this.

“Oh, no, I forgot. You would much rather a prince, if you could have one.”

“We all have our preferences,” Nicolò says.

“I’m not criticising,” Marco says, cheerfully, and Nicolò knows he isn’t. Marco isn’t always the quickest on the uptake, but he is fundamentally good-hearted.

Eventually it occurs to Nicolò to wonder if their presence might impede the prince from re-appearing at all. He tells the queen that they will go to Malta – if she thinks that fitting – until things are more certain.

“That might be wise,” she says. “You should not have to wait long.” She studies him. “Are you still prepared to go ahead with this?”

Nicolò squares his shoulders. “Yes. In fact I must.”

*

They leave on an afternoon tide, and anchor for the night shortly after sunset. Captain Nile is from Malta herself, and pleased to be going there now, even if she sympathises with Nicolò’s frustration at the circumstances.

“You’d think a prince would be better able to face up to his duties,” she is saying to Nicolò, when there is a sound of splashing.

“What’s that noise?” Nicolò says.

“Could be birds,” Nile says, but she puts her hands on the railing and leans out a little, looking towards where their anchor rope goes over the side. “Huh. It’s not birds.”

“There’s a man,” says Marco, sounding bewildered. Nile is striding towards where he’s standing, waving to the crew to stand by.

“Hello there,” she calls over the side, in the trading tongue; Nicolò catches up to her as she says it. “Where did you come from?” There’s a pause.

“I am just taking a rest,” someone calls back. He sounds like his mother-tongue might be one of the many kinds of Arabic they speak on the southern shore of this sea. “Before I continue to shore.”

“It’s getting dark,” Nile says. “That’s dangerous.”

“That’s my problem, isn’t it?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” says Marco. “Come on board.” Nile and Nicolò exchange a look; of course Marco had not stopped to ask before saying that.

Nicolò doesn’t bother saying anything, though; he’s too busy finding the rope ladder, coiled neatly in its chest, and attaching it to the hooks on the railing. He throws it over the side. The sun has set, and it is rapidly getting dark. He sees the man let go of the anchor line, and swim across to the rope ladder, but he can’t make out any of the details of his face. His hair is dark, and curly; well, that does not distinguish him from half of the crew on this ship. He climbs the ladder quickly. Nicolò reaches out to give him a hand over the railing. His flesh is chilled from the sea.

“Peace be upon you,” Nicolò says, then switches back to the trading tongue. “We saw another vessel passing eastward, just before sunset. Did they throw you off?”

“Ah, no,” says the man. “I jumped.” He is much of Nicolò’s height and probably his age as well, though his skin is darker. Right now he is sallow with tiredness, and soaked to the skin. He does not seem to be armed, or in any state to present a danger to the ship. It would have been the right thing to do to help him anyway, but Nicolò will allow himself a little pragmatism.

“Slavers,” Marco says, nodding sagely.

“No,” the man says, again. “No, it is – a longer story than that.”

“It can wait,” Nicolò says. “Nile, can we –”

“Someone’s fetching a blanket,” Nile says. “Do you have a name?”

The man hesitates, noticeably. “I am called Tayyib.”

“That’s nice,” Nile says. “Well, Lord Nicolò is right, your story can wait until you’re dry, but I’m the captain of this ship and I want your word right now that you’re not going to cause trouble for us, or you can climb right back down that ladder and keep on going to shore.”

“You have it,” Tayyib says, accepting the blanket a crewman hands him with murmured thanks. “I don’t mean to cause anybody any trouble, though I must warn you, I am not succeeding, of late.”

“We all have those times,” Nicolò says, clapping him reassuringly on the upper arm. “You are welcome with us for tonight. I will see if we can find you some dry clothes.”

“You are kindness itself,” Tayyib says, or that’s what Nicolò thinks he says; it’s in Arabic, and not the Sicilian dialet he knows best. He’s certainly from Tunis, or somewhere nearby. He goes on in the trading tongue. “Thank you. May I know the names of my helpers?”

“I am Nicolò of Genova,” Nicolò tells him, “and this is my brother Marco, and Captain Nile.” He is already turning, to see about the clothes, as he speaks; he cannot see the man’s face. He does not say anything in response.

From: (Anonymous)

For this prompt:
https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/6403.html?thread=2337027#cmt2337027

It's uh. Spiraled, a little. See y'all on the other side.

________________________________________________________________

It’s possible Joe hasn’t thought this through. He’s spent the last two days scrubbing every inch of his brownstone, and now he thinks it smells a little too clean in here. Almost sterile, anti-septic like a hospital.

He lights a candle in every room, hoping that the teakwood and amber scent will overpower the Lysol spray.

Joe looks at his phone. “On my way,” Nicky had texted ten minutes ago.

His stomach clenches. He’s immersed himself so deeply in the logistics of this whole affair—signing the paperwork, preparing Nicky’s room, shopping for groceries, cleaning his house—that he’s had little time to stew on what is actually about to happen.

Joe sits on the couch and takes a few deep breaths.

A man he has never actually met is going to arrive at any minute and move in. Joe is going to pay all his expenses and, as a result, get to do some truly deviant things to him.

It sounds crazy and also kind of sleazy, but Joe can rationalize that second part away. He’d done extensive research, and the site he’d found Nicky on was legit, and they spent days negotiating everything besides.

The notion that this was still crazy is a little harder to argue with, especially when the doorbell rings.

———

It’s possible Nicky hasn’t thought this through. He has a suitcase and a duffel that contain all the possessions he deemed either too sentimental or too valuable to part with, and he’s in an Uber on his way to move in with a man he has never met.

He reminds himself it’s just for the academic year. It’s not forever. He didn’t sign his life away…just the next nine months.

And he can leave, he reminds himself, at anytime, if it’s just too awkward or he can’t go through with it or—or if Joe hurts him, which is a thought he doesn’t really want to entertain, but a possibility he still needs to be prepared for.

Not that he thinks it’s likely. He and Joe spent weeks negotiating the terms of their…arrangement, and Joe had prioritized Nicky’s comfort every step of the way. Still—Nicky’s met wolves in sheep’s clothing before.

The Uber pulls up to Joe’s brownstone—and Nicky immediately knows which one is his, since he saw several photos of the exterior and interior once it became clear they were both talking about a live-in situation.

Nicky thanks the driver, hauls his bags up the the front steps, and rings the bell before he can even consider getting cold feet.

The door opens almost instantly, and Nicky is face-to-face with his sugar daddy.

The first thing he feels is relief—in the flesh, Joe is at least as, if not more, attractive as he is in his pictures. Then Nicky is suddenly self-conscious—how is he measuring up?

Joe had been wide-eyed when he answered the door, but now he breaks into a smile. “Nicky,” he says warmly, “you’re beautiful.”

The ease and earnestness of the compliment leaves him speechless. “Ah, thank you. You are—you’re very good-looking, too. It’s nice to meet you.” He holds out his hand, which feels like the wrong thing to do, but Joe keeps smiling as he takes it in two of his.

Then he’s helping Nicky with his suitcase and leading him into the apartment. Nicky drinks it in, though everything is exactly as advertised—lots of art, ranging from classic to contemporary, a small but nice kitchen, plush furniture and shelves stacked with books, though he sees a few that are completely empty.

“Those are, ah, for you,” Joe says, having followed Nicky’s gaze. “If you want, that is. If you’d rather keep your books in your room, that’s—I mean, I understand.”

Joe is clearly feeling out of sorts, which somehow helps Nicky pull himself together. “No, I appreciate that, thank you.” He manages a smile. “That suitcase is mostly books.”

Joe grins at him. “I’m excited to see what a philosophy PhD candidate reads.”

“Lots of Kant, lots of Mills, a little Singer,” Nicky tells him absently, as he ventures further into Joe’s home.

Joe points out his room, his office, the bathroom, and Nicky’s room.

“There’s no ensuite,” Joe says, sounding anxious. “Is that all right?”

Nicky stares. Because he has pride, he had not shown Joe pictures of where he had been living or even mentioned a neighborhood. “Yes, that’s—that’s no problem,” he manages.

Joe beams. “I’ll let you get settled? Unless you’d like some help?”

“Ah, no, thank you, it won’t take long.”

“Okay. Great. Um, if there’s anything in here you don’t like or want to keep, you can just set it outside in the hall and I’ll find another place for it.”

Joe leaves and Nicky looks round. The room has a double bed, a nightstand, a dresser, an armchair, and a small writing desk. There are a few art pieces hung on the wall but all the surfaces are free of knick knacks. It’s perfect.

The whole thing seems too good to be true.. At almost thirty, Nicky is long in the tooth for a sugar baby, and he hadn’t really expected to catch the attention of anyone who still had their hair, much less someone as young and handsome as Joe, who is only three years older than him.

What’s more, he’s increasingly confident that Joe isn’t an asshole—just a busy man, with some pretty intense sexual appetites, who wants an intimate relationship without all of the up-front effort.

The sex is what’s concerning Nicky most, and he only has himself to blame. He hadn’t outright lied to Joe, but he’d certainly let the other man believed he had more experience outside exactly two bad one-night stands, when in reality, Nicky needed to Google most of the terms Joe was using.

None of it had sounded bad, exactly, and Nicky knew an opportunity like this was unlikely to present itself again, so when Joe asked if he was comfortable with a “Dom/sub dynamic,” Nicky wrote back and said, yes, of course. Joe sent him back a list of specific acts and Nicky took his time looking up each one before agreeing to them all.

He hopes he doesn’t end up regretting it.

———

Joe sits on the couch and tries to read, but mostly just pretends he’s not waiting on Nicky. When the man in question resurfaces, they trade tentative smiles—Nicky’s is so small, just a twitch of his lips, and Joe wonders what it’d take to get a full-on grin—before Nicky joins him on the couch.

Joe sets down his book. While he desperately tries to think of a conversation topic, Nicky leans in and kisses him.

He spends a second being surprised, then several minutes just being grateful—because it’s really, really good, kissing Nicky.

When he nudges Nicky into his lap, Nicky goes. He has one hand on Joe’s shoulder and the other on his cheek, just the ghost of a touch.

Joe pulls back from the kiss to nibble at Nick3y’s neck. All that pale skin, his for the marking.

“You know,” he says between bites, “I had big plans to romance you a little first.” It’s true. There’s a new outfit for Nicky in a gift bag in Joe’s closet, an eight o’clock reservation at Modern Love, a bottle of champagne chilling in the fridge.

“I’m a sure thing,” Nicky tells him. He sounds a little breathy, and it’s music to Joe’s ears. He kisses Nicky again.

“I mean it,” he insists after they break apart. Nicky looks confused. “About romancing you,” he says, then has to further clarify. “Though it’s not—it’s nothing much, I just had a few plans for us is all.”

“Oh.” Nicky’s lips are so red from their kissing it makes Joe want to forget about said plans. But then Nicky smiles again, almost shy. “All right.”

Joe shifts Nicky from his lap. “Don’t move,” he says before hurrying to his bedroom.

When he comes back, gift in hand, Nicky is sitting primly with his hands clasped his lap. His face is hard to read, but Joe thinks he looks a little curious.

“Here,” he says, giving Nicky the bag. “For you. For tonight.”

