#and Booker thinks for a second that nicky might be normal but then they have to take a ship somewhere and Oh Boy

[thegayguard]

Okay but consider: Andy getting a sea shanty stuck in her head so she starts grumbling the words under her breath and then Joe then Nicky then Booker join in and you just have these immortal warriors absolutely belting Wellerman in perfect harmony and Nile just sits there like ?????????

[xiaq]

Woke up thinking about The Old Guard. Enjoy, I guess: Edit: It’s a whole ass fic now

Nile’s sword arcs out of her hand and onto the ground several feet away for the third time in as many minutes and she leans over to brace her hands on her knees, breathing hard.

“How are you so good at this?” she asks.

It’s a mostly hypothetical question. Hundreds of years of practice ought to make someone frustrating adept at swordplay.

“Ah,” Joe says, grinning, “while you were busy being heterosexual, I studied the blade.”

It takes Nile a second.

“Ok, wow. Shut up. You’re not allowed to quote memes at me, old man. “

“She is also not heterosexual, my love,” Nicky says from where he’s sitting in the shade with a book. His tone is lightly chastising. “You should not assume.”

“Oh.” Joe looks genuinely surprised. “I apologize. Are you not?”

“No? I’m bi.”

Joe considers this for a moment. “Bisexual?”

“Yeah.”

“I see. Booker is as well. Though it took him a few decades to realize.”

“It took him a few decades to admit,” Nicky argues. “I think he realized rather quickly, sharing such close quarters with us.”

“Oh my god,” Nile says, straightening. “Were you two responsible for Booker’s queer awakening?”

Joe spreads his arms as if to prove his innocence—though “innocent” is difficult to pull off when one hand has a sword in it.

“Nicolò is very pretty and makes equally pretty sounds given appropriate…stimulation. I was not responsible.”

“You were responsible for the sounds,” Nicky says dryly. “And I recall several years in Malta where you had a predilection for nudity and Booker had a predilection for getting drunk and commenting on the unfairness of your ass. I do not think that was only jealousy, my love.”

“I do not recall this,” Joe says.

“I do,” Andy mutters.

She’s sitting on the opposite side of their little courtyard cleaning a rifle.

Nile hadn’t understood, at first, why the group was so adamant about renting a home with a private, stone-walled, garden. After sparring with them for a few weeks every morning, healing countless wounds, some of which might have been fatal for a normal person, she gets it now. And that’s aside from Andy’s fondness for dismantling and reassembling weapons while sunbathing. Privacy is important.

“Regardless,” Nicky says, “are we using queer, now, as a term? Is that no longer derogatory, Nile?”

“Mm,” Nile says. “I mean. It’s still derogatory when some people use it but it’s also been pretty widely reclaimed. There’s a whole like, genre of scholarship called queer theory, now. You can get a degree in it.”

“Interesting,” Nicky says, tapping his book against one thigh.  “We should go to college again. We haven’t done that in a while.”

Nile looks back and forth between them. “You’ve gone to college? Of course you have. Better question. How many degrees do you all have?”

“Andy has nearly a dozen. Mostly sciences, right boss?” Joe says.

“Three in biology,” Andy says, not looking up as she scrubs the bore of her 338 Lapua. “Two in microbiology, one each in chemistry, cognitive science, astronomy and astrophysics. One in ecology. And one in music.”

“Music?” Nile repeats.

“Not just music,” Joe objects. “A degree from Juliard. Have her play the piano for you some time. Or the violin.”

Nile feels a headache coming on. “And you two?”

“Joe has two bachelors degrees in studio art,” Nicky says, “a PhD in art history, a masters in art conservation, and a law degree. I have a bachelors in English, a PhD in religion, a doctorate in medicine, and a masters in medical ethics.”

“And Nico went to Culinary school twice,” Joe says proudly.

Nicky sighs. “Three times.”

“Ah, my heart. I apologize. Nico attended culinary school three times. But he only graduated twice.”

“What happened the third time?” Nile asks.

“We do not speak of it,” Nicky says.

“We could,” Joe suggests.

“Yusuf,” Nicky says.

Joe laughs. “Perhaps later. Again, Nile.”

Nile groans and retrieves her sword.

“Keep your elbow up this time,” Andy says, still not looking away from her gun.

Nile groans louder.

[sixth-light]

Nicky & Nile in the kitchen baking together.

The first time Nicky asked Nile if she would like to do some cooking with him, it was a grey, miserable day in Tasmania and she had spent two hours lying on the couch, reading news on her phone, her face growing unhappier and unhappier. Nicky knew that expression; he had seen it too often on Andy’s face over the last twenty years, or maybe forty, or maybe two hundred; but Nile’s unhappiness was more personal. She still had a hundred thousand cobweb ties to a normal life, stretched but not snapped. Of course what was happening in her homeland concerned her.

Nicky couldn’t do anything about that, right now. But he could offer her something else to do. 

“Have you ever made bread?” he asked, coming no further than the doorway. 

“Have I - why?” Nile sat up, now cautious. Nicky knew why, too; that sort of question from Andy was usually the prelude to something much more exciting than his plans for the afternoon. 

“Bread,” he repeated. “With yeast, and flour. I thought you might like to. Or maybe you can teach me how you make it.”

“Sick of watching me doomscroll, huh? Me too.” She got up off the couch. “Yeah, okay, I’ve never made bread. Though I did read a really great Twitter thread on how they did it in Ancient Egypt, once.”

“I am afraid you will have to ask Andy if that is what you want, and I will warn you now she has never been much of a cook, but we will make do,” Nicky told her, and they measured out flour and yeast and water and salt. White puffs of flour and heavier brown freckles of meal got everywhere, as they always did. Nicky talked for a little while, and then let the silence fall comfortably. He was so glad that Nile was good at comfortable silences with them, already. It had taken Booker years to learn that trick. 

“I like this,” Nile said, as they kneaded. “It’s good thinking time.”

“Yes, it is,” Nicky agreed. He felt Joe hover fondly at the door, and then leave again. Joe knew better than to interrupt kneading. 

“And now, we let it rest,” Nicky said. “For a while.”

“Don’t get too metaphorical about this,” Nile said, laughing, a smear of flour white across her brow. 

“Nicky’s not allowed to do metaphors,” Andy said, appearing in the doorway. “Joe’s in charge of those. Mmmm, I love that smell. Second-best thing you can do with yeast. Well, maybe third, depends how you count.”

“First best,” Nile said, very firmly, and started washing her hands.

“You haven’t seen how it’s going to come out yet,” Nicky couldn’t help saying. “It’s a new experience every time.”

“I have faith.” Nile grinned over her shoulder. Despite the rain streaking the window, it lit up the room.

Yes, Nicky thought, meeting Andy’s amused gaze; there were very few things you couldn’t feel better about if you stopped, took a breath, and made bread. 

[fadagaski]

Prompt: Nicky explains to Joe why he shaved his head.

(You can't have that icon pic and not expect something like this)

1986 and change is in the air. It’s Joe’s job to collect Andy from the airport, navigating their way through past every security checkpoint using only his innate charm and Booker’s frankly atrocious ID forgery.

"What's the terrain?" Andy asks, mouth full of trail mix smuggled over from the States.

"Queer punk scene seems a good place to start," Joe says.

"You'll never get the piercings to pass. You and that earring in Jamaica, remember? 1660s? 70s?"

"How could I forget. Blood everywhere." Joe had so wanted the hoops: so audacious, so piratical. He's still a little bitter about it now. "But Nicky says he's got an idea."

"Bake them something?" Andy might be aiming for sarcastic but Joe can hear the fondness, not to mention interest: she's been away on 'business' for a few weeks now, and has definitely missed Nicky's cooking.

"He said we would see when we got back. I think he's dug up some old leathers from somewhere."

When Joe raps his knuckles against the door in their signature code for Wednesdays, Booker opens it with his eyes wider than normal.

"You okay?" Joe asks, immediately on alert. "Something happened?"

Booker shakes his head. "No, everything's fine. Hey boss."

"Hey yourself. You gonna stand in the doorway the whole afternoon?"

Mutely, Booker moves aside, closing the door with a quiet noise behind them. "He's nearly finished," he says cryptically.

Joe is still a little cautious from Booker's peculiar greeting, but he perks up at the mere mention of Nicky. "Oh yeah? He in the bedroom?"

"Bathroom."

Joe heads that way now that Andy is reunited with Booker, already asking for "some goddamn real liquor, Booker."

At the closed bathroom door, he knocks the special rhythm that's only for him and Nicky.

"Just a second, Joe."

Unusual. Normally Nicky would grant immediate access. But maybe he wants to surprise Joe with something. Joe likes surprises, and Nicky likes to do things that Joe likes.

"I'll be in our room," he says. When he turns to leave, he thinks he can hear the slosh of a razor shaken through water.

Five minutes later, having thoroughly exhausted the ceiling for entertainment, Joe sits up on the bed when he hears the bathroom door open, footsteps treading along the corridor.

"Joe?"

"I'm here."

Nicky turns the corner and Joe's breath stops in his lungs.

"Your hair!"

Nicky's hand lifts to his head, scuffing over the bald scalp. "Yes."

"It's gone!" Redundant to even say it, but Joe can't think of a time in nearly a thousand years where Nicky has ever been hairless. And for these past two decades, Joe has been the lucky beneficiary of the floppy-haired styles of the hippies, has spent days of his life carding his fingers through Nicky's long locks.

Nicky sits beside Joe on the bed, hands in his lap. He still has the moustache, bizarrely; it lends him a serious, almost sinister air.

Until, of course, he smiles the special smile that's just for Joe, like he is fondly enamoured of whatever Joe is doing right now.

Right now, he is staring. He can't help it.

"I know it's a big adjustment," Nicky says, skating his palm over his head again, "but it's just until we are integrated. It will grow back again quick enough."

Curious, Joe lifts his hand, rests it on the vulnerable dome of Nicky's shorn head. It's white almost like bone, which makes his spine shiver, but when he strokes his hand down to Nicky's neck, it makes a pleasant rasping sound that reminds him of sweaty nights, Nicky feasting on Joe under the sheets, hours spent writhing under his stubbled mouth.

Joe tugs Nicky in closer, raises his head so he can kiss the new skin. To think, after all these centuries, there is here in front of him a part of Nicky he has never kissed before.

When his eyes drop to Nicky's face, Nicky reads him like the open book he is, and grins amused. "Or I can keep it short, if you prefer."

How lucky Joe is, to be the beneficiary of Berlin's blossoming punk scene.

I'm sleep-deprived. Prompt me!

