theoldguardkinkmeme | Fills Post

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/3653.html?thread=980549#cmt980549 Nile had managed to stay relatively quiet the first time, but by the third time she felt her orgasm building, she couldn’t help herself. It had been a long time, okay—a long time since she had done this with anyone and a long time since she had had her eye on Booker. “Yes, yes, yes,” she wailed, fingers tightly curled in Booker’s hair as he lapped enthusiastically at her and teased her with one finger. “Booker, please, more,” and he slid in a second finger, earning a shriek from her. “Oh yes Booker, fuck, how are you so good at this, yes yes yes just like that, going to come—“ He licked her through her orgasm as he had the previous two, his fingers slowly working her through the aftershocks, and she winced when his nose bumped against her clit. “Too sensitive, baby,” she warned, pushing his head away. He looked wrecked and blissful, licking his lips as if he already missed the taste of her, and the sight sent a little spasm through her even though she had just climaxed. She squirmed a bit on his fingers, groaning as they pressed against a sensitive place inside her. “Oh, feels so good,” she gasped out, slowly grinding down against his fingers, and he let her take what she needed, resting his head against her inner thigh, pressing soft kisses against the skin there. It took longer for her to get to the edge this time, but when she did there was something different, an extra desperation in her eyes and the way she worked herself against his fingers. “Booker, baby,” she warned, a little frantic, “I’m going to come again, fuck,” and he leaned in to lick a long stripe up her folds, carefully avoiding her oversensitive clit, swirling his tongue around where his fingers entered her, and her eyes went wide. “Book, Book, oh God I never felt like this before, I’m going to—Sébastien, please, oh, right there right there—“ and then three things happened at once. Nile clenched violently around his fingers, screamed loudly enough to wake people in the building next door, and gushed wetness all over his fingers and his face. He blinked, looking up at her with her release still dripping on his cheeks and his chin, and she groaned at the sight. “Oh my God, Booker, that definitely never happened before,” she explained, and pulled him up for a kiss, tasting herself on his lips. “You were so good to me, made me feel so good,” she praised in between desperate kisses, shivering when he gently slid his fingers out. “Never felt like that before, your tongue, Booker, fuck.” She could feel him hard against her thigh, let her legs fall open so that he could thrust against her if he wanted. “Nobody ever made me feel as good as you,” she confessed, and he groaned, hips jerking, and she realised when she felt a splash of wetness against her thigh that he had come untouched. “Fuck,” she said enthusiastically, and kissed him again, wet and sloppy, her arms twining around his back to keep him close. “All those months I spent thinking about this, not sure if you were interested, and then it was even better than I could have expected. So good, Sébastien,” she praised, pressing a soft kiss to the tip of his nose and rubbing her hands down his sides. “I wanted to please you like you deserve to be pleased, mon coeur,” he confessed, burying his head in her shoulder, and she kissed the top of his head as her hands meandered down to his ass, squeezing lightly. “You did, baby, didn’t you see how much I enjoyed it? I—fuck, I never in my life came like that before. My vision actually went white for a moment and I couldn’t help making such a mess of you.” She brought one finger to where her release was still drying on his chin, swiped lightly at it and then prodded at his lips. He opened for her immediately, sucking her finger into his mouth and swirling his tongue around it, and it occurred to her that she would like to see him sometime apply his talents to sucking a cock, plastic or otherwise. She told him so, and he groaned around her finger in a way that made her think he agreed. “Bet you’d be good at that, too,” she remarked. “You’re just made for giving pleasure, aren’t you?” He whimpered, a soft broken sound, and she wasn’t terribly surprised to feel his length fattening up again against her leg. “Yes that’s right, you were perfect for me, made me come harder than I thought was possible.” She reached down to take his cock in hand, jacking it a few times to bring him to full hardness. “Want to make you feel good too, you know,” she commented, and then she guided him to her entrance, rubbed the head of his erection through her folds. “Do you want to, baby?” There was no way on earth he was going to say no to that, and his eyes rolled back in bliss as he started to push into her. “Nile, my heart,” he begged, “it’s too perfect,” and his breath was ragged as he bottomed out, holding himself there to let her adjust. She shifted a bit, taking stock of the way he filled her, and gave him a pleased grin. “It’s good, Book, you can move,” she encouraged, and he started up a slow, careful rhythm. Later, she thought, she would tell him that he didn’t have to be so cautious with her, that she wasn’t going to break. But this was nice, after the frantic desperation of her earlier orgasms, to feel the pleasure slowly building as he rocked into her. It was intimate, too, and she wanted to blush as he locked eyes with her, wanted to look away but she held his gaze, pulling him down for a kiss. “Love this,” she whispered, and the unspoken coda was “love you”. Not yet, she thought, but soon she would tell him. He was grateful that he had already come once against her thigh, because it was the only thing that let him drag this out, let him luxuriate in the feeling of being so completely connected to her. Even so, his desire built faster than he might have liked, and he kissed her deeply. “What can I do for you?” He asked against her lips, and she kissed him back, pushing a little harder into his thrusts. “Don’t need anything more than this, Book,” she said honestly. “Just like this is perfect for me.” She came before he did, barely, and it wasn’t the ferocious intensity of the last time but it seemed to go on forever, her thighs trembling where they bracketed his legs and her kisses interspersed with little whines that drove him crazy. “Should I—should I pull out?” He asked when she finally seemed finished, and she shook her head adamantly. “Want to feel you come inside, Book, please,” and just hearing her say that she wanted that was enough for him, he snapped his hips twice, quicker than his careful rhythm, and spilled inside her with a hitching sob. His eyes were dark with tears when he met her gaze again, still buried inside her, and she stroked his cheek lightly. “Everything okay?” She asked, and he nodded. “It’s just a lot, that’s all,” and she understood completely. “I’ve got you,” she whispered. “You don’t have to be alone anymore,” and she held him close until he fell asleep. She was still sleeping when he woke up in the morning, and he pressed the softest of kisses to her shoulder before disentangling himself carefully from her grasp, determined to at least rustle up some coffee and toast to bring back to her for when she woke up. He walked into the kitchen, a little bleary-eyed, and groaned when he saw the entire team gathered there at the table, eyes locked on him and sharing devious grins. Andy cracked the silence first, sending him a conspiratorial wink. “Goddamn, Booker, who knew you were such a sex fiend?” He buried his face in his hands, equal parts flustered and amused. Quynh burst out laughing, bright and cheerful, and it was so nice to hear her happy again, he thought. He wasn’t sure that that was possible, back when she first found him in Paris—but then again, he wouldn’t have thought back then that he would be able to get better himself, to earn the love of someone as amazing as Nile. “Seriously, Booker,” Joe remarked, helpfully pulling out the coffee and bread and handing them to Booker. “What on earth did you do to make her scream like that?” Booker was sure his face was bright red, and then Nicky piped in with a grin. “I mean, we all had to listen to it all night, so we at least deserve the dirty details.” Andy looked up from where she was cleaning her labrys, shooting Quynh a heated look. “I mean, I wouldn’t say we objected to hearing it, honestly it was pretty hot. We tried keeping count of how many times she came, but sometimes you two were so loud in between that it was hard to tell,” and that was it, Booker was going to sink into the floor from embarrassment. “Book?” Nile called from the other room, voice still sleepy, and Booker hurried to collect the coffee and toast and go back to her. Just before he reached the bedroom door, Andy called his name once more. “Booker? Just so you know, we’re happy for you two. I think you’ll be good for one another,” and his face shone with genuine pleasure. “Thanks, boss. Me too.”

For this prompt (https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1468.html?thread=261820#cmt261820)

"So while Nicky is more quiet, he definitely is extremely protective of Joe, I mean we all saw how he lunges for Merrick when Merrick was stabbing Joe right?

So I wanna see a scenario where they're on a mission and the big bad guy is holding Joe hostage and Joe gets hurts

And the second Joe is hurt, Nicky is absolutely feral, trying to get the bad guys away from Joe and get Joe to safety and clings to him for days in end because while they are immortal, Nicky can't stand the thought of Joe being gone for even a second"

Nile doesn't register it. She sees it but she doesn't think twice about it. They get hurt. They die sometimes. It doesn't matter if they're in the middle of the fight or in the hands of the evil prick of the week, right? Except apparently it does.

The guy they're hunting; some drug kingpin with ambitions to expand into human trafficking according to Copley. He managed to catch Joe when they were doing recon and Andy ordered them into the attack with no time to plan. The guy has a knife in his hand and he's been snarling threats while Joe mocked him the whole time. The grunt Joe let out when the guy finally drove the knife into Joe's gut barely registers with Nile over the chaos of the fight.

"Sacre-dieu," Booker breathes in the same instant that Andy says "Oh, fuck."

Nile doesn't have words for the sound Nicky makes.

Then Booker and Andy both tackle her to the ground. Booker's chanting in French. It sounds like he's praying. Andy is cursing in the low focused way that means something's gone horribly wrong. Nile hears a lot of screaming. There's wild gunfire. When she manages to push Booker enough that she can see, she sees blood everywhere. Nicky's a blur of motion amid screaming bodies.

It's a good thing their enemies have their hands full because Nicky is mesmerizing. Nile's fought alongside Nicky for months now and she's never seen him fight like this. Nicky is the shield, the one who finds the way through the firefights and he generally incapacitates his opponent. He's careful, methodical and controlled. He's none of those things.

Nicky tears through the armed goons like a whirlwind. The boss, Nile doesn't even remember his name, screams orders but Nicky just keeps coming. He's been shot, she's pretty sure but he isn't slowing down.

"You should have seen him," Joe had told her once. "His God's wrath made flesh."

She'd laughed. Joe being Joe, she'd thought. He exaggerated. Nicky fights well but he's too controlled, too methodical to be really scary. Nicky's too kind. He has the gentlest soul of any man she's ever met. He hates the violence of what they do as a necessary evil. He hates hurting people and tries to be as quick and clean as he can.

Nile is not enjoying how wrong she was about that.

Nicky leaves his sword sticking out of the last of the guy's goons and their target drops Joe's body. Nicky catches him before he can hit the ground. Nile tries to push up because the target's getting away, goddammit!

"Don't." Andy pushes her down.

Nile gets her head up in time to see Nicky pull the knife from Joe's belly. His focus is on the blood spilling out, free hand pressing down. He doesn't look away from Joe. The knife flies through the air and there's a meaty thunk. Then the heavier thud of a body dropping. Nile is twisting to see who just fell. Andy and Booker are still frozen, all of their attention on Nicky and Joe.

No, Nile realizes, not on Nicky and Joe. Just on Nicky.

He has Joe cradled against his chest, one hand pressing against the still-bleeding wound, the other threaded in Joe's hair. Nicky's expression is...empty. His eyes are closed, lips moving. In the silence, Nile can hear the familiar sing-song of prayer. It's Latin, she thinks. Not Italian. Not Arabic. Nicky's voice is barely a whisper.

Andy pushes herself up slowly, watching Nicky like he's a live grenade. Booker inches backwards. Nile can hear his breathing, shallow, rapid gasps and feel the way his heart is still racing. Andy presses a hand between Nile's shoulder blades. Stay.

Nile doesn't fight it. She's staring at Joe although her eyes keep flicking to Nicky. Shouldn't he be awake by now? Nicky's rocking him back and forth, praying in that barely audible whisper the whole time. Andy gets a knee under herself and pushes up.

Nicky's eyes snap open, head turning towards them and Andy freezes again. There's a second of tension, then Nicky refocuses on Joe and Andy breathes out. Nile catches her eye and Andy shakes her head emphatically.

Booker is praying too, Nile thinks. She couldn't move if she'd wanted to and she really doesn't want to. Even Andy's gone still and Nile can hear her muttering "Wake up for fuck's sake!" under her breath.

Like he'd heard her, Joe sucks in a sudden gulp of air and lurches upright in Nicky's embrace. Booker's relieved sigh flattens her again but Andy doesn't move. Joe blinks and looks around. Nile sees him take in the bodies, pause on the goon with Nicky's sword sticking out of him like a ghoulish flag and he turns to Nicky. He has to shuffle to get a hand up to cup Nicky's cheek.

"This was a bad one, huh?" he's smiling faintly despite the worry in his eyes. "I am here, hayati. I am well."

Nicky doesn't respond immediately, eyes still closed.

"You saved me," Joe insists. "I am here. Open your eyes, my love. See me."

Nicky's eyelids flutter, eyes opening slowly, and he touches the bloody tear over Joe's stomach with a shaking hand. Joe tuts at him, gently turning his face up.

"Look at me, my darling," he repeats. Nicky's eyes flick up almost automatically and he stares at Joe for a full five seconds before he blinks. All the tension runs out of him and he lunges at Joe. Joe manages somehow to keep them both more or less upright, hooking his bound hands over Nicky's neck and holding him close.

"Thank fuck," Andy breathes out in a rush of air and stands easily. She offers Nile a hand and Nile scrambles to stand, still staring at Nicky.

"That was a bad one," Booker says quietly. "I'll go warm up the car."

Andy nods and glances at Nile. "Copley need anything out of this place?"

"Uh, no?" Nile gestures at Joe and Nicky. "Should we...?"

"They'll be fine," Andy says. It comes out half-order, half-question. Neither of them react. She waves Nile towards the door. "Just...give them a few minutes."

Nile waits until they're outside before she turns to Andy. "What the fuck was that?!"

Andy brushes her hair back and tucks her gun back into her harness. "Nicky reacts...badly to Joe getting hurt. They'll be fine in a couple of minutes."

"Badly?" Nile sputters. She peers around Andy and Joe still has Nicky’s face in his hands. Nicky has his hands curled around Joe’s wrists. They’re totally focused on each other and really, it’s probably weird that Nile thinks it’s really sweet. Andy pats her shoulder.

"Nicky goes first," Andy says then smirks. "After me. You’ll learn."

“Yeah,” Nile sighs. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/4108.html?thread=1428236#cmt1428236

As soon as Nile gets home, Nicky grabs her by the wrist and drags her over to the laptop, saying “Close your eyes.”

“You are so lucky I trust you,” she says, but does as he asks. They’ve lived together for eighteen months now, since she moved to Italy to start her art history PhD; they’re not a natural match, but Nicky is so much older than the other Italian undergraduate students, and Nile didn’t blink at the awkward mess that is his adult life to date. They both like the quiet in the mornings, and good coffee, and a tidy kitchen, and refusing to give up their faith because of who they love, and that’s pretty much all Nicky could ask for in someone he’s sharing a flat with.

Nicky puts his hand over the caption on screen; he can’t quite get the whole picture in without it showing. “All right. Open your eyes. What do you see?”

“A laptop,” Nile says. “Fine, fine. It’s a photo of Joe.” She squints. “Damn, that’s a nice suit. I didn’t know he owned a suit.”

“You’re sure.” Nicky bites his lip.

“Yeah, I know what your boyfriend looks like.” Nile frowns. “Why –”
He takes his hand away. She leans over to read it. “Crown Prince Yusuf al-Kaysani of – shit, Nicky.”

Nicky covers his face with his hands. He can’t look at it any longer. “I know.”

“Shit,” Nile says again, and sits down. “You really had no idea?”

“Of course not!” Nicky exclaims, throwing his hands up. “He’s my boyfriend Joe! He’s doing a Master of Fine Arts! He likes bringing me coffee in bed and he gets charcoal all over the sheets and he reads me poetry and lets me talk about my essays and he complains about his mother making him go to fancy parties and at no point did he mention those fancy parties were at a palace, because he is a prince!” Then he really hears what Nile said. “Wait. Wait. You knew?”

“Not – exactly,” Nile says, and Nicky isn’t sure what his face says, but she flinches. “No! No, I didn’t. I just – it was Andy, okay?”

“Andy,” Nicky says blankly, because Andy and Booker live with Joe and he thought they were his friends but now he thinks – “She’s security? They both are? They must be.”

“Yeah.” Nile sighs. “I asked her if she wanted to go out once when you had Joe over, and she said she had to work, and then I found her watching the building and – look. Look, Nicky, I swear, she didn’t say he was a prince, she said his parents were wealthy, and I kinda figured that because – well, that was obvious, right? He’s never pretended to not come from money.”

“No, he hasn’t,” Nicky says, turning the laptop around to stare at Prince Yusuf, who is Joe, who now seems as untouchable as the moon and yet Nicky can recall the heat of his skin under Nicky’s hands, this morning, without even consciously trying. “He hasn’t…lied to me. I don’t think.”

“I do,” Nile says. “Lies of omission still count, when they’re this big.”

Horrifically, Nicky can feel tears pricking at the back of his eyeballs; he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I just…Nile, I love him so much.”

“I know.” Nile sounds gentle. “He said the same thing to me about you last week, did you know? He was over here and you were making dinner and he was sitting at the table watching you, and I asked what he was thinking, and he said Nile, I love that man so much, and a lot of other stuff which I’m not going to repeat because you should hear it from him. It was beautiful.”

“It doesn’t matter, though,” Nicky says, lowering his hands. “He doesn’t – he’s the Crown Prince. I’m a failed priest with half a psychology degree.”