“Oh.” Nicky blinks. “Thank you, Joe.”

If he’d heard Nicky say his name before now, he likely would have abandoned his plans and focused on pleasing Nicky so well he was screaming it. But he’s come too far to turn back, so that will have to wait.

Nicky fiddles with the tissue paper. “Do you—should I open this now?”

“Um.” Joe clears his throat and looks at his phone. “Actually. Why don’t you just go change? It’s clothes,” he adds hastily. “Nothing fancy, just—I wanted you to have something, from me. And then I thought we could go out for dinner.”

“That sounds nice,” Nicky says, though Joe has no idea if he means it. Sincere or not, Nicky gets up and heads for his room, so Joe goes to change too.

The restaurant isn’t fancy, but it’s got a definite air of hipster chic, so Joe changes out of his joggers and faded Columbia tee and into a fitted shirt and jeans. He laces up his boots and grabs his leather jacket, does a quick for any curls or beard hairs gone astray, and returns to the living room.

Nicky is already there, and Joe is not prepared. His new jeans actually show off his thick thighs and perfect ass, and the v-neck of his shirt shows off his broad shoulders. He’s holding the jacket Joe got him—fatigue-green, military-inspired—and standing in the middle of the room like he’s not sure what to do with himself, which makes two of them.

“You look really, really good, Nicky,” Joe tells him. Getting Nicky’s measurements over the course of their negotiations had been a brilliant act of foresight on his thought.

That earns him one of those elusive, small smiles. “You do, too.” He’s blushing a little. Joe can’t help grinning back.

“The restaurant is about a ten-minute walk. Is that okay?”

Nicky nods. “Yes, of course.”

He follows him out the door and waits for him to lock up. When they step down on to the street, Joe takes his hand.

Nicky doesn’t look at him, but he does close some of the space between them so they’re pressed almost hip-to-hip as they stroll through the neighborhood.

Joe chooses not to dwell on their mutual silence and instead fixates on the feel of Nicky’s hand, the heat from his body. So they’re a little awkward right now—so what? Soon after Nicky replied to Joe’s initial message, they’d established that neither of them had done this before.

Joe wouldn’t mind being Nicky’s fiftieth sugar daddy, but he can’t deny he’s a little extra pleased to be his first.

When they get to the restaurant, they’re shown immediately to a table so tiny their legs brush as they sit. Not that Joe’s complaining.

The reason this is all so hard, he thinks as he stares at Nicky across the table, is that they already know so much about one another, despite not actually knowing each other.

He knows Nicky is from a small town in Italy (though he still wasn’t prepared for just how fucking hot his accent would be), and Nicky knows Joe is Tunisian but lived in Germany until he came to the U.S. for college.

He knows Nicky is on track to complete his PhD this academic year, but he’s been cut off from his family’s money after coming out to them a year ago. Nicky knows Joe is an accomplished and well-off artist.

Nicky also knows that Joe wants to do all kinds of filthy shit with him—to him—and Joe knows Nicky’s onboard.

It’s just a lot to have already established on what’s technically a first date. Joe says as much, and Nicky looks thoughtful.

“Well, there are many things I still do not know about you.”

“Like what?”

Nicky leans his chin on his hands. “Do you like to dance at weddings, have you ever brought food on the subway, how do you take your coffee, do you lean your seat back on a plane, would you rather go to the mountains or the beach?”

Joe blinks. Then Nicky’s face cracks into a little smile, and Joe laughs.

“I love to dance at weddings,” he tells Nicky. “I have brought food on the subway but I was really, really hungry and it wasn’t smelly. I like a lot of sugar and a little cream. I would die before I leaned my seat back and I’m a beach guy.”

“Very impressive.”

“Well, what about you?”

Nicky sits back. “I have been known to dance at a wedding, with help from champagne. I would never bring food on the subway or lean my seat back on a plane. I take my coffee black and I get burnt, so mountains.”

After that, talking is easier. There are still a few lulls throughout their meal, but one of them always manages to end it before it drags on too long.

Joe knew he was going to like Nicky—he was an attractive, pleasant person who had essentially agreed to let Joe pamper and fuck him any way he wanted, so it would be hard not to—but he hadn’t expected to like Nicky.

This could end badly for Joe, if he gets too attached, but right now he doesn’t care as long as the night ends with Nicky in his bed.

From: (Anonymous)

Prompt here: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/6403.html?thread=2281475#cmt2281475

“Nicky in a veil! I don’t care what kind or what time period :3”

Nicoló di Genova felt the fabric of the bulky garment Yusuf had asked him to wear. They needed to enter a town, one controlled by Salafi muslims and full of Fatimid soldiers, for supplies. Unless they disguised his Frankish features, like his light-coloured eyes and the pale skin of his hands, they feared that he might be killed or taken hostage if his identity became known. Nicoló would need to cover all his features with a veil to ensure his safety in the presence of all other men besides his mahram—his escort—Yusuf.

Read the first part here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27474940

From: (Anonymous)

Fingers crossed I’m doing this right...
This prompt:

https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1106.html?thread=183890#cmt183890

Filled (or tried to) here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/27390718

From: (Anonymous)

https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/6403.html?thread=2334211#cmt2334211

Dear meme, I've been craving a feel-good fic where Joe loves being taken care of and spoiled and Nicky loves doing just that. It could be a 5 times fic, or for a special day, or just for no reason at all. His favorite fancy food, a vacation somewhere he really loves, gifts and compliments, his favorite sexy thing to do, if you wanna take it that way. Loved, happy, well cared-for Joe is an absolute wonder and Nicky takes genuine pleasure and pride in making that happen.

______________________________________________

5 times Nicky spoils Joe and one time he returns the favor

1.
Joe’s never been a morning person. He hated to have to get up early and he never understood how Nicky could leave the bed voluntarily, without necessity, before six in the morning.

As long as he knew him - and in his case it was a very long time - Nicky got up early and went out for a jog. And when he was back he usually made breakfast for them.

Joe yawned and stretched his arms over himself. He looked at the alarm clock beside the bed. 9 a.m. Still pretty early but he couldn’t stay here the whole day. Of course the bed beside him was empty and he hadn’t expected anything else. But just when he sat up he heard the door to the bedroom and clattering of crockery.

“Buon giorno, amore mio,” a smiling Nicky said, carrying a tray.

“Buon giorno,” Joe said, involuntarily switching into Italian, too.

Nicky carried the tray to the bed, shooed him over and sat down beside him. He placed the tray on his lap and leaned over to kiss Joe gently on his cheek.

“Caffè?” Nicky asked but didn’t wait for an answer, he just took one of the two mugs with cappuccino and handed it to Joe.

“Grazie mille, amore,” Joe said and took a small sip while Nicky shoved a plate over to him.

“I made cornetti alla crema,” he said and pointed at a plate with said deliciously smelling pastries. They were still a little warm Joe realized when he took one.

“You made cornetti? For me?”

“No, for the local fire department. Of course I made them for you,” Nicky quipped. Joe knew that Nicky always made them from scratch and it was a lot of work. But they were awesome and Joe loved them.

“You’re spoiling me,” Joe groaned when he took the first bite. They tasted awesome, as usual. Buttery, flaky and the custard inside was sweet and simply perfect.

“Only the best for you,” Nicky smiled and watched Joe eating his pastry.

“Ti amo, habibi,” Joe said and leaned over to kiss Nicky.

“Ti amo.”

From: (Anonymous)

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/5880.html?thread=1968888#cmt1968888

No bonus cause I couldn’t work it in. Title of this is ‘kiss me thru the phone’ cause it slaps. Also this is 2.8k for some reason. Idk what to tell you.
**

On a scale between one to ten of stupid ideas that Nicky’s had and executed - this was definitely an eleven, but, well… he was desperately in need of release or he would surely murder his boss in the morning.

“Hey stranger, having trouble sleeping?”

The voice on the phone is deep, accented, and husky with sleep and causes Nicky to pull the phone from his ear to look at the time. ‘2:45’ it reads in small white print and Nicky feels a wave guilt.

He sometimes forgot that normal people had normal sleep schedules.

“Ah, sorry. I didn’t realize the time, never mind –“

Nicky says ready to hang up and finds other means of release but gets interrupted.

“No, It’s alright. We’re already talking. Why don’t you tell me your name”

The man on the other end of line said casually.

“Nicky” he says without thinking then regrets it. People probably use their fake names for these things. But then again, he already gave his credit card information so what’s the point of lying about his name now.

“That’s cute. What’s it short for?”

The man continued and Nicky is genuinely taken by surprised. Usually people just assumed and then he had to correct them.

“Nicolò” He says and settles back into the pillows to let his eyes roam the ceiling. He had been sitting awkwardly on the bed until than. Unsure of what position he needed to be in to do this.

“Nice to meet you Nicolò,” the man on the phone said and it sounded sincere enough to calm him. As far as phone sex lines go, this is less anxiety inducing than he expected it to be.

“What’s kept you up so late Nicky?” The voice continued and Nicky couldn’t help noticing he didn’t give a name in return. He wanted to ask but wasn’t sure if he was allowed.

“Deadlines” He says instead and ignores his curiosity, “the time just got away from me as it does” Nicky answers and crosses his legs at the ankles.

His body started to ease more into the mattress. He still felt as if he was tied into knots but the man’s voice was smoothing and his tone lulled him to comfort.

“Did you meet your very time consuming deadlines?” The man asked and the smooth timbre of his voice causes Nicky’s eyes to close as it washes over him.

“Yes” it’s all he says as he’d rather listen to the other speak.

“Hm… Good boy Nicky” the man continues with a hum and Nicky feels a warmth bloom in his chest and cheeks as his eyes open. It really shouldn’t affect him so much but it’s been a very long time since he indulged that side of himself.

There’s a heavy breath that hangs on his tone when he answers “Thank you”, and the heat formed inside him begins to spread.

“Oh,” the voice said with a pause, “You like being a good boy?” The other asks and his sleep sinewed voice takes an erotic tone that floods Nicky to the swelling in his groin.

He feels embarrassed. He doesn’t remember being this easy.

“Is this usually how this goes?” Nicky asks instead of answering because he needed a distraction from being so turned on so quickly.

This stranger managed to touch on one of his most intimate secrets in under five minutes and he needed to process that. A part of him knew he was being ridiculous. What kind of person called a phone sex line but then got embarrassed when sex got involved. Him apparently.

“Sometimes,” the man on the line answers and Nicky hates that the lewd tone in his voice is still present, “some people like to jump right in, others like to be coaxed into it.”

He finishes and a silence forms between them as he gives Nicky time to answer.

Nicky doesn’t and the quiet lingers as he listens to the other man’s soft breaths and tries to calm the heat in his veins with reminders that he’s too old to be on a hairpin trigger.

“Would you like to be rewarded for being such a good boy?” The voice fills in the prolonged silence and Nicky releases a huff of air that he’s sure is heard.

He desperately wants to say yes but forces himself to stay quiet purely out of whatever remains of his dignity.

“Has it been a long time since someone gave you a treat Nicky?” The other man asks and Nicky inhales deep and stifles the sound in his throat.

“Yes” he answers barely a whisper and purses his lips in shame.