[fireinmoonshot]

THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS | ANDY x READER

Pairing: Andy / Andromache of Scythia x Reader Fandom: The Old Guard Word Count: 1197 Warnings: Death (like, a good lot of it), mentions of blood, guns.  A/N: I love writing for The Old Guard because it’s basically just angst, and Andy is potentially one of the most angst filled characters I’ve ever written for. I had a blast writing this. This does also contain slight spoilers for The Old Guard, of course. But it does take place after the events of the film in a random space of time that you can determine yourself!

For the first hundred years, Andy was determined not to let herself feel anything but friendship for you. She’d felt the pain of losing someone she loved so deeply before. The way it had torn her apart from the inside until she was nothing but cold and unfeeling on the outside, at least to most people. Booker, Nicky and Joe had brought some warmth back to her, and when Nile came along she did the same. But towards you, there had always been slight animosity. She was civil, she had to be – you couldn’t live with someone for a hundred years without at least pretending to like them. But it was different with you.

She’d forced herself to push her feelings down for a hundred years.

She was ready to push them down for another hundred.

Until, that is, the day of October 14th, a hundred and one years after you first died.

It was a normal day, a normal job for the lot of you. Nothing too difficult, nothing you couldn’t have fun with. Nicky, Joe and Nile were working together to barricade the room and keep the mansion’s guards out while you and Andy worked on going through the filing cabinets trying to find the files you were here to retrieve.

“This would be a really useful time to have Booker’s help,” you muttered.

Andy glanced over at you. “Focus on the task, would you?”

She ignored the jealousy that ran through her. You’d been friends with Booker, good friends. She’d thought that the two of you might have become more at one point, yet she had no idea that you had never looked at Booker as anything other than a brother.

“Have you got anything yet?” You knelt down and pulled open another drawer and began to flick through the files in it which had been, usefully, separated into labelled sections.

“No.”

From the door, Nicky yelled. “Any time soon would be great, guys!”

“We’re trying!” The two of you yelled back in unison.

You looked over at Andy, a grin making its way onto your face, expecting her to look at you the same way, amused. Instead, she made a point of not meeting your eyes and turned away from you, opening up another drawer and focusing on the files inside of it so that she wouldn’t think about how lovely you looked when you smiled.

That was when she heard the crash.

The barricade that the others had been building had started to strain from the pressure of the guards on the other side. A vase from the top of a cupboard one of the team had pushed in front of the door toppled and fell, crashing onto the floorboards beneath it. Andy held her breath as the cupboard swiftly followed the vase.

Everything happened quickly, then. She didn’t have time to move or act or to do anything other than watch as a guard weaselled his gun through the gap in the door and fired a single bullet. Whether it had an intended target, she didn’t know. All she knew was that she wanted whoever fired it dead.

You fell backwards against the filing cabinet, several files you’d pulled out sent scattered to the floor, flecked with blood.

Nicky, Joe and Nile acted quickly, killing the other guards that tried to get through and beginning to barricade the door again. But Andy only had eyes for you. She fell to your side, knowing that you’d revive again any second, and cupped your face in her hands.

“Come on, come back,” she muttered, words inaudible against the gunfire.

Her eyes went to the wound. It should be closing up… it should be healing.

“No, no, no.” Panic flared through her and she shook you fiercely. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare do that.” It’s not their time. It’s not their time! It can’t be. “Come on, come back to me. Now!”

Andy never cried, not really. She never allowed herself that. This was an exception. She squeezed her eyes shut, her vision having blurred anyway from the tears that had assaulted her. Her hands stayed on your face.

Her eyes were still closed when yours blinked open.

You groaned a little in pain as the bullet clattered to the floor.

“Andy?” You muttered.

The gunfire had ended and Andy hadn’t even realised. It was quiet again. Her eyes opened and she took in the sight before her. You, alive, breathing… alive.

“Why the hell did that take so long?!” She cried, one of her hands moving to the wound to check if it had healed properly. It looked as if there was never even a wound there, the only tell being the blood around it. “I thought that you were dead!”

“I was dead.”

“Not funny.”

“How is that not funny?”

Andy fumbled. How was she going to explain this? How could she explain this? You, reviving with Andy kneeling over you, crying and willing you to come back. There was no explanation for that.

“Hey, why are you crying?” Hesitantly, you reached up a hand to wipe them away.

“Why do you think I’m crying?”

You thought for a moment. “Is it because you thought that this was it? You said something about it taking so long. You realised how much you never want me to actually die?” Your words were partly a joke and partly truth. You wanted to hear her say yes, to admit things you and the others had suspected for a long, long while. But you couldn’t help but tease at the same time.

Andy stared at you, words rushing through her mind.

“Well, is that it?” You pushed.

More silence followed. You wondered if she was ever going to say anything. Just when you were about to give up hope, to push her hands away from your face, and to stand and start searching for the files again, Andy surprised you by leaning in and pressing her lips to yours. The kiss was quick, rushed, but it held the passion of a hundred years of hidden love and the promise of a hundred years more.

Andy pulled away and looked at you. “You don’t do that again, you hear me?”

“Don’t do what?” You replied, a little shell shocked from the kiss.

“Die.”

A small laugh erupted out of you. “I can’t really promise that. I mean, dying… that’s kinda what I do… like a never ending circle of dying…”

Her lips quirked up into a small smile. “Oh, shut up.”

Another yell came from across the room. This time, it was Joe. “When you two are finished confessing your love, would you please find that file?”

Andy laughed and looked over at them. “Yeah, yeah, we’re on it.”

She stood up and offered you a hand, which you took, and stood alongside her. With a smile directed at you, she walked over to the drawer she was looking in before and started searching again.

“By the way,” you started, searching your own drawer again. “When we do get out of here, I’m expecting a full explanation of the last hundred years. You know that, right?”

[randomingoftherandomness]

Secrets I Have Held In My Heart

A/N: Modern!AU, Soulmate!AU, Soul Mark!AU, Angst, OT3.

This is quite honestly one of the longest things I’ve ever done in one sitting. I am exhausted. My prose and tenses are probably everywhere and I am so sorry for it. Enjoy x

(Edit 20/1/2021) It has recently come to my attention that lies and slander have been spread about my character amongst persons in this OT3 community. They are malicious lies made with the intent to cast a shadow over my credibility and my good standing in this community. I only ask that you come talk to me first before you believe the horrible things that have been levelled about me.

Please take care of yourselves x

--

Booker smiles placidly when he catches Joe's eye from across the room and let's the pretenses drop the moment he ducks out into hallway, finding a spot of quiet from all the music and chatter of celebration in the living room. He really should be happy but as it is with heartbreaks, happiness is something you can only fake until it feels real.

He opens the door when the doorbell rings and kisses the cheeks of the latecomers in greeting. They awkwardly avoid his eye with shifty smiles as they shuffle past him. Booker doesn't blame them. It's an awkward fucking situation all around.

Joe's warm and happy laughter carries through the air, and Booker just feels his heart twist in his chest. The sight of his head of curls bobbing along in the joy of whatever joke one of their friends was making while his arm was slung intimately low around Nicky's waist was unbearable. Booker has enough self-respect in him to recognise it as jealousy.

He has been in love with his best friend for almost as long as he has known him. It had been ridiculously easy for them; Joe had no soul marks and neither had Booker, so it was the most natural thing to move in together after they'd both hit 33 and when Booker decided to offer his fine art restorer skills up to go freelance, they make plans to spend the rest of their lives together. It made sense and they were happy. Booker had had no intentions of ever letting Joe know how he had truly felt and that was the mistake.

It isn't that he dislikes Nicky. 

The man was beyond perfect and Booker could have never hoped to compare. From the briefest of familiarities, he knows that Nicky was a former theology student who left the seminary and is now deep in his work with a local NGO, well on his way to maybe working for the UN some day. He volunteers at a local shelter, helps at his church's soup kitchen, is handsome and funny, is a fucking Saint personified and looks great next to Joe when Booker looks like a twice drowned rat on his best day. It isn't that he hates the man. It's just that, well, Nicky isn't him.

Booker knew something had changed then. Joe had never looked at him the way he had when his and Nicky's eyes first met. And he knows Joe like he knows his own mind and there won't be any one as trusting or as kind. If he tells him he loves him, Joe would stay and he'd be Booker's, but that's not how love works and so he waits until the day they're both on the sofa watching a game and Joe turns to him to say, "Nicky's my soulmate."

Just like that. And because he could never hurt Joe, he smiles, nodding. "I figured he was. Congratulations man. That's amazing!"

There had been an indescribable look that crossed Joe's face when he said that but he hadn't lingered on it for too long. Joe's soul mark was on his left forearm set in stark, bold lines; a scimitar and a longsword threaded together with roses and thorns. Pretty cool and Booker made sure to tell him so.

That had been three months ago. Three months of waiting for the other shoe to drop, the inevitable moment when Joe says he's gonna move out and into Nicky's unit. For the second it hits his best friend that there really wasn't a place for someone like him in this equation. Two months of sitting around until he wraps up his current contract with the museum in the city and the curator takes him aside to ask him if he would be interested in working for a private collector in Turkey. Two years to work on a team of freelancers. Two years on the other side of the continent. Booker said yes with no hesitation.

"Hey, you good?"

Booker knocks his bottle of beer to Copley's. He is one of the newer persons to join their friend group but it feels like they've know each other for a very long time. His warm smile anchors Booker to the here and now and he is stupidly grateful for his presence. The man was steadfast and calm, and it made sense to Booker that he'd be the only one he told about his leaving. "Yeah. I'm ready to go whenever you are."

He'd snuck a duffle bag of his things out to Copley's house the day before and then two suitcases when Joe was over at Nicky's last night. Right before the party to celebrate Joe's birthday, he had brought his carry on out to Copley's car. His name was still on the lease and he has left instructions to help pay for his part of the rent until the end of the year if Joe would like to continue staying here. Copley will help ship the rest of his things after a month. All that's left to do is leave.

Joe had been looking forward to introducing Nicky to his family and friends, and this party was perfect for it. Booker feels bereft at the thought that this could be the last time he sees him in a long while and he cranes his neck to spy him in the center of the room, accepting a kiss from Nicky as the birthday cake is brought out from the kitchen. He holds that image of Joe, smiling from ear to ear and hopes he won't hate him too much for leaving without saying goodbye.

"Let's go."

--

His Turkish is passable at best but he gets by well enough. The rest of the restoration team were up and coming names mixed with pioneers in the field and despite the lingering heart ache, Booker finds himself pleasantly settled and happy with the work he gets to do. Everyone seems to be equally as excited as he is to be working on their employer's personal collection of paintings and sculptures, in addition to the rare books that Booker has never seen outside of museums and archives.

It's good work and it keeps him busy. It stops him from thinking about Joe too much.

Booker had found thirteen missed calls and twenty texts and ten voicemails when he lands. He hesitates only for a moment before deleting everything that wasn't from Copley or his work.