“I think gay marriage is legal in –”

“Yes, but it doesn’t matter. Because it’s a job, Nile, you understand that? These days. Being a prince, or one day a king, or being married to one. It is a job I am extremely unqualified for and he has not asked me if I am interested in, and as it happens I don’t even believe in monarchy, which makes me even less qualified for it. So…it doesn’t matter.” Nicky hates that he has to say the next words, but they’re true. “I’m going to lose him eventually.”

“So what you’re saying is that you don’t want to be Kate Middleton,” Nile says, very seriously. Nicky can’t help letting out a half-laugh.

“No, I don’t.”

“I think you need to talk to him.” Nile makes a face. “I know I need to talk to my girlfriend. If she’s not on duty as a bodyguard. Which, yeah, okay, I should have told you.”

Nicky closes the laptop, and takes a couple of deep breaths. “He’s supposed to be coming over for dinner tonight.”

“I know, I was going to go out.” Nile lays a hand on his. “Do you need me to stay, instead?”

“If – I do not want to inconvenience you. But could you…be on call?”

“I can do that, yeah.”

Nicky hugs her. “You are my favourite person.”

“Joe is your favourite person, even with all this,” Nile says, “but I’ll take it. We need better taste in people, Nicky, huh?”

“We do,” Nicky says. “We do.”

*

He promised Joe he’d make risotto, but when he goes into the kitchen he is filled with a nameless resentment; Joe has, at home, an entire staff to make him risotto, or so Nicky assumes. He doesn’t know how that works. He grew up in a three-bedroom flat in Genoa, with his mother and four siblings. But as Nile says, Joe has never hidden that he comes from money.

He wants to cry again, which will help nothing, so instead he lies down on the couch and closes his eyes and tries to think of what he wants to say. He considers praying, but he doesn’t know what he would pray for.

At some point he falls into an uneasy sleep. When he wakes, red sunset light is washing over him through their beautiful north-facing living room window, and someone is calling his name and knocking on the front door.

“Nicky?”

It’s Joe. Of course it’s Joe. Nicky’s mouth tastes like wool and he has the beginning of a headache and his shirt is wrinkled. Joe is a prince. He doesn’t know what to do.

He stands up and goes to open the door. Joe smiles at him like the sun coming up, there and real and beautiful. “Nicky, there you are! Was the –” He frowns. “What’s wrong?”

Nicky can’t find anything to say. He reaches up and touches the side of Joe’s face, just to make sure he still can.

“Nicky,” Joe says, urgent now. “Nicky, what is it?”

“I’m not sure,” Nicky says, “how I’m supposed to address a crown prince when he knocks on my door expecting to eat my risotto, which I have not cooked.”

Joe opens his mouth, and then closes it, and then squeezes his eyes shut, and then swears very sincerely in Arabic. Nicky does not recognise the words, precisely, but he recognises the mood.

He tries to drop his hand. Joe catches it and holds it.

“I do not deserve risotto,” Joe says, “and I don’t even deserve to be allowed into your home, really, but…can we talk?”

“I wish,” Nicky says, and means every word of it, “I knew how to say no to you right now, or ever,” and pulls Joe inside.

*

He means to take Joe to the table and sit down and have a proper conversation, like the adults they are, but instead he somehow ends up pulling Joe down onto the couch and burrowing into him for comfort, which is ridiculous, because Joe is the reason he’s upset. Joe holds him like he’s fragile, like he might not be allowed to hold him. Nicky hates it.

“Was it Andy?” Joe asks. “Who told you.”

“What? No,” Nicky says. “Although it turns out Nile knows she is your bodyguard. Why would you think that?”

“She keeps threatening to,” Joe says. “She keeps telling me that I can’t hold out on you like this, that it isn’t fair.”

“I like Andy a lot more than you right now.”

“That is fair.”

“What does Booker say?”

“He says I can be an idiot if I want.”

“I like you more than Booker. But it’s close.”

“Also fair.” Joe wriggles; the couch is not that big, and neither of them are short men. “How, then?”

“You’re not going to believe me,” Nicky says, “but a Wikipedia spiral while I was procrastinating on doing some reading for class.”

Joe groans. “No, I believe you. I can’t believe that hasn’t happened until now, is what I can’t believe.”

“Neither can I.” The couch isn’t big enough for Nicky to turn over and face Joe, who is curled protectively at his back, the way they often sleep; he’s not sure whether that’s good or bad. “How long did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

“I think I was hoping…” Joe pushes his nose into the back of Nicky’s neck. “I don’t know. That you would see photos and assume I had a doppelganger, or that you would find out on your own and it wouldn’t be like this. Which was very stupid.”

“I just think you owed me the knowledge that this had a time limit,” Nicky says. It is the last thing he wants to say because saying it makes it true.

“Nicky,” Joe says, fiercely, clutching him. “No.”

“It does.”

“Only if you want it to.”

Nicky falls off the couch. It is not his finest moment. He takes Joe with him. Fortunately Joe does not land directly on top of him, but it is still extremely uncomfortable, especially when Nicky’s knee hits the leg of the coffee table.
Nicky swears, and extricates himself from Joe. He sits up. Joe stays lying on the floor, looking at the ceiling. He has a charcoal smudge above his left eyebrow. It looks beautiful. Nicky does, hopelessly, stupidly, love this man so much.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nicky says. “You’re supposed to go to Genoa with me next month and meet my mother. You’ve never even talked about introducing me to your family. Because you’re a prince, and I’m – me, and I bet they don’t even know I exist.”

“Of course they know you exist,” Joe says, sounding exasperated. He tries to sit up, but the coffee table is in the way. It is a process. “Well, my parents do, because I am not giving my sisters information like that to hold over me.”

“You told them?”

“I mean, Andy and Booker told them, or so I presume,” Joe says, like that’s normal, “but yes, I told them, because I love you and you’re the best thing that has ever happened to me, and they’re my parents and I wanted them to know that.”

“Oh,” Nicky says, having been fully prepared to resent being Joe’s dirty secret, and unable to handle this. “Oh.”

“I’m not ashamed of you,” Joe says, his face darkening, but not with anger at Nicky; never that. “I just…it’s a lot, you know? I couldn’t just – I want you to meet them. I want that very much. But I hadn’t even managed to tell you my whole real name. So my parents were still a ways down the list.”

“You’re going to need to marry someone…” Nicky waves a hand. “I don’t know. It’s a job, I understand that. Who you are. And it’s a job I don’t think should exist, by the way, we should be clear on that. But I don’t think it’s a job I can do.”

Joe laughs. “Oh, you need to talk to my father. But, uh, are you saying you can’t do it because you wouldn’t want to, or…”

Nicky tries to collect his thoughts. “I’m saying that five hours ago it had never occurred to me in my life to think about it!”

“Well,” Joe says. “Yes. I can see that.”

They stare at each other. The sun has gone down; the room is getting dark. Nicky gets up on his knees and shuffles over to Joe. Joe looks up at him, a terrible sort of hope in his eyes. Nicky puts a hand under Joe’s chin, burying his fingers in his beard, and kisses him. It feels exactly as it always does when he kisses Joe; like he has always known how to do it, like he could spend a lifetime learning how.

“Did you grow this beard as a disguise?” he asks, when the kiss ends.

“Yeah, kinda,” Joe says. “You know what I look like without it now, I guess.”

“You are ridiculously handsome with or without it. But you know that.”

“Nicky,” Joe says again, pulling him down so they’re huddled together. Joe is leaning back against the couch. “I don’t expect an answer. Or for you to forgive me, even. And this is…this would be…not easy. But I do need you to know that I mean it, I mean it, the only person who decides whether you walk away from this is you.”

Nicky snorts. “And your parents, I assume.”

Joe’s face wrinkles up. “Look – okay – don’t worry about that, because they’re going to love you.”

Nicky tries to imagine a king and queen loving him, and ends up laughing hysterically into Joe’s shoulder. Joe holds him and lets it pass.

“I don’t want to walk away,” he says, finally. “I want you to come to Genoa next month, and I want to finish my degree, and I want – I want –” He pulls back, so he can look into Joe’s eyes. “I want you. But I need to know what that means, really.”

“That’s fair,” Joe says again, and cups Nicky’s face and kisses him very gently.

Nicky’s phone buzzes in his pocket, and they both jump.

He checks it; it’s Nile. He tells Joe so. “Checking whether she needs to come and comfort me, or yell at you.”

“And…”

“I told her,” Nicky says, “that we are going to be eating dinner, and you are staying over, and then…and then. We will see.”

“Do you want to order something?”

“I want you to help me cook,” Nicky says. “When else am I going to get the chance to have a real crown prince do kitchen prep for me?”

“Whenever you want,” Joe says. “If you want. I hope.”

“I hope too,” Nicky says, and it’s dark enough now that they need to turn on the lights, so it’s hard to make out the details of Joe’s expression. But the way he smiles has a light all of its own.

(A/N: I have very deliberately not named Joe's country because I don't know enough about North Africa to feel comfortable creating a fictional monarchy there, but, uh, assume it's basically North African Wakanda.)

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/4108.html?thread=1431308#cmt1431308

Fifteen years after she dies for the first time, Nile is sitting in a room with the rest of the team going over a mission Copley has sent them, when Andy says “You know, we can do this without Copley, but I’m glad we found him. At least we get another thirty or forty years of this.”

“What?” Nile says. “You expect him to keep helping us ‘till he’s a hundred?”

“What?” Andy frowns at her. “He’s not that old.”

“He’s nearly sixty, Andy!”

“No,” Joe says, disbelieving. “That can’t be! He’s barely grey.”

“Well it is,” Nile says. “I remember when he told me all about his fiftieth birthday party. Which was eight years ago.”

“You hadn’t even met him eight years ago,” says Nicky.

“It’s been fifteen years.”

“No!”

“Yes!” Nile says. “I died in 2019, and the Angola thing was ’24, and that mess in Maine was ’32, and –”

“No,” Andy says. “I refuse to believe it. He can’t be nearly sixty.”

“Well, he is!”

“How old are you, then?” Joe frowns at her.

“How old did you think I was when I died?”

“Uh.” Joe squints. “Eighteen?”

Nile pinches her nose. “That’s barely old enough to enlist.”

“Thirty,” Nicky tries.

“Closer. But also no.”

Andy waves a hand. “Everybody looks like an infant until they start getting grey hair, these days. It’s all the sunscreen and plastic surgery.”

“You know most people don’t get plastic surgery, right?”

“Prove it.”

“Everybody,” Nicky says. “Is this actually important, right now?”

“It’s important that apparently you all can’t even guess someone’s age within a decade, yeah.”

“No, he’s right.” Joe sighs. “But really. I would have guessed forty for Copley, at most.” He frowns. “Or, like, eighty. I can never tell.”

“Oh my god,” Nile says. “I can’t believe you.”

“Don’t worry.” Andy grins. “I believe us all the time.”

I haven’t written fanfic in YEARS. I mean like... years. So please forgive this rusty fandom old but I hope this is something like you wanted.

———————————————————

He opens the link because curiosity had always been his biggest flaw and then he immediately wishes he hadn’t because now he can not look away.

It’s Joe. With eyes that shine brighter than the stars and a smile that vanishes every negative thought he’s ever had in favor of giving holy praise.

Joe with the artist hands and the poetic slick tongue and the laugh that he wishes he could record and replay on repeat until the world ends.

Joe who he finally had the courage to invite over for dinner in the hopes of broaching the topic of this thing between them.

Joe who is staring back at him through his laptop screen, very naked and very aroused.

Nicky can’t help the way his eyes roam quickly over the expanse of dark skin glistening with sweat to rest on the swollen head of his cock.

He half wishes the camera would zoom in so that he could get a better look and is wholly unprepared when it does.

He’s staring at the mushroom head, deep angry red and wet, and the picture zooms even further to catch the rolling beads of precome that comes through the slit.

‘Touch yourself’ a voice speaks off screen and Nicolò releases a puff of air he hadn’t realize he was holding as the camera pans out to Joe wrapping those perfect long fingers, often covered in ink, around his cock.

‘Christ’ it slips out of Nicky’s mouth before he could help it as Joe’s hips bucks up, pushing the head of his cock through a loose fist.

He definitely shouldn’t be watching this. He definitely couldn’t pull away unless his house started to burn down around him and even then he might risk a couple lifetimes

‘Feels good baby?’ The voice speaks again. Nicky barely registered that it’s male and that he’s maybe heard it before but that’s the last thing that he cares about as the camera pans up and zooms to Joe’s face.

‘Shit’ another unintentional huff of air slips out as he takes in Joe’s expression. Eyes clenched tight, mouth tight, bottom lip curled inwards with his teeth pushing in.

The camera zooms out to show the rapid shallow breaths that he’s taking. Quick rises of his toned chest, smattered with hair and covered with sweat.

‘Nngg’ A groan and Nicky sees the bob of his throat as if he tried to swallow the sound before it made its way out.

‘Well don’t do that’ comes off screen as the camera pans to his groin, to his hand moving at a leisure pace around his cock and to the quick jerks of his hips like he can’t stop his body from chasing more as those deft fingers barely graze the head of his cock.

‘Let me hear you, you sound so gorgeous’ says the person behind the camera and Nicky finds himself agreeing and wishing Joe would comply.

‘Ugh... fuck’ Joe says, voice raw, and Nicky says ‘fuck... Joe’ and undoes his fly because the erection he sprouted since opening the link and seeing Joe, naked, sitting on a bed, legs open, and staring directly at him as invitation has really gotten uncomfortable.

‘Fuck... please’ Joe says as Nicky watches, entranced.

‘Please what?’ The voice answers and zooms out for the whole picture. Joe stroking himself so slow that it must be a tease, his face scrunched up in pleasure and frustration. His chest rising and falling in quick succession. Thighs flexed as he holds himself back from fucking into his hand as the left grips the edge of bed at an angle that can’t comfortable.

‘Please... I wanna come’ Joe says and Nicky feels for him. Groaning as his palm presses against the bulge in his briefs.

‘Only on my cock’ the voice replies and Joe bucks his hips into his fist with a loud groan that has Nicky doing the same.

‘Do you want my cock?’ The man speaks again and Nicky’s heart starts jackrabbitting at the prospect that he might get to watch Joe getting fucked.

‘Please’ Joe answers quick and short as he fails in keeping his hips steady again.

‘Say it’ off camera voice says and Nicky pushes harder against his length in agreement, ‘fuck... say it’ he echoes then the camera man speaks again ‘look at me and say it’.

He’s completely unprepared for the zoom in Joe’s face as his eyes open, pupils wide with lust, tongue darting out across his lips, voice rough and low when he speaks ‘I want your cock’.

‘Fuck!’ He has to shut his eyes as he squeezes the base of his cock, Hand having found its way into his underwear somehow as he tries to pull himself back from the ledge.

/Fuck. Joe looking at him with those eyes that speaks volumes, that perfect mouth begging for his cock/

‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck’ Nicky repeats, eyes shut as he shakes his head against intrusive thoughts that are not helping. He squeezes harder against his length. He refuses to shoot off like some fifteen year old. He has self control. damn it.

‘There you go...’ the voice coos followed by a loud ‘Nnnggg’ in Joe’s low timbre that has Nicky’s eyes snapping open.

He shuts them again just as fast, not ready for the onslaught, then opens them slowly to take in the new image to be permanently imprinted in his brain.

Joe’s wet hole unfurling as it spreads to take a thick cock inch by inch.

‘Fuck’ He was definitely going to shoot like a teenager with no control.

‘Fuck’ Nicky says again, giving in and gathering the moisture at the tip of his cock for a slicker slide as he starts stroking.

‘Fuck... yes.’ Joe says as his hole pulls in all in and clenches down hard enough for Nicky to feel it vibrating through him.

‘Shit... Joe’ he’s unable to stop himself from stripping his cock with a tight fist as he envisions that’s his cock going in and out at a brutal pace and making the sweetest man he’s ever met moan and beg and scream and writhe around like he can’t get enough.

The camera pans away from his perfect greedy hole and up the length of his body. Showing the expose line of his neck with his head thrown back, and the tension of his abs as his back arches of the bed.

‘Fuck. Please. Please.’ Joe says and his right hand his back to is cock matching the frantic pace of the one in his ass.

‘Fuck. Please. I can’t’ Joe says, Head bending forward and eyes snapping open to stare straight into Nicky’s soul and he’s done.

‘Fuck... Joe’ his voice cracks as his orgasm rips through him. Lightning fast and sharp and feet pushing hard against the ground as his hips bows forward so hard he cramps.

He works his cock until the tingling in his legs dissipate, eyes glued to the screen as he watches Joe meet his own spectacular end. Muscles so tight it looks painful, come shooting across beautiful brown skin, practically up to his beard. and then he breaks. Every muscle going lax as he collapses back to the bed.

The camera zooms on his face again, mouth open and panting, beautiful curls matted at his forehead and those perfect blown eyes blinking lazily, half lidded, staring at Nicky, crinkling at the sides as he smiles in thanks.