“That’s not fair. A good boy like you should have someone to give you what you deserve.” The man says sounding so sinful that Nicky bites his tongue to keep from moaning.

He uncrosses his ankles and tilts his head to peer down the length of his body and there was absolutely no going back now; not if his prick had anything to say about it.

“Nicky?” The voice questioned across the line as he sinks his head back against the pillow,

“Yes. I’m sorry. I’ve never done this before” Nicky answers and cards fingers through his hair to push away from the sweat accumulating on his forehead.

“Don’t be sorry sweetheart, you’re doing great.” The voice reassures him and it only causes more arousal instead of comfort.

“Do you want me to slow down?” The other asked with concern and Nicky’s shaking his head before he answers,

“No. This is… good. K-Keep going. Please.” his words catches and his eyes close again as he resigns himself to his fate.

“Whatever you want sweetheart, you’ve earned it”

Try as he might, Nicky can’t hold back the whimper that escapes him at that and he throws his arm over his face. Half to have something to muffle his mouth into and half to keep his hand away from his very stiff prick.

It twitched against the cotton of his pajama pants and the friction was torturous.

“You sound beautiful darling” the other supplied over the phone and Nicky exhales into the crook of his elbow,

“Thank you” he answers with a rough whisper.

“I’ll only tell you the truth sweet boy,” the voice starts and Nicky can’t find it in him to wonder how true that is if this is a service. Truthfully he’d mostly forgotten about that part when the other man started pushing his buttons.

The decision had been made that yes, he actually was that easy.

“How would you like to be rewarded?” The man asks and Nicky groans into his arm before answering, “Fuck me” he makes out like a secret and there’s low intake of air out of the speakers.

“I’d love to sweetheart,” the other answers, “You’ve been so good, I’m dying to give you my cock”

Nicky groans into his arm again, his hips pumping forward and staining the front of his pants with pre-come.

“You sound so gorgeous Nicky, are you in bed?” The other asks and Nicky nods before remembering the other man can’t see him, “Yes.” He answers, voice officially strung on the fire running through him.

“Are you naked for me sweetheart? I want to see all of you spread out for me”

Nicky sets the phone on his pillow to take off his shirt lightning fast and fling it across the room. The pants were harder as the pull against his erect cock made him groan and stutter. He kicked them off the bed just the same and lied back naked and sweating against his sheets.

“Okay, yes. I’m naked” Nicky says panting like he exhausted himself when he picks up the phone again.

“You’re so good sweetheart, are you hard for me?” The other asks in an understatement to the throbbing in his prick.

“Yes” Nicky answers fisting the sheet to keep from reaching for his member, “Yes, I’m so hard. I’m - It’s leaking.” He finishes, shutting his eyes tight.

“You make a vision Nicky,” the other man starts, “Will you try it for me? I want to lick the taste from your lips”

Nicky moans, hips thrusting into the air and his breath escaping him sharply, “Yes” he answers choking on the sound and finally getting a hand on himself.

“Yes…” he groans out low and desperate at the relief of having something to fuck into as he starts stroking his cock with a loose fist.

“Just a taste sweetheart, don’t come before I’m inside of you” the other man said in response to his panting and hitched sounds and Nicky remembers what he was supposed to be doing.

“Fuck… sorry” Nicky whines, stilling his hips. He pinched back the foreskin between his thumb and forefinger and swipes at the head of his cock to gather the fluid weeping there. Letting go of his hard prick feels like torture but he does it in order to bring his thumb to his lips.

“mmmm” Nicky moans low in his throat, tongue working around the digit and tasting himself, “hmmm” he continues taking his thumb down to the knuckle and pressing in. He desperately wishes he had something else in his mouth. Hard and heavy, weighing down his tongue and making his jaw ache.

“So good Nicky,” the voice on the line answered and Nicky moans again, sucking hard and digging his heels into the mattress.

“You’re so gorgeous sweetheart. I want to claim the taste of you from your mouth, lick all of you until there’s only me. Then kiss across your flesh to take it at the source”

Nicky pulls his hand from his mouth with a whimper to wrap around his cock again as his mind’s eye fill in soft lips and a velvet soft warm mouth sucking him down. “Yes” he breathes, smoothing the fluid over his cock and rutting into his hand,

“You taste divine Nicky, I want to drink you down to the last drop”

“God…” Nicky cries fucking up into his imagined mouth insistently. He was moaning loudly with the pump of his hips. He felt so close already.

“Don’t come sweetheart, I want to feel you first. I want your perfect hole gripping tight and squeezing around me when you do”

“Fuck…” Nicky whines high and pulling off of his cock like it burned, “please hurry up” he says forcing his hand to run up and down his thigh.

“Do you have lube?” Came across the phone.

“No. I mean yes. But I don’t need it” He answers pinching his thigh to back himself off of the ledge,

“I’m big sweetheart, you need a good stretch to take me” the other man answers and Nicky groans at the prospect.

“I don’t need lube. I. um. I like it. The… h-how it feels. And then, and after.” Nicky confesses feeling as timid as when he first started.

“My good boy likes a little pain?” The voice asks in that sinful tone and Nicky is nodding fast as his hips raises again,

“Is that okay?” He asks nervously through a soft moan. He’s been with men where it wasn’t, which was nice in its own way but Nicky was quite aware of what he could handle and what he couldn’t.

“It’s perfect Nicky,” the other says and the curl around his name makes him reach for his cock for a few pulls and a tightening squeeze at the base.

“I don’t think I could be gentle with you sweetheart,” breathless words continue through the speaker, “You’ve made me want you so badly. I just want to hold you down and fuck you until you cry”

Nicky squeezes harder, a whimpered “yes” falling from his lips as he staves off his orgasm, “please. Fuck. I don’t even know your name” the words came out all at once, not at all intentional but Nicky was too far gone to care.

“It’s Joe sweetheart” The other man answers with a hint of amusement and Nicky falls back into the mattress.

“Joe” Nicky repeats running fingers up his chest to tweak at his nipples, “please Joe, I want to feel you all week.” Nicky finishes, pinching hard and moaning into the phone.

“Get your fingers wet for me Nicky, as many as you like” Joe says, his rich voice deepening with a growl and Nicky obliges. He opts for only two and plunged into his mouth, sucking loudly and heaving needy cries around them.

“Just like that darling, You’re going to work them in when you’re done. One by one for me”

Nicky sets the phone near his head, deciding he needs both hands free, and wedges his fluffiest pillow underneath his hip to help with his positioning. He bends his left knee and flattens his foot against the bed for leverage in pushing up.

His fingers are coated with saliva when he pulls them out lewdly and circles his hole with the middle. The first touch feels cold on his overheated skin and Nicky lets out a gasp of surprise.

“Did you start fucking your hole sweetheart?” Joe asks huskily and Nicky bites his tongue with a whimper as he pushes in and his hips pistons up.

He releases a shuddered breath, working the digit all the way through, the saliva coating doing next to thing to help the friction of rough skin against the tight channel.

He’s quiet save some labored puffs of air as he works himself in and out, slowly then climbing in pace as it becomes easier each time.

“You sound so perfect Nicky,” Joe is saying into his ear and sounds just as breathless, “Do another now sweetheart, you’re so good, you’re ready for another”

The sound of him combined with his words has Nicky adding another finger with a whine, eyes closing at the burn of his rim stretching to accommodate.

“Ahh!…” he makes out when he tries to breathe out and there’s a soft muttering in another language through the speaker,

“Keep going sweetheart” Joe says voice heavy with so much want that Nicky is scrambling his free hand across his chest and nipples to keep from pulling at this leaking cock.

He’s unable to keep quiet against the friction as he’s plunging his fingers deep and moving his hips in tandem - his arm becoming sore with the awkwardness of the stretch.

“Feels good darling?” Joe asks and Nicky can hear faint rustling in the background like Joe is moving around.

“Yes” Nicky moans, fingers pushing to the knuckle and prodding for his prostate, “hurts?” Joe asks and there’s the definite catch of his breath that makes Nicky bites his lip and whine a pleased “yes”.

“Talk to me sweetheart,” Joe says with an answering groan just as Nicky finds it and stars explodes behind his eye lids.

He screams out as his upper body bends off the bed and his muscles clench down, “Oh.” he’s gasping coming down from the sudden burst of pleasure and prodding gently at the soft tissue with keening whimpers.

“So gorgeous,” Joe is saying in the speaker and Nicky can hear the frantic slide of skin against skin.

It shoots right through him, “Fuck…” Nicky curses reaching for his own cock and plunging fingers in fast into his sore hole to match the pace of the other man.

“Harder Nicky,” Joe’s tone is gravelly when he speaks and Nicky fucks himself harder on his fingers, cries rising and echoing louder in the darkened room.

“Yes, sweetheart” Joe groans, “hard like that. Want to fuck you hard until your throat is sore and your voice is gone from calling my name”

“Joe” Nicky’s whimpering, his body arched in a tight ball as he works his prostate and his cock wildly, “Please” he cries desperate to break,

“Fuck sweetheart, anything you want” Joe answers rambling, “anything Nicky. You’re so good sweet boy. You can have anything you want. Come for me Nicky. I want my good boy to come on my cock”

Nicky’s flexed to cramping when his orgasm hits - balls pulsing painfully as ropes of thick come shoot up to his chest. His insides clenched so tightly that he leaves his fingers in while he strips his cock raw.

He’s vaguely aware of his loud moaning interspersed with words and Joe’s own “Whatever you want, fuck” grunting in the background when he drops against the mattress and his prick becomes too sensitive to continue tugging on his own.

His hand falls away with heavy breaths and his muscles go slack into the sheets allowing him to pull his cramping wrist free.

There’s labored breathing weaving through the blood rushing in his ears and Nicky lets the tempo lull his eyes close.

**

Naturally he wakes up to his alarm blaring.

Unnaturally, he’s covered with dried semen and there’s an alert on his phone stating his card was refunded. He’s surprised and blushing.

Then he reads a text in Italian from a number he doesn’t recognize saying “I’m flattered. Let’s discuss those very nice things you said”.

Nicky is also very unnaturally late for work that morning.

From: (Anonymous)

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/6403.html?thread=2361347#cmt2361347

[I sincerely hope someone writes the super-sexy ovary-exploding man-handling version of this prompt, but in the meantime, I offer crack.]

-------

If it weren’t for Nicky’s decades as a sniper, he might have tensed or lowered his binoculars. Instead, he took a steady breath and said, “Code Pink.”

Joe froze beside him on the small tattered sofa they’d set just inside the third-story window for surveillance.

“Shit,” Andy cursed from the cafe across the street. With any luck, she’d had the forethought to lift her mostly empty coffee cup to hide her mouth. “Fuck. Now? Where?”

Nicky didn’t stop his search for the target, but Joe brushed against him in the familiar motions of removing his headset and scooping up his own binoculars.

“I see it,” Joe said. “200 meters to your left, boss.”

“Nicky, keep scanning for the target. Joe, eyes on the Code Pink,” Andy snapped. Neither of them pointed out they were already doing that. Code Pink’s were stressful for everyone. “Booker, where are you?”

“In the little art gallery,” Booker said, bewildered. That was where he was supposed to be.

“I’m still with him, if you’re asking,” Nile said. “What’s a Code Pink?”