As if sensing he was being summoned by thought, his phone rings as he basks in the afternoon sunshine whilst reading a book on his off day, Copley's name flashes on his screen.

"You still alive, then?"

"Alive and kicking," Copley says over the line with a laugh. "I swear, Joe is going to eviscerate me one of these days."

Booker shakes his head, marking his page and setting his book aside. The sunlight feels good on his skin and he takes a deep lungful of air. "He won't. He's way too nice."

"You didn't see him glare when I packed the last of your things into the boxes. They're shipped, by the way. Should reach you in a week tops."

"Thanks. I owe you big time."

"Oh, you owe me more than big time. When I come over to visit, I want you pulling out all the stops for me. I want the five star experience, Mr Booker. No expense spared," Copley chuckles.

"Alright, alright," Booker laughs. "I'm sure I can rustle something up. Just let me know when, alright?"

Copley hums and they fall into a comfortable pause. "How are you? Really. Don't lie."

He tightens his grip on his phone, swallowing tightly. "I miss him every day but that's not new. I think I'll keep missing him for a while yet."

"That's normal. I'm not surprised. I think he misses you too, you know?"

"He has Nicky now. He doesn't need me. I'm... I'm just his best friend with a stupid crush that had made plans to spend the rest of my life with him. I don't fit in it any more and he deserves more than I could ever give him," He swallow tightly, licking his lips. "Copley, he'll be okay."

"But will you?"

Booker doesn't have an answer to that. When his things arrive a week and a half later, he accepts it and begins to unpack his books. He's grateful to have his familiar favourites and is eager to fill his shelves when he spots the edges of an envelope peeking out of a battered copy of Neruda. It was a letter and it was addressed to him, though the handwriting is unfamiliar to him.

Dear Sebastien, it starts and this clues him in that this person isn't someone who knows him well. No one outside of his employers and colleagues call him Sebastien.

I hope you don't mind. I'll be slipping this along with the books. I really do hope it finds you well. I don't have your number and judging by the way Joe seems to not receive a reply from you, you might have changed it. I would ask it from Copley but I do not know him well enough and you deserve someone you can speak to without any awkwardness. I write this letter because I want to know you better. It occurred to me that we have never exchanged more than a handful of words whenever we meet and it was always about Joe. I found myself curious about you even if it feels like I know you from all that Joe talks about you. He still talks about you. Even if it is in confusion as to why you left us. I don't write to judge you. I just want to be your friend. If you are amenable, please send your reply to me care of the address on the back of this paper. I hope that you do. I won't tell Joe if you don't want me to.

Sincerely, Nicky.

Booker flips the paper and sees that it's for the church he'd half-remembered being the one that Joe had mentioned off-handedly once. He rereads the words, thrown by the whole thing. He tucks it into his pocket, pushing it to the back of his mind as he focuses on unpacking his life. But the shape of it digs against his skin and he cannot help unfolding it every few minutes to read it all over again.

Each word was carefully pressed and written with intent. He finds his thumb brushing over the looping Joe, but it is the careful He still talks about you that decides things for him.

Scratching his chest absently, he tears out an empty page from his notebook as writes, If we're going to be friends, you'd better call me Booker.

--

The seasons change and his correspondence with Nicky grows from a weekly letter to every few days, to Booker posting a letter only to receive a reply for the one he sent two days ago when he arrives back in his flat. Booker takes to sending a box of baklava over an overnight service and Nicky sends him a handwritten recipe for his Nonna's tomato soup when Booker off-handedly mentions a sniffle.

Eventually it gets easier to talk about Joe and Booker tells Nicky on what he likes and what he doesn't, how to best care for him; he's allergic to a certain brand of detergent, he always forgets his scarf in the depths of winter so always stuff one in his coat pocket, he loves it when you caress his hair, he doesn't support any team in football but he loves watching a game and he always chooses the team that starts on the right side of the pitch, ask his mother for her recipe for lamb stew and make that for him when he's having a busy week.

Nicky never seems to be bothered by him telling him all these things and in turn, Booker learns that Nicky cannot function before his first cup of coffee, that he misses the quiet of his life in the seminary but he is glad he can do more as he is, that he has a few kids that he works with that he is hoping will get into gifted programmes that can help them excel in academia, that if he hadn't done the almost priest route, he would have been a doctor or a medic.

It was ridiculously effortless to be friends with Nicky and he finds himself actually looking forward to his letters and random bits and bobs in the mail. Sometimes Nicky sends Booker Joe’s sketches and he keeps them up on his bedside, keeping them in sight as he falls asleep at night. Other times there’s a picture or two, taken by Nicky, of Joe. Joe on the corner of the sofa, curled up and dozing, Joe eyes crinkling as he laughs at something. Joe with those ridiculous sunglasses they bought on a whim over a very wet Welsh afternoon.

As the first chill of the season sets in, Booker asks about Joe.

He's fine. Missing you. We're heading to his family's beach house. He said you both used to go together?

Booker finds that he can smile a little easier when the memories come or when it is brought up that Joe misses him. It still tastes a little bittersweet but he can be happy about how he had the chance to experience these things with Joe. Even if he hadn't been the one to keep having them. 

Yes. He writes, But you both can do this together now. Make sure you pack extra blankets for yourself. I'm sure you know that he hogs them.

Nicky replies with a box of Marks and Spencer Welsh Cakes which Booker thanks with an assortment of Turkish Delights. 

Their correspondence slows as the weather cools further. Copley, when he tells him about what’s happening over Skype, merely asks him if it i a good idea to be even putting himself in the same sphere as Joe and Nicky when he had moved across the continent just to get away from the heartbreak. 

“I don’t see how it couldn’t be,” Booker says over the sizzling of the butter as he makes the cheese toasties that Joe used to love for breakfasts. He scratches at his chest, eyes watching the way the cheese oozes off its side.

“Mate, I don’t think you’re far removed enough to actually know how catastrophic this could be.”

“O ye, of little faith,” Booker huffs, flipping the toastie. “At some point I would like to be able to exist in the same city as him without melting into a puddle of heartbreak. If being friends with his soulmate helps get me there, I’m all for it.”

“You are a masochist, Mr Booker.”

Booker laughs even as he burns his finger on the pan.

He works harder than ever, learning and improving his own techniques under the tutelage of his colleagues and can appreciate the opportunity. There's already talks of him going to New York after the New Year's to accompany some of the artifacts that are being lent out for display. Booker is climbing the stairs up to his building, head down, free hand rubbing at his chest and reading through the latest methods of restoration on his phone when he bumps into a person rushing down. 

“Oh, sorry--”

“Booker.”

Joe’s eyes are big and wide when their gazes meet. Booker blinks, breathes in deep before looking behind him to see Nicky watching them from his landing, exhaling shakily as he whispers, deep and with feeling, “What the fuck are you guys doing here?”

--

Nicky nurses his cup of tea from his lean against the window and deftly avoids the inquiring glare Booker keeps sending his way from the safety of the kitchen. Joe, on the other hand, is carefully prowling the space of his studio flat he has made home, obviously cataloguing the way his books sit on the shelf and the way he has kept the space marginally clean-ish, how there are pictures and sketches tacked to the wall behind the dining table, the clear signs of a life he has built here.

“Let me get this straight, you picked up Nicky’s mail from the church, saw my handwriting, and decided to come all the way to Turkey. Just to see me,” Booker says, gesturing at their backpacks leaning against his door. “Again, let me ask, why?”

“Why?” Joe laughs, throat clicking when the sound comes out rough and raw. “You ask me why I would fly out to Turkey in the middle of the holiday season just to see my best friend who left me without telling me he got a job in Turkey and was going to leave without even so much as a goodbye, and you are asking me why I would come all the way out here just to chase you down? Are you perhaps short of a marble!”

“And what was I supposed to do! Linger around you when I was dying every single time I looked at you and knew I wasn’t your soulmate? We were going to spend our lives together, Joe! I loved you!”

Booker slaps his hand over his mouth and turns away, focusing on his breathing. “You love me?” Joe says softly in the stillness of the flat.

“I did. I do and I’m sorry,” He sighs, feeling his chest shake with his trembling breath. He presses the heel of his hand to his sternum. “I do. And it’s okay, Joe. I know you don’t love me in that way. It’s okay. I just need some time away to figure out how to love you like you need me to.”

“And what do you know about what I need from you?”

Booker feels Joe come close and allows himself to be turned around to be face to face with him. “Do you know I love you too?”

“Yeah,” He chuckles wetly, rubbing his nose with the back a hand. “I’m your best friend.”

Nicky choose this moment to speak. “Booker, look at him and listen. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you in our letters. “

There’s an insistence in Nicky’s gaze that galvanises Booker to turn to Joe and meet his eyes head on. “I love you, Book. I always did. I still do. Even after the bullshit you’ve put me through.”

“But Nicky--” “Nicky’s my soulmate and I love him too.” Joe smiles, eyes gone liquor soft when Nicky returns his fond look. “But I’ve loved you for the longest time, Book. I still want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

The itch on his chest starts to burn.

“And you’re alright with this?” Booker breathlessly asks Nicky, taking a step back. “This- This whole Love, Actually thing is a situation you’re okay with?”

“Yes,” Nicky says, standing to cross the distance between them. Joe reaches for him then, tenderly touching him by the elbow while Nicky slides a hand to his cheeks and Booker feels immediately overwhelmed. He parts his mouth to speak when he doubles over dropping to his knees when the fire spreading over the skin on his chest sends him to his knees gasping for air. 

Joe keeps a hold on him while Nicky looks him over with clear worry. “Fuck!” Booker groans, trying to arch away. Clawing at his shirt, he tears at it until the buttons plink on the floor as they fall. For a moment, he does not register the dark lines that spread over his sternum. Running shaking fingers over his raw skin, Booker barely holds back the awed gasp at the scimitar and longsword twined together with thorns and roses. 

“Well,” Nicky laughs softly, cupping him by the side of the head, sweeping him into a gentle kiss. In that second that their lips touch, Booker feels his heartbeat skip a notch. “I guess this answers things, doesn’t it?”

-- Epilogue --

“That’s the last of the boxes.”

Joe kicks the door shut behind him, dropping the bags in his hands to the floor, ignoring the evil eye sent his way by Nicky who had warned them against scuffing up the hardwood floors. Booker throws himself onto the sofa with a sigh and Joe, grinning like a maniac, does a running start before launching himself onto Booker. 

“Oof!” And then after a beat and a wiggle. “Joe, you’re suffocating me and I can feel your dick against my ass.”

They’ve finally moved into their first home together. It had taken a bit more effort after Turkey to keep their fledgling relationship going but all’s well, ends well and Booker is back with them after finishing up his contract with glowing recommendations and growing his contact list. Joe was ridiculously proud and he knows Nicky feels the same too. 

