#Yusuf al-Kaysani

[krimsnkramsart]

[superkitty21]

There's nothing more dangerous than rewatching a movie you used to be hyper-fixated on. I watched The Old Guard for the first time in years and now I'm reading first hand accounts of the Crusades and skimming wikis about Muslim raids on the Genoese coastline in the 11th century.

All this just for a more accurate mental picture of my otps meet cute

[linaxart]

carpet weaver

[nkp1981]

[myrkky]

immortal husbands being soft 💕

(uncropped version on my twitter @ nastymyrkky)

[negotiumcrucis]

One of my favourite pictures of Yusuf 🔥🔥🔥

[asamandra]

Teasing the little brother is fun!

[lovelikedestiny]

It all begins with Nile looking out of pure boredom at Nicky’s ID - or at least one of his innumerable ones -  lying on the kitchen counter. 

“Aren’t Nicky’s eyes green?” She asks and regrets her question the exact moment the words leave the tip of her tongue because Joe gasps and puts a hand dramatically on his chest as if she had offended him personally somehow.

Which is ridiculous since it’s Nicky’s eyes she asked about and said person isn’t even in the living room with them but off in the kitchen, cooking while softly humming to himself.

In the only armchair Booker places a hand on his face as if Nile had just made the biggest mistake of her life. Andy doesn’t hesitate, groans barely audible and mumbles something like having to check that her ax didn’t disappear before disappearing herself like morning fog on a field.

“Green?” Joe repeats bewildered and Nile plays with the thought of quickly changing the subject but she can’t think of anything useful.

Great.

“You’re asking if Nicky’s eyes are green?”

With a suffering, long-drawn sigh Booker fishes for the remote control, increasing the volume of his soccer (football, Nile corrects inwardly due to several former and appalled protests of the boys) game which doesn’t seem to bother Joe in the slightest.

“Mon dieu, here we go again…”

“Uh…yeah? His ID states that his eyes are blue and I just wondered because they appear to be green,” Nile tries to explain her question.

“Blue?” Joe raises his eyebrows and Nile almost expects to get into her first real argument with one of her new team members but to her relief - apparently having dodged a bullet there - he only smiles fondly. “My dear Nile, you will notice it’s impossible to pin Nicky’s eye color down to a single shade. On paper the mirrors of his kind soul are always forced into dullness unworthy of their true beauty.”

Whatever Nile had assumed to get as an answer to her question, it is absolutely not this indirect declaration of love from Joe to Nicky who - again - is not even in the same room to hear that.

While her curiosity is piqued and she is strangely moved by the crystal clear affection for the love of his life, illuminating Joe’s face, Booker turns off the TV, obviously having given up on his attempt to ignore the situation.

“Andy, do you need help checking on your ax?” He calls as he rises. 

“Get your own excuse!” Andy yells back and Booker looks at Nile and Joe.

“Andy needs help with her ax, so I’m going to…help her with her…uhm…ax,” he ends awkwardly. Entering the hallway, Nile can hear him mutter: “You can do better than that, Sebastien. You imbécile.”

“Impossible?” Her attention returns to Joe who invites her to sit down next to him with a light tilt of his head. She willingly follows his request, unceremoniously plopping down on the sofa. “Even after all these years?”

“Especially after all these years,” is Joe’s mysterious reply. Thankfully he elaborates on his statement without Nile having to require more information. “I know it’s hard to believe but even after more than 900 years Nicky and I still discover new habits of each other: certain preferences, a change in particular movements, new interests or the urge to try out a different hobby. But most and for all we are still able to see beauty in mundane things like waking up in the same bed, sharing a cup of coffee or taking a stroll through parks. Nearly a millennium ago I wouldn’t have believed it if someone had told me that I’d love someone with every fiber of my being, so much that it would hurt to breathe sometimes, although I would’ve spent centuries with them. It is difficult to verbalize this feeling of deep connection ingrained in the bond I have with Nicky.”

The devotion to Nicky - unquestioningly Joe’s soulmate - Nile can hear in his warm voice takes her breath away and she only remembers how to suck air into her lungs when they start to burn. Despite the sheer wonder of a relationship having lasted that long without losing any of its mutual love it means a lot to Nile that Joe is speaking to her so openly and devoid of any doubts regarding Nile’s acceptance.

“And it fills me with the utmost joy that I am still incapable of capturing every single color of Nicky’s eyes because it means that there are so many things about him waiting for me to detect them.” Nile admires Joe’s honesty and the unashamed way with which he tells others about his connection to Nicky. 

Infinite and profound tenderness.

“Wow, when you phrase it like that I can totally see where you’re coming from and I’d love to hear more,” Nile says, forgetting the actual reason she started this chat. Her brain is catching on a little too slowly. “I mean if that’s alright with you,” she backpedals hastily although Nicky joining them interrupts their conversation for the moment.

“Andy said you were holding ‘exaggerated and dramatic love speeches about me’.” He greets the both of them with a smile hidden in the corners of his mouth and presses a kiss into Joe’s curls as he walks behind the sofa.