Andy ignored her. “Quynh?”

“At the fountain.” Quynh’s voice had a trace of amusement Nicky wasn’t sure Booker and Nile would catch. “No sign of the target.”

“Everyone stay ready,” Andy ordered. Nicky let his methodical search pattern trace over her and found she’d been quick enough to lift her phone to her ear as cover. “This could be our only window to plant a bug on him.”

“Code Pink’s moving toward the ice cream parlor,” Joe reported. “275 meters to your left. Quynh’s closer now.”

“Ice cream?” Nile asked, “What—?”

“I have eyes on target,” Nicky said. “Approaching from the Southeast and closing on Nile and Booker’s position.”

“Understood.” Nile instantly snapped back into her mission mode. “We’re on it.”
“Quynh…” Andy started.

“Under control,” Quynh said, her amusement more obvious this time.

Joe’s free hand swept over Nicky’s knee and squeezed in a way that normally felt comforting, but at least they were on the same page. The milk run portion of this mission was about to go bad.

“Eyes on target,” Booker said. “Closing the distance.”

“Code Pink’s moving,” Joe said. “Fuck. On an intercept course.”

Nicky stayed silent, still tracking the target’s path. He and Joe were too far away to stop the inevitable.

“Eyes on Code Pink.” Quynh was too serene for Nicky’s nerves.

“Approaching target,” Nile said.

“Providing distraction,” Booker said, “in ten, nine — oh look, how cute. Hello, little one. What beautiful curls you— ah!”

Quynh’s shriek burst through the comms like static, and her perfect tackle sent Booker sprawling across the cobblestones. His head hit hard, but she came up shouting.

“Did you think I wouldn’t find out about that woman? My father told me not to trust you, but I told him he was wrong, and now—” She sounded close to tears. “How could you?”

“Come on, Book,” Andy murmured. “Fight back.”

“Quynh.” Booker pushed up on his elbow and switched to Greek. “What was that? That wasn’t the plan.”

“I loved you!” Quynh shouted before switching to Greek as well. “You’re absolutely dreadful at this.”

“A little warning would’ve helped! Am I bleeding?”

After living with various combinations of these people for so long, it was easy for Nicky to tune out their shouting and focus on the mission.

The target skirted around the growing crowd, brushed past Nile, and continued down the street.

“Success,” Nile rushed to say in a gap between the shouting.

“Going dark,” Nicky said and Joe echoed him, neither caring if the others heard. They’d figure it out eventually.

Nicky set his binoculars and earpiece aside and twisted to drop his forehead to Joe’s shoulder. Joe pressed a dry kiss against the top of his head.

“We did it,” Joe murmured in his hair.

“It was closer than it should’ve been.”

“Yeah, but Booker didn’t get all the way to the child, and Nile didn’t blow the mission distracted with his…”

Nicky shuddered, “Dad Vibes, she calls them.”

Joe snorted and pulled him closer. “And if those seconds of contact were enough to make Nile jump him at the safehouse, maybe they’ll be finished by the time we rendezvous.”

The tension of the close call leeched out of Nicky’s shoulders, and he rolled his head to meet Joe’s eyes. “What will we do in the meantime?”

Joe’s grin said exactly how he hoped to spend the hour before they could safely leave the building.

From: (Anonymous)

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/4108.html?thread=1301516#cmt1301516

I’d love for some Booker/Quynh/Andy smut but I’m down with either Booker/Quynh or Booker/Andy. So long as Booker absolutely gets his shit rocked by either of these powerful ladies!

——————————————

Booker stretched lazily in the bed, eyes still closed and brain just barely coming online, and then all of a sudden something pulled sharply at his wrist, cold metal waking him up quickly. His eyes flew open, his wrists jerked, and he locked eyes with Quynh, who was sitting smirking on the edge of his bed, the key to the handcuffs she had locked him to the headboard with dangling from her fingers.

“Hello, pet,” she greeted him, always with that edge in her voice, like she was just on the verge of being feral even though it had been seven years since she had escaped from her watery prison. “Hi, Quynh,” he replied, blinking his eyes a little sleepily and relaxing in his bonds, his cock already starting to chub up in his sleep pants as he knew what she would want.

It was a strange dynamic that they had fallen into, but he had no complaints. It had started with decades of a casual friends-with-benefits relationship with Andy, of offering himself for her pleasure whenever she was bored or horny. Then, a few months into his exile, Quynh showed up in his lonely apartment, killed him at least a dozen times, tortured him to try and get him to tell her where Andy was, and then finally quirked her head, stroking a finger down his cheek. “You make such pretty noises, sad boy,” she had told him, and he couldn’t get his mouth on her fast enough.

From those slightly dubious beginnings, the three of them had built a nice thing, quirky but one that worked for them. Booker was still technically in exile—even though they had all mostly forgiven him after a few years, they had agreed that a little time apart to heal wasn’t a bad idea for anyone—but “exile” had become a lot more flexible over the years. He lived alone, minded his own business most of the time, except sometimes one of the team would call him for backup on a mission, or just to chat. And sometimes he would wake up and Andy and Quynh would have let themselves in with the spare key he had made for them, hoping he could scratch their itch.

Quynh moved to straddle him, and he grunted as her weight settled on him. She was wearing one of his shirts and nothing else, he noted, and wondered how deeply he must have been sleeping to not hear her rifling through his closet. “Good to see you again, pumpkin,” she remarked, and he stifled a smile because she always enjoyed coming up with random pet names for him. Her nails scratched lightly down his bare chest, her fingers tweaking one nipple, and he groaned. “Can I have a kiss hello?” He asked plaintively, and she laughed, bending forward to kiss him, her hair brushing like silk over his shoulders.

“Have you been good for me?” She whispered, turning to nip at his ear, tongue laving over the lobe, and he groaned. “Yes,” he pleaded, but she didn’t look satisfied. She scooted down his thighs, just enough that she could grab his cock through his sleep pants, rubbing hard a few times over the bulge. “Are you sure? I know you can be a slut sometimes,” she said casually, enjoying how his length jolted under her fingers at her words. “You’d do anything to get your dick wet, wouldn’t you?” She asked, squeezing his cock so hard it was just on the edge of pain, and he shook his head frantically. “Only want you and Andy,” he pleaded. “I promise, I...I haven’t been with anyone else since last time.” He was telling the truth—he had always loved sex, but somehow these two had ruined him for anyone else, and it wasn’t a great hardship to wait a month or so in between their surprise visits, taking the edge off by jerking off to memories of their last time together.

“Hmm,” Quynh said noncommittally, but she let go of his cock so that she could pull his sleep pants down. “Andy’s taking a shower,” she explained, grinding down against him a few times, his cock nearly slipping inside her but then sliding through her slick folds instead. “Told her I would warm you up for her.” She grasped his length in her hand, lining him up and sinking down on him with a groan. “Mm, I missed that,” she remarked as she began riding him at an excruciatingly slow pace. “Andy and I have some good toys, but it’s just not the same.”

It was agony to be unable to touch her, to have to just lie there and take it, to watch her strong thighs working as she rose and fell on him, her thin frame swallowed up in his shirt. “Though humanity has gotten much more creative with their sex toys since I went in the water,” she commented casually, seemingly unaffected by how she was fucking herself on his length. “Back then, we pretty much just had some cocks that someone carved out of wood. But yours is much nicer, cupcake,” she assured him, and looked up with a smile when the door creaked open.

Andy hadn’t bothered to get dressed again after her shower, and Booker’s mouth watered as he saw her standing there nude in the doorway, little droplets of water running down her skin. “Hi boss,” he managed to choke out, as calmly as he could while he was buried balls deep inside her wife. “Hi yourself, Book,” she greeted him, leaning down to press a kiss to the tip of his nose before sitting down at the foot of the bed.

Quynh lifted herself all the way off of Booker’s cock, earning a plaintive whine, but she only turned around, repositioning herself so that she could face Andy. “Oh yes,” he gasped out as he felt that wet heat surrounding his length again. If he missed seeing Quynh’s face, he did appreciate how in this position he could watch as she kissed Andy deeply. “Quynh,” he begged. “Please, faster,” he urged her, but she just laughed, rolling her hips slowly. “I want to take my time and savour it,” she explained. Andy was busy unbuttoning the top few buttons of the shirt Quynh was wearing, sliding her hand in to cup her wife’s breast. That earned a soft “oh,” from Quynh, who clenched around Booker as Andy rubbed her sensitive nipple. “Please keep doing that, boss,” Booker pleaded, voice strained.

Laying there watching them, he felt like nothing more than a toy. He felt like he couldn’t take credit for Quynh’s whimpers and moans; each soft sigh drawn from her lips belonged to Andy, who had worked both hands into Quynh’s shirt and was trailing her fingers down her breasts and her sides as they kissed filthily. He might be the one inside her, but it was Andy’s name that Quynh gasped out, her hands tangled in Andy’s hair as her lover kissed down her neck and nosed at her collarbone. He was just something that they were using to make love to each other, he felt, and it drove him wild with desire.

When Andy worked a hand down between Quynh’s legs, rubbing at where she and Booker were joined, Quynh jolted, giving Booker a gorgeous view of the way her back arched, her head thrown back on pleasure, and he groaned, his eyes fluttering shut as he fought to hold on and not spill into her warmth. “Yes, Andy,” Quynh pleaded, grinding down desperately on Booker’s cock. “Oh fuck yes, just like that, oh fuck, going to come—“ and a moment later, Booker gritted his teeth as she fell apart around him, her inner walls massaging his length as she shuddered through her climax.

He expected her to climb off of him and for Andy to want him in the same way, but Quynh didn’t move, even as she slumped down a little bonelessly, she just stayed sitting on his cock, not moving. Andy nudged her thigh, grinning. “Do I get a turn?” She asked, and Quynh merely curled her ankles around Booker’s legs, making it clear she wasn’t budging. “Mm, he feels good like this, don’t want to move,” she protested, and Booker groaned. It had been agony enough when she was bouncing on him and he couldn’t touch her or do anything to make her go faster. Having her just sit there, warming his cock with her body but not giving him any of the friction he needed, was truly going to be the death of him. Even so, he knew better than to try and thrust up into her and chase his own pleasure. That wasn’t part of the deal and never had been—he had always offered himself to the two women completely and trusted that they would give him what he needed.

“You can have his mouth,” Quynh suggested, and Booker perked up a bit at that. It wasn’t that Andy gave him any more control over that than if she had taken Quynh’s place, he thought as she shrugged and moved up the bed to straddle his face. Sometimes she would let him show her how good he was at this, would let him sink to his knees and take her apart with skills he had carefully cultivated over the years, but he knew that that wasn’t what she was craving right then. She set her own pace, holding his head in place so that she could get him right where she wanted him. There was no time for finesse as he licked into her; he could only try and keep up with her rapid fire rhythm, try and be a good toy for her as she took what she wanted. Quynh had always been loud in bed, but Andy was nearly silent, the faint trembling of her thighs the only indication that she was close. “Oh,” she murmured softly, her fingers tugging so hard at his hair that he was amazed any of it was still on his head, and as soon as she began quivering on his tongue he groaned, long and low, and spilled into Quynh. Quynh looked over her shoulder to give him a conspiratorial wink, and his head flopped back against the pillow, exhausted as he came down from his high.