They’ll need to work hard over the next two days to spruce the place up in time for their housewarming. Their friends and families will be here and Joe cannot wait to show off his loves. Wrapping his arms around Nicky and pulling him along back to the sofa where Booker is, he basks in the happy warmth of feeling whole with his heart in one piece.

[bitchin-beskar]

What Are Those?

Fandom: The Old Guard

Rating: G

Word Count: 1k

A/N: This... this is just crack. Pure and simple. Blame @immortalwarriors for this cursed idea and The Gay Guard gc for encouraging this madness.

Tags: @the-killer-queenie @perropascal

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged in any of my works!

Please consider liking and reblogging! I love the feedback!

“OW! What the–”

Nile stood on one leg, rubbing the bottom of her other foot. She peered at the ground, trying to figure out what she’d stepped on. Her brows furrowed as she noticed a small rubber cross laying on the ground. She picked it up, looking at it closely. 

“Is this a–”

“Oh, you found it!”

Nile turned, her eyes widening as she took in the scene before her. Nicky was standing there, looking absolutely, completely, one-hundred percent normal, except for one thing. On his feet, were a pair of well-worn, bright yellow crocs. 

He was holding his hand out expectantly, and Nile slowly handed over the cross, watching as Nicky bent down to put it in the only empty hole. “Is that–? Are you–?” 

Nicky looked up at her, clearly confused. “Am I what, Nile?” She opened and closed her mouth, trying to get the words to come out.

“Are–Are you–Are you wearing crocs?”

Nicky frowned standing up. “What’s wrong with crocs?” The question was so genuinely pure, Nile almost couldn’t believe it. She sputtered, turning to look at Joe as he entered the room. 

“I–I, wha– Joe, explain!” 

The man in question sighed upon seeing Nile’s face. “Which one did you step on?” At Nile’s confused face, he elaborated. “Nicky’s constantly losing JibbitzTM, which one did you step on?”

“It was a cross…?”

Joe nodded. “Yeah, he loses that one all the time. It’s almost… poetic, I think.” He sat down at the table, and Nile fell into a seat across from him. Nicky moved to the pantry and started pulling out ingredients to make dinner. Every time his crocs squeaked, she winced.

“Joe… Why…?”

She’d never seen Joe looked defeated, but here, sitting across from him, he looked like he’d just been told he had two weeks to live. Or that someone had kicked his puppy. “Nicky’s always loved clogs. We were in Amsterdam, around 1230, I think? Clogs had just started to become popular, and he fell in love. He always insisted on having a pair for in the house, and a pair to travel in.” Joe shook his head. “It drove Andy nuts. Quynh thought it was adorable.” 

Nile nodded distractedly, unable to fully focus with the constant squeaking of the crocs on the kitchen floor. 

“So, when crocs were made, in 2002, Nicky had to have a pair.” Joe sighed again. “Of course, he couldn’t pick just one color.” 

Nile frowned. “What, so he bought a couple?”

Joe groaned, banging his head on the table. “I wish,” he mumbled, before lifting his head. “No, Nicky bought a pair in every. single. color. available.” Nile gaped, and Joe just nodded. “Yeah, we have at least two pairs in every safe house, and I think Nicky might have collected every single JibbitzTM ever created.”

“Not true!” 

Nicky poked his head around the corner from the pantry. “I own every single one of the JibbitzTM crocs ever made, but the off-brand ones?” Nicky shook his head. “I’m sure there are ones I haven’t purchased yet. Every time I see a new one, I make sure to buy it, but I know that some have slipped through the cracks.”

Nile looked horrified. “How do you remember all of the ones you do own?”

Nicky grinned. “Booker made a spreadsheet!”

***

Nile really knew she was a part of the family when that Christmas, under the tree, along with all the other presents were a brand new pair of white, fur-lined crocs with her name on the tag.

***

Nile was walking through the farmer’s market, browsing the different stalls. They were back in America, after spending a couple of decades traveling across Europe, Andy had decided it was safe for them to hop back across the pond. Nile was excited to be back home, even if it wasn’t her home state. 

As she passed one of the stalls, she noticed they were selling a wide variety of home-made things, including what looked to be JibbitzTM. Nile tried to walk past the stall, she really, really did. But in the end, she went back, looking through the different options. She found a mini frying pan and a plate of spaghetti, and before she could second guess herself, she was pulling her phone out to text Booker.

His exile had lasted all of a week before the others had snapped. They’d marched to Booker’s safe house in France, and pulled him out of his drunken stupor. Nile had gotten him hooked up with online therapy, and although Joe was still a little peeved with him, their family was back to normal. Well, relatively. Nothing was really normal when you had five immortals living under one roof. 

She sent him pictures of both of them, with a one-word text. Spreadsheet?

She didn’t have to wait long for a response. Nope. Well, that settled it. She purchased both of them, cringing a little at the price. (Ten bucks? Seriously? Well, she guessed they were technically a ‘novelty item’ now. Damn she felt old.) She shoved them into her pocket, figuring she could give them to Nicky later that night.

***

Nicky was so excited by her purchase that he forgot about the pizza in the oven. It burned, quite badly, and they had to order in. Nile made the mistake of suggesting Olive Garden. 

Nile never made that mistake again. 

***

The first time Nile wore her crocs without Nicky prompting, Joe immediately stood up from the table, throwing his pencil down. “No! I’m done!” He cried, storming out of the room. Nile looked worried until Nicky reassured her.

“Do not worry, Nile. Joe has said he’s ��done’ at least twice every decade, and he’s still here.”

***

When they pulled Quynh from the ocean, over seven-hundred years since she’d first been thrown in, her first act, once she’d woken up, was to attack Andy. Once they got her calmed down, and Andy had tearfully apologized for taking so long, Quynh greeted the others. She hugged Joe, Booker, and even Nile, but when she got to Nicky, she stopped, staring at his feet.

She looked up, stared him straight in the eyes, and asked, “What are those?”

Nicky grinned. “They are my crocs!”

[aphroditestummyrolls]

Tagged by: @rhubarbdreams @cactusdragon517 @morallygreywaren and @ceraunos (I’m so sorry this took so long! Thank you for thinking of me, it is so flattering <3)

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line. Then tag 10 of your favorite authors!

This was SO FUN. It was so nice to go through my old stories... I’m really proud of my writing. That’s something I never thought I’d say, and it’s something I’ve decided I’m going to do unabashedly from now on. <3 Happy almost April, everyone! 

Gaining Heart (Spartacus) 

The days following the defeat of Glaber had been a flurry of activity.

Agron found himself not only leading on field of battle, but leading organization and defensive strategy. Those fucking Romans had moved into the temple as if it was their own home, claiming all that they saw— but they had also brought much of their own. Food, wine, supplies— it was a gift from the fucking gods, and needed proper inventory.

Agron knew not how to do that. Nasir and Naevia were invaluable, cleaning each chamber of any evidence of battle, cataloguing lists and categorizing everything from barrels of grain to rolls of bandages.

Tangles and Roots (The Old Guard)

He was covering Andy.

The hangar was dark, shadowed by the last of the night while dawn crept up over the skyline outside. The plane was set to land any minute now, and Nicky’s eyes flicked from corner to corner, finger on the trigger of his gun and his jaw grinding hard. He could swear he saw shapes moving along the roof— the banks of high windows above them left eerie patches of weak blue light, flickering with little flashes of darkness.

It was probably just birds. He was out of practice— they had done nothing but sit around in the six months since Merrick, trying to heal the deep wounds left in their minds… and bodies, in Andy’s case.

Nicky swallowed, stepping that much closer to his friend’s side as they took their places in the shadows.

Still Awake? (The Old Guard)

He pretended to sleep. His eyes were closed, and his muscles were stiff, tying themselves into knots where he laid in his cot between Andy’s empty bedroll and Joe and Nicky’s snuggled up bodies. Booker refused to be comfortable— he refused to rest. The day had been rough, and the fighting had left a bone deep ache inside him, even while the physical wounds had healed.

All the Time in the World (The Old Guard) 

The first time Nicolo and Yusuf bathed together, it was by the river— he wasn’t sure which river. It had probably changed names and countries a hundred times by now. All he remembered was that, by the time they heard the steady rush of water and cleared the brush and trees to the bank, he was half mad with annoyance.

If that man made one more grumbled complaint— one more clearly telegraphed grimace— about the supposed smell of him, Nicoló might have to break their truce and run the bastard through.

Kissed by an Angel (The Old Guard)

Nicky felt his lips flicker into a private smile, setting the pot on the stove to simmer and turning to look out the window into the garden. Joe’s garden.

He was humming to himself— Nicky couldn’t quite hear it, but he could tell by the set of the other man’s jaw under his beard and the purse of his lips as he concentrated. The weeds wouldn’t rip themselves, the overgrown shrubs wouldn’t miraculously be already pruned and waiting for them.

They were finally back in Valletta. Finally home.

Patron Saint of Satisfaction (The Old Guard)

It had been a long, long few weeks.

Joe’s shoulders were tense and knotted, and his whole body still ached from the train ride he and Nicky had taken all that day. There was a stifling, choked sensation in his gut that would rise in waves, up his throat to the tip of his tongue until he was ready to scream. The whole way to their safehouse, he brushed shoulders with his lover— practically leaning on him— and let himself take refuge in the feeling of Nicky’s warm hand entwining their fingers.

Waking Dreams (The Old Guard)

At first, they could’ve been anywhere for all Joe knew.

There was nothing in the world but Nicky— his scent, his body, his quiet sleeping breaths. Joe felt himself hover on the edge of sleep and wakefulness, the familiar thrum of pleasure making up the backdrop of his thoughts.

He nuzzled into his Nico’s neck, pressing sloppy, half asleep kisses to the back of his neck.

Here There Be Monsters (The Old Guard) 

The morning had been blustery and hot. The scent of ozone made the sea air thick as it blew through his hair where they all stood, crowded around the lower deck. They all squinted against the bright sunshine, but Joe knew better than to trust the blue sky.

”If I’m getting in, I’ve gotta do it soon—“ he spoke up, cutting into some conversation that he hadn’t been listening to, “There’s a storm coming in from the East.”

Nile— still so young, so far from the American Midwest, and in her first field season— raised an eyebrow at him from behind her sunglasses.

He smiled at her bemused look, shooting his gaze over to Andy. Andy smirked, huffing a laugh. “If anybody knows, Joe knows.”

In Loving Memory (The Old Guard)

The wind whipped up off the water, cold and salty despite the way the sun beat down on them. It was alright, honestly— refreshing after all those stuffy hours in the car.

These immortals were highly resistant to normal modes of transport. Like a plane— a real passenger plane, not a Russian cargo plane full of drugs. It was all cars and boats and trains, low to the ground, literally under the radar.