“I would never dare to do that,” Joe protests, winking and leans back his head to get another kiss directly on the lips.

“Is that so, habibi?” Amusement sparkles in Nicky’s eyes which originally had been the drive behind Nile’s curiosity. “Nile, is Joe holding an exaggerated and dramatic love speech?”

Grinning, she admits, “Yeah, he kind of does but honestly I’m here for it.”

Joe throws a small pillow at her but he is laughing, showing off the crinkles making him look even more likable. “Liar!”

 “So you’re not ‘being so disgustingly sweet that one has nausea’ as Booker put it?” Nicky digs deeper. The two immortal warriors evidently have a lot of fun playing this little game and Nile enjoys the relaxed atmosphere.

“Booker has bad taste,” Joe says loudly, clearly addressing the French man somewhere in the safe house.

“Shut up, jackass!” Booker shouts back.

Nicky tsks chidingly and acknowledges Joe’s shit-eating grin with a lopsided smile of his own. “Now that we’ve settled the matter I wanted to inform you that dinner is ready in fifteen minutes.”

“Thank you, vita mia.” Joe threads their fingers together, caressing each knuckle with a peck. “I appreciate your cooking wholeheartedly.”

“Not just you,” Nile adds and mentally takes note to look out for the color of Nicky’s eyes.

Her plan is astonishingly easy to carry out once she knows what to keep her own eyes on. 

More often than not Nicky’s eye color consists of various shades of blue mixed with splinters of green, turning his eyes in the right light into shards of seafoam, deep, mysterious teal lagoons on hot summer days, lucious, vast forests or the wide expenses of the sky.

She notices that they seem to get colder whenever something arouses his irritation: an insult spit at Joe on a mission, impoliteness in everyday life, injustice, an attempt to hurt Andy or when someone shoots Booker or Nile herself is in danger. Then the tempting, gentle mountain lakes freeze to merciless, piercing shards of arctic ice and blazing silvery steel, so frosty you can nearly feel the cold as thousand pinpricks in your skin.

If he is sad or in a bad mood there is a depressing gray outweighing the other colors in his gaze like clouds on a rainy day or a raging storm in fall, making them more washed out and muted.

On a mission as they’re in the crossfire Nicky pushes her out of the way, shielding her with his body and an “Uff” escapes her as the air leaves her lungs all at once. Carefully he braces himself with his arms above her and for a second she only stares into his eyes, intensively looking down at her in return, examining her body for wounds. 

“Are you alright, Nile?”

“Oh shit!”

Alarmed by her curse he starts searching for an injury. “What is it? Did you get hit?”

“There is fucking gold in them!” Nile exclaims, unaware that she is completely ignoring his concerned questions.

Confused, he pauses. “Prego? I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

But Nile’s focus is on something else. “There are golden freckles in your eyes! Are you kidding?”

“I told you so!” Joe calls somewhere on their right, involved in a fight. “Nicky’s eyes don’t have one color!”

Despite the fact that they’re in the middle of a battle, bullets flying over them, Nile laughs and has to chuckle even more when Nicky shakes his head. “Unbelievable…”

The next time Copley makes them fake ID’s he asks Nicky: “What eye color do you have?”

And Nile goes: “You can’t answer that so easily.”

[krimsnkramsart]

[theartguard]

The Art Guard's GIF collab project!

Each of these frames was drawn by one of our members! In order they are:

@sassy-wartime-nun

@zairaalbereo

@seanchaidh7

@linaxart

@queen-shuri

@artgroves

@holly-bearie

@dr-lemurr

@beepbeepsan

@yuliares

@flawlessassholes

@isabellehemlock

@goldheartedsky

@queen-of-badomens

In their blogs you'll find each of their frames, go check them out!

[linaxart]

Bathhouse

[laviejaguardia]

Chapters: 4/?

Fandom: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Original Character(s), Nicky | Nicolò di Genova/Original Character(s)

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, long timeline, Unrequited Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, emotional angst, Pining, POV Alternating, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Heartache, Tunisian Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Italian Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Implied/Referenced Homophobia

Sometimes people meet in the right place at the wrong time, and then reconnect at the right time but wrong places. This story is about what it takes for time and place to align.

New chapter is up! Hope you enjoy it <3

[nkp1981]

Some people value their beauty sleep more than others in The Old Guard.

my creation

[lazaefair]

Nicky “19th century lighthouse keeper hat” di Genova vs. Yusuf “used-car salesman mustache” al-Kaysani. Discuss.

[yellowmagicalgirl]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Old Guard (Movie 2020) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Characters: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Additional Tags: 1960s, what do you call homecoming when your home doesn't exist anymore?, Immortality, Religion Summary:

Mahdia, Tunisia. 1965.

Yusuf and Nicola take some time to visit the city where Yusuf grew up.

Thank you to the Team Mermaid creator who wrote this for me!

[asamandra]

Sometimes Nicky likes to tease Joe. 😂