Nicky closes the laptop with his clean hand. Then wipes the soiled hand on his jeans as he tucks himself back in.

This was not how he expected his evening to go.

How the hell was he going to get through his dinner tonight. And what was he going to do about the other three links in the email.

——————————————-

A/N context: Joe maybe did some amateur porn to pay for school? Or maybe he just liked making home movies. Whose to say.

Welp. Jumping into this return to fic writing thing head first. Back on my dark twisted bullshit cause that's my jam. Still very rusty but trying.

Trigger warning: Blood, bloodlicking, a little gore, and general fuckedupness.

Inspired by the fact that Joe stabbed that guy in the EYE with a sword! IN THE EYE! and his brutal kill of Keane jfc, that was savage. Not to mention the wiping blood covering mouth thing are you kidding me???

----------------------------------------------

He’s always preferred the blade to a gun and it’s more than familiarity. He likes it for the personal touch. He doesn’t always get the chance to enjoy the intimacy of it but tonight time was on their side. He could take the moment to revel in the warm liquid sliding down his hand to his wrist and forearm.

He has his scimitar up through the guard after puncturing through the abdomen. It’s better this way. He can feel the muscles against the tips of his fingers and if he nudges just a little…

“There, there”

He can push further, work the guard in as well, get it up the hilt so he can feel the smooth tissue on the inside.

“Shh, shh, shh”

He hushes the man twisting underneath him, hand clamping further down against his mouth as he releases another muffled scream.

There’s tears in his eyes, Amazing. He hadn’t been expecting tears.

“It’ll be over soon” He says splaying his fingers wide, nearly letting go of the hilt to rummage around. It feels like rubber when he squeezes at a piece, but there’s little dips in the tissue.

Intestines. He thinks smiling again and pushes further in as his prey grows weaker in his struggles, his body going lax against him.

“Uh uh… not that soon” He twists the blade inside and the body under his hand jerks with a yell as blood starts to seeps out the sides of his mouth.

“Almost done” Joe assures him and nudges further into the abdomen. He can almost get his hand in but it needs a lot of twisting for the widest part and it doesn’t look like his friend will make it through.

“Shh, shh, shh” He pushes in more forcefully, widening the puncture until it fits and he has it in to the wrist.

The man beneath him screams, a hard jerk against him before going completely limp. Joe uncovers his mouth and the last of his breath hacks a mouthful of blood that he barely avoids getting in his eyes and instead coated the side of face and neck.

It isn’t as much fun when they’re not reacting, and so he works on pulling his hand through with the blade. The body beneath him ends up torn clavicle to abdomen in doing so as he decided the time for finesse has passed.

His hand is bloody and warm and dripping as the body slumps to the ground lacking the grace of the living.

“Yusuf”

He turns to the direction of the voice and his vision is overwhelmed with blue eyes holding back a storm before he’s seeing nothing as soft lips presses against his own.

It’s a hard kiss. Forceful, as if he’d ever resist his Nicolo, and full of teeth as Nicky bites more than he kisses until there is tongue pushing inside of his mouth and he meets it with just as much fury and wild abandonment.

“Yusuf” Nicolo pulls away for a second to suck the other’s bottom lip into his mouth and gnash down hard until blood starts to pool.

Joe can’t help the way he moans at that as Nicky’s tongue invade his mouth again this time with the added taste of blood sliding between them.

“Was that too much for you habibi?” he asks with laughter in his tone as Nicky drags his mouth to the blood stained neck and worked on sucking it clean and biting down to bruise.

“If it’s too much, next time you’ll have to wait outside…” His words trails off into a deep groan as Nicky’s teeth sink into the thick cord of his jugular.

“Nicolo” he breathes and pulls his Nicolo against him to press him into the wall.

It takes some maneuvering around the expired body on the floor to get close enough but then they are and Joe’s dragging his bloodied hand into Nicky’s hair, scimitar long forgotten to the floor, to pull his head up so he could lick inside his mouth again. His turn to bite and make bleed this time.

There’s something spoken again his tongue, it might be his name again but it’s ignored in favor of getting in as deep into his Nicolo as he could while the other man make work of the getting the cargos open to wrap deadly fingers around his hard member.

Joe abandons smearing blood into Nicky’s hair to slide the hand down his chest and to his belt but it doesn’t get far as Nicky’s grabs it and spreads his tongue against the palm before sliding the middle fingers in his mouth and sucking like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do.

“Nicky.” Joe is lost. His head bangs back against the wall and his eyes closes because it’s too much to take. Between his bloody hand fucking in between Nicky’s perfect cupid’s bow lips and the hand working quickly along his cock, he doesn’t last at all.

After, when he’s spent and sated and loving the feel of Nicolo softening inside of him and his hard body weighing him down, he remembers that he did in fact bring lube this time and no “Spit and blood is still not a good substitute Nicolo”.

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/3653.html?thread=1123653#cmt1123653

Fill: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26841448

For this prompt (https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/4011.html?thread=1140395#cmt1140395)

"Either in Merrick’s lab or in any other circumstances where Joe and Nicky are kidnapped and separated, the bad guys taunt Joe about raping Nicky. When they get rescued Nicky reassures Joe that sure, they kicked him around a bit and called him some names but definitely no rape took place.
He’s lying."

Nicky knows the signs. He is an old soul. Cruelty and greed are the same the world over and have been so since his first, useless death in the name of his Faith's greed. He knows the way men behave when they see something that they want but are too ashamed to admit to desiring. His love for Yusuf, the radiant, glorious love that he receives in return have made men like Merrick's brute hunger since their earliest days together.

He is afraid but only that they will take Joe instead.

His love is fire and sunlight, all his passions burning bright enough to dispel the deepest darkness. Joe is fearless of his own wellbeing. Only for Nicky, does his beloved fear. But the speech, the way that Joe puts himself between Nicky and harm is like nectar to the bee to such men. They rejoice in the chance to take what is Joe's and prove they are the stronger for their hatred and petty greed.

Nicky is Joe's. He almost laughs that they think that truth could ever be changed. Since the first day he died until the good Lord decrees that their time has come, Nicky belongs to Joe. Nothing they do will ever change that.

Merrick himself is satisfied with murder. Nicky knew boys like him in the cloister; Marco, who had pulled the wings off flies: Giuseppe, who had drowned unwanted (and wanted) kittens. He imagines himself greater than he is and delights in displaying his power. He falters when Joe revives and proves that his petty violence has cowed neither of them. Nicky notices that the leader of the men keeps his eyes on Nicky and he recognizes that look. He knows the signs.

So he is not surprised when they are seperated. Joe is shoved into the lift with three men holding him. Nicky is left with five and the man with hate and lust in his eyes. Nicky wonders idly who he reminds the man of. A former lover? An object of desire who passed from the man's life ignorant of the hunger they left behind? Perhaps it is simply that he fits Joe as well as a tailored suit, a true equal in the eyes of one who cannot conceive of any relationship that is not one party as master over the other? Men have killed Nicky for less.

"Take him to the conference room," the man says.

The men laugh. Most of them. Nicky sees one man who grimaces where his comrades cannot see and one of the men holding his arms loosens his grip rather than tightening it. Their leader's smirk makes them bold, kindles the madness of the mob and Nicky sighs.

"Let's see why he thinks so highly of you, eh?"

"Let's make you sing instead!"

"Let's see how much you've learned about pleasing a real man!"

They're all laughing now. Nicky just feels weary down to his bones. He doesn't fight as they strip him. The man is not foolish enough to uncuff him, leaving the fabric wadded up around his wrists. The table is smooth and cool from the air conditioning that whirrs overhead. Nicky closes his eyes.

Meno male, he thinks, Grazie Dio that it was not Joe they picked.

Joe would be present, tormented by the crude handling and the animalistic grunts. Nicky...goes away inside his head.

He has never been a particularly carnal man, with the sole shining exception of Yusuf/Joe. His time as a man of faith left him with a natural distance from his physical body and needs. Nicky does not notice hunger or thirst or even the craving for another's touch as keenly as other men do. It troubled Yusuf for the first two centuries, made him more ardent in his admiration and his lovemaking. It has never troubled Nicky. He can lose himself in Joe's mere presence and the feeling is beyond words.

And when this happens, Nicky can withdraw and leave his tormentors only his body to ravage.

The man comes to him first and last. Nicky acknowledges that. First to break him if he can and last when it becomes apparent that the worst he and his men have done cannot inspire in Nicky even a flicker of the rage he showed when Joe was attacked. Nicky has been told before that his eyes, empty as the rest of his physical body, are disconcerting. The men falter, lust shrivelling in the face of his indifference and the man who orchestrates it all is made angrier with every failure.

His anger is directed only outward, of course. Nicky would laugh if he didn't want this to just be over. He has more immediate concerns; finding Joe and escaping. His temper sparks at the man's hissed "slut" of all things. The ridiculousness of it offends him and suddenly Nicky is furious. It is not enough that the man must force himself on Nicky but he must also blame Nicky for his misplaced and unwanted lust?

The man pulls back and there is a moment, barely a second, where he is not paying attention to Nicky. Nicky drives his elbow back and up. The man gasps and falls back. His men's laughter stops. Nicky turns his head and meets the man's furious eyes with his own steady gaze.

"Fucking-!" the man's breath will not let him swear. The rest descend but Nicky barely feels it. One of them gets a lucky strike in. Nicky feels his neck dislocate and the world vanishes.

He revives in the lift, hanging between two men. He is clothed again. The man is not present. The silence in the lift is suffocating. The man holding his right arm drops him when his spine realigns with a snap. Neither of them will look at him and they drag him into a laboratory. Joe is already strapped onto one of the cots. The doctor with the pleasant smile and ambition where her soul should be is standing over him with a clipboard.

Joe's eyes find him and everything that is not that beloved face falls away. "Nicky!"

"Joe!" Nicky reaches for him only to be hauled back by rough hands on his shoulders.

"Are you well?" Joe demands even as they force Nicky onto the cot beside him.

"I am fine," Nicky says.

"He's better than fine," one of the guards leers and Nicky wants to kill this man so badly that his hands shake. Joe's eyes go wide. Nicky curses silently.

"Sweet as honey," the other agrees and they both laugh. Joe makes an inarticulate sound and Nicky manages to catch his eye and holds his beloved's gaze. Joe's fear and rage shine but it is the love underneath them, constant as the progress of the sun through the skies, that Nicky focuses on. They are together. That is what matters.

Joe manages to bite his tongue until they are left alone. "Nicky, hayati..."

"They lie," Nicky says in the mish-mash of Ligirian, Arabic and Greek that makes up their private language. He feels only the barest guilt. It was nothing to Nicky but Joe with his great heart and wide eyes...he would be ruined by the mere knowledge of it. "They wished to teach me better manners with their fists. They wanted you to be afraid for me."

"They did not need to trouble themselves," Joe's eyes search his face and his love smiles despite the worry in his eyes. "I am always afraid when you are apart from me."

"And I," Nicky tells him gruffly. "When you are away from me, there is only desolation."

The hand closest to him strains against the strap biting into his wrist and Nicky reaches back with as little success. Joe's smile is a little more genuine this time.

"And you say I am the romantic?"

"After a thousand years," Nicky manages, "I have learned some of your skill."

"We will be free," Joe promises him and Nicky's answering smile is unsteady but he believes him.

The following hours are one nightmare after another until Nicky fears they will be buried under them. Booker and Andy's capture. Booker's betrayal. Andy's mortality.

Then Nile comes to their rescue and everything else is pushed aside in the pursuit of Merrick and their own freedom. The man manages to surprise them, first the explosion and then the gas. Nicky is confused but he sees that man, that monster in a human skin, attack Joe and all his reason abandons him. He attacks the man but he's weak from healing what was done to him and the gas burns his lungs.

He is surprised by the gunshot. Not that the man shoots him. He is surprised that the man takes the time to be so pointlessly cruel.

Then he is dead.

He wakes to Joe hovering over him and Nicky can only reach for him, hand grasping at the stained fabric of Joe's shirt. He can't linger, can't collapse into Joe the way he wants and needs to. They aren't safe yet. He grabs his gun and they run to catch up with the others and there is another bewildering rush of violence and mayhem.

Nicky does not go away but he does retreat. He keeps his focus on the things that he can do; he tends Andy's wounds, helps Nile clean the blood from her braids and puts a simple dinner in front of the ruins of his family. He only goes to shower off the blood when the tension in the room is too much.

The water is hot enough to sting and Nicky's feet skid on the bottom of the bath. He catches himself on the tiles and drops his head so he can breathe. He is shaking, tears in his eyes as it all comes rushing in at once. He startles at the hand on his shoulder but Joe steadies him before he can fall. Nicky steps into his arms and Joe embraces him with the hot water pounding down on their shoulders. Joe guides Nicky's head to his shoulder. He works the dried blood free of Nicky's hair and his fingers are gentle against the back of Nicky's head. The phantom itch where bone and brain knitted back together tingles under Joe's touch and Nicky's breath hitches.

"I am here," Joe says quietly, turning Nicky's face up so he can kiss him. His eyes are dark but his smile is soft. "I have you, hayati."

(Um. I have never - ever - written any variety of porn before. I have never even intended to. But then Iiiiii... wrote this? So, uh... bear that in mind. I do take concrit; idk if it's the Way Of The Community here or not. But I hope you like it! I'm posting part one before I chicken out, but there will be more (probably a lot more, eventually), because I never met a fic idea that didn't get three times longer than planned.)

*

The first time is an accident.

It was bound to happen eventually – it’s been long enough now that there’s no heavy cloud of shame or despair or hatred any longer to dampen the body’s natural urges, and it’s not as if there haven’t been nights where Nicoló rolls to face away and hikes his blankets up over his ears to provide some extra privacy and muffle any noise, or where Yusuf traces constellations with his eyes while carefully and tactfully pretending he doesn’t know exactly what’s going on across the fire. They don’t really bother to set a watch anymore, and that means that they’re always lying down at around the same time. Opportunities for complete privacy are rare, and they’re both grown men who have lived in close quarters with other men before.

Somewhere along the way, they’ve adopted the habit of only ever seeking their pleasure one at a time, only one to a night. It’s not a conscious choice – that would be ridiculous – but Yusuf never hears Nicoló’s blankets rustling in that particular way after he himself has achieved release, and he never reaches for himself if he’s heard Nicoló do the same that night. It’s not something he knows they’re doing until he hears Nicoló grunt softly one night and thinks, Damn, I was going to…

He realizes as soon as it crosses his mind that it is ridiculous, the idea of practically taking it in turns. But it doesn’t seem like something that would bear scrutiny, so instead of questioning it (and instead of ignoring it and reaching for his cock, which should perhaps have been the obvious option), Yusuf settles down determinedly and resigns himself to nothing but sleep on that particular night.

It’s some time later, and after he’s mostly forgotten that bit of strangeness, that he unintentionally violates it.

It’s been a long day, hot and exhausting, and they nearly botched a river-crossing in a way that could have killed either of them, but more importantly nearly swept one of their horses downstream with half their supplies. Yusuf is tired and damp and out of sorts, and even after consuming some actually hot food and sitting quietly by the fire for an hour or so, his nerves still feel full of gritty sand, keeping him awake and irritated, annoyed and dissatisfied by a hundred things. It’s been a while, he thinks, almost a week at that, and regardless, he’ll sleep better after. Besides, he would like to have one nice thing out of this thrice-cursed day.

He slides his hand down more slowly than he’s usually wont, brushing idly over the sensitive parts of his chest through his tunic and then pausing, and sliding it back up again, skin on skin this time. It’s been even longer since he’s gone slowly, really taken his time, and suddenly it seems like a fantastic idea. He deserves to enjoy himself a little.

He’s rubbing at the sensitive spot above his left ribs and teasing his inner thighs with his other hand (biting back a sigh because it’s so nice, but if he’s going to draw it out it would be rude to moan the entire time), when he hears Nicoló’s breath hitch in a very particular way on the other side of the fire. Shit.

Several thoughts collide in Yusuf’s head at once – a plaintive not fair!; an angry, grumbling sentiment about how it’s not Nicoló’s turn; utter dismay at the very idea of dropping his hands and ignoring his arousal and soldiering through until tomorrow night; a desperate idea that maybe he could just wait until he’s sure Nicoló is asleep; chagrin in the form of I should have just made noise, that’s what I get for being considerate; a wordless concern about the fact that he knows that particular sound, that small hitch of breath that starts like a groan and slides into a sigh, doesn’t just mean that Nicoló is doing the same thing as Yusuf, but is almost certainly an indication of the exact moment Nicoló got a hand around his cock.

The latter is probably the most important thing, but in the moment, the dismay and annoyance seem most important. Why should Yusuf be the one to stop? He started first.

So he keeps doing what he’s doing, lets his breathing stutter as much as it wants to, even makes a small noise of appreciation when he squeezes a palmful of flesh just right. He hasn’t even touched himself in any serious way yet, but he’s more than half hard. He is not giving this up.