Nile understood why. She didn’t want to end up strapped down to a lab table like the one they escaped all those months ago. She’d just rather take a nice plane from the closest airport to Provence and get to Valletta in a matter of hours, rather than drive through three countries and all the way down the Italian boot, just to bribe a fishing boat.

Feed My Soul (The Old Guard) 

Malta looked good on Nicolò.

Joe leaned on the railing of their balcony, looking down into their old, old walled garden where his Nico shuffled around in the herbs. He was looking for something particular, the bridge of his nose scrunching as he peered at the mess of overgrown pots.

Joe beamed, the familiar, all-encompassing warmth of loving that man filling him up and making him feel expansive and bright. There was a cathedral ceiling in his chest, airy and golden with the light of dawn through its tall, jeweled windows. There was a house of worship where his heart should be, and he traced the lines of the other man’s body like he was devoting a painting to him.

Sono Qui (The Old Guard)

Andy left Booker on the beach.

She felt his gaze follow her, but couldn’t bring herself to look back.

It wasn’t as if they had never separated before— as if the four of them had been constantly attached from the time they finally found the Frenchman, even after months and months of dreaming and searching. There were plenty of times where they spent months, or sometimes years apart. They took breaks from each other, they traveled. Just a year ago, Andy had declared that she needed a break— was that last year of being alone the thing that led Booker to betray them? Maybe they should’ve stayed together. She never should have left him. She understood how it felt to be alone in the world… to lose someone so precious that life loses its color.

Andy had left Booker plenty of times. It wasn’t something she liked to think about now, but she had… She had assumed he was handling it like her. Somber and drunk, wishing for some type of release. They’d talked about it enough times. But not like this.

Brother of My Heart  (The Old Guard)

Joe clenched his hands on the steering wheel, flexing his fingers to feel the stretch in the tendons, even though any injuries from the fighting had long since healed.

While driving away from the ruins of Merrick’s car, the adrenaline was still rushing in his veins, and all his self control was devoted to staying reasonably within the speed limit. The last thing they needed was to get stopped by some bobby cop while covered in blood and dust, with a bullet through Andy’s stomach.

Right now, they needed to blend in. So, Joe didn’t press the gas pedal into the floor.

Care and Feeding (The Old Guard) 

Nile couldn’t ever remember liking the cold.

Even at home in Chicago. Sure, her memories of warm Christmas masses, bright lights on the tree, and gently falling snow outside the kitchen window made her throat dry with that familiar, wistful grief. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to seeing pine trees or twinkle lights without thinking of her mom’s mac n cheese, or how early her brother would wake her up on Christmas morning.

But loving Christmas, and loving snow? Those were two completely different things.

Going Underground (Star Wars) 

Poe wasn’t sure what it was like when they broke through the atmosphere into Yavin IV. He didn’t watch through the Falcon’s wide front window as the familiar jungles passed by in a blur of green underneath them, and he couldn’t pick out the roof of home from the surrounding grasses as they came in for a landing.

The first thing he saw as he came to, bleary and aching, was Finn. They’d fallen asleep right where they were, pressed shoulder to shoulder at the holochess table, Poe’s head on Finn’s shoulder. It took him a sluggish moment to recall why his hand had its own throbbing pulse, and why Finn’s soft, dark skin was pockmarked with strange cuts, glistening with bacta.

The second thing he saw, swallowing against the rush of memories filling his fuzzy mind, must have been a hallucination.

STAR WARS VIII: The Battle of the Force (Star Wars) 

“General, I don’t know how much longer we can hold ‘em off—”

Poe’s voice crackled from the shoddy reception, nearly engulfed by the constant bombardment in the background.

“Commander, the Resistance depends on taking down this dreadnought.” Leia kept her voice steady and strong “Stand your ground.”

Beyond What We Can See (Star Wars) 

If he was being honest with himself, he supposed that he’d been feeling the Force his whole life. He’d always just brushed it off as basic intuition— he thought everybody felt this way. It wasn’t until he started seeing the way the Force was treated in the First Order—as a myth, a fearful, distant thing—that he realized how much he needed to keep his head down. Even though he only felt it in small ways, he was different. He buried the feelings, tried to ignore the nagging dread that said that he didn’t belong there in his platoon. That none of them did.

But that wasn’t something he was allowed to feel. The Force wasn’t supposed to be something any of the troops knew firsthand.

Like She Always Did (Star Wars) 

The first time she left was barely a memory. More of a dream. He didn’t remember the fight they had, but he knew in hindsight that they must’ve had it for much longer than the tail end that he saw. Maybe it was what got his little feet out of bed in the first place. Daddy’s eyes were rimmed with red and Mama was pacing out her anger into the sitting room rug. Poe’s eyes were wide as he watched from the threshold to the hall, his little hand gripping onto the pillow that he’d tugged along with him from his room.

Love Will Help You Heal (Star Wars) 

Every inch of him throbbed, the last dregs of whatever the interrogation droid had injected him with still pumping through his bloodstream. He was so tired. How long had it even been? Getting captured on Jakku felt like a hazy dream, as if it was weeks ago.

No one was coming for him. He knew that much—he’d probably be mad if they endangered the resources to try—but he couldn’t help but wish anyway. Death seemed so close, like a cold hand on his shoulder, by his side in the recirculated air of the Star Destroyer.

He wished they’d just hurry up. His drug-addled, sleep deprived mind didn’t know if he was asking for rescue or death. Maybe they were the same thing now.

Dying a martyr. At least it suited the image—Poe Dameron, Poster Boy of the Resistance.

Ghosts of Future and Past (MCU/Captain America) 

His head was throbbing. His back ached. Everything in him pulsed with agony like he’d been hit by a train.

A train. Bucky.

“Bucky is alive.” 

He could feel the winter cold at the memory, his eyes snapping open as the past few moments came flooding back to him.

There had been another Steve. Even without the mask, he’d looked just like him. It must have been Loki playing tricks again, it had to be.

Sweet as Honey, Gold Like the Sun (Stranger Things) 

Steve was drifting after high school graduation. He drifted right out of the halls of Hawkins High and into a desk job at his dad’s office. If he was being honest, he’d been drifting since the Gate closed— maybe even since Nancy broke it off.

He wasn’t mad. She was his best friend. He and Jonathan were even friends now. No, he hadn’t been mad for a long time— but he was lost. The kids were going to high school. Dustin would be getting his license one of these days, and Steve’s last function to his little gaggle of brats would become all but useless.

The idea of not serving a purpose left the bitter tang of anxiety in his throat. Once the kids didn’t need him— and Joyce and Hopper and even Nancy— Steve would be left behind. Again.

Okay... Some of these may have been more than just what is considered “Opening Lines”, but I can’t just leave something feeling unfinished, and I’m a little tipsy, which means I am bending the rules <3

**EDIT** i forgot to look for patterns and pick my favorite! I mean, I think all storytelling/creative expression (anything from developing a recipe to composing a painting to writing a story) follows a distinct formula. And the best way to establish the story is by starting it with the most important element front and center— I almost always start with my main character. A thought or a feeling, a situation or a sensation. They’re the focal point from which everything ripples out. Those first ripples (the 2nd, 3rd or 4th lines) are usually about building the setting. It’s an equation that works so well for me, and though I sometimes shake it up by adding immediate dialogue or flipping the positions of setting and main character, it has served me well ❤️ i think my favorite has to be Brother of My Heart. It’s the first really, immediately big story Ive ever had. So many comments, so much warmth, so many kind people— it grew my confidence and helped me make friends. It reminds me of how truly wonderful fandom can be, even just with the first few lines.

I’m going to continue to bend the rules by not tagging anyone immediately-- it’s giving me weird anxiety levels, so I’m gonna wait and do it later maybe. If, in the meantime, you see this and want to do it, write me down as the one who tagged you! <3 Feel frrrreeeeeeee! 

[betweenheroesandvillains]

Warmth

They are packed tightly into the too-small car.

Joe is driving and Nicky is, of course, riding shotgun. His hand is twisted backwards so it can casually rest against Nile’s knee. Nile herself is squished between Quynh and Booker, the backseat of the Fiat 500 technically too small for the three of them but they make it fit. Gianna Nannini is blaring from Nicky’s phone. Nile, who has only had short naps ever since leaving Shanghai about a day earlier, dozes happily with Quynh’s arm wrapped around her shoulder.

Someone nudges her awake. Nile’s eyes fly open immediately to find Nicky hovering over her. “We’re there,” he says. His gaze is soft as always. “Thanks,” she murmurs, half-stretching. Her spine pops a few times. Nicky offers his hand and she takes it as she clambers out of the car. Her left leg is all pins and needles. She leans heavily onto him.

 They warm up some torta di patate, which Nicky would not normally allow. Booker usually stashes the leftovers in his refrigerator shelf and declares them fair game. But Nile kept dozing off on the sofa and Nicky insisted on getting some proper food into her before she sleeps. It’s fair enough, she has not had more than a coffee and a handful of snacks on her way back. So they are crowded around the kitchen table, Nile propped up on her elbow and only half-there.

The familiarity of it lulls her into a state that is not quite asleep and not quite awake – the conversation’s ebb and flow, the familiar voices with their characteristics. Nicky’s Italian lilt, the laughter hidden in Joe’s voice, Quynh’s silky yet sharp interjections, Booker’s baritone quips. Nile flushes the potatoes down with grape juice she steals from Booker and waits until she loses whole stretches of the conversation before she excuses herself to go to bed.

Nicky tells her nonchalantly to sleep in the room behind the second door to the right. Nile is exhausted enough to not question him telling her about rooms in her own home.

-

She sketches Goussainville. She sketches Nizhny Novgorod the way she last remembers it: All of them in the garden of the Dacha, playing some card game. She paints the shed they spent an excruciating week in back when Andy said she would come back with Quynh or not at all. Nile realises that none of these places ever felt temporary. She could have spent the rest of her immortality in any of them.

“So where are you at home,” asks a woman with a heavy German accent at Frankfurt airport while she waits for her connecting flight. Nile opens her mouth. Then she shuts it again.

The easy answer would have been to choose one of their safehouses. They have stayed in a refurbished farmhouse near Nice for the better part of ten years – it would have come out naturally to say that. She does not quite get it out, though. Not with the way the older woman looks at her.

“My family… we moved a lot recently,” Nile answers. Thinks of Booker’s novels that he always fits somewhere to travel with them. Thinks of Nicky humming in the kitchen and the way Joe’s laughter would startle her awake whenever she napped on his thigh. Andy’s stories are still in her ear, and Quynh’s sharp puns. She feels at home everywhere, Nile thinks, as long as they are with her. They once spent two months on a reconnaissance mission where they only had each other as company and shared the smallest three-room hut ever. And every time she had gotten back to that hut and had heard their voices, Nile had called “I’m home.” And it had felt right.