Andy climbed off of him, sprawling out next to him on the bed and resting for a moment. “Book? What do you need?” She asked, and Quynh just chuckled. “Oh, I think you gave him everything he needed,” she teased, finally getting off of his softening length. “He came at the same time as you did, pretty much.” She lay down on the other side of him as Andy, pillowing her head on his chest. “So good for us, as usual,” she praised, lazily drawing patterns on his chest with one finger. “Fuck, I need a nap. Air travel may be convenient, but when you go from Tokyo to Paris in a few hours, it still messes you up.” She leaned up to kiss him chastely. “We brought you lots of Japanese sweets, don’t worry,” and she tossed the key to his handcuffs to Andy as she snuggled back against his chest. As soon as Andy unlocked them, he wrapped one strong arm around Quynh, holding her close, and loosely rested the other on Andy’s shoulders. She would put up with the cuddling for a few minutes, he knew, long enough that he and Quynh would doze off, and then Andy would go pad restlessly around his apartment, eagle eyes clocking the most minute changes, and then she might unpack their bags, if he was lucky and they could stay with him for a few days. Joe had started slipping little trinkets for Booker, inside jokes or stupid football mementos, into Andy and Quynh’s luggage when he knew they were going to see him, and that, more than anything else, had made him realise that he had been forgiven, that he still had a future with these people he loved so dearly.

Andy might not put up with the cuddling for long, but she pressed a kiss to Booker’s cheek, nuzzling him a bit. “Good to see you again, Book,” she whispered. “Rest now,” and then she murmured a few words in a long-dead language, words that he never needed to ask her what they meant because the fondness shone clearly through the indecipherable syllables.

From:

theoldguardkinkmeme

The prompt is: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/3653.html?thread=1036869#cmt1036869

"Sometimes, Nicky just needs to be hurt until he can have a good cry, so Joe bends him over and spanks him until his beloved is exhausted from crying and begging and squirming to try and get away.

Safe, sane, consensual - but Joe is ruthless and Nicky is a happy, bruised mess.

Either canon verse or AU is fine."

The fill is here: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/3653.html?thread=2065477#cmt2065477

From: (Anonymous)

Prompt here: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/6403.html?thread=2388483#cmt2388483

“Joe loves filling Nicky with a huge enema, until Nicky's tummy is bulging and he looks pregnant. Then Joe plugs Nicky up, and they spend the day with Joe taking care of his 'pregnant' partner, with much talk from Joe about how he loves putting his baby into Nicky.”
“Top!Joe only, please.”

From time to time, when Joe and Nicky were able to spend the day alone together after a night of fucking each other into the mattress, they liked to pretend that the impossible might happen.

They would start in the bathroom, with Nicky kneeling in the bathtub, while Joe prepared his body for implantation.

Joe would snap on latex-free gloves and prepare his kit: filling an enema bag with a warmed saline solution, attaching it to a clear hose with a nozzle, stopping it up with a clip and greasing it with medical-grade lubricant to ease its insertion. Joe would then hang the bag up and check on the condition of his obstetrical patient.

Joe would allow himself a little indulgence as he checked Nicky over, examining the presentation of the intimate parts of his anatomy and fingering the loosened muscles that would work hard to carry a child to full term.

Joe would then explain to Nicky the medical procedure he’d previously consented to, again, so he could begin to anticipate the steps of his treatment and ask for comfort if he needed it. Joe would rub his naked back and shoulders in circles, murmuring reassurances, as he watched him breathe in practised patterns to manage his anxiety at undergoing what would feel like an ordeal.

Joe would then place a steadying hand on Nicky’s rump, before gently twisting free the plug that held back the semen with which he had inseminated his lover’s receptive body the night before.

Joe would then clip and unclip the enema bag to run the saline solution through the clear hose, before inserting the nozzle he’d prepared into his patient’s loosened orifice. Joe would then give Nicky only a word of warning as he unclipped the enema hose and monitored the flow of the saline solution that would make his patient look gravid as it filled and distended his belly.

Joe would listen to Nicky moan and whimper as his abdomen became distended, comforting him through his pain and nausea, as he described to him how he was carrying him through the early stages of gestation—fertilization, implantation, embryonic and early stages of fetal development—as he filled his body with what he said was amniotic fluid.

Joe would only terminate the procedure when he was satisfied his patient’s pregnant condition was unmistakable—when his gravid belly was prominent and bulging. Joe would then replace the enema nozzle with a large plug to ensure he didn’t risk developing a medical complication and losing his pregnancy prematurely.

“Grazie mille,” Nicky would whisper, when Joe had finished, awestruck as he always was at the miracle of conception.

“Prego,” Joe would respond, enthralled by what the changes they had wrought to Nicky’s body together.

“How far along am I?” Nicky asked, breathlessly, as he rediscovered the shape of his pregnant body.

“I’d say you look like you’re in your late second trimester—maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven weeks along?”

“That’s wonderful,” he sighed. “Oh—I feel so huge.”

“Let me help you out,” Joe insisted. “Your gravid belly will certainly affect your sense of balance—and your gait. We don’t want you to risk a fall—you could easily injure yourself and our unborn child.”

Nicky let Joe care for him and the child he carried. He waited patiently as his lover helped his pregnant body from the bathtub and dressed him in loose-fitting pyjamas before guiding him to rest on their sitting room couch.

Nicky moaned again as he lay down and felt the weight of his belly shift beneath him.

“Does it hurt?” Joe asked, concerned.

Nicky shivered a little as a wave of nausea washed through him and the muscles of his distended belly began to cramp.

“I feel a little—” Nicky shuddered. “I don’t feel so good,” he admitted, feeling anxious.

“You must still be suffering from morning sickness,” Joe surmised, with a concerned frown. “I suppose it’s not totally unheard of for it to still bother you like this so late in the second trimester.” Joe worried at his lip, as he considered their options. “Don’t move,” he instructed, needlessly, “I’ll bring you something.”

Nicky waited, curling in on himself as he broke out into a cold sweat, until Joe returned with a package of saltines and a glass of flat water.

“Here,” Joe said, unwrapping some salty crackers for him. “Try to eat this—it’ll settle your stomach a little.”

Nicky accepted the saltines, grateful, as he hoped desperately that he could avoid being sick.

Nicky always found that his bouts of nausea—as his body adjusted to carrying and providing for a fetus—were the worst part of each of his pregnancies.

Joe watched, singularly focused on Nicky as he suffered through the pains and symptoms of pregnancy, as any expectant father might be. Joe waited until he ate a cracker or two and drank a sip of water, before he felt he could relax.

Joe reached out and brushed his knuckles against his partner’s forehead.

“You still feel a little hot. Do you want me to help you take your shirt off?”

Nicky nodded and let Joe divest himself of his loose shirt.

Joe tossed the damp shirt to the side before turning his attention to his pregnant lover, again. “Do you—Would you mind if I touched your belly now?”

“No,” Nicky murmured, giving him a timid smile and feeling his face colour a little. “I think I’d like that a lot.”

Joe didn’t hold himself back—he ran his hands reverently over Nicky’s pregnant belly, tracing its size and shape and feeling for even a hint of movement beneath the distended skin.

Joe adored the sight of Nicky like this—heavy with child—his child. Joe felt the same rush of desire flood through him each time they conceived and they could take pleasure in their fecundity. Joe would get Nicky pregnant every time they made love, if he was asked. Joe would cater to all of Nicky’s impossible desires, if he so craved. Joe would worship Nicky’s pregnant belly and his aching back and his swollen feet and his stretch marks, if he was allowed.

“I’m feeling a little cold, now,” Nicky admitted, interrupting Joe’s reverie. “Do you think you could lie with me and keep me warm?”

Joe was only too happy to agree and he divested himself of his own shirt before settling behind Nicky, spooning him, and cradling his pregnant lover’s bulging abdomen.

“I love this,” Joe admitted to his lover, as he indulged in their skin to skin contact. “I love seeing you pregnant like this.”

“I know,” Nicky sighed, settling against him, as his lover laid possessive hands on his pregnant body. “Tell me what else you love about my delicate condition.”

“I love that I can get you with child—that I can fill you with my seed and watch my baby grow inside you.”

Nicky moaned, revelling in the possessiveness his lover—and the father of his child—showed. “Tell me more,” he begged him, covering his lover’s hands with his own.

“I love that we conceived this—this unborn child—together.”

“So do I,” Nicky groaned, as they felt up his gravid body together. “I could only ever do this with you, my love.”

“I know, hayati,” Joe reassured him, caressing his cheek with unreserved affection. “I love that you would even do this for me. I love you for choosing to carry our child. I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” Nicky said. “I love you for giving me a child to carry.”

Nicky turned his gravid body slowly to face him then, to press his bulging abdomen—huge with child—against his lover’s body.

They kissed and whispered sweet nothings to each other as they lay together, embracing each other around the bulge of their unborn child.

They took advantage of this quiet moment, between the two of them, to go over their birth plan once more. They wanted to birth their child at home, to deliver the baby and the after-birth in their own bathtub, without outside help or interference. Joe helped Nicky practise his breathing and rehearse his positive birthing affirmations. They felt they would be ready to deliver a child when the time came, but until then wanted to enjoy this pregnant moment.

Nicky and Joe stayed like this, dozing in the comforting embrace of each other’s arms—until they couldn’t any longer.

Nicky woke with a gasp, feeling his cramping had become too powerful for him to ignore anymore.

“Wake up, Joe. We have to get up!” Nicky cried out, trying to wake him.

“What is it?” Joe asked, alarmed.

“I think it’s time, Joe!” Nicky wailed, as he cradled his cramping belly. “Oh, caro Dio!”

“Did your waters break?” Joe asked, panicking.

“No! Maybe! I think it’s coming now!”

“Wait! Not here! We have to move you first!” Joe moved himself off the couch and crouched beside his lover.

“Hurry, Joe!” Nicky begged him. “I can’t control it!”

Joe took Nicky into his arms, lifting him up and carrying him back into the bathroom. He quickly helped divest him of his remaining clothing before guiding him to kneel in the bathtub once more.

Joe guided Nicky through his birthing mantras and his breathing rhythms they had practised, so he could manage the pain of childbirth.

Joe kissed and caressed Nicky when he began crying openly, keening, even pleading for Joe to help him deliver his child.

Joe did the only thing he could think of to help him, he touched and stimulated his lover’s erogenous parts to help him through his ordeal. He stroked his lover to orgasm even as he sobbed as birthing pains wracked his body.

Joe waited until Nicky jerked and climaxed before working the plug free from his passage. Joe held onto Nicky as he wailed and shuddered in his arms as all the fluid he’d taken up came gushing out again.

Nicky leaned against Joe, trying to settle his laboured breathing, as the other man rinsed off any remaining traces of the birth. He let him wrap his trembling body in a warm towel and move him to the rest on their shared bed.

Nicky wanted nothing more than to rest after suffering through his labour pains, to begin to recover after the ordeal of delivering his child, but Joe had one more experience in store for him.

“Lay back, hayati. Let me thank you for everything your body suffered for me,” he requested.

Nicky acceeded to his attentions, biting his lip, as Joe knelt before him so he might worship his post-partum body.