There is a much sharper intake of breath across the fire. Well… it serves Nicoló right. For what, Yusuf isn’t quite sure (rationally, he suspects that, of course, Nicoló is now in the same position he was in a moment before, and it’s not actually anyone’s fault, but having compassion for the other man seems like a tall order at the moment), but it’s on him now. He can stop if he wants, but Yusuf isn’t going to.

Yusuf stops palming his side and drags his fingers over his nipples, squirming a little. He edges his other hand closer, fingers ghosting up his thigh, but not quite there. Fuck, that’s good…

Nicoló makes that noise again. His breath hitches, in as a tiny groan, out as the barest sigh, and Yusuf knows that he’s reached down again and wrapped his fingers around his cock. He can’t even be annoyed by it, because somehow, suddenly, that knowledge has set every nerve in his body on fire. Yusuf is practically dizzy with it, or maybe he actually is; his own hand closes around himself before he even thinks to do it. The sensation punches out his stomach, and he can hear the shocked way he exhales but he doesn’t give much thought to it. He’s far more than half-hard now.

“Ah!” Nicoló cries quietly across the fire, and Yusuf can hear blankets rustle sharply, as if the other man has jerked sideways in pleasure, or thrust his hips upward. Yusuf moans as low as he can manage, his hand sliding slick and hot along his cock. He closes his eyes and tips his head back, his hips thrusting up into his grip of their own volition. He tries to rein himself in, make sure it lasts a little longer, but it’s so difficult when all he wants to do is thrust, and thrust, and thrust…

He’s still moaning, Yusuf realizes, Too loud, and he pulls his free hand from his clothes, fingers dragging over sensitized nipples and making him twitch violently – and then shoves the fleshy bed of his thumb into his mouth and bites down.

With his own noises muffled, he can hear just how ragged and frantic Nicoló’s breathing is. He’s making tiny noises, not quite whimpers, just audible over the crackle of the fire, and they send shards of tingling heat down Yusuf’s spine. If he listens hard enough (and he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t, but he does, squeezes his eyes shut and grips himself tighter and does), he can hear the faint slapping noise of Nicoló’s hand on his cock. He’s working himself over hard and fast, Yusuf can hear it, and he speeds up himself, panting, his spare hand falling to clutch at his thigh. He groans, and almost immediately, Nicoló moans as if in answer. Yusuf’s skin is prickling hard with heat all over now, and he moves his hand a little faster still, not knowing what he’s looking for until he achieves it.

When he hits the same rhythm as Nicoló, the wave of lust that swamps him is so powerful he gasps. Nicoló moans again, and Yusuf opens his eyes to the night sky just so he can clamp them shut again. He’s lost track of everything except for the frantic imperative of touching himself and the fire in his belly only blazing higher at every noise that isn’t his own. He needs to be quieter, he thinks desperately, he won’t be able to hear, he has to thrust harder, he has to stop grunting, he has to thrust harder – Nicoló moans, not once but over and over, ‘ah! ah! ah! ah!’, and Yusuf pumps himself in time to the other man’s sounds, blood pounding in his ears and his fingertips starting to tingle. He needs it so badly, needs more, he’s desperate to come, and he hates the idea of it, never wants this to be over. Yes, more, please, not yet, yes –

Nicoló groans, long and broken, as he finishes, and that’s it; Yusuf is arching into his hand, shaking with release as he comes so hard brilliant white light obliterates what’s left of his brain. He thinks he may have shouted, but he’s not sure; he thinks he may have passed out, but he’s not sure. He is sure he no longer knows which way is up. He’s still trembling all over, and gasping for breath, and he should be horrified but that will have to wait because his brain is too fuzzy to care and he’s never felt this good in his life. He can hear Nicoló’s breath sobbing in his chest six feet away, and it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t be gratifying…

It is.

“Baby, come on. You’ll love it, I promise.”

Joe almost bursts into laughter but manages to hold it in. They’ve been in a playful mood this week, trying things even when it does turn into helpless laughter and cuddling and messy handjobs with whatever experimental element tossed aside. He’s committed to seeing this one through as long as Nicky is.

It started with the two of them overhearing a private conversation happening a little too loudly at the neighboring table of their favorite cafe. Young people’s openness about sex in this century delights him, the blasè way this group of friends launched into a discussion of ‘first times’ was no exception, only he couldn’t have guessed it would involve so many explicit jokes. Nicky at one point almost spits his coffee everywhere. They exchange a glance, grinning at each other in a coconspirital way. On the walk home, hands swinging gently between them, Joe asks, “So, do you want…?” and Nicky says, “Yes.”

They spent an hour or so grinding and making out, sloppy, pretending at inexperience. Joe had his hands in Nicky’s hair the whole time, mussing it up until it’s sticking in every direction. Nicky stole Joe’s hat to toss it on backwards, grinning like he’d just discovered his character motivation, and carried Joe to bed.

Joe let Nicky talk him out of his clothes and then practically threw Nicky’s off of him- careful to let him keep the hat- and now they’re down to briefs, back to grinding.

“You must have tried before, an ass like that.” Nicky is saying, too close to Joe’s ear. He almost never talks like this, Joe doesn’t even know where he’s getting his material, but something about it is hot in combination with the teasing glint in his eyes. “Right, baby? Just a finger?”

Joe, who has taken Nicky’s cock more times throughout his very long life than he could possibly count, let alone Nicky’s cock alongside a toy, bites his lip and shakes his head. Now it’s clearly Nicky’s turn to fight off laughter. They kiss like themselves for a minute, sweet and familiar, then Nicky leans back again and lifts Joe’s legs up over his shoulders.

“You’ll let me, won’t you?” Nicky asks, cajoling, getting his hands on Joe’s ass and squeezing.

Joe puts his hesitant face back on, having to turn and cough into his arm to disguise his laugh, and says, “I don't know Nicky… maybe we shouldn’t…”

“Come on, baby.” Nicky teases, grinding against Joe’s ass, wheedling, “It’ll feel good, I promise.”

Joe clutches at the sheets, pretending this alone has overwhelmed him- it could, but only if they were already naked and Nicky was talking about love- and says, “I heard it hurts… wouldn’t you rather I blow you?”

“No way.” Nicky says, though it’s not clear which of those statements he’s referring to. “No baby, you’ll like it, come on, just the tip?”

That’s what makes Joe feel like he’s going to blow apart. That’s what made him ask Nicky for this, the reason he’s already opened himself up for it. Something about the thought of that, of just the barest hint of Nicky fucking him, after all this time and all the things they’ve done, like an eager young thing who thinks he can talk Joe into it with the incredible power of his cock, is… hot. Funny, but hot.

(As if he and Joe didn’t both cry the first time they figured out their connection enough to be physical. Their real first time felt like a miracle, a gift from a higher power. He already belonged to Nicky long before they had sex. It’s fun to play like he isn’t Nicky’s yet but he’ll still let him in, only a little.)

“Okay. Just the tip.” Joe repeats, grinning. Nicky nods frantically, overeager and nearly losing Joe's hat, and hurries to divest them of their underwear.

With his legs slung back over Nicky’s shoulders, the first brush of Nicky’s bare cock up against his ass makes Joe genuinely gasp. Nicky hears it, rubs his hands against Joe’s legs and watches him. Joe loves Nicky’s eyes. They’ve seen all of him, right down to his soul. Nicky doesn’t ask if he’s alright out loud, if he’s still into this, he watches and waits until Joe bucks his hips up in an obvious signal to keep going.

Part of the fantasy of this is that, thanks to their earlier prep and the way they’ve built up to this, all Nicky has to do is reach down to pull his foreskin back, rub the precum already gathering at the slit, and then he’s pushing it in.

This time Joe’s gasp is fake, theatrical, although it does feel good stretching his rim. Nicky always feels good. It also feels like not enough, like a cruel tease of what he knows Nicky can give him. Nicky’s already pulling out, pretending concern, saying, “Was that too much, baby? Did I hurt you?”

Joe can’t stifle the giggles that bubble up from his chest at that, even when Nicky leans closer, bending his legs back in a deep stretch, to kiss them from his lips. As if Nicky could hurt him. As if Nicky could hurt him with just the tip of his cock.

“You’re just so big.” Joe says, batting his eyelashes, “Could we try again?”

Nicky barely lets him finish the sentence before he leans back again and guides his cock back into place. He does it slower this time, biting his lip, letting them both really feel it. Again he stops long before Joe’s body expects, long before Joe wants him to, but the sight of him in that hat, hair sticking out the sides, a kind of wildness like maybe he could come just from this, is so fucking hot Joe makes a frustrated noise and demands, “Kiss me.”

“I have to pull out again first.” Nicky says, and he’s right that if he leans back over Joe like this he’ll slide all the way in. Joe wants him to. Nicky could fuck him so good right now, just like this, they both know it. He catches a hint of a smug look in Nicky’s smile, like he’s winning something, like he thinks Joe’s about to give up the game.

“How does it feel?” Joe asks instead, making Nicky freeze. “Am I tight?” He feels Nicky restrain himself that time, sees the way his shoulders go tight.

“Yeah, baby.” Nicky says, but he barely pulls his hips back and his cock pops free again, Joe’s so slick and open for him. “Feels so good.”

“You could fuck me, if you want.” Joe says, keeping his voice level. Nicky gazes goes sharp, surprised but clearly more than ready to sink all the way into Joe’s ass, but it’s Joe’s turn to smirk and say, “But just the tip. Hold your hand around it so you don’t go deeper, okay?”

“Joe.” Nicky groans, then adds in rapid Italian, “You can’t be serious my love, tell me you’re joking.”

“I want it.” Joe says, smiling angelically, relaxing back on the bed.

Nicky pointedly gets a grip on himself, stroking until Joe kicks him, and does as Joe asks, slowly at first.

It’s a terrible way to fuck. Yet, with Joe clenching around him every time he slides in, with the struggle to hold back and give Joe what he wants, Nicky still loses his composure quickly. It’s a privilege to watch.

“Don’t you dare come inside me.” Joe says, every part of him inviting Nicky to go deeper and to stay there, to do exactly the opposite.

Nicky seems to lose his character the more he’s into this, the more he turns pink, but he still has the hat on. “I don’t… fuck, Joe, I don't know if I can come like this.”

Nicky seems to be getting there just fine to Joe, but he hums like it’s a real problem and reaches a hand down to fist his own cock, grinning when Nicky’s gaze snaps towards the motion and stays there, “What do you need baby? You need me to talk to you? Tell you how good you are, my first and only?”

“Joe…”

“Your acting needs work, sweetheart. You should have come all over my ass by now.”

“I’m. Trying.”

“You’re close, aren’t you? You want it, you’re right at the edge, close your eyes.” Joe says. He’s talked Nicky to orgasm before, falls into the rhythm of it and lets his voice get low and quiet, groans the next time Nicky rubs up against him, slipping through lube and precum, and finally goes in but only for a fleeting moment. “If you beg me for it right now, if you say please just once, I’ll sit on it, babe. I’ll let every inch of you in, all the way. You want that? I won’t let you pull out, won’t even let you thrust until I come first, grinding down on you.”

“Joe.” Nicky gasps, eyes screwed shut. He shifts his hips back and wavers for a moment, holding his cock, the exposed tip red and wet. He still doesn’t beg yet.

“You want it like this don’t you?” Joe coaxes, “Come on Nicky, give me just the tip one more time, come on.”

“I’m so close, I-“ Nicky says, jerking himself a few times to Joe’s voice, rubbing the head up against Joe’s ass in an even worse tease. “Let me come inside, baby, please?”

Joe wants to feel that too, and he really can’t say no to Nicky’s begging, especially when he’s exercised such self control already. “Yeah, do it, come in me Nicky, come on. Come.”

Nicky presses the head of his cock inside, the ring of his fingers still preventing him from going any deeper, and when Joe clenches up around him they both groan at the feeling of Nicky spilling inside. It’s a familiar feeling, hot, pulsing, but Joe’s jerking himself harder at the image of Nicky. He’s pink all the way down his chest, tense and shaking like he’s still hanging on by his fingernails not to shove all the way into Joe’s ass. One of his hands is squeezing around his cock, stroking himself off into Joe, the other is clutching Joe’s hat backwards on his head. His eyes are closed, have been since Joe told him to close them, and he’s sucking hard on his lower lip.

“Gorgeous.” Joe breathes, and comes all over his own chest and stomach.

Nicky pulls out as Joe’s body tries to hold him in, both of them grunt and then laugh, collapsing onto their sides together in a messy tangle. Joe shivers and stretches out luxuriously, legs like jelly, as Nicky kisses him and scratches at the back of his neck just the way he likes.

Very softly, into the tiny space between their bodies, Nicky whispers, “I love you, but we are not doing that again.”

“Okay.” Joe agrees readily, “I always want more of you. It was fun though?”

“It was fun.”

Fill for:
Joe/Nicky - Dark!AU, compentency kink, danger play, rough sex
https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/4011.html?thread=1163435#cmt1163435

Keane/Nicky, gunplay (non-con) Because of that one scene.
https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/953.html?thread=10425#cmt10425

Joe/Nicky, Bites and Bruises
https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/953.html?thread=27321#cmt27321

+++

It was a massacre.

Plain and simple, achingly simple. It had been three years since the debacle at Merrick Industries, when the Guard had been too tired to be thorough. Their prey thought they'd escaped and that made them sloppy. All the better for it. Joe found it made them sloppy. He liked when they were, when they fought back, when they screamed. Nicky cared less, and his opinion mattered.

They were doing this for him.

Nicolo didn't like keeping scores unsettled.

His name was Hissam Keane. He had a wife and a lovely son. He was kneeling in front of Nicky, and he'd already lost both and the ability to move his right arm.

Nicky grabbed him by the skull, his gun pressed flat against his brow. All Joe had to do was watch.

"Please." The word was hard one, broken and gasping as Nicky ground the barrel of his gun against Kean's skull.

"Begging? As if that can make up for anything." Nicky said, calm and cold. Even splattered with blood with a trail of carnage behind him, his rage was glacial. It was enough to make Keane wince.

"It was a mistake."

"I don't think it was. In fact, I think the only mistake you regret was getting caught. I know a lot about confessions, but you can't be forgiven for your sins unless you're truly sorry."

"I am." Keane was bleeding sluggishly from a head wound. He breathed like a bull, teeth grit, his eyes wild but they crossed as Nicky dragged his gun down the length of Keane's nose. Behind them, Joe laughed, sweet and bright, and Nicky's expression softened ever so slightly.

"Prove it." He drawled, and the barrel of the gun, metal hot enough to spike red across bared skin, pressed against Keane's mouth. He tried to jerk back. Nicky's grip stayed firm. "Repent."

Keane hated him. He could see it in his eyes, furious beyond measure, but he opened his mouth, and Nicky felt pleasure scorch his veins.

The metal dragged across his tongue, inch by slow inch, and he watched Keane tense, breathing hard and shaking. He bared his teeth, pearly whites against black metal, and Nicky thumbed off the safety.

He felt Keane shudder. When he opened Keane's mouth, he pressed it in far enough to kiss his soft palate.

"Do you know what it felt like to have a bullet shatter your skull?" He asked, forcing the barrel of the gun in deeper until Keane drooled around it. "You live long enough for the pain. You feel the bone break but you can't even scream."

"You really shouldn't have done that." Joe drawled, but he only had eyes for Nicky, watching him choke Keane with his gun.

Keane tried to mumble something, slurring against the hot metal, but Nicky just shushed him. "You can say you're sorry, but penance requires action. You need to show how much you want forgiveness." He said as Keane closed his eyes and swallowed.

Keane surged forward, opening himself up to the gun. His pink tongue darted around the edge of the weapon, blistering with the heat as it slipped inside. He was rough and frantic, and fear looked so much like lust. Nicky stepped forward, moaning obscenely. He pressed into Keane's broken shoulder, cock hard and thick through his pants, and there was disgust in Keane's eyes, pure unfetted revulsion as he drooled down his chin.

Nicky pet his hair, leaned close enough to kiss him.

"Your son looked just like you."

Keane snarled, rushed closer. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Steady arms wrapped around Nicky's waist, and Joe's chin hooked shoulder. "What happened to not playing around?"

Nicky didn't stop him when his hands moved lower.

"Penance is serious work."

Joe shoved him up against the wall, catching his mouth in a bruising kiss and riding high off the adrenaline they shared. Keane's body slumped at their feet, but they didn't pay it the slightest bit of attention as Joe bit down on Nicky's lip hard enough to taste copper.

"No one else gets to touch you." He growled, working Nicky through his pants until his partner groaned, knees wobbling. "No one else, you hear me?"

"Only yours."

Breath caught around a filthy promise, as Joe's bloodied hand found his cock. Nicky's head fell back, exposing the long line of his throat. When Joe bit down, it felt like release. It only got worse from there.

It would be rough and desperate. They would tear at each other, frantic and desperate, dragging cuts that should scar and bruises that would have remained for twice as long. Crimson could mark where welts would be, when open-mouth kisses wouldn't erase them.