-

The beds are all pushed together because try as they might, it is almost impossible to fit more than three adults on a twin-sized mattress. Finding her own spot between the pillows and blankets is easy and familiar. She is so tired that she just literally falls into bed, not even bothering with taking her jeans off. Her sleep is deep and dreamless for the first time in months.

 Nile wakes up at some point in the smallest hours of the morning, disoriented and too-warm. She blinks her eyes open. Quynh’s face is relaxed as she sleeps soundly, her hair a wild cloud around her head. She has pulled the duvet up all the way to her chin, as so often. The arm across her stomach might belong to Booker, Nile can’t be bothered to turn her head far enough to find out. All she knows is that she feels safe and at ease. Come morning, they will all be woken by Joe climbing over Nicky for his morning prayers because it’s impossible to lie so close and not be jostled by the slightest movement. Nile can already hear Booker groan about it but it does not matter in this moment. She buries her face in the pillow and falls back asleep, a smile on her face.

-

Nicky and Joe bring Booker home seven years after he got exiled. They asked him to come back earlier, but Booker said he needed more time. If the way he looks is anything to go by, he was right. His smiles are genuine and he looks healthier than Nile has ever seen him. Still, he shifts on the doorstep. Glances around, from the table to the basil on the windowsill to Quynh to Andy to Nile.

Nile has called him a dozen times alone in the last three months, has left presents in his flat after he gave her the address, has done videocalls every few weeks. It was never quite the same. So seeing him now nudges her heart out of its rhythm for a moment.

She thinks it a split second before Andy says it out loud. “Welcome home.” Her tone is warm, soft. Andy pushes herself off the counter she was leaning against and gathers Booker in a hug. Quynh follows suit and pulls Nile with her until they are all just a pile of interlocked arms and hands.

Booker’s voice is thick when he says, “It’s good to be back.” But what they all hear is, “It’s good to be home.”

[avelera]

Headcanon: Why exactly do the The Old Guard go by such American versions of their original names?

So I’ve been thinking about a Watsonian explanation for why Joe, Nicky, Andy, and Booker go by English-nicknames and not just English but such American versions of their names. I mean, seriously, calling the French guy whose name is Le Livre Booker? That’s some American dumbassery right there, an English person would have come up with about a 1,000 different insults to toss at a French guy other than just mischievously translating his name. 

(The Doylist explanation for all this is, obviously, the writer and director are Americans. ANYWAY.)

But I finally figured it out! They must have picked up those versions of their names during the American Civil War, where we see them prominently pictured in the photo on Copley’s desk.

See, while “The Old Guard” wonderfully, blessedly ignores the U.S. entirely for most of the story (other than it being where Nile is from and the military she served with), the OG Old Guard members clearly have some experience there, the first thing they say to Copley is that a company man for the CIA would usually be American, not a Brit, showing some understanding of the inner workings of the American intelligence apparatus. 

"Sure, Avelera,” you might say. “Clearly they’re familiar with the US, they’re mercenaries, but they seem familiar with everywhere on Earth. That doesn’t explain the Americanization of their names.” Aha! But this brings me to another theory, which requires a slight digression: 

The immortality of the Old Guard is very interesting, it’s pretty much only fast healing, which arrests them at the age they died. There’s no super strength, no accelerated metabolism (they’re effected by knock-out gas just as much and for just as long as anyone else), they still need to eat and sleep, and most importantly there’s no improved memory. This is really key because it means that for all their bragging about how Nile and Booker are babies, the older Old Guard like Andy, Joe, and Nicky still experience time the way normal people do, complete with forgetting things because they’ve lived through so goddamn much. 

This is pretty huge because it means, unlike some supernatural immortals in fiction, if they spend a century somewhere they’re going to feel it. And in my opinion, this is the Watsonian rationale for why they don’t really have very distinct accents for their original languages and they’re comfortable with changing up their names, you would too if every decade actually felt like a decade and you had over 100 of them.

But back to the Civil War. If Booker died in 1812 fighting for Napoleon, and his son died in his 40s that means (ding ding ding!) that shot of the Old Guard in the Civil War in the 1860s would have been soon after the last of Booker’s family died, perhaps immediately after depending on how old his sons were when he died or if they were fathered after he became immortal. Perhaps the Old Guard didn’t just go to America to fight in this war for kicks or for a good cause (if they were on the Union side). Rather, they might have been trying to give Booker a change of scenery after the trauma he’d been through, maybe to the point of staying away from Europe for an extended period of time. 

And you know what those nicknames of theirs sound like? The kind of nicknames that the dumbass American soldiers they met while they were there would give them. Yusuf becomes “Joe”, Nicolò becomes “Nicky”, Andromache pretends to be a particularly clean-shaven, stunningly attractive man and becomes “Andy” and Sebastian LeLivre becomes “Booker”. Now add a few more decades onto that of kicking around in the U.S., then have English become the most common second language in the world in the 20th c., and suddenly those names become comfortable and hey, maybe in 100 years you’ll pick up a new version of your name to match the times, just to keep things fresh. 

[extremelynormalblog]

Old Guard tattoos headcanon

(Now also on AO3!)

But can you imagine Joe & Nicky, just COVERED IN TATTOOS under their clothes??

(I know tattoos are frowned upon in both of their religions but let’s say that either they’ve both stopped observing their original faiths’ lifestyle rules--after all, pretty sure the Bible and the Quran both frown on the idea of humans randomly resurrecting--or that they’re atheists here.)

So they’re both covered with ink head-to-toe by now, because they’ve been collecting them for centuries, commemorating all the places they’ve been, the eras they’ve lived through, the people they’ve met and loved and lost (they both have some for Lykon and Quynh, and Andy smiles sadly every time she catches a glimpse of them).

And they would have had time to learn how to tattoo, of course. They’re secretly the world’s most experienced artists & they do each other’s ink whenever they can--they have equipment stored in a few of their safehouses--but also some lucky few people they deem worthy enough to risk it.

Of course word gets around in the tattoo connaisseur community, and their names are shared, very hush-hush, by a small group of their fans.

Getting an appointment with them is super rare--there’s an email address you can try, and most of the time you don’t get an answer but sometimes one will come 3 years later, and then it says “I can make some time for you but you have to come to me. I can see you in 2 days in Buenos Aires or next Friday in Kinshasa.”

Their fans are divided between those who think they’re criminals on the run, and those who believe they’re spies (some believe they might be both.) 

They don’t charge anything but you have to swear you’ll keep their identity secret, or they’ll come back for the tattoo.

(That one sounds like an urban legend, but they say one dude who was lucky enough to be chosen blabbed about his experience on social media and a year later, he got in a freak accident that left him unharmed except for that one tattoo, which was damaged beyond recognition.)

Nile can’t hold back her gasp the first time she seems them both shirtless, hanging out around a pool in one of their villas. They’ve been careful, and you really can’t see anything under their clothes at all.

It’s not like any tattoos she’s ever seen, a mish-mash of styles and colours, writing and numbers and symbols and faces, some of the pieces so faded that you almost can't make them out anymore, and other that look like they've been tattooed over--not a cover-up, just a second layer on top of the first one.

It feels like seeing too much--she almost feels like she should avert her eyes, worse even than the time she walked in on them fucking.

Joe catches her looking, and he raises an eyebrow. 

“Those are amazing,” she says. “Will you tell me about them sometime?”

“Sure,” he says. “We’re due for a session anyway, aren’t we Nicky?”

“Does either of you even have room anymore?”

“He’s pretty full up,” Joe says, jerking his head towards Nicky, and if she looks carefully she can tell that every possible square inch of Nicky’s pale skin has been filled. Joe seems like he’s got more room left in between the major pieces. “He started it, and when he ran out of space they just bled onto me I guess.”

He shrugs, like it’s totally normal to divide memories like this between two people, like they’re sharing the same skin.

“What will you get? What happened?” she starts asking, because they must be pretty careful about what events are important enough to immortalize on themselves, otherwise they would both have run out of real estate ages ago. Of course, she realizes halfway through her question.

“Booker,” she says.

Nicky turns his head at that. He looks at Joe, and then at her, smiling.

“No, not Booker,” he corrects. “You.”

[dialux]

I feel like the rest of the group knows Booker has done his best to kill himself before, but any time/fic theu find him at it post-exile (esp after he’s speaking w them again) always fucking gets me

As a counterpoint, nonny, I fall into the camp of Andy, Joe and Nicky not knowing.

Because I just love the idea of Booker being the forger and the hacker and the competent guy who nobody knows is falling apart until it’s way, way too late. But the real tragedy here? Is not only that Booker fell apart: it’s how good he was at hiding it!

Joe and Nicky are pretty observant, and Andy’s definitely no slouch in that department either.

So Booker’s being a good actor? It’s backed up by his criminal history, and also by how surprised everyone else is re: his betrayal, and, even more importantly, puts the onus of identifying all his problems on him as supposed to everyone around him.

(I mean, that would’ve been true no matter what, but there’s a difference between someone going abt being so drunk he cannot function and someone picking out missions for them and identifying homes for them and being a really good guy to have at their back and then spending his off-time drinking like he’s taking part in a cheeseburger eating contest, only with alcohol. For one, you’d expect people to say something; for the other, you might just treat it as a... personal decision. The sheer number of people I know who would, in a normal society, be told they’re addicted to alcohol numbers very, very high. But so long as it doesn’t stop them from doing their work or touches on their personal lives to a great extent- and especially if you spend extensive time alone, without family- I don’t see anyone saying anything.)

Imo, the best possible fic for this- and I’m writing one, yes, for another ask I got a couple days ago- is one where they might have known it on an intellectual level, but didn’t really understand until they’re all on a mission and suddenly Booker’s thrown himself into danger for no ostensible reason, and they all need to back up and think about... stuff. And what, exactly, that means, and why it happened, and, maybe, even, how to stop it.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that pure whump is definitely not for me? I just love Booker being a pathetic, prickly asshole: emphasis on the prickly.

Accepting help isn’t for him! But neither is giving up.

I mean, it took the guy 250 years to really truly surrender himself. Otherwise, on a list of tragedies he’s gone through: the French Revolution; Napoleon’s invasion of Russia; buried all his children such that the youngest died at 42- which is so young; and by then everyone else is already dead, including his wife- and then spent about seventeen decades with someone who very clearly doesn’t remember her own mother and two other people who have decided and built their lives into each other, all the while killing people/throwing himself into the shittiest places in the world on the off hope that they might take some bullets and spare the people that won’t be able to survive that. It’s an utter tragedy on every level. It isn’t just the loss of what happened to him before 1842: it’s the continuous loss of it, reminded every time that he sees a mother crying over her dead children or a father burying the child that didn’t come home from the war.

