Fills Post
Jul. 22nd, 2020 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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FILL: Joe/Nicky, Secret Royalty
Date: 2020-10-05 01:45 am (UTC)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.)
Re: FILL: Joe/Nicky, Secret Royalty
Date: 2020-10-05 02:37 am (UTC)This is wonderful and I want to hug it?
Re: FILL: Joe/Nicky, Secret Royalty
Date: 2020-10-05 03:10 am (UTC)*happy sigh @ dreamboat boyfriend Joe*
author i really loved this, and that Joe and Nicky are gonna figure things out! <3
Re: FILL: Joe/Nicky, Secret Royalty
Date: 2020-10-05 04:49 am (UTC)Re: FILL: Joe/Nicky, Secret Royalty
Date: 2020-10-05 06:42 am (UTC)Re: FILL: Joe/Nicky, Secret Royalty
Date: 2020-10-05 12:11 pm (UTC)Re: FILL: Joe/Nicky, Secret Royalty
Date: 2020-10-05 12:18 pm (UTC)Particularly this gem: “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.
Re: FILL: Joe/Nicky, Secret Royalty
Date: 2020-10-05 06:21 pm (UTC)Re: FILL: Joe/Nicky, Secret Royalty
Date: 2020-10-06 12:16 pm (UTC)Re: FILL: Joe/Nicky, Secret Royalty
Date: 2020-10-07 01:39 am (UTC)