But first, Joe left ugly marks in blue and purple smudged across his pulse, made him scream his name, with his hand around Nicky's cock and the other in his hair.

In the end, they shared a knife sharp smile and a softer kiss.

"Come on." Nicky murmured, running his fingers down the rapidly healing scrapes he'd left in his lover's skin. "We have work to do."

welp... here's 4k of porn cause this prompt grabbed me by the loins.
----------------------------------

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/3653.html?thread=1000773#cmt1000773

It takes a few years after the return of Quynh to convince the team that Booker needs to start going on missions with them again. They weren’t so willing to cut the exile short; it took a lot of Nile’s “It’s better if we can keep an eye on him” and “I can’t keep being the only one who knows how the internet work” before they agreed. But even then it was on a trial basis with a very firm, “Fine, but you’re in charge of him” from Andy and a general consensus of “Yea, he’s your problem now” from the other immortals.

It’s possible that they took the “you’re in charge of him” a little too literal but Nile only had so much self-control.

Booker with his sad puppy dog eyes was so damn grateful pliant eager to please desperate to make up for his sins that he jumped at her beck and call even when it completely inconvenienced him. She almost couldn’t help the way she started pushing and looking for boundaries. Asking for more, seeing what he was willing to give or where he drew the line. There seemed to be no limit with him.

When things turned sexual she started to doubt herself, wonder if she was taking more advantage than was allowed. Wondered how much of his willingness was consent versus obligation, and so she had asked him.

“Are you really okay with this?” Nile spoke sincerely, fingers pressing against the hard planes of his abdomen as she’s poised above him, thighs wide and bracketing his hips and wishing she had done this before getting so close to taking him inside of her. “Do you want this?” She continued, eyes boring into his own seeking the truth.

“I want whatever you want to give me” Booker answered. Voice thick and lingering in the space between them and well, that sounded a lot like yes, so she continued forward, positioning him between her folds and sinking down the length of him until she felt full and stretched and so good that she regretted not doing this sooner.

Nile took him at a slow pace to allow her body to get used to the girth of him. The way he pressed against all the sensitive parts of her felt better and better every deep sink from tip to root and back again. She had her palms pressed against his abdomen for leverage and the muscles beneath her hands were so tightly flexed with tension as he held himself still that she worried he was in pain.

Nile reached forward and grabbed Booker’s hands and brought it to her hips, sliding along her outer thighs as she did so and the stuttered exhale of breath that he gave truly did wonders for her ego.

“You can touch” Nile said with a squeeze of her inner muscles and a gyration of her hips that forces another exhale and a grunt out of him.

“Thank you” He huffed out so sincerely that she does it again and doesn’t miss the jump of his hips that thrust his cock deeper into her, “Sorry” Booker whispered reverent and stroked up and down her thighs and around her waist to her back and buttocks. His eyes were locked on her the whole while, as if afraid to look anywhere else, as if unsure if he was allowed and the thought burned a fire deep within her.

Nile never thought of herself as someone who liked control in the bedroom but staring down at Booker as he let her use his body as she sees fit, eyes begging for permission, she decided this is definitely something that she could get used to.

She sped up her movements and grabbed his hands again, pulling them from roaming at her lower back and brought them up to her breast where she was sensitive to the cold and wanting some stimulation. His hips gave another miniscule jerk and Nile grinned wide and ground down against him. It started a feedback loop of tiny motions of his hips against her and her grinding against his cock and pelvis until he startled her with rough thumbs brushing against her erect nipples.

Her inner walls squeezed tight around him and the slam of his hips against her this time was harder and deeper than the rest. Her eyes shut from the sudden sensation and a whimper escaped her, a sharp “Booker” tagged on the end of it.

“Sorry” Booker breathes the sound barely making it out of the growling noise of his throat. He tried to settle his hips flat on the bed again, legs tense beneath her but Nile adjusted her stance, leaning forward with more pressure on her knees as she pulled halfway off of him and smacked him hard against the outer thigh so that he would slam into her again.

“Merde… pardonne-moi.” Booker speaks through a groan as he’s pulling back, eyes finally shutting closed against the pleasure in his veins until Nile pinches at his chest. She’s shaking her head side to side and brings his hands back down to her thighs now covered in sweat.

“Fuck me” she says, and squeezes her walls around him for emphasis, whimpering loudly again as he slams in deep involuntarily.

“Yes, Book, hard”. Nile says arms at his side. He adjusts his position as he seeks to comply, hands gripping at her thighs and knees bending to plant his feet for leverage.

Booker pulls out to the tip and thrusts in hard, pulling her down to meet him and pulling a loud cry from her mouth. “Yes… Like that” Nile says as he does it again and again, setting the fast and hard pace that is asked of him.

Her moans are loud enough to penetrate the walls of his shitty apartment before she can help it, with a constant string of “yes, yes, yes” in the brief moments that she’s able to form words.

He’s quiet under her for the most part, his sounds consist mostly of heavy stilted breathing and the groan and grunts he’s unable to keep hidden when he hits that deep part of her that causes her to grip tight around him.

Her gasps of “God… yes… there” leads to a continued assault at her spot and soon she feels the tightness of pleasure coiling in her belly.

She doesn’t have a good history of climaxing from penetration alone so she grips his arm and pulls him forward so that she’s more in his lap than leaning over him and she can slip those rough fingers of his in between her legs where she wants them.

“Merde…” Booker breathes low, fingers sliding between her folds where she is slick and wet and warm, “mon dieu.” He exhales as her body tightened and jerked as his middle fingers circled at the nub of her clit.

“Yes… Booker” Her eyes snapped opened and locked unto his to demand her release and he pulled forward to sit upright and bring her completely into his lap. His thrust weren’t as long in this position but they were still hitting her hard and deep and now she could grind against the fingers at her clit.

“Merde.” He says again in disbelief, interspaced with her cries of ‘Yes’, ‘God’, ‘and Booker’.

There’s a moment when his head leans forward and Nile thinks he’s going to kiss her but he turns away, bending instead to kiss at her neck and collarbone as he uses the free hand to grope at her breast and bring her nipple into his warm wet mouth for a gentle suck.

The coiled knot of pleasure at her belly broke all at once and her body seized tight against him with the force of her orgasm. Her scream was loud enough that it would be embarrassing if she cared and Nile only became aware of Booker’s continuing short thrusts against her, and his fingers working at her clit, and his mouth at her tit because it became too much after her bones turned to jelly.

She tugged at the arm between her legs to pull it away, and carded the other hand through the messy blonde hair falling across his forehead to pull his mouth from her breast so that she can relax against him as he stilled his hips.

He was still hard inside of her and it took a minute to realize as her nerves slowly regained feeling. She became aware of the way he was trembling, hands stroking her thighs in a way that was too frantic to be intentional.

Nile raised her head to see Booker’s face and noticed his eyes were shut tight and his jaw was clenched hard as he breathed heavily through his nose. She leaned forward to press her lips against his chastely and his eyes opened to peer at her.

“Ça va?” His voice is low and pleading when he speaks and it shakes like the rest of him. His eyes, blown until they are nearly black, reflects the frequent desperation that he viewed her with. He’s still waiting for permission she realizes and kisses him quick and chaste again before starting a gentle rocking with her hips.

“You can come Book” She whispers against his lips and slides her arms around his neck to rub from his crown to his back. “It’s okay. You can come inside me” Nile says continuing the gentle circular motion of her hips and Booker always so eager did just that. His fingers gripped her thighs tight and he released inside her, quiet except for the deep groan in his throat and his body pulled so taut, eyes shut so tight, that she thought it looked a little painful.

His palms stroke along her hips to flank and around her back as he finished and slumps against her with a slow exhale. His head sagged along her neck and she slowed the motion of her hips to a stop as his arms encircled her completely.

“Merci” she felt him mumble against her along with a string of French she couldn’t make out as his breathing evened out. She’s completely sure she’s never seen him this tender.

“It was good. You were so good” Nile says because she’s seen movies and she’s read books and she has a general idea of what’s happening here and what’s needed. “You did so well holding out for me” She continues and trails fingers against the length of his spine and into his hair as he shudders against her. “Let’s lay back” Nile pushes down against his shoulders until he’s falling back against the bed, arms still wrapped her as she wiggles up so he slips out of her. “Like this” She says turning to her side and pulling him along so that he’s facing her and she can wrap her limbs around him after pulling the covers up.

Some time later, as the glow faded and she noticed he’s coming to, she decides to broach the topic of consent again. Arms wrapped around his torso with one leg strewn across his hip, sore in her thighs and back and lower abdomen in a way she really wish wouldn’t go away so she could be reminded of a good thorough fuck every time she moved, Nile says “You can always say no you know, if you don’t want to do something... it’s fine Booker, I won’t send you away”. She has her head cradled against his neck and her gaze to the wall across from them hoping the current state of them doesn’t impact his decision to be honest with her.

She felt the deep breath that he took before answering and her chest tightened waiting for the worst,

“This is the most that I’ve felt in a long time”. Booker said after a beat, so quietly that she thought he didn’t want her to hear. Alas she did and it made her smile and it pulled at her heart strings so she curled her leg around his a little a lot possessively. “Okay. Glad I could help”. Nile replied and that was the end of that of that conversation.

Things between them began a steady incline after that.

PROMPT:
https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/2726.html?thread=626086#cmt626086

FILL:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/26857945

From:
https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/4011.html?thread=1208235#cmt1208235

With Sub!Joe, and Dom!Nicky.
+++

Joe was a sweet kisser. He had a lovely mouth, soft and accommodating. Eager. His beard tickled Nicky's cheeks when he pressed in closer. He squirmed in Nicky's lap, just enough to toe the edge of disobedience, and Nicky wanted it to an embarrassing degree.

He'd thought it was money well spent.

Half of this was a favor for a friend. The club was hosting an auction for a charity with a solid purpose, with Andy spearheading the project. Promoting small business in food deserts was important, but Nicky had mostly been there to make sure Quynh didn't get bought by anyone she didn't like, without bloody knuckles. Then when she'd traipsed off with a careless wave and the certainty she wouldn't be sitting down easy the next day, Nicky let himself have fun.

And Joe was fun.

He'd seen him around the club once or twice, asked him to get a drink. He knew the man who put that silver chain around his throat by sight if not name, but they'd made proper introductions earlier that night. They'd gone over what could and couldn't be done. Like pulling Joe's hair, and Nicky did just that, forcing his head back.

He was rewarded with a full-body shudder, and Joe pawed at him, grabbing at his arm before pulling back, remembering not to touch. He was so keyed up from just a little kissing. Keane was a lucky man.

Nicky was going to make sure that when he returned him, that Joe was always going to have something to compare Keane too.

"Pretty thing." He murmured. "You look so good on your knees. Calm down, I'm going to take good care of you, I promise."

Joe gave a jerking nod, eyes already glassy. He fidgeted, nervous or excited, maybe a little bit of both. It was difficult to tell, but Nicky knew that after putting Joe through his paces, he'd be able to relax. Subs needed a firm hand, they always felt better knowing that there was someone there who could take control.

"You trust me, right?" He said softly and was rewarded with another quick nod. "Good boy." Nicky ran his hands down from Joe's curls, following the length of his spine. It was a shame he wouldn't be able to bruise, but it would be bad form to mark someone else's toy when he was just borrowing him. "Tell me what you need, pretty thing."

"You." A single word breathed around an exhale. There were no wrong answers, but this was an especially good one. He hoped Joe was a talker. He had a voice as nice as the rest of him, and Nicky thought he'd like the way his name fit in Joe's mouth. Or sir.

Nicky kissed the apple of his cheek, then the warm patch of skin just beneath his ear. His fingers slipped along the waistband of his shorts.

"Where?"

Another ragged sound, and Joe was flushed red, worrying his lower lip in a way that was distinctly distracting. His eyes flitted over Nicky's face, then darted somewhere over his shoulder, but Joe took his hand, tried to press it into his lap. There might have been some wrong answers.

He squeezed Joe through his shorts, not even hard yet. "I asked you a question."

Joe gave a soft groan, responding so quickly to Nicky's touch. He leaned forward, fighting with himself to be good and stay still when all he wanted to do was plead for more. Nicky smiled. Such a sensitive man if it took so little to rile him up.

"H-here." Joe stuttered as Nicky stroked him hard through the fabric of his shorts.

"Here, sir." He corrected and Joe was quick to bow his head.

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir." He babbled. It didn't take much until he was tenting his shorts, already leaving a small wet stain against the front.

"That's more like it. If you're going to be so disrespectful, I'll have to teach you your place."

"Yes, sir."

He couldn't stop watching Nicky's hands. Nicky flicked him through the leather, just to make him twitch and hiss, and he wanted to spend every hour of this weekend making Joe sound like that. Joe's hand went to Nicky's wrist, and stopped before he could actually make contact.

Nicky waited a beat, gave him a chance to relax, but Joe wouldn't move. Wouldn't look his way. He brought his other hand down to palm the soft swell of his ass, working him over. "Are you still with me, Joe?"

"Yes, yes sir." Answered like a snap. Joe's breathing was very measured.

"Like this?" Nicky goaded, hands moved between his cheeks, pressing into the cleft of his ass, but the fabric was too tight to give. He'd been delighted when he'd found Joe poured into them the first time he entered their hotel room.

"I want it, sir." He couldn't immediately tell, with the thickness of Joe's beard, but he was gritting his teeth like he wanted them to break.

Nicky slowed down.

"I'm not going to hurt you unless you want me to hurt you." He said calmly, but something flickered in Joe's eyes. Anticipation? Fear? A little bit of fear only heightened the game, but there were rules and boundaries. Any good player knew how to respect them.

"I want it, sir." Joe repeated a little too quickly and Nicky frowned.

Something felt off and Nicky always trusted his gut. He would never want to break a piece of art, especially one that had been entrusted to his hands. He coaxed Joe closer, caressing his hands down his pet's body to try and sooth him.

"We don't have to do anything you don't want to. You get to tell me if something is too much and I'll stop. Do you understand?"

"I want it, I'm ready!" Joe seemed almost panicked, flinching under Nicky's touch as he finally remembered. "Sir. I'm sorry."

"Hey. It's okay. It's alright." Nicky glanced between them, to where Joe's hand fisted into the hotel's expensive sheets, and he'd wanted that but not like this. “Joe, look at me-“

Another nod, barely present, and Nicky’s stomach churned.

"Hey, red." It was little more than a whisper, but he watched as tension drained out of Joe's shoulders. It took the sting out of feeling so wrong footed.

Nicky pulled away first, and Joe shuffled onto the bed, staring intently at the opposite wall. He wanted to pace, but contented himself with digging one of the extremely plush bathrobes out of the closet. He'd sort of hoped they'd get a chance to use the fancy tub.

There was a tap on his shoulder. Nicky did not scream, but when he turned, Joe was holding out a water bottle like an olive branch. He wore a towel like a shawl and it did very little to hide him, but Nicky felt a pang of regret all the same.

"Are you okay?" Joe asked, brows furrowed in concern.

"I should be the one asking you that." He took the water bottle and offered Joe a smile, but the other man looked away, busying himself with something inconsequential. Nicky couldn't help but look at him, taking in the line of his body. It was a real shame, he'd love to unwrap the towel around him like unwrapping a gift, it was altogether too tempting.

"Yes. I'm sorry, I should have been better. All that money you wasted, I-. I am ready when you want me."

Joe didn't look at Nicky who sighed and set the water bottle aside. "You're not and it's okay. I'm not going to force you into anything, it's only good if you want this to and, well...do you want this? Honestly."

Joe looked strained, and even as he answered yes, Nicky didn't think he could believe him. He took a drink to keep himself from reaching out.

"What happened, Joe?" As far as Nicky knew, they weren't doing anything Joe hadn't done before. He didn't like this. Everything was supposed to end when the scene did. Joe still held himself like he was expecting them to come to blows. "I don't want to be with someone who'd make me into something I'm not."

Joe winced, fidgeting with the end of his towel before he leaned against the wall and scrubbed a hand over his face.

"I haven't done this before." He said, with more bitterness than Nicky expected. "With a different- anyone different. Keane was looking forward to hearing about it."

"But you weren't?"

Joe stayed silent and Nicky mentally cursed Keane. How could he bring someone unwilling to share? If he was so callous with his own sub like this in the open, what did he do behind closed doors?

"Does he often ask you to do things you don't want to do?"

Joe kept his head turned to the side, but the answer was written in him clear as day. Anger turned to fury.

"You don't have to go back to him if you don't want to. No one has the right to force you into anything. If you need a place to stay or someone to support you, I will help you."

"You don't even know me."

"No, but that doesn't change the offer. If you want to walk away from him, I'll make sure he never touches you again."

"He's not like that-" Joe protested, but stopped himself, scrubbing a hand over his face. After a moment, he moved back to the bed, head hanging between his shoulders.

Nicky watched him for a long time before he reached for his phone. He found some semblance of privacy on the balcony, and the call itself happened quick enough. Andy was an old friend, and she'd organized this whole event. They'd specific rules about this for a reason. Keane wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the club ever again.