And Booker doesn’t give up until 2019.

Idk, but that says something to me. First, whatever happened in 2018 to make Andy call for a moratorium was obviously vvv fucked up. Second, Booker trusted Copley to hold to his word on making the world a better place with his sacrifice.

Booker, even if left to his own devices for a hundred years, isn’t going to be spending the time drinking himself to as many deaths as possible- though he might attempt it for a year or two. He’ll do it, and then get to work on figuring out how to remove the immortality himself. He’ll do it, and then start working on setting up safety nets for the rest of the team. He’ll do it, and then take missions for himself, because the only person who’s ever given him a reason to live that can’t be taken from him is Andy, who’s told him to live for others, to live to help others.

And maybe one of those missions crosses with the other four. Maybe they realize that Booker’s far less inclined to care about his own safety- this is the man who walked into a bunker in Sudan knowing he’d be shot at by sixteen people, and didn’t hesitate the entire goddamn time- than any other human should be. Maybe they decide to talk to him about it.

But if they do, and if it happens, it’ll be a conversation that’s... tense, because there’s so much guilt on all sides, and hurt, because maybe there shouldn’t have been this many secrets between them, and grief, and loss, and all of those other things that make for the very best kinds of discussion. Not pure forgiveness; not pure hatred.

Just a family, trying to work through bad times together.

[cantteachanoldguardnewquotes]

Together

Please enjoy some fluff I wrote while stressing about stuff.

Comments always appreciated

Summery: It has been a hundred years and it's the first night Booker is back with his family.

Warnings: nightmares, mention of death, mention of torture, both brief, some violence but it gets better.

A/N: Andy is immortal again in this.

Features: So much fluff, cuddle piles, flirting, acceptance, comfort, forgiveness, family love, happy ending.

Word count: 2555

It was the first night of having Booker back from exile. He was trying to figure out where he stood after so long and the rest of them were doing there best to make him feel welcome. After all, he had served his sentence without complaint even after Quynh had left him to stay with Andy. He had really cleaned up his act and was still working on being better.

Nicky and Nile were making hachis parmentier, french onion soup, and cherry clafoutis for dessert all on honor of Booker's return home.

"Nicky, if you were a fruit you'd be a fineapple." Joe teased popping another cherry in his mouth.

Nicky grinned, narrowing his eyes thinking of the perfect response. "And if you, Joe, were a vegetable you'd be a cutecumber."

Joe barked out a laugh, closing the distance between the two of them and wrapped his arm around Nicky's waist. "Is that right?" He cocked an eyebrow. "You think I'm..." He paused biting his lip seductively. "Cute?"

Nicky's eyes sparkled with delight at his husband's reaction. "It's crossed my mind on occasion." Nicky wiped a smear of floor on Joe's nose.

"Ok, that's enough flirting. Save it for after the meals done please." Nile interjected when she realized they would do this all night if she didn't put her foot down. "Nicky has work to do and you aren't helping one bit." She pulled Joe's arm off Nicky and started pushing him toward the dining room.

Joe gapsed in mock surprise and let her push him out of the room, out of the corner of his eye he saw her trying not to laugh she was in just as high of spirits as the rest of them.

Booker, Andy and Quynh sat around the table playing some blackjack before dinner.

The kitchen and dining room were connected so they all could see and hear everything that was going on.

"I see nothing's changed?" Booker smirked keeping his eyes on his cards. He was trying not to show it too much, but oh he'd missed his family. Absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

Andy chuckled. "Never."

"Joe, you can join us." Quynh patted the seat next to her.

He accepted and sat down finding himself kitty corner with Booker.

Booker in the short time he'd been back was still walking on eggshells around Joe and Nicky. He knew they had forgiven him but he was being cautious all the same. He wouldn't blame them if they had any hard feelings.

Joe had mixed emotions about Booker being back. His betrayal still stung but he was happy with how far Booker had come. The truth was he had missed him, sometimes more than he cared to admit, so he was doing his best to let bygones be bygones, it would just take a little getting used to having him back.

They played a few more rounds before Nile came out of the kitchen carrying food. "Dinner is served!"

Quynh jumped up and ran to the kitchen to help carry everything over.

Joe went and got drinks and cups, while Andy cleaned up the game.

It took no time and they were all sitting around the table with the food steaming in front of them.

Nicky smiled at everyone's anticipation, taking in his family's warm energy. "Dig in."

"Oh babe, you've outdone yourself." Joe said closing his eyes and savoring the hachis parmentier.

"Hey now, Nile helped too." Nicky said.

"Nile, this is outstanding." Joe grinned ear to ear at her.

"Thanks, it was fun. This was my first time making it and Nicky helped a lot."

"Well I would have never guessed you hadn't made it a hundred times before." Quynh chimed in.

"How does our French guest of honor feel they did?" Andy asked Booker.

Booker had been touched, even moved, when Nile told him they had picked out some of his favorite dishes for dinner tonight. He had offered to help but Nile and Nicky would hear none of it. 'Perhaps tomorrow' Nicky had teased.

"It is..." He shook his head a little, almost as if he was in disbelief. "The best I've ever had."

Nile beamed, and Nicky happily took another bite. They were both glad their efforts had turned out so well.

They talked and they laughed, told stories about their time spent apart, teased and joked. It was wonderful getting back to a new normal.

"Here I'll get the dishes." Booker volunteered after dessert.

"Someone's on their best behavior." Andy teased.

Booker wasn't sure how to respond, he really was still trying his best to make amends.

"Hey." Andy saw his hesitation and grabbed his arm so he would look at her. "I'm glad your back Book."

Almost as a reflex his eyes darted to Joe and Nicky, but there wasn't anything unpleasant in their expressions. "I'm glad to be back." He said refocusing on Andy.

"I'll put the food away if you've got dishes." She patted his arm before getting to work.

Quynh helped as well with cleanup while the other three went into the living room to pick out a movie.

"No horror, not tonight." Joe said.

Nile grabbed the remote before they could. "But I love horror movies." Nile grinned an evil grin. She knew Joe could only take so much before he was out, even with Nicky holding him. "What are you feeling Nicky?"

Nicky shrugged. "Maybe something funny?"

Nile nodded her head. "Hmm, a comedy does sound pleasent." She agreed.

Joe squeezed Nicky's hand so Nile wouldn't see, grateful for the light-hearted suggestion.

Quynh came into the room and saw Nile scrolling through the comedy section. "Nice." She liked watching almost anything so long as there weren't people drowning. Nile could always talk her into watching horror movies unlike the rest of them who were more hit or miss.

Quynh looked at the seating arrangements, and thought for a moment. "This won't do, Nicky will you be a dear and come help me?"

Nicky didn't even ask, just followed her out of the room.

They came back a few minutes later with an armful of comforters and pillows. She began making a pile on the floor against the couch so they could lean on something and Nicky dropped his armful of blankets and pillows where she directed.

"There are too many of us to sit comfortabley on the couch, we'll have to improvise." She stood back to admire her handiwork.

Joe chose a spot and pulled Nicky down beside him so he could lay his head on Nicky's shoulder.

Nile curled herself almost into a ball and rested her head on a pillow on Nicky's lap. "What about one of these three?" She asked.

The rest of them read the descriptions.

"The one with the cruise ship." Nicky suggested.

"I second that." Joe said.

"Sounds good to me." Quynh added. "We're gonna start the movie!" She yelled to the slowpokes in the kitchen.

Andy came around the corner followed closely by Booker.

He paused, trying to decide where to sit among all the blankets.

"Don't be shy." Andy said guiding him over to where Quynh was sitting pressed up against Nile.

Quynh pulled him down so he was sitting right next to her and Andy sat down on her lap and rested against Booker's shoulder.

"Ready?" Nile asked before pushing play.

She got a chorus of confirmations from everyone and started the movie.

Nicky had been right a comedy was just what everyone needed on a happy day like today. They all enjoyed it and relaxed.

Quynh joked she was going to buy Andy some of the ugly outfits the characters were wearing.

At one point Nile had to sit up because she and Nicky were laughing so hard at one of the jokes.

Booker and Joe had a debate on how long someone could live on a cruise ship without getting caught by staff.

Andy fell asleep with a fourth of the movie to go.

When it was over they laughed and carried on about some of the jokes and how unrealistic the ending had been.

When the concern died down they all bid each other goodnight going to their rooms.

Nile, relaxed as she was and as tried as she was, still couldn't fall asleep. She finally gave up after two hours and went to the kitchen to get some water.

Andy was already in the kitchen which at this point never surprised Nile.

"Can't sleep?" Andy asked.

Nile shook her head.

"Wanna talk about it?"

"Why is it even, on happy days, does it feel like nothing can chase away the dark?" Nile asked taking a drink of her water.

Andy studied her for a moment. "The last job still bothering you?"

Nile swallowed hard and looked down at the floor. "I know it probably shouldn't, but yeah."

Andy gently lifted Nile's chin. "I wasn't asking you to justify anything Nile. I'm asking if you're ok." She said kindly.

Nile sighed. "I guess the answer is no."

Andy pulled her into a hug. "I'm sorry."

The last job had gone all wrong. The person they were trying to rescue was killed before they had made it in, they had to fight there way out through tear gas and ak-47s, Joe had died horribly, Nicky had his face bashed in guarding Joe while he was out, Quynh lost an arm, and that didn't even cover how many bullets they'd all eaten.

No one who had attacked them survived.

It was a terrible job and the noise and confusion still troubled Nile.

It might still haunt some of the others as well but if it did she felt they were better at hiding it.

"Will I ever be able to see that stuff and sleep after?" It has been a hundred years already, her hopes weren't high.

"With a heart as big as yours I doubt it. Believe me, we all struggle with nightmares, your not alone in this. Will it lessen as time goes on? Maybe, probably, but it will never truly go away. That's just the curse we are forced to live with." She kissed the top of Nile's head. "That's probably not the answer you were hoping for."

"You never give me the answers I want to hear." Nile said teasing her.

"But like I said you don't have to face this by yourself. Come sleep with Quynh and I. It helps when you're not alone." Andy took her hand and led her to the room they were sharing.

Quynh was asleep and didn't wake up when Andy laid down next to her. Nile laid down next to Andy and they were both out in no time.

Around three in the morning Nicky woke up to the sound of a shout. His hand flew to his gun and he pressed into Joe feeling him at his back to make sure he was safe.

He'd recognize that cry anywhere and jumped up running straight to Booker's room.

He kept a sharp lookout for any intruders in the house and swung Booker's door open while keeping as much of his body hidden behind the door frame as he could.

The lights were still off and he didn't see any signs of something being wrong. With great care he peered around the door and stepped further into the room.

A lamp snapped on and he pointed his gun at an apologetic Booker, who had his hands in the air.