Nicky forced himself lay back and let Joe lick and nuzzle and cherish all the worst parts of his spent body—his swollen birth canal and his concave belly and his flat chest.

Nicky burst into tears, then, unable to keep his emotions in check any longer as his lover worshipped his childless body.

“What’s wrong, Nicky?” Joe asked him, concerned that he’d gone too far this time. “Does the birth still pain you?”

“Not the way you’re thinking,” Nicky confessed, speaking through his tears. “I feel so heart-broken.” He gave another little sob, as he tried to wipe the tears from his face. “I feel so sorry that I lost it. I dearly wish that I could have stayed pregnant for you.”

“Oh, Nicky, you did everything perfectly,” Joe reassured him, feeling relieved and thrilled by the devotion this man had shown him with his willingness to twist himself into a new shape so he might satisfy their impossible desire for a child.

Nicky sobbed into Joe’s arms, entrusting his lover with all his love for him and his grief for failing to bear him a child.

“We’ll conceive again,” Joe promised him, “and I will show you how much I love your pregnant body and then I will show you how much more I love your body when it is barren. I love you beyond measure and reason. I will always find you to be beautiful and worthy of love.”

Nicky couldn’t keep from crying, as he was reminded again how much he loved this man and how much this man loved him in return.

From: (Anonymous)

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/6403.html?thread=2268163#cmt2268163
Hope you like it OP! :)

Nicky escaped as soon as he could. His Royal Highness, King Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Kaysani, called al-Tayyib was… well, unbelievably horrible. Not physically, because, to tell the truth, he was quite handsome. His behavior, however, was detestable. Nor did it help to have other men who looke rarely like the king; a Naboo tradition, even though a strange one.
He didn't even want to be there, but the Jedi and the Republic had insisted on an Enarc guard, as a sign of their adherence to the soon-to-come-into-force treaty, kindly conduct by the Republic (and their blasters).
"Damn king," he grumbled at Neimoidian, hiding behind one of the columns. They were at a long welcome lunch, filled with sharp speeches of peace and prosperity. There were two Jedi as well, as envoys of the Republic. "Al-Tayyib my pants, that king has not been nice a single day of his life."
"Sometimes he is," a voice replied in a flat, graceless Neimoidian. Nicky jumped up and brought his hand to the pistol at his waist, before stopping.
He was one of those strange companions, dressed in elaborate dark robes, his hood down. This one in particular had dark curls and a longer beard than the original. His eyes sparkled with laughter.
"I didn't mean to offend, I'm sorry," Nicky lied, returning to Basic.
"Don't be, the king is unbearable from time to time."
"Are you allowed to say that?"
"We are his servants, not his slaves," the man said seriously, and Nicky felt his cheeks redden at the veiled allusion.
"Are you some kind of clones?" He asked then, unable to stop his curiosity.
"We are aides, attendants," the man specified, leaning against the same column that was hiding Nicky. "They choose us for our resemblance to the king and our abilities."
In the distance, musical instruments and the noise of conversations sounded. The king and his other two servants would be there. The banquet would last for hours and hours; each Lord would have the right to speak, and gifts were expected to be given to each other, trinkets of merely cultural value. There was time, and Nicky had questions for the man who was surely just as bored as he was.
"Tell me," he asked.

~

He found Andy, the Jedi, and Nile, her Padawan, at the entrance to the king's chambers and his court. Nicky had slept well, and was expecting to find Joe, to discuss the unfinished business of the day before. He had discovered, to his surprise, that Joe was a scholar, with extensive knowledge. The general idea was that the Naboo were inept and dumb people, dedicated to constructing buildings with no purpose beyond making them look pretty. His only luck was to be in the middle of the trade route.
"You look… impatient to start your watch," Andy pointed out, one of her eyebrows raised in curiosity. Nile was looking at him too. Nicky closed his mind to any intervention. They had taught him that Jedi could read your mind if you weren't careful. Meanwhile, he imagined undressing Andy, touching her purple skin and brushing against her pointy ears. Was her skin the same shade down there? Andy smiled at him, a dangerous gleam of teeth, as if she knew what he was thinking.
"I must meet our future allies," Nicky replied, adjusting the scabbard of his vibroblade, and eyeing the lightsabers enviously.
The Jedi had arrived days ago, in a small ship, without the pomp Nicky associated with Republic envoys. Enarc after all, was the head of the Enarc Run, although the next stage was unfortunately Naboo. Dozens of wars later, it seemed that the Republic would no longer tolerate that, and there they were, the result of months of negotiations, with an alliance that stretched, fragile, on the shoulders of a king too used to being obeyed. Hence his desire to continue arguing with Joe about the benefits of the parliamentary system against the monarchy (even if it was an elective).
The door to the rooms finally opened, and Nicky smiled automatically, before seeing the king in front of him. His smile froze as the man's gaze swept him up and down, with open disdain. Behind him, Joe winked at him. Majid and Malik were the names of the other two servants, recognizable only after a time; because at that moment, anyone could be anyone. Only Joe looked a little different, or maybe Nicky identified him.
"I would like the representative of Enarc to show the city to one of my aides," said the king. Nicky stood himself. He doubted that the king could come out; with all the paraphernalia above his head, he was most likely going to hit the next door that had the misfortune to be lower. Perhaps, with any luck, the king would decide that Joe would be the assigned servant.
"You can stay with me," he gestured at the Jedi with one hand, and then Joe stepped forward. "I want Joe to know the city of our allies and to come and tell me later."
"Future," Nicky muttered under his breath. But the king did not seem to notice his words and dismissed Joe with a gesture, re-entering to his chambers, along with the Jedi.
Joe was dressed in fancy clothes again, this time in light colors, of a different manufacture than they were used to at Enarc. He stood out like a ham at an Ithorian party.
"You'll have to change if you want to visit the city," Nicky said, leading him to his own room. He had analyzed their sizes and was sure that his clothes could fit Joe. When Joe took off his outer layer, Nicky noticed the belt and the vibroblade hanging there. The scabbard was curved, unlike its own straight blade.
"Can you use it?" He asked, slightly amused. "I thought the Naboo were pacifists."
"Being a pacifist doesn't mean being foolish."
Nicky nodded in response, handing him what he'd chosen for him. They were simple garments: pants, shirt and a tunic over it, made of rude and durable fabric. Somehow Joe managed to look flawless, much better than Nicky could have looked. He changed clothes too, shedding his uniform, and slipping into comfortable clothes.
"Are you the keeper of the king's wardrobe?"
"Something like that." Joe smiled at him, tucking the cape fabric around his neck in an elegant twist.
"We will go for a walk around the city, hopefully you can bring some of Enarc to your king."
They took Nicky's speeder, an old modified vehicle. Official transportation was available to them, but Nicky preferred to keep a low profile. The Naboo delegation had been housed in the Office of Commerce, the most important place in the city, next to Parliament. There were a few days to sign the treaty.
"What is your profession?" Joe asked as Nicky drove the ship through the tall buildings in the center of town. The spaceport was a short distance away, with the endless stream of ships that didn't stop day or night.
"I belong to the surveillance corps."
"You don't look like a cop."
"I'm not." Nicky drove past downtown. There wasn't much air traffic at the moment, and below on the ground, he could see the landspeeders. "I am... assigned as an escort to business delegations on other worlds. This is my first time serving someone other than Enarc."
He found parking a short time later, when the tall buildings gave way to lower constructions, fifty or a hundred stories high, inhabited by the more common people of the city. There was a small apartment that Nicky used when he was on leave, but he certainly wouldn't take Joe there.
He knew that the capital of Naboo was a very ostentatious city, with ornate buildings, domes and waterfalls. Enarc was the opposite: practical, with rectangular structures and few color variations.
The smell of oil and cinnamon came to them when they walked through the streets of the market. Joe looked at everything with an expression that Nicky couldn't interpret, so he kept silent, only answering when Joe asked him something related to the market. It was one of the few concessions in the city regarding informal commerce; the biggest food bazaar on the planet, and one of the indulgences one could ever have: it was delicious and cheap.
"This place has the best fried dough in town," he told him, showing Joe a rather large booth. There was a line, as always. Ahead of them, three Togruta children spoke in barely understandable Basic, and later, another couple from Ithorien talked in their language. Fortunately, the line was moving fast. When it was their turn, he left a couple of credits on the table, and handed Joe a paper bag, full of fried buns covered in honey. It was the traditional version, the same recipe as when Nicky was a child and played in the streets with the others. It felt like home.
Joe groaned as he tasted it and licked his fingers. Nicky looked away, concentrating on his own pastries. A cry distracted him; a man and two children, being taken from a house by police officers. They screamed. Joe stepped forward immediately, one hand reaching for the vibroblade on his hip. Nicky took it, and it seemed to confuse Joe enough to stop him. Nicky dragged him behind the street stall, keeping him in the shadows. They observed how the man and children were taken away in a speeder with the logo of the administrative police.
"They're authorized," Nicky finally explained, loosening his hold on Joe. "If he owes money ... his whole family will have to pay it."
Joe was frowning, his eyes darkened with something Nicky couldn't identify.
"Is that correct? " He reproached, smiling bitterly. "Is it what your precious democracy does?"
"Joe… it's, it's the rules, they were set-"
"Who agreed to them? Your Lords?"
"Do you know the political problem that you would have caused by entering there?" Nicky growled back, suddenly annoyed. "There would be no negotiations, they would have taken you and your king out."
"For defending what is right?"
"Do you think your people are right? Do you think we don't know how you treat the Gungans?"
Nicky clenched his fist, barely realizing that he had Joe's hand tangled in his. He released him immediately, as if burning. Somehow it did, like Joe's eyes. He had thought they were stars, and now he was being set on fire. He remained silent, and Joe did too, for what seemed like forever.
"Will you tell the king about this?" Nicky asked after a while. The syrup had made his fingers sticky and Joe's bag of fries had been left on the floor, dropped when the man tried to draw his sword.
"The king looks through my eyes," Joe replied.

From: (Anonymous)

Joe sees it coming but he doesn’t tell Nicky that. It’s more fun to wait until Nicky figures it out and he’s looking forward to the sound of his name in Nicky’s mouth when he asks for what he wants. In the meantime, Nicky blows him so often Joe starts dreaming of the heat of his mouth.

The first time is barely after a mission, Nicky shoves Joe up against the brick wall of an alleyway and sinks to his knees, getting his dick out with a single pass of his hands over Joe’s fly like a magic trick. Joe turns his hat around so he can lean his head back against the wall and spreads his legs, uncaring that they’ll be interrupted by a teammate if they don’t hurry. They’re both in tactical gear, swords at their hips, and Nicky is rubbing the head of Joe’s cock against the inside of his cheek with his tongue so hard it’s a different kind of assault. Joe touches Nicky’s lips gently where they’re stretched around him and says, “Hurry up baby.” Nicky groans.

The second time Nicky joins him in the shower when Joe’s singing to himself and gets him to shout instead.

He ducks under the table at dinner and Joe has to wipe the corner of his mouth afterward, feigning nonchalance. He kneels and begs Joe to fuck his mouth. He deepthroats him dangerously close to passing out.