By the time he came back, Joe had taken off his necklace. It sat in a heap on the bedside table. Other than that, he hadn't moved, and Nicky felt something twist in his gut. Fuck, Keane.

He sat beside Joe, not touching, not crossing any of those lines, but close enough to try and offer some comfort. "I'm sorry."

"No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come here. I put you in a terrible position."

Nicky held up his hand and hushed up. "I'm glad I could help and honestly, there's worse things than spending an evening with a handsome guy." He gave Joe a wry smile. "We could order room service and splurge for movies? A safe night, no pressure."

It won him a laugh and Nicky couldn't help but think of how nice that sounded. "You're serious? All that money and you want to buy me an expensive dinner and a movie?"

"Why not? I could use the company if you're up for it and you seem like a nice guy. Maybe it'll be like a date."

"Except I'm a sure thing." Joe said, and waggled his eyebrows in the most ridiculous way, and Nicky laughed like it had been punched out of him. He didn't know then that Joe's terrible sense of humor was just as dry and just as ridiculous as his own, but after he ordered too much from Room Service and settled into bed, Joe picked a movie and pressed along his side. All Nicky had to do was raise his arm. Joe fit beneath it with too much ease.

+

For this prompt: Joe/Nicky - Mistaken Identity - Office AU (https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/4108.html?thread=1280780#cmt1280780)

AO3 link here: in the tide of a day (https://archiveofourown.org/works/26866282/chapters/65550952)

(Chapter 2 is entirely written, I just had to break the editing/proofreading up over two nights. Should be completed tomorrow.)

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/4108.html?thread=1372172#cmt1372172

Link Fill: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26867302

(not going anon for this b/c the names would give me away)

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/2726.html?thread=578982&posted=1#cmt978854

“Why have we never had a trade agreement with Tunis before?” Marco asked his older brother, the morning Prince Yusuf sailed into Genoa.

“It wasn’t worth it, before,” his brother, the Count, said. They were both still finding their way since their father’s death the year prior. “They’ve only started to dominate the trade along the southern coast since – well, there was some business in Egypt, who knows what treachery goes on in heathen lands. Anyway, we burned their main port thirty years ago, and Father always said there wasn’t even anything worth taking there. But now they control the southern route to the Holy Land and they helped drive the Normans out of Sicily. We must be on their good side, and get access for our ships. We don’t have the numbers to do it the difficult way, by force.”

“What do they want?”

“Things we can give them, I hope.” The Count shrugged. It was hard for Marco to think of him that way, but he needed to. “Just, for the love of God, do not insult any of them.”

“Wait,” Marco said, remembering. “Didn’t Father sell Nicolò somewhere south…?”

“I don’t remember.” He shrugged again. “He was thrown in as a last-minute sweetener to that bargain; Father didn’t have any use for him here, and he was always too pious and proper, and keen on books. Being sold out of Christendom must have given him a shock or two. But if we were going to hear from him again, I’m sure we would have by now.”

“That’s probably true,” Marco agreed. Most of what he remembered of the occasion was the way their mother had wept, and the way Nicolò had refused to. Their mother had retired to a nunnery shortly after. She was still there. Marco wondered if it pleased her to have outlived her husband. “And he was tiresomely pious, as you say.”

Marco had been not much more than a boy the last time there had been a party from across the Mediterranean Sea in Genoa. He didn’t remember much about them, and didn’t know what to expect of Prince Yusuf; different lands preferred different things in their princes. Prince Yusuf turned out to be a tall man with the broad shoulders and tell-tale wiry forearms of a man who knew how to wield a blade. He also had a curly black beard and an open smile, almost guileless. Marco could feel his brother’s satisfaction. This did not look like a man who would strike a good bargain.

He was richly dressed after the fashion of his people, in a turban and long layers of robes. So were the rest of his party. Marco could also feel his brother salivating at the sight of such fine clothing and the wealth and access to trade that it implied. If they could make a good bargain with Tunis, they would steal a march on Pisa, and perhaps even Venice. Perhaps – one could dream – even Byzantium. But then, it looked as if Tunis might already have contact with the Greeks; of course, there had been Roman settlements there long ago, or so the few travellers’ reports they had said. Prince Yusuf’s party was mixed in appearance, even though their garb was all the same in style. There were some as dark-skinned as Ethiopians, two women – which was most unexpected, given what one heard – and one man who, despite the effect of the sun on his skin, looked like he could have been born in Genoa, or even further north among the Germans. He had pale eyes that surveyed the Genoese party coldly and critically. Marco almost felt he had seen him before. A translator, perhaps.

Or – no, as it turned out; one of the darkest-skinned men, bearded like his prince, did the translating. It was all formalities at this first meeting, anyhow. Marco more or less didn’t hear any of it. He was a simple man, and his greatest enjoyment was when his brother needed him to lead men into battle. These kinds of trade talks might be necessary to Genoa’s success, and their eventual destiny of controlling the Western Mediterranean, but by God, they were dull.

There were introductions, and wishes for everybody’s good health and the success of the discussions. Marco had never seen his brother so eager to please a foreign party; there were not even any veiled insults. They did need this agreement very badly, then. Then the embassy from Tunis were taken to their quarters. There would be a banquet this evening, to welcome them.

Marco thought absently as he left the audience chamber that the cold-eyed man who might not have been born in Tunis had not been introduced, but he lost the thought again almost immediately, instead contemplating the curved swords of the embassy’s guards, and how they might fare in battle, depending on the armour of their opponents.

*

The banquet went as banquets usually went, although half again as long, because Marco’s brother meant to impress, so there were additional courses and some truly incredible works of the sweet-maker’s art, a swan made in marzipan that looked so real you could see every feather. Prince Yusuf complimented it highly; apparently he had an eye for art.
His brother caught him as the embassy began to leave the banquet. “Go and see what they are saying in private. Use the old passage, you know the one. We cannot leave anything to chance.”

“I don’t speak their language,” Marco protested.

His brother’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe that they have no Latin. The Prince was a little too quick to respond to some of the things I said. And that man beside him – you cannot tell me he was born in Tunis.”

“That does not mean he speaks Latin,” Marco pointed out. “He could have been sold as a slave, when he was very young.”

“Obviously he is not a slave,” said his brother. “He would not have been seated beside the Prince, if that was so. Now go. You are the only one I can trust with this.”

Marco sighed, and went. He was really too tall for the secret passage which went through the wall behind the quarters assigned to the embassy, and too broad across the shoulders as well; but it was a family secret, which Marco had only had revealed to him by his father once he was an adult and sworn as his brother’s right-hand-man. There weren’t many other people, if any, who could be trusted with it.

He made his way to the spyhole that looked through a tapestry and into the room the Prince was sleeping in; the beauty of it was that the light-colored tapestry and the darkness of the secret corridor made it easy to see into the room, if candles were lit, as well as hear. But it couldn’t be seen from the other side, unless you were searching the room very thoroughly.

The Prince wasn’t revealing any useful information, worse luck, in any language at all. Instead he was sitting on his bed, unclothed, getting his cock sucked, which was a pleasant way to pass an evening, Marco supposed. He craned himself awkwardly and saw that the person doing the cocksucking was the cold-eyed man. He was as pale as Marco without his clothes on, at least on the parts of him that evidently never saw the sun, and he was performing his task with enthusiasm. Maybe that was why he hadn’t been named, maybe he was just the Prince’s catamite. Rude to bring him to a serious negotiation, but men thought with their cocks like that all the time. Judging by the smile on the Prince’s face, he certainly thought it was worth it.

Marco sighed, and turned to lean with his back to the wall – at least that way his shoulders were not cramped as well – and waited for the noises to stop. The Prince was murmuring something, but it was certainly not in Latin, let alone Ligurian, and too low to hear. Eventually the murmuring got louder, and Marco bent to the spyhole again, but it was still no good; now the Prince was on his back on the bed, and – Marco squinted – yes, the other man was sodomising him. Marco had always thought of that act as something that benefited the giver far more than the recipient, not that he had indulged himself, but the Prince was still evidently enjoying it, tipping his head back, mouth open in unashamed pleasure. The other man paused to lean down and kiss him, a sweet small smile on his lips, not cold at all. Marco was abruptly annoyed at them for such careless public indulgence of their venial sins, and then remembered that they were behind closed doors and he was spying on them; but still. He turned around again. They were making a lot more noise now, both of them, but still nothing useful; not even a name for the other man. Marco wished his own marriage bed heard that many noises of pleasure. It wasn’t that it never had, but his wife was seven months with child, so it certainly had not of late.

Finally, finally, they were done. Marco hoped for some bed talk then, though he was past expecting it to be useful. But instead they washed themselves, an act of fastidiousness that seemed out of keeping with what they had been doing, before lying down next to each other. Then, just as Marco’s knees were really starting to cramp, they began to speak, but it was still in their own tongue. Marco was just about to leave when one of them said, in Latin, “I think she might be dead.”

“He certainly is,” said the Prince, so it was the other man who had spoken first. “Are we sticking to the plan?”

“They can have their chance.” The other man wound a hand into the Prince’s hair – without his turban, Marco could see that it was as curled as his beard. The Prince kissed him fiercely, and then it was back to Arabic, and more murmuring that sounded like love-words.
Marco gave it up, and made his way painfully back down the passage. If the worst came to the worst, they could possibly embarrass the Prince; but he did not look like a man worried about being embarrassed by his bedroom affairs. Marco would leave it to his brother to decide.

*

Marco was not present for most of the negotiations, trade talks not being his skill, but according to his brother they were going with much more difficulty than had been expected. They seemed to have little to offer that Tunis particularly wanted. The cold-eyed man, Marco observed on the occasions he was present, was some sort of close advisor to the Prince, as well as his bed partner; he murmured in his ear, often at moments when it seemed like things might be going well, or there might be some advantage of knowledge they had that the Prince did not. Certainly it was obvious he needed no translator to understand the Genoese, although the Prince kept up the pretense. They had that knowledge to help them, and never said anything in the Prince’s hearing that they did not want him to know.

“Today his husband was asking about the rights of Jews in Genoa,” Marco’s brother said with disgust, on the fifth day. “What do they care about that?”

“His husband?” Marco said.

“Yes,” said his brother. “The beardless one, who sits next to him – so there is no question of embarrassing either of them with what you saw. They do that there. I asked, and the Prince spoke very openly of his affection, and what a trusted right hand he was.”
He scowled. “My wife wanted to know why I never praise her so openly.”

Marco laughed. “It is true, brother, that those sort of words don’t come easily to you.”

“I have every respect for her,” his brother protested. “I don’t need to speak like a poet to prove it.”

“Apparently she wants you to.”

“And when is the last time you recited poetry about your wife?”

“My wife isn’t the one complaining,” said Marco, but that night his wife did tell him how she had heard such things about the Prince of Tunis and his poetry, and it was not that she did not appreciate her husband, but would it not be nice, to have someone speak of her so?

“Find yourself some unwed knight who wishes to carry your favour, if you want poetry,” Marco said. “Some of them enjoy that sort of romantic nonsense.”

His wife was very displeased by this, but she was very close to her birthing bed, and never in good sorts at that stage; he put it down to that.

*

On the tenth day, as a break, they had a small sort of tourney, as a friendly display of skill and goodwill. The knights of Tunis – not that they were knights, precisely – did not joust or uses lances as the Genoese did, but some of them were incredibly skilled on horseback, including the Prince, and one of the women, who carried an axe.

Marco’s brother offered to face the Prince in a bout with swords – of wood, of course. The Prince graciously declined, but offered up his husband as his second, to face Marco. Marco’s brother accepted for him, so Marco went to prepare; as they were not fighting with steel they would not use full armour, but gambesons and helmets would make the bruises less painful, and lessen the chance of someone taking a blow to the head they might not recover from. Not that Marco was anticipating many bruises. He was very good with a sword.
That thought lasted for the first few moments of the fight, as the Prince’s husband circled him, with the patient gaze of a falcon waiting to swoop. When he did, he proved to be lightning-fast, even in his long robes, wielding the wooden blade one-handed with slashing motions, never trying to block Marco’s blade but simply moving out of the way. Marco was first frustrated, and then annoyed, and then flat on the ground, the other man’s blade at his throat.

“Our custom is to go to three,” Marco spat in Ligurian, and the other man nodded; yes, he understood. He beat Marco almost as easily, twice more. Marco managed to land a blow or two, but they were only glancing. It was the most embarrassing thing that had happened to him since he was a boy.

“My husband is very skilled with a blade,” the Prince said, proudly. His husband beamed at him, the intense expression he had worn in the bout melting away. Marco was tired of both of them.

Prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/3653.html?thread=984133#cmt984133

When the doorbell rang, Joe slipped his hand into Nicky’s, squeezing gently and bending to kiss his husband. “Are you sure you want to do this?” He asked, cupping Nicky’s face in his hands. “It’s not too late to change our minds, or I can be the one to try instead—“ but Nicky looked determined, if a bit nervous. “I want this, Joe. Or at least, I want what this can give us, want to have a child with you.” He nuzzled Joe’s cheek. “I’ll be in the bedroom getting ready, my love, you can go greet him.”

As Nicky perched on their king bed on his hands and knees, fingering himself open quickly and efficiently, he remembered the reviews they had read online. This breeding stud had come highly recommended, had a 92% success rate impregnating omegas on the first go, which was a major point in his favour. Nicky didn’t really fancy sleeping with anyone but Joe, and he wanted to do it as few times as necessary to get knocked up. He had also appreciated that many of the reviews commented on how professional the stud, Booker, was—no awkward small talk or pretending like they were making love, he apparently treated it like the procedure it was.

Nicky might not be turned on at the thought of taking any cock other than Joe’s, but he certainly was turned on at the thought of growing round with their child, and his fingers became wet with slick, letting him open himself up easier. He remembered the dimensions of Booker’s cock from the website, knew he would need to really work himself open if he wanted this to be comfortable.

The bedroom door opened, and it was just Joe at first, who he leaned down to kiss Nicky, eyes dark as he watched Nicky’s fingers working. “Are you almost ready, darling? Can I bring him in?” Nicky nodded, moaning as the pads of his fingers brushed his prostate. “I’m ready, Joe, ready to make you a father,” he whispered, and they shared another passionate kiss before Joe went out to get the stud.

Booker was objectively an attractive man, Nicky noted idly, which was nice—at least he wouldn’t be repulsed by the thought of what was coming. The man simply nodded, politely, and moved behind Nicky on the bed. Joe moved in front, cradling Nicky’s face in his his hands. Booker was dressed for easy access, and he simply pushed his sweatpants down, letting his cock bob free. He was still mostly soft, but he was still noticeably bigger than either Joe or Nicky, as was normal for an alpha. His nostrils flared slightly as he caught a whiff of Nicky’s and Joe’s mingled scents, and he wrapped a hand around himself, closing his eyes as he stroked himself to hardness.

Nicky swallowed, a bit intimidated at the sight of the thick length fattening up, and Joe pressed a reassuring kiss to his forehead. “It’ll be fine, my love, we’ll go slowly,” he assured him. Nicky nodded, pulling his fingers out a little shakily. “I’m ready,” he told the man, but it was only Joe he had eyes for. He was still looking at Joe as he felt the blunt head catch on his rim, slipping in his slick, and then felt the stud’s full girth entering him, inch by long inch. Nicky whined, pressing into Joe’s touch. “It’s big,” he gasped out, and Joe stroked his fingers over Nicky’s cheeks, soothing him. “Do you need to stop? Is it too much?” But Nicky shook his head, thighs trembling a bit with strain as the stud continued to push into him. “Just need to—ah!—adjust.”

Finally, finally, he felt the stud’s hips against his ass and knew that he had taken all of that thick length. Nicky let out a soft, overwhelmed groan. “Move, please,” he begged. Despite the stretch, it felt good, Booker’s cock stimulating places inside him that normally didn’t get touched, but he still wanted this to be over as soon as possible, wanted to feel the rush of come inside him that he hoped would bring him and Joe the child they had dreamed of for so long.

The stud obeyed, setting a rhythmic pace from the start that betrayed his years of practice and had Nicky rocking forward into Joe’s touch. He turned his head up, sweetly, hoping for a kiss, and Joe obliged him like he always did. The thick head of the stud’s cock grazed Nicky’s prostate and he yelped, the kiss with Joe turning filthy as he felt a wave of his slick bathe the length buried inside him, easing its way. “I am glad you can find pleasure from this,” Joe murmured, his fingers brushing Nicky’s kiss-swollen lips, and Nicky opened his mouth eagerly so that he could muffle his cries against Joe’s fingers.

It wasn’t surprising that, after years of providing such services, the alpha had built up an impressive stamina, and Nicky lost track of time as the stud kept up his steady pace of thrusts. Booker’s own breathing never faltered, and true to his professional reputation, he never let a groan or a whine escape, until right at the end, when Nicky heard a cut-off moan from behind him and then felt something thick pressing up against his rim. This was the moment he had been waiting for, he thought with a flush of excitement that cut through the fear of how on Earth he was going to fit that inside him. The alpha was going to knot him, was going to spill the release that could give them the child they wanted so desperately.