Joe starts losing count and then, in the middle of blowing him, Nicky pauses, Joe’s cock in one hand, his own shoved down into his pants, and looks up at him. “Joe, it’s not enough. I mean, of course you’re always enough for me my love, but, I want-“

As much as Joe wants to hear him beg for it, he’d really rather come down his throat right now. “Yes, Nicky, I know you’re hungry for it, we’ll go tonight, please suck me.”

“Thank you.” Nicky says, relieved as always that Joe understands him. He snaps back into the single minded focus that's had his mouth on Joe’s dick more often than not recently and drinks him down with that same unshakable feeling of more more more.

They do go that night, they go inexcusably early because halfway through dinner Nicky started shaking his leg and shooting unsubtle glances at Joe, removing silverware from his mouth very slowly after each bite. Joe isn’t expecting there to be as many people coming to this particular gloryhole as there are, but then, maybe half of those visitors aren’t expecting them either. It’s obvious from the way they shuffle forward, hesitating, and then hurry into the stall to close the door. They’re clearly not expecting Nicky, who falls on the first few cocks like he’s dying of thirst and hasn’t been sucking Joe’s soul out three times a day.

Joe doesn’t help, not directly. He does take his jacket off, fold it, and convince Nicky to kneel on it instead of the hard ground. He gathers Nicky’s hair out of his face and ties it up for him, so it won’t get in the way. He tells Nicky what a good little slut he is, how his mouth was made for this, how lucky he is to be married to him. He says these things very quietly so as not to be heard through the wall.

The first dick that doesn’t disappear into Nicky’s mouth so fast that Joe barely sees it is big, bigger than both of them. They’re here for Nicky but Joe’s mouth waters a little just looking at it.

“Go on baby, show them how good you are.” Joe whispers, rubbing himself through his pants. Nicky glances at the stranger, then down at Joe’s hand, and whines a little, but does as he’s told. Just like the last person, this one ends up pressing up against the barrier so desperately that it shakes with the force of their thrusts. They come a long time. Nicky swallows it all.

The next cock has a ring behind the balls, a metal one that Nicky spends a lot of time tasting before he gives them a proper blowjob. They don’t come, but gasp out thank yous as they frantically make their exit.

The next person makes Nicky chase them until Nicky’s mouth is pressed against the hole. Joe can’t see it but he has to shove his own pants down just imagining somebody rubbing the head of their cock against Nicky’s lips, smacking it against him. Joe fucks into his fist and imagines the stranger doing the same, only letting his husband have a little taste on the peak of each stroke.

Joe gets Nicky on his hands and knees after that, shoving his pants down unceremoniously and opening him up while he continues to service what must be a long line. Word is spreading and the club is probably reaching capacity now that it’s getting later. Some of them are loud and messy, some barely make it into Nicky’s mouth before they come. Nicky’s jaw must hurt but he never hesitates to lick and kiss and suck at the next cock in his face. His own is hanging down between his legs, much neglected, dripping now that Joe’s fingers are stretching him open.

When he’s ready Joe doesn’t ask, just pushes into Nicky’s ass like it belongs to him, making him groan obscenely around the cock in his mouth. “There you go baby, is that full enough? Such a slut for it. They’ve never had it as good as you, baby. They never will again, your perfect mouth ruining every cock for anyone else.”

The next cock is rough with Nicky’s mouth and shoots out across his face. Nicky tightens up around Joe’s cock so hard Joe thinks he must have come himself, but a quick reach around confirms that’s not the case. Joe is close, close enough that it hurts to slow his thrusts to a stop but he does, holding Nicky’s cock in his hand and petting the long line of his spine. “Are you alright, baby? Did you get sloppy with that one, my perfect slut?”

Nicky groans what might be Joe’s name. He’s shaking with the effort of staying up on his hands. Another cock comes through the hole, uncut. “One more, please? Just one more.” Nicky begs.

“You always say that.” Joe says fondly, and lets Nicky’s cock swing down below him again. “You can suck them until I’m done with you baby, but no longer than that. Otherwise we’d be here all night.”

Joe builds his thrusts up again, watching Nicky expertly get off the next two strangers with pride. The next time Nicky seals his red swollen lips around a cock, Joe rabbits his hips in hard against Nicky’s prostate, merciless, and reaches around to squeeze his husband’s balls. Nicky jerks and shoots come across the floor in one long stream, dragging Joe and the stranger over the edge with him, both holes briefly filled with heat.

Joe catches him before he can fall forward and sighs, saying “No baby, no more.” before Nicky can even ask. He’s licking his lips, face red, eyes dark and pleading, and Joe loves him so much but he’s clearly had enough even if he doesn’t realize it yet.

“Please?” Nicky tries, voice too weak to really be heard. How raw his throat must feel. “One more?”

“You’re too good for them, everyone waiting, everyone who heard what a cock-hungry slut was in here.” Joe praises, kissing him just once, just to feel those swollen lips against his for a moment. “I love you so much. If you want more cock today you’ll have to wait for mine.”

Nicky nods, exhaustion making his shoulders droop now that Joe’s decided they’re done. A cock appears through the hole but Joe doesn’t let Nicky see it, just picks him up off the floor and takes him home. His perfect husband. Nobody in this town will forget him. Joe already can’t wait for next time.

From: (Anonymous)

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/5194.html?thread=1643850#cmt1643850
"Booker at the peak of his banishment and in the pits of his despair, getting drunk off of his rocker and agreeing to a gang bang which is consensual, but the filming of it is not. (Nile or Copley or the rest of the guard come across the video somehow and reach out to him.)"

Note: The initial gangbang, with it's major consent issues, is not described any great detail. Most of the fic is Nile helping Booker process, but there is some fun, fully consensual and negotiated sex at the end!

---
As per usual, Nile receives a message from Copley at 1500 hours GMT with a report on that day’s efforts eracing their footsteps from the ether.

Today’s report is not usual. All it says is, “Call me.”

---
“We are in Naples, haven’t done a mission in weeks, and I am about to have, and I’m quoting Nicky here, “the world’s finest pizza.” What the hell is going on that’s so urgent?”

“It’s Booker.”

“And?”

“He’s been video taped.”

“Scrub it like you always do.”

“I did.”

“So?”

“It’s- ah- a- um-”

“I am this close to--”

“Pornographic. In nature.”

“Shit.”

“I sent the video, Nile. Watch it and let me know what you want me to do.”

“No. I am NOT watching--”

The line goes dead.

And fuck you too, Nile thinks, uncharitably, at the now dark screen.

---
Later that night, Nile makes sure the others have gone to bed before she gets out her laptop and plugs in her headphones.

There’s no way Booker is that stupid, she thinks as she waits for the video to download from their secure server.

The video opens to several naked men, stroking their erections, ringed around one man laid out on a bench before them. The prone man is blindfolded, with one penis in his mouth. Another is lined up to penetrate his ass.

It takes Nile a minute, but the man at the center of all this attention? Even blindfolded, she can tell that it’s Booker.

Well that’s just--

She presses play because at this point, in for a penny, in for a pound. As her brain processes what she sees, a chill comes over her. Booker isn’t performing and neither are the other men: there’s no clever positioning or editing of any kind. This is real and raw and that’s unsettling for a start. Booker is demonstrably aroused, and moaning around whomever’s penis is in his mouth at the moment. But there’s something floppy and uncoordinated about his movements that really sends the dread down her spine.

Nile calls Copley back. “Where is he?”

“Amsterdam.”

“Get me there by tomorrow.”

“On it.”

“Don’t tell the others.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

---
Nile packs an overnight bag, makes her excuses -- Just really want to be by myself by the ocean for a couple of days. Headed to Capri. See you when I get back. -- and practically sprints from their villa into a waiting taxi.

One flight on a very small, very private plane later, she arrives in Amsterdam.

She texts him: “We need to talk. I’m coming to yours. Be there in an hour.”

He opens the door of his flat to her and she pushes inside. Rounding on him, she says, “Are you sober?”

He scoffs.

“Then I’ll wait.”

They sit, mostly in silence, for hours as the alcohol burns through his bloodstream. She watches him vigilantly to ensure he doesn’t consume any more.

“Are you sober?” she asks again.

“Regrettably.”

“Then let’s get started.”

She pulls up the video on her laptop and turns the screen towards him.

“I need to know what’s going on here,” she says and presses play.

Every muscle in Booker’s body freezes. She slams the laptop closed.

“Talk to me, Book.”

His head drops into his hands. The rest of his body is still poised to flee, to implode, to shatter at any more disturbance.

They are silent for a long time.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like that,” he says, barely audible. He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t move.

“Like what?” she asks, as gently as she can.

“Recorded.”

Shit.

She rises from her chair and is about to fling her arms around him, when she stops herself. “Is it alright if I hug you?” she asks.

He nods.

“I know it’s hard, but I need words Booker.”

“Yes,” he breathes. And then her arms are pulling him firmly against her and his face is turning into her neck and she’s rubbing circles into his back as his body is wracked by tear-less, sound-less sobs.

---
It is many hours on the sofa and many episodes of a cheerful British priest solving the many, many murders in his quaint little village when Booker finally utters a complete sentence. “Have the others… you know…?

“Seen it?

He nods.

“No. They think I’m basking in the Mediterranean sun on Capri right now.”

“And Copley?”

“Doing his job and sworn to secrecy.”

He nods again and falls silent.

God Nile doesn’t want to have to ask what she’s about to ask, and this isn’t really an opening, but there’s also never a good time and...

“I know these men violated your trust by filming it, but the rest of it, Book, was it…?” She chokes on the end of her sentence.

“Consensual?”

This time, she’s the one that nods.

“I don’t know.” He shifts his gaze to the ceiling, his fists clenched against his thighs. “I wanted it. I was desperate for it. But now knowing they did- this- I mean we’d all been at one of the nightclubs in the district and what else is there to do at a nightclub except drink and dance and…” he draws in a long, shaky breath. “I don’t know, Nile. I don’t know.”

His eyes flick to hers and she sees how haunted they are by this admission. She reaches out her hand toward his.

“May I?”

“Sure.”

Nile rubs her palm over his knuckles and then laces their fingers together. Her thumb strokes the back of his hand.

“I’m glad, at least, that you wanted it.”

He closes his eyes. At her touch or his memories, she can’t tell.

“Everything thing else goes away,” he says softly, “except for giving pleasure. And it’s- it’s nice- not having to think or decide or know.”

“Hey, Book, look at me.” He obeys and his eyes catch on her own serious gaze.

“Next time,” she says, still stroking the back of his hand with her thumb, “next time you feel like you need this, please, please call me. I don’t know how… these things… usually go but I’m sure I can learn and I can arrange it or be there or whatever, just please let me keep you safe.”

He tenses. “I’m not your responsibility, Nile.”

“I know. But you are my family. And families protect each other.”

He snorts and opens his mouth to object. “Don’t,” she says sharply. “The others might need 100 years, but I never did.”

---
Almost literally a life-time later finds Nile and Booker in the bedroom of a stupidly luxurious hotel suite.

She kisses him deeply and grabs his ass and runs her fingers over the base of a plug that’s been seated in him all day long.

“You ready for this, babe?”

Booker keens with pleasure as her fingers make quick work of his button down shirt and belt. Moments later she has him fully naked and pushed back onto the white expanse of the bed.