“Joe,” he whined, “his knot—“ and Joe carded his fingers through Nicky’s hair, reassuringly. “You can take it, darling. Our bodies know how to, see, you’re taking a little of it already.” The stud had stopped fucking into Nicky with his long deep strokes, instead was circling his hips so that his growing knot gently massaged Nicky’s entrance, and Nicky moaned at how surprisingly good it felt. “See,” Joe praised. “You’re going to open up for it beautifully, just wait. Does it feel good?” He asked, curious as neither of them had ever experienced this before, had found each other before they ever tried experimenting with alphas. “Yes,” Nicky groaned, a punched-out sound. “It rubs against me just right, sometimes catches on the rim a bit—“ he looked at Joe with wide eyes. “I want it inside,” he realised, a little surprised, and rocked back onto the stud’s length. It took him a few tries, but on the third attempt he felt the knot slip all the way in, stretching him impossibly wide, and Nicky groaned, long and low, and came untouched, just as he felt the first wave of the alpha’s release inside him.

The stud had his hands on Nicky’s hips, not gripping tightly but just bracing himself to keep the two of them in the most comfortable position as they were tied together. He was quiet except for his slightly ragged breathing as his cock would twitch and flood Nicky with another spurt. “He comes so much,” Nicky told Joe, eyes a little glazed with the intensity of it all. “Breeding you properly,” Joe agreed, satisfied. “Filling you with our child, my love,” and Nicky squirmed a bit on the length still tied to him, angling his face up so he could kiss Joe properly.

“Please, my darling,” he begged. “Please let me take care of you,” and Joe groaned. “You still want me afterwards, don’t you?” He checked, because they had talked about it earlier and Nicky had been adamant. “Yes, yes,” Nicky agreed, his eyes rolling back in his head briefly as he felt Booker shudder through another wave of his climax, his knot throbbing against Nicky’s inner walls. “But let me get you ready, please,” and Joe could never deny him anything. He sat back, legs curled under him inelegantly as he unzipped his jeans and peeled them off, left in his boxer briefs sporting a clear bulge.

Nicky shuffled forward as much as he could while he was still being knotted, got close enough to mouth wetly at his husband’s cock through the fabric, and Joe groaned. “Don’t tease me, baby,” he begged. “Watching you squirm on his knot as you get bred full of our child is already a lot,” and Nicky pulled back, waiting for Joe to peel off his briefs and feed his cock into Nicky’s waiting mouth, bit by slow bit. They both sighed out in relief as Nicky swallowed all of Joe; neither Nicky or Joe’s cocks were that large, as omegas, and Nicky had always liked how he could take Joe easily in his mouth, enveloping him entirely in his warmth.

The stud was far too professional to ever admit it, but Nicky thought privately that his front row view of Joe getting his cock sucked seemed to speed the process up a bit, as he spilled twice more in Nicky in rapid succession and then Nicky could feel the knot slowly deflate, loosening until they were able to pull apart. He pulled his mouth off of Joe’s length, then, tapping lightly at his thigh.

“He’s done, cuore,” he told Joe excitedly, and then graced the stud, who was pulling his pants up and grabbing his jacket, with a polite smile. “Thank you, I’ll be sure to recommend you highly on the site,” he complimented, and the man gave both of them a genuine grin. “Fingers crossed, I’m sure you’ll be wonderful fathers,” he remarked before seeing himself out.

He had no sooner closed the door than Joe was on Nicky in a flash, moving behind him to get a look at the aftermath. He groaned as he saw Nicky’s entrance, red and puffy, with little droplets of the stud’s release seeping out. “You look so full, Nicolò,” he said in awe. “He came in you so much I can’t imagine you’re not pregnant already,” and he reached around to caress Nicky’s flat belly, brushing across his husband’s cock was again starting to be interested in the proceedings.

“Take me, Joe,” he begged, and Joe stroked himself a few times as he watched the fine tremors of Nicky’s hole, clenching a bit in emptiness after the long minutes spread around the alpha’s knot. “You’ll hardly feel me after that huge length,” Joe admitted, maybe the barest hint of insecurity in his voice, and Nicky couldn’t have that. He flipped over onto his back, pulling Joe on top of him, kissing him deeply. “I’ll feel exactly what I want,” he murmured as he guided Joe to enter him, sighing at the familiar feeling. “Which is you, my husband, the light of my life and, God willing, the father of my child.”

Prompt here: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/2487.html?thread=487607#cmt487607

The seventy-first serum Kozak comes up with does nothing. Neither does the seventy-second. Neither does the seventy-third.

After administration of the seventy-fourth, Nicky spasms on the bed, spits up a bloody froth, and collapses. The heart monitor alerts for a flatline. Booker stares up at the ceiling and waits for Nicky to revive.

And waits.

And waits.

Twenty-four hours later, Kozak regards the body on the gurney dispassionately and tells Keane's men to take it to the freezer for storage. By then Joe has progressed from praying to begging to screaming, and when they unbuckle the straps holding Nicky's lifeless body down, Joe lets out a wail of anguish and nearly comes off the gurney, begging in broken Italian, no, don't take him from me, don't take him, NICOLO -

They take Nicky's body away anyway.

**

"There's no point keeping her alive if we're not getting anything out of her," Merrick says. "Try the latest formula. It may have a different effect on someone who's already been immortal."

It doesn't. Andy thrashes against her restraints, goes grey and then white, sags into the table. The heart rate monitor sounds a flatline for an hour and a half before Kozak turns it off.

**

Quynh barely spoke after they brought her in, and when she did it was only to Andy. Booker sometimes wonders if she forgot how to in her five hundred years of drowning.

After Andy dies, she says only one thing: "Being in the coffin was better than this."

She's silent when Kozak injects her with serum two hundred and three. Four hours later, Booker knows she's going to be silent for good.

**

The only times Joe smiles these days are when Kozak tests a new formula on him. The rest of the time he's either weeping or too lost in his grief for even that. Booker sometimes wonders if he smiles because he hopes each injection will be the one to reunite him with Nicky, or because he wants to be smiling when it does.

Formula four hundred and eighty-two does the trick. Joe's smile finally lasts.

**

"Dad?" Nile asks groggily. It's the first coherent word she's said in an hour. Kozak's latest concoction has done something to her mind. She's been getting more and more confused, and she stopped responding to speech half an hour ago.

She still seems to hear singing, so Booker's been singing. Nursery rhymes, mostly, lullabies he sang to his sons once. None of them are in English, but Nile seems comforted.

The heart monitor sounds a few minutes later. Booker takes a deep breath and keeps singing, so that she'll have something to soothe her when she revives.

He gets all the way through Sur le Pont d'Avignon before he accepts that she isn't going to.

**

"Where are the others?" Copley asks two days later, looking around the room in confusion. One of the two women Marines guarding the door looks over her shoulder, her face tight with horror.

All Booker can do is weep, and wonder why Copley couldn't have waited until Kozak had finished him, too.

(Prompt here: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/953.html?thread=37817#cmt37817)

When Nicolo is sent to live in the cloister house, he thinks at first that it’s a punishment for the way his body and voice have begun to change. The older acolytes assure him that it’s not. They tell him he’s been chosen for a special duty, that Mother Moon marked him for such on the night he was born, and now that he’s approaching manhood it’s time for him to come and live with those like him.

There are ten of them already there when he arrives, ranging from a man of some thirty years to a girl two years younger than Nicolo who came to the cloister when her monthly blood started. They live separately from the rest of the order, their world bound by the four walls of the cloister house with its garden and shrine to Mother Moon in the center. Once Nicolo accepts that he’s not being punished, his greatest problem is boredom. He’s no longer allowed to help with the charitable work the order does in the villages and towns near the temple, or sing with the choir at festivals and ceremonies, or even take a walk in the hills around the temple when he has free time. In time, he finds other ways to occupy himself, like helping in the garden or the kitchen and reading his way slowly but voraciously through the cloister’s small library.

As he gets older, he comes to understand why those marked such as he is stay in the cloister. He learns of certain ceremonies and rituals requiring acolytes who have remained chaste, untouched. The rarest and most sacred of these occurs whenever Mother Moon and Father Sun meet in the sky, to be together for a brief span of time before continuing their separate journeys through the heavens. On those days, acolytes of the sun and moon come together as well, bodies joining in a symbolic recreation of that celestial union.

The Mother and Father themselves choose those who represent them in such rituals, revealing their selection to the heads of their orders. Nicolo has no way of knowing what he’ll be chosen for or when, but in the cloister library he often finds himself revisiting the texts that detail the eclipse ritual, studying the diagrams of human figures entwined in a representation of a marriage older than humanity itself.

It’s the summer of his thirtieth year when the order’s astronomers announce an upcoming eclipse, and Nicolo is summoned to speak with one of the senior clerics.

On the eve of the eclipse, Nicolo bathes in a chamber open to the night sky, the water around him silvered by the moon’s light and scented with moonflower and night-blooming jasmine. He gathers the few possessions he holds dear and bids farewell to his brothers and sisters, for those chosen to leave the cloister don’t come back. Many stay in the order, some leave to make their own way in the world, but once the purpose Mother Moon chose them for has been fulfilled, she no longer requires their celibacy.

At dawn, clad only in a thin robe of pale silk, Nicolo travels in a palanquin to the main temple, shielded from view of all but the two acolytes of the moon chosen to assist him. In a small side chamber, they dress him in an elaborate outer robe, stiff with silver brocade and heavy with moonstones and pearls. Finally, they drape a gauzy silver veil over his head, thin enough for him to see through while still obscuring his face. His partner from will be similarly veiled until the two of them are alone in the ritual chamber, their own identities obscured to better embody their roles.

Finally, the time comes, and Nicolo joins a procession of moon acolytes into a large audience chamber. It’s packed with more people than he’s seen in one place since he went to the cloister house, but his eyes go to the one at the forefront of the sun’s acolytes. Veiled as he is, tall and broad enough that Nicolo presumes a man. He’s clad in robes that look as though they might have been made by the same hand as Nicolo’s, but where Nicolo gleams silver this figure shines gold, his robe adorned with amber and topaz.

They walk until they stand across from one another in the center of the chamber, pausing there as the heads of their orders speak in turn, addressing the gathered faithful and reciting the familiar story of Father Sun and Mother Moon. How long ago the two of them fell in love from a distance, glimpsing one another in the sky and yearning, moving slowly but surely toward each other in their orbits until at last they met and embraced.

How they refused to part from that first embrace, remaining locked together in the sky as hours turned to days and days to weeks. But without the cycle of day and night, the earth and all its creatures suffered, until at last their cries reached the heavens and the sun and moon knew that they must part. Since that time, so long ago, the two of them have kept to their appointed paths and cycles, meeting in the sky only when the time is right—and when they do, their union is all the more passionate for its brevity.

On cue, the man standing across from Nicolo holds out his hands—brown and strong-looking, the only part of him Nicolo can see clearly, and speaks. “I stand here in place of Father Sun, who gives life and warmth to the world. I am yours, if you will have me.”

Pushing down a flutter of nerves, Nicolo places his own hands in the stranger’s warm, firm grip. “I stand here in place of Mother Moon, who lights the night so we need not fear the darkness. I am yours, if you will have me.”

The head clerics speak more words, but Nicolo barely hears them. He peers through his veil, trying to make out any detail of the man’s face, but all he gets is a vague impression of dark curls beneath the golden silk that covers them.

The next thing he knows, the two of them are being escorted, still hand in hand, to the ritual chamber at the very center of the temple. It’s a small, circular room with mosaics of the heavens adorning the walls and ceiling, and in the middle of it stands a bed, its trappings simple but luxuriously soft. The only other furniture in the room is a small marble table holding a goblet of silver, another of gold, and a small, stoppered bottle of oil.

Their escorts bow and retreat, shutting the door, and then it’s just the two of them and their sacred charge. Nicolo’s hands shake a little as he grasps the hem of his veil, but he takes a steadying breath and pulls it from his head, turning to face his partner as he does the same.

...Sweet Mother, but he’s beautiful. Warm dark eyes move over Nicolo’s face slowly, and when he smiles, Nicolo’s gut gives another treacherous flutter.

“They told me I could ask your name once we were alone,” the man begins. “That is, if you want to tell me.”

“Nicolo,” Nicolo replies at once, with the dizzy, absurd thought that he’d tell this man anything he wished to know.

“Nicolo,” the man echoes, smile widening. He holds out his hands much as he did in the audience chamber, and again Nicolo takes them. “I’m Yusuf. Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid,” Nicolo says at once, defensively. Yusuf looks at him with a gentle quirk of his eyebrows, then down to their joined hands, and Nicolo realizes his are still trembling faintly. “It’s just nerves,” he says with a wry smile.

“I understand.” Yusuf squeezes his hands, then gestures to the goblets on the table. “I think these are meant to help us with that.”

Nicolo nods, picking up the silver goblet as Yusuf takes the gold. The concoction inside is something acrid and herbal with honey mixed in, and Nicolo grimaces at the first bittersweet taste, but drinks it down.

He feels it the moment it hits his system, every sense expanding and unfolding with a speed that makes him grip the edge of the table for support. He can feel the texture of the marble beneath his fingers in minute detail, every grain and tiny flaw. Yusuf’s eyes widen in reaction to the same feeling, and Nicolo can hear his heartbeat speed up.

As he rides out the wave of sensory overload, Nicolo realizes he’s aware not just of everything in the room, but of what’s taking place in the heavens above. The chamber they’re in is closed to the sky, but Nicolo knows, with unquestionable certainty, exactly how close the sun and moon have drawn together above them, how soon they’ll meet. He takes a shaky step toward Yusuf, needing with a force that’s bigger than his body to be that close to him.

Yusuf catches him by the arms and holds him steady, the touch of his hands burning even through the heavy fabric of Nicolo’s robe. “You feel it, too,” he says in a low voice. “How close they are.”

“And how badly they want to come together,” Nicolo says, grabbing at the brocaded front of Yusuf’s robe. “How they’ve yearned for each other. Yusuf, please—“

Clever fingers work the fastenings of his outer robe, and Nicolo does the same with Yusuf’s. Heavy, bejeweled fabric falls to the ground with a muffled thump and they both step free of it, now clad only in their thin inner robes. Nicolo takes Yusuf’s hands, lacing their fingers together as they stand chest to chest, eyes locked until Yusuf closes his as he leans in.

Their lips meet at the very instant Mother Moon and Father Sun come together in the heavens above. Nicolo grips Yusuf’s hands and leans into the kiss as the moon starts her journey between sun and earth, dimming the sun’s brilliance as, just for a while, she keeps all his light for herself.

Yusuf frees his hands and brings them up to frame Nicolo’s face, tilting his head for better access as his tongue grazes Nicolo’s lower lip. He touches him gently and carefully, not as though he’s afraid of hurting him, but as if Nicolo is too precious a thing for him to do otherwise. Nicolo feels that same urge toward gentleness and care as his hands curve around Yusuf’s waist, feeling the heat of his body through thin silk. It guides them both as they shed their last layer of clothing, as they kneel on the bed facing each other with barely a pause in kissing.

The ritual states they should wait to become one until the eclipse reaches its totality, and with the heightened awareness granted to them they’ll know when the moment comes. For now, they explore each other’s bodies slowly, reverently.

Yusuf buries his face in the curve of Nicolo’s neck, making him gasp and squirm at the tickle of beard and then gasp again as Yusuf lavishes kisses on that spot. Nicolo trails his hands up Yusuf’s arms and across his shoulders, feeling the play of muscle under his skin, then makes Yusuf arch and hiss as he runs his nails lightly down his back. They both shake and cry out when their bare cocks rub against each other, hard and flushed, standing up against their stomachs.

As the time draws near, Yusuf urges Nicolo onto his back and settles over him, his knee gently nudging Nicolo’s thighs apart. He strokes Nicolo’s cheek with the backs of his fingers, looking down at him in wonder.

“You’re so beautiful,” Yusuf whispers, making him blush. “I tried not to wonder too much what my partner in this would be like, and I would have accepted whoever the gods chose. But you—“ His thumb skims over Nicolo’s cheekbone, traces the shape of his mouth. “You’re beyond anything I could have dreamed.”

Nicolo reaches up to grasp Yusuf’s hand, pressing it to his lips. “I feel the same,” he murmurs. “When I saw your face...I’d never have dared to imagine they’d bless me with someone so lovely.”

Yusuf kisses him, deep and lingering, then sits up and reaches for the oil.

Nicolo knows from his studies what to expect here, but still gasps and tenses when Yusuf brings oil-slick fingers to his entrance. Yusuf pauses and gives him a concerned look—this is their sacred duty, the reason they’re here, the culmination of years of faith and seclusion and chastity, all leading to this, but still he pauses, and Nicolo’s heart swells with gratitude and affection.

“I’m all right,” he says, looking into Yusuf’s eyes to try and convey his sincerity. “I’m ready for it. Just...gently?”

Yusuf nods. “I won’t hurt you, Nicolo,” he promises. His fingertips are rubbing in slow, easy circles now, not pressing in yet. “I’ll do everything I can to make it good for you, I swear.”

Nicolo gives him a quick, tremulous smile, and then his head falls back on the pillows as Yusuf starts to push in, gently coaxing Nicolo’s body to open up for him. It doesn’t hurt—Yusuf keeps his promise, careful with his touch and liberal with the oil—but it’s so much, feeling Yusuf inside him, even just his fingers, touching him as no one ever has before.

Time feels strange here, measured not by seconds or minutes but only by the progress of the eclipse, this uncannily precise knowledge of the sun and moon’s movements. It seems both moments and an eternity later that Yusuf has three fingers in him, moving in a slick, easy glide as Nicolo cries his pleasure to the heavens.

When Yusuf’s hand leaves him he whimpers, bereft, but then Yusuf grips Nicolo’s legs to spread them further and kneels between them. Nicolo hooks his legs around Yusuf’s hips and grabs onto his shoulders, breath coming fast in anticipation as the blunt head of Yusuf’s cock nudges his entrance—and then they both hold still, trembling with the effort, because the eclipse isn’t total yet, the sun and moon are still coming together, just a little more—

—And then it happens, sun and moon slotting into perfect alignment, Mother and Father embracing for the first time in age, and Nicolo grips Yusuf’s shoulders and babbles, “Now, Yusuf, now, do it, give it to me—“ and Yusuf does, sliding home in one swift stroke.

Nicolo arches off the bed, nails digging into Yusuf’s skin as Yusuf rocks into him. His cock fills Nicolo perfectly, like they’d been made to fit together this way, and when he pushes in hard Nicolo feels it everywhere, from the tips of his toes to the crown of his head. He thinks he actually screams, though it’s hard to hear anything over the rush of blood in his ears.

Still rolling his hips in a steady rhythm, Yusuf bends to kiss him, and Nicolo wraps his arms around his neck and holds him close. Yusuf brings one hand up to Nicolo’s face, smoothing his hair back from his forehead, cupping his cheek as they kiss. His other hand wraps around Nicolo’s cock, achingly hard and leaking at the tip.

“Come for me, sweetheart,” he whispers against Nicolo’s mouth, hand moving fast on his cock. “Let me feel you.”

Nicolo’s whole body seizes up for a moment as he comes, streaking Yusuf’s hand and both their bellies with white. Yusuf strokes him through it, murmuring “That’s it, that’s good, you feel so good, Nicolo—“

He’s still fucking into him at the same steady pace, and Nicolo’s breath hitches on a sob as the sensitivity he feels in the wake of his climax starts to border on pain, but he grips Yusuf tight and doesn’t ask him to slow or stop. He’s not sure they could stop at this point—they’re both still in the grip of something bigger than themselves and they need to finish, Yusuf needs to—

“Come on,” he whispers, bringing a hand up to cup the back of Yusuf’s head, fingers tangling in his hair. “I have you, dear one. Let go.”

Yusuf moans, hips working frantically as he spills his seed deep inside Nicolo, filling him to the brim.

They collapse back onto the bed together, Yusuf half on top of Nicolo, going soft inside him. Nicolo buries his nose in thick, soft curls as Yusuf pants against his neck, and high above the moon and sun start to slide apart, their brief reunion coming to an end.

“Thank you,” Nicolo says softly. To Yusuf, and to the gods themselves, for choosing him for this most sacred duty and this kind, beautiful man to perform it with him.

It is a singularly excellent day for Joe. He wakes before Nicky does, cuddles closer and breathes in the sleepy warmth of him. He gets to feel Nicky wake up in his arms, stretch and groan and turn to kiss him before he even says good morning.

“I’ll make pancakes.” Nicky says, and kisses him again. He stays when Joe argues for five more minutes in bed, kissing sleepily and scratching gently at Joe’s scalp. When he does get out of bed he tucks the blankets back around Joe’s shoulders and smiles, uncomplicatedly joyful, saying, “Stay, I’ll bring it back.”

Joe likes to watch him cook, likes to steal a taste of the batter and feed Nicky blueberries, but he’s happy to stay in bed too. Their last job had been a slam dunk, only the transportation afterward left something to be desired; neither of them had managed to rest until they made it to this house, their house, by the seaside.

He doesn’t quite fall back asleep, has to get up to use the bathroom and then crawls back under the covers just listening to Nicky singing to himself in the next room. It’s like he’s dozing in a beam of sunshine, hearing Nicky so happy warms Joe to his soul.

Nicky brings back more than pancakes. There’s pancakes and eggs and tea and coffee and maple syrup and oranges that Joe didn’t even know they had. He brings all of this into the room on an overloaded tray that he sets down in Joe’s lap, fussing with teacups until Joe gently stills his hands so Nicky will look at him.

“Babe, I know this isn’t an anniversary.” Joe says, lifting Nicky’s hands to his mouth so he can kiss one and then the other. “Are you spoiling me?”

“Yes.” Nicky replies, lifting his chin stubbornly like he thinks Joe’s about to try to talk him out of it.

“Hmm, and just what do you have planned for after this feast?”

Nicky shrugs one shoulder up, taking his hands back so he can push some of the plates toward Joe, probably worried about the food getting cold. “I have some ideas but I didn't bet on you catching on so quickly, hayati. I must not be doing this enough.”

He whispers the last bit like he doesn’t quite want Joe to hear, but Joe does and he aches with it. If there weren’t an entire breakfast buffet between them he’d tackle Nicky to the bed and kiss the daylight out of him. “Nicky, you don’t have to-“

“You deserve it.” Nicky says, firm. He doesn’t go on out loud, but he stares straight into Joe’s eyes and the depth of emotion there has him melting back into the pillows and nodding slowly.

Their breakfast conversation is meandering and seemingly disjointed after that, except that they share so many memories at this point the connections between things like summer storms and specific Spanish sonnets are as clear to them both as one plus one. After Nicky clears the breakfast tray Joe does get to tackle him to the bed, laughing when Nicky rolls them back over and licks the lingering syrup stickiness from his lips, kissing him until they’re both trying to decide if they’re too full to do anything more.

Joe thinks about what he wants most in the world, something that Nicky can give him of course, and says, “Walk on the beach with me?”

“I’d love to.”

They get dressed minimally, swim trunks and button up shirts left open. It’s still early and most of their neighbors are older (in a sense), so the beach stretches out before them empty and picturesque. Nicky takes his hand and they amble along together, pausing occasionally to pick up a colorful shell or watch the waves. They talk about paint pigment and cartoons and what Nile just texted them. Joe feels weightless, not like an immortal warrior concerned with the fate of humanity but like a man deeply loved, as safe and warm and right as his hand clasped in Nicky’s.

They’ve made much longer journeys together than a slow walk up the beach and back. In some ways they’ve been making one long journey since they met each other and this is a tiny part of that, a doubling back, barely a blip in their larger trajectory. It means the world.

When they get back to the house Joe asks Nicky to sit for him, formal in a way he usually isn’t because he wants to feel truly spoiled and wants Nicky to give him that. Nicky agrees, going to find a book and losing his clothes along the way. The simple tease of his shirt hitting the floor in the hallway is almost enough to have Joe tracking down lube rather than his sketch pad, but he resists that urge for now. Only for now.

Joe finds Nicky again at the kitchen table, sitting naked in the morning sunlight, and is struck by a sudden shyness. They’ve been together so long it’s impossible for him to fully disentangle himself from Nicky but sometimes, when it’s just them, when he’s already holding all that love deep in his chest, just looking at Nicky is overwhelming. Looking at Nicky now, Joe thinks oh, he’s so beautiful.

Nicky looks up at him and goes pink, smiling softly like he can read Joe’s mind. “If I’d known a thousand years ago you would still look at me like this…” Nicky drops his gaze, shaking his head with a soft laugh.

Joe moves close enough to tilt his head up for a kiss, holding Nicky’s chin, and says, “If I’d known you would still let me look…”

“You can do more than look.” Nicky assures him, spreading his legs.

“You willfully misunderstand what sitting for me entails.” Joe laughs, kissing him again. “Come to the studio amore mio.”

Joe glances up from his sketch pad to find Nicky has moved again. He forgets he’s posing every time the book he’s reading actually captures his attention. Joe loves him, but he’s trying to draw him and Nicky’s completely shifted his pose.

“Sweetheart.” Joe calls, softly.

“Mm.” Nicky replies, not at all listening.

“Nicky, babe, you’re the most scattered model I’ve ever had.”

That Nicky hears, he glances up from his book and smiles, “You don’t pay me, hayati.”

“I would pay you,” Joe replies, tracing the image of Nicky’s lips with his thumb, “But I would have to show someone else this picture, let alone sell it to them.”

Nicky shifts gracefully back into the pose Joe had positioned him in before, rebalancing his book on his knee and spreading his legs again. Joe’s glad of that especially, because he was about ready to sketch Nicky’s cock.

“Better?” Nicky asks, smiling a little at the obvious downward direction of Joe’s gaze.

“Si, grazie.” Joe says, picking his pencil back up. Nicky chuckles softly and goes back to his book.

Joe likes drawing Nicky when he’s nude but not aroused, just lounging casually in Joe’s little studio, paying him no mind. He’s gorgeous like this, sexy and comfortable in a way that makes Joe’s art all the more intimate. There’s love, centuries of it, between them, and no shyness about their bodies.

“Have I told you lately how cute your foreskin is?” Joe asks. He loves to flirt with Nicky like this, loves to make him quirk his brow like he’s not sure it is flirting.

Nicky glances down at himself, shifting again but spreading his legs further so Joe doesn’t correct him. “Not in so many words.”

“Oh?” Joe asks, pretending forgetfulness.

Nicky goes back to his book but says, “You do like to play with it.”

“I do.” Joe admits. Nicky’s cock is always a delight, even now he’s thinking about kissing it, thinking about teasing until the head peeks out for him.

“You do.” Nicky says, turning the page. Nicky doesn’t need to say keep talking to me outright for Joe to hear it.

“I like watching you put a finger under it, like it better to get my tongue there.” Joe says, keeping his tone casual. Nicky hums agreeably, as if he’s not listening again. Joe knows better. “Or my cock. What do they call that again?”

“I’m not going to tell you.” Nicky says. His face looks unaffected, no blush, but his cock, well, Joe has the ‘before’ picture right in front of him.

“Alright, well, it’s nice when you share.” Joe teases. “I thought you were spoiling me today.”

“I am.” Nicky insists, “You think I stay naked this long for anyone else?”

“Are you cold, baby?”

“A little.”

“What did you want to do next?”

“Give you a massage. Starting with your hands.”

“Nicky.”

“Oh you’re done sketching now?” Nicky asks, stepping off the stool and setting his book down on top of it. He approaches Joe with intent, as if he’s in full chainmail with his sword at his hip rather than naked and interested. Joe shivers as Nicky circles around behind him, hooks his chin over Joe’s shoulder to consider his work and presses up against his back, hugging tight, stealing his warmth. “You are too kind in your depiction, as always.”

“I’m not. I see you truly.”

“Truly you see that I need a haircut.”

“I see you need-“ Joe starts, but Nicky claps a hand over his mouth.

“No, no. No more flirting or you’ll distract me. Come back to bed?”

“Always.”

Prompts
https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/3653.html?thread=983877#cmt983877

***

https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/4108.html?thread=1370124#cmt1370124

Link:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/26894551

Never Trust a Dragon

Summary:
Prince Yusuf al-Kaysani, on the way to stop his runaway groom-to-be is intercepted by a very scaly obstacle.

In response to this prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/4108.html?thread=1455372#cmt1455372

The first time the angry Christian does it, Yusuf is so shocked at the sensation he slips up, knees weakening, allowing his attacker to slip a dagger between his ribs.

He lost his helmet between the third and fourth times he was killed, no doubt taken by another soldier in need as he lay on the battlefield. Yusuf can hardly begrudge the theft, given that it doesn’t seem to matter what happens to him, he always rises again.

He does begrudge his body’s reaction to his hair being used as a handle, as an instrument in his murder.

The Christian’s hand slips out of his hair as Yusuf falls to the ground, bleeding, and his last conscious thought is that he misses the sensation as soon as it is gone.

When he awakens, his scimitar has been stolen. He uses the dagger that was still lodged in his stomach to chop his hair short and remove the weakness.

-

It is not as if Yusuf was unaware of this particular predilection. In his former life, as a merchant’s son with no wife and children of his own, he’d been a popular visitor to whorehouses in ports all around the Mediterranean, the rare visitor who didn’t care much for the gender of the legs he was settled between as long as he could pleasure someone into pulling his hair until he was blind with pleasure and rutting into the bedsheets.

Still, it is more than a little embarrassing to desire a man he should, by rights, detest, so much that he no longer stand on his own two feet the moment Nicolò gets a hand in his hair and pulls his head to the side to kiss him properly.

It is almost worth the shame to see the awe on Nicolò’s face when Yusuf slumps against him, overwhelmed and unmistakeably aroused and foolishly trusting Nicolò to catch him.

It is definitely worth it when awe turns to determination and Nicolò’s gentle hand tugs harshly at his hair and Yusuf falls to his knees.

-

It is many months before either Yusuf or Nicolò have the necessary vocabulary in each other’s languages to talk about it. They have wandered aimlessly from Jerusalem towards Cairo in that time, and Yusuf has found, to his horror, that not only does Nicolò share his unique and possibly cursed fate as well as possessing the uncanny ability to turn his knees to water with a touch of his hand, he is also kind, stalwart, honorable in a misguided sort of way, and shyly funny when he has enough words to make a joke.

In Cairo, after a long and luxurious bath, Nicolo asks.

“Your hair,” he says, shirtless and sitting on the bed of their rented room. “You, ah – when I pull your hair…”

Yusuf flushes red. “Yes,” he says.

“May I do it more?” Nicolò asks.

Yusuf would mistake his question for idle curiosity if there were just a hint less gravel in his tone and a bit less pupil in his eyes.

This is how, hazy minutes later, he finds himself splayed on Nicolò’s lap, impaled on his cock and groaning in pleasure as Nicolò pulls his hair.

He hasn’t done this before. He kept his explorations in whorehouses to hands and mouths, trying, in some ethereal way, to remain at least a little chaste (and in a very real way to remain free of illness). He was always afraid of the intimacy this act in particular he allowed. Over the last months, however, he has come to know that Nicolò is trustworthy, that he is a good man raised with bad intentions, and that he is Yusuf’s future.

He has also come to know that he desires Nicolò more than he thought human existence allowed for.

It is a small mercy that Nico waits until they have passed the irksome stages of preparation, of penetration, to get his hands in Yusuf’s hair, or he thinks he would not survive this encounter.

Lightning shoots down his spine when Nico pulls just right, only to be greeted by lightning from below when Nico’s cock grinds up just right and Yusuf wails, overwhelmed.

“You’re glorious,” Nico tells him hoarsely, and pulls harder.

Yusuf clenches down around him, hips rocking frantically to get more sensation, cock an aching line against Nico’s abdomen.

“Please,” he mouths out, begging this man who, a year ago, he wouldn’t have dared to dream of.

Nico tugs again and Yusuf’s world turns molten.

Again, and goosebumps break out all over his skin.

Again, and Yusuf comes without a touch on his cock, thick drops spilling down onto the light hair covering Nico’s body, crying out and groaning his praise and his desperation.

Nico tugs one more time, after Yusuf’s done, and his cock jerks painfully, spitting a last, pathetic glob of come into Nico’s bellybutton.

Yusuf’s eyes roll back into his head and he collapses against Nicolò.

Nicolò’s cock slips out of him and he gropes down to finish him, numb with pleasure as he is, only to find him wet with come and softening.

“It would take a much stronger man,” Nico tells him, smile playing about his serious lips, “to hold out with such a vision writhing and coming on his cock.”

Yusuf shudders against him.

-

Later, Nicky will place an article written by a man called Pavlov on Joe’s lap and raise a teasing eyebrow.

-

Written for this lovely prompt: https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/953.html?thread=24761#cmt24761

Here is the link to the fic on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26919529

Prompt: pretty self-explanatory,just Nicky getting doubly penetrated by his husband and hotJafar.
https://theoldguardkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/2487.html?thread=442807#cmt442807

Filled: A new fantastic point of view

Nile/Booker, first time, squirting, praise kink

Fill - Mad Passion, Nicky/Joe

FILL: Joe/Nicky, Secret Royalty

FILL: Nile & team, they can't discern ages

FILL: Nicky/Joe + Joe/Other - Joe’s Ex sends Nicky a sex tape

Fill: Joe/Nicky - DarkAU unrepentant sexy mercenaries

FILL: Booker/Nile, Modern Widower Booker

Fill - All the Shades of Gray, Joe/Nicky, Non-con

Give An Inch (Fall A Mile): Joe/Nicky, Moving Goalposts (1/?)