Still fully clothed, Nile kneels next to him and takes his face in both her hands.

“You still want what’s about to happen?”

He nods.

“I need words.”

“Gods, yes.”

“Safeword?”

“Massachusetts.”

She turns his head to the right. “I will be in that chair the whole time, watching you and taking pleasure in the sight.”

“I know.” His voice has gone breathy with arousal and Nile presses a quick kiss to his lips. She pulls the blindfold over his eyes and runs her fingers through his hair.

“I’m going to go get them now. But they won’t touch you until I tell them to.”

“Mmmmhmm.”

Nile opens the door to the bedroom and ushers in several mostly naked men. Many of them are already stroking themselves nearly to full hardness.

Her attention shifts back to Booker, who’s practically vibrating in anticipation. She runs a hand up his flank and then bends his knee back against his chest. She works the plug out of him and leaves a light kiss against his hip and then takes a step back.

“All yours, gentlemen,” she says as she settles onto her chair.

The men gather round the bed and one of them grabs Booker by the hips and lines his cock up to Booker’s stretched and pliant hole. In another moment, the man is buried to the root inside Booker and Booker moans in pleasure and abandon. Nile relaxes, a satisfied smile on her face.

From: (Anonymous)

Continued from here: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/694.html?thread=2122422&posted=1#cmt2190262

Sorry about the delay! The actual writing was easier this time, which means hopefully no more tomatoey mishaps, but Life is in overdrive rn. I'm doing the bulk of the moving on the 19th, so I don't want to make any promises for before then, though I will be working on the next part, but after that I should be all clear for writing.

Heads up that there’s some reference to serious injury in mild-moderate detail here – nothing too bad in the grand scale of ‘many times’ but let’s call it upsetting detail referenced with all the (lack of) delicacy merited when you’ve been murdered like sixty times. Or, you know, canon-typical body horror. (Also, I had to split this in the middle of a section break because it didn't work any other way; sorry about the five-second cliffhanger. :) )
*
Yusuf isn’t sure how long they intend to stay in Baghdad. At first he didn’t ask because it wasn’t especially important, and then he didn’t raise the subject because he was enjoying the city and didn’t particularly want to think of leaving, and now he’s left it too long, so that it’s just a giant, needless millstone of dread sitting in his stomach.

Growing older makes one aware of one’s poor habits, he reflects wryly, but this does not guarantee anything will change.

Nevertheless, he’s well aware that simply… remaining, until some too-closely witnessed accident or suspicion about the too-kind march of years means they will have to depart, whether quietly or quickly. He is also aware, even more keenly than he was at thirty (or sixty) that ignoring something he doesn’t want to think about will only make it a larger, more daunting problem, when most likely dealing with it head on would be either an entirely unremarkable task in reality, or at worst an unpleasant but brief one.

And yet… “We are fallible creatures,” he sighs, earning a strange look from a donkey. “We know ourselves to be fallible, and so we watch ourselves fail and say, ‘Ah, yes, how ridiculous human nature,’ and we do it again.”

The donkey fails to acknowledge his truly profound piece of philosophy. It brays loudly, which Yusuf refuses to acknowledge as commentary.

But of course Yusuf is not a foolish young man any longer; nor is he thirty (nor sixty), and therefore he commits (for perhaps the second or third time, but never mind about that) to bring up the subject with Nicolò in the evening – with the casualness it deserves, rather than the weight it has accumulated.

“And I am uninterested in what you have to say about it,” he observes to the donkey, which seems on the point of making a quip.

“I apologize,” Kazem says from behind him, utterly taken aback, and Yusuf whirls to realize he has distracted himself from his client’s arrival.

“No, no,” he protests. “I was speaking to – ah–” But no. There is absolutely no way to salvage his dignity without giving grievous offense. Yusuf sighs, slumps a little, and points helplessly at the donkey.

“Oh?” Kazem is attempting to make it a polite enquiry, but his voice goes high with stifled amusement.

Since Yusuf is surely old enough to be beyond such foolish things as ego, he sighs internally and only offers Kazem a slightly abashed smile. “Shall we find a place to sit?”

“Please.” Kazem gestures to the nearest building but one. “That is the eating-house I recommended. I always find such things are best discussed over a meal.”

“You are a wise man.”

If the donkey makes remark as they leave the street, Yusuf is far too enlightened to notice.

*

He’s in a good mood when he returns home, not least because he’s been commissioned for three separate translations at more than half again his usual rate. If Kazem has a new story to make the rounds with among his business acquaintances, this time about the eccentricities of his translator, well, Yusuf has decided he deserves it. Perhaps he’ll spin the tale to Nicolò that he furnished one apurpose, for that reason. Nicolò will never believe it, but his brow will furrow in doubt and disbelief, which makes him look endearing.

Yusuf’s heart quivers, and his stomach lurches in response. As he always does when those feelings arise (more and more often lately, but no good thinking about that now), he pushes both aside and determinedly turns his thoughts elsewhere.

Today especially he is determined not to lose his good mood. He has managed to find some quality persimmons at the market, and at a bargain as well (and as pleased as he is by that, he really only bought them because Nicolò is exceptionally fond of date-plums, and there it is again, better move on); he learned on his way home, from her husband, that Ruqayyah is nearly recovered from her fall and her fever is gone, and since she has a taste for it and is well enough now to eat but not cook, would he bring some of his strange and excellent Frankish cooking once again, some night (and if there’s a slight pang at that, it’s only because he knows he can draw much better metaphors than a parallel between a friendship and a slightly altered dish); and the half-vicious cat that always skulks around their street took a scrap of meat from his hand that morning without even clawing him (Yusuf has tamed far worse than a cat in his lifetime, but sadly Nicolò was not with him to be teased about it, so he has saved that one up for tonight).

Nicolò is not there when he arrives home, which is to be expected; the other man has been finding casual work as a labourer quite often these days. He enjoys it, he says, and it gives him the chance to learn how to speak the language like a real person, rather than a scroll. (Yusuf had strongly protested any idea that he had not taught Nicolò to speak like a real person, but it is true that his own Persian is deliberately empty of more colourful colloquial turns of phrase. It is not a particularly good trading strategy to cast strongly-worded aspersions on your supplier’s parentage, for instance.) Yusuf hums under his breath as he reorganizes the persimmons in a dish until he’s found an arrangement that meets with his aesthetic satisfaction. He’ll cook tonight, he thinks, if Nicolò hasn’t returned by the time he’s finished at the bathhouse. If he makes extra, he can bring it over to Ruqayyah and Hossein early. Mostly for his own amusement, he considers what in his repertoire might be considered suitably Frankish – although of course most of the dishes are really just Maghrebi fare with this or that substitution or alteration courtesy of Genoa (or of necessity), and unrecognizable to an actual Frank.

He’s still thinking idly on that, among other things, when he returns from the bathhouse, wondering if there is any eggplant left or if Nicolò used it all the night before, since it is too late to be worth traipsing all the way to the market for more. The sound of someone running pulls him from his thoughts barely ten steps from his door, and he turns sharply more from habit than real alarm – he is not armed, in any event, not for so short an excursion so near his home.

A moment later, the man skids to a stop in front of him, and in the moment where he desperately tries to catch his breath, Yusuf recognizes him as one of the young men Nicolò has brought back for dinner. “They need feeding,” he always says. This one is Ali, or Ammar, Yusuf isn’t sure.

“Master Yusuf,” he gasps out, still bracing his hands on his thighs. “I’m so sorry – your friend–”

Yusuf’s stomach doesn’t move, but something icy breaks free from high in his chest and plunges endlessly downward. He thinks it might be his soul. “What happened?”

From: (Anonymous)

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/7005.html?thread=2438749#cmt2438749

(OP, I hope you meant it about Heyer, because we're doing a massive Heyer crossover universe here!)

“Frederica!” Charis exclaimed, having barely taken her gloves off. “Frederica, I have heard the most astonishing news.”

“Can it wait until the tea has been served, dearest?” Frederica responded. “Then you can tell me comfortably, without interruption.”

“I suppose so,” Charis sighed. “I own I am still very surprised that you have decided to come down for the Season, in your condition, as convenient as it is for me –”

“There is Jessamy to see about, and with any luck that will all be sorted before I am quite laid up.” Frederica put a hand on her stomach. “I am barely loosening my stays at this stage, I promise you, there is nothing to fret about.”

“If you say so,” Charis said, blinking doubtfully; Frederica knew she had had a very hard time of it with her son last year, and was duly concerned about Frederica, even though she had had the easiest of births with her first two. She waited until the tea was brought in, clearly quivering with excitement, and started speaking as soon as Frederica began to pour.

“It is the Duke of Tunis!” she exclaimed. “He has married! And there is more!”

“Clearly, or you would not be so excited about it,” Frederica said, smiling at her. “Do go on!”

Charis cleared her throat. “He has married the Sardinian ambassador’s brother –”

“Not all that surprising, surely? The ambassadorial set are all very social among each other, and of course Tunis is not so far from Sardinia.”

“The Sardinian ambassador is actually from Genoa, which is part of the Kingdom now,” Charis said, a degree of insight into international affairs which frankly astonished her sister, “which I only know because Lady Ombersley very kindly instructed me, she having spent so much time abroad, you know – anyway, what was I saying?”

“Why it was surprising that the Duke of Tunis had married the Sardinian ambassador’s brother,” Frederica prompted her.

“Yes! Well, they are Catholic, you see, which is one thing, and what is more, I understand the ambassador’s brother was meant for the church, that is, the Roman one,” Charis said.
“And you know they do not let priests marry, and instead he has got married to the Duke of Tunis, and besides which Lady Ombersley confided in me – or I cannot say she confided because there were a group of us there, but she did say it in a lowered tone – that is, I believe the ambassador is not personally very well-to-do, it being an appointed position, and something about a Republic and the war, but they are not French, so I did not follow her logic. The point is, the brother does not have any sort of portion, it is believed, and one would think that would be necessary when there are so many other obvious barriers to the match – so the only conclusion can be that it is for love!” Charis clasped her hands together. “Don’t you think that’s romantic?”

“Yes, of course, dearest,” Frederica said. “And terribly useful.”

“Useful?” Charis blinked at her.

“You know that Jessamy has – an interest, which he hopes to bring to a marriage, with Alverstoke’s permission,” Frederica said.

“Oh yes, his Cambridge friend. What was his name? Aubrey?”

“That is correct. Anyway, I will not burden your ears with it, darling Charis, but there is some small scandal around the rest of the family, which is difficult for Jessamy’s career, and I do think it will be much easier to win Alverstoke over if everybody is busy talking about this match instead.”

“I think they will be,” Charis said sagely. She did not prefer to spend most of the Season in London, being a creature of simple habits and too attached to her child and husband besides, but she did enjoy visiting with Frederica for a few weeks to catch up with old friends, from her one Season. “I have already heard the news from a dozen people, and that is more than when the Baroness Scythia returned last year with an American bride.”

“Well, excellent for us, then,” Frederica said, “and I will look forward to meeting this mysterious new Genoan groom. Lord Yusuf is such delightful company; I hope he has found an equally delightful husband. Now, will you have more tea?”