"Ah, Nicky, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to alarm you let alone wake you up, sorry about that, you can go back to bed, I'm alright." Booker was talking fast, trying to get all his words out at once.

Nicky did one more sweep with his eyes around the room before putting his gun down.

By now Joe had made his way down the hall and peered into the room. "All clear?" He asked gun in his hand.

"We're fine." Nicky assured him. "What happened?" Nicky asked turning his attention back to Booker.

"Nothing but a nightmare." He said waving them off, he attempted a small smile but it looked more like a grimace.

Nicky wouldn't budge, there was still the faintest hint of terror in Booker's eyes. He walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. "Tell me, if you can." He laid his hand on Booker's arm.

Booker squeezed his eyes shut, and shook his head. He couldn't tell them how he'd tried to do a job and got kidnapped then tortured for nearly two year. How every night for two years he had wished for death more so than usual and knew that neither death nor help was coming. But it still haunted him, tormented his dreams, sometimes he could even feel imaginary pain from the things they did to him. He couldn't tell them, he wouldn't, that was the same fate he had signed them up for and he couldn't bare to live with it if they told him it was karma. He knew it was.

"It's nothing." He whispered, not looking at either of them.

"You don't have to face it alone anymore." Andy said, she had joined Joe by the door and had watched most of the interaction. "You're home Book." She walked over to him and took his hand. "Do these dreams happen often now?"

Booker hesitated he still didn't feel like this should be any of their problem. He wanted to be able to carry this on his own, no matter how heavy the load.

Joe narrowed his eyes, not without kindness, studying Booker. "Be honest."

Booker looked at him, and saw all the concern and sincerity he thought he might never see again. "Nearly every night." He admitted.

None of them were a stranger to night terrors it came with the job, but dealing with them on your own, they haven't had to do that in a long time, they knew how difficult it was.

"Come, join us." Andy gently tugged on his hand. "Nile is already sleeping with us it won't make any difference to add more."

"I-" He started to protest, he couldn't put them out on his first night back, they'd already gone above and beyond for him.

"She's the boss." Joe grinned.

"Don't argue." Nicky added, he was smiling as well.

Booker didn't say anything just stood up to follow her.

Nicky grabbed his pillows and blankets so there would be enough.

Nile and Quynh were both awake when they walked in, Andy had asked them to stay so that Booker wouldn't feel too overwhelmed.

"I'm sorry for waking everyone." Booker said sheepishly.

"Don't give it another thought." Quynh insisted and the rest of them agreed.

Nicky laid his stuff down by Nile but didn't turn to go back to bed just yet.

Nile noticed his thoughtful expression. "You can stay too." She offered squeezing his hand.

Nicky looked over at Joe.

Joe smiled and walked over to kiss Nicky's temple. "Room for two more?" He asked Andy.

"Always."

They weren't exactly sure how, but they got everyone to fit in a comfortable enough pile with Nile and Booker in the middle, surrounded by their family.

This was safe, this was home, and the nightmares stayed away.

[bookerandy]

kaysanova - they adopt some kids after realizing they’ve lost their immortality/one of them gets injured and doesn’t heal

I’m so sorry this took so long! I was going to add more, but haven’t had the time these past few days and decided to just add this part. Thank you for being patient and for sending this prompt! I had a lot of fun writing it.

If I end up writing more, I’ll reblog this and add to it! Also wtf you can’t add read more?? On the app???

-

Thankfully, it hadn’t been a big wound. It had only needed two stiches and Nile had taught herself how to treat their wounds when it happened to Andy. But it wasn’t really the wound that hurt and Nicky knew that.

They had never been without each other. Not even in the beginning, when they had killed each other over and over again. They had always had each other. It had always been the two of them against the world. Not anymore.

Nicky sat on the edge of the bathtub. Nile had crouched in front of him, as she cleaned the healing wound. She talked, but Nicky didn’t listen. It was one of the few times he didn’t listen. He adored her, it was almost like having his baby sister back.

They hadn’t talked about it, even though it had been months now. Nicky knew why, but he wanted to talk about it.

“And then Andy took me to the church downtown”, Nile continued, dabbing the wound with some antibiotics. “Have you been? It was really nice, actually. She even let me pray and-...”

The bathroom door opened. Joe stood there, casually leaning against the doorframe. He had a small smile on his lips.

“Would you give us a moment, Nile? Andy’s trying to cook, you might want to give her a hand.”

Nile glanced up at Nicky as if to ask him if it was alright, and Nicky nodded. He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“Don’t move, I still need to add a plaster.”

Nile passed Joe and Joe closed the door behind her. For just a moment, Joe stood by the door and Nicky sat on the edge of the tub and they didn’t even look at each other.

“I’m sorry”, Joe said, finally. “I’ve ignored it, I’ve ignored you and I’m sorry.”

Nicky stood. He gently took both of Joe’s hands in his own and held them. He searched for something to say, but in every language he knew there was nothing he could say that would make this hurt any less.

“I love you”, he said, instead. “And I don’t want you to hurt when I’m gone.”

Joe embraced him in a hug and they stood there for a long time. Nicky wasn’t sure how long, but it did make him feel better.

“I’ve been thinking”, Joe pulled back enough to have a look at him. “Do you remember what you said, that first night?”

“I don’t think I understand, Joe…”

Joe led him back to the tub and sat down. Nicky did the same. Joe grabbed his hand as soon as he did and pulled out his phone. He only held it, though.

“The first night we spent together. We talked about our families and you told me about the girl you’d marry. Do you remember?”

Nicky pulled his hand away.

“I am not leaving you!”

Joe was quick to grab his hand again and Joe’s soft fingers calmed his raging heart, if only a little.

“I don’t expect you to. Listen to me, please”, Joe spoke Italian now. Despite the 1000 years that had passed, he still spoke with a slight accent. It was barely audioble, but it was Joe. It was his Joe.

“You told me you didn’t want to marry her”, Joe continued, still in Italian. Nicky suspected it was to make sure Nile didn’t understand if she stood just outside the door, and to make Nicky feel a little more at home. It worked. “You told me the only thing you’d want from that marriage was children. Do you remember?”

Nicky’s heart beat so hard in his chest now that it physically hurt. They had agreed years ago that it wasn’t going to work with children. Even before Booker, they had both decided they didn’t want to outlive their children. Hell, they hadn’t even adopted a puppy for the same reason and that often happened to normal people.

“I’ve been in contact with a social worker”, Joe said, as Nicky slowly sat down next to him again. “And she has a little girl we could have. She only wants to meet you, that’s all.”

“Joe…”

“I mean it, Nicky. I want this and I know you want this.”

Nicky thought for a second and squeezed Joe’s hand.

“Okay.”

The office was brightly lit and had a bunch of kids’ drawings on the walls. It smelled faintly of the flowers in a bouquet by the window. The walls were yellow and the furniture was white. Scattered on the floor, there were toys and stuffed animals.

“You must be Joe”, the woman by the desk stood and held out her hand. “We spoke on the phone.”

Nicky watched as Joe took her hand. She was elderly and had a very kind face. Her hair was pulled up in a neat hairdo.

“And this must be Nicky”, the woman said, when she turned to shake Nicky’s hand. “I’m Rose. I’ve heard you’re interested in getting a little girl?”

Nicky nodded with a bright smile on his lips. He felt silly, but he hadn’t been this happy for a very long time. Since Andy lost her immortality, it had been difficult to find something to keep them going.

“We have a three year old here. Her name is Ava and she is born here in the States. Would you like to sit?”

Nicky and Joe sat by her desk. She offered them coffee and talked to them, asking questions and telling them about Ava. Nicky was about to burst, when she finally asked when they wanted to see her. The woman left the room and Nicky turned to Joe. Joe looked just as happy as Nicky felt.

“I can’t believe we’re going to meet her”, Nicky took Joe’s hand, holding it for a moment.

The woman returned just a few minutes later, with the little girl resting on her hip. Ava had black, kinky hair and big, chestnut eyes. She wore a bright pink dress and a pair of white shoes. She also held a stuffed pony almost as big as herself. She was perfect.

Nicky quickly stood when Rose walked inside the room and let the little girl down on the floor. She held the pony close to her chest and looked up at Nicky with wide eyes. He crouched next to her and waved his hand, just a little.

“Hello, there”, he said, gently. “I’m Nicky.”

“I’m Ava”, the girl said and held out the pony. “This is Pinky.”

Nicky petted the pony and smiled. Joe joined him on the floor and greeted the girl.

“Should we play?” Nicky sat down and picked up one of the stuffed toys.

They played. Nicky wasn’t sure how long they stayed, but he had a warm and fuzzy feeling in his chest. Ava stood with Rose and waved them off when it was time to leave.

They returned two weeks later and signed all the papers. Ava got to come home with them and she was only the first of many.

“You’re gonna get to meet your aunties now”, Nicky told Ava, as Joe unlocked the door to the safe house. They walked inside and even before the door closed behind them, Nile came running.

“Look at her!” She said and she beamed. “Hello, Ava!”

Ava shyly his her face against Nicky’s shoulder and he laughed gently, petting her back.

“This is Nile”, he told her, but let her hide. “She’s your aunt.”

Slowly, Ava turned back to have a look at Nile. Nile looked as if Christmas had come early.

“Andy is in the kitchen. She’s making dinner.”

Joe gently took Ava from Nicky’s arms, as Nicky undressed. They had gotten her gifts to open as soon as they had eaten and Andy had promised to make her favourite (even though no one but Andy knew what that was) and Nile had made baklava the day before. Even Booker had sent Ava a gift. Nile and Andy kept in contact with him, even though it was “cheating”.

Andy stood by the oven in the kitchen. She had a towel thrown over her shoulder and her hair had grown just below her ears. She had dressed up, because she “had to make a good impression.”

“Aunt Andy”, Joe called, and waved to the woman. Ava did the same, although still shyly. “Look at our daughter!”

When Andy turned around, her cheeks were flushed and she looked just as exciting as Nile, even though she clearly tried to hide it.

“Hi there”, Andy said, as she quickly threw the towel on the counter. She held out her hand, but changed her mind a second later and waved instead. “I’m Andy.”

“My name is Ava”, Ava said with a shy smile and struggled to get down on the floor. Joe let her down.

The table setting was all in pink and blue, except for a big wine glass in yellow plastic. Ava’s name was written in big, circular letters on the glass.

Ava waddled to her seat and Andy helped her up, but then quickly took a step back and sat on the other side of the table. Joe and Nicky quickly joined at the table and Nile came inside ten minutes later with a paper crown and placed it on Ava’s head.

“Welcome home, Ava!” Nile said, as she sat next to Andy. Andy served them all (turned out her favourite was pasta and sauce, even though Nicky didn’t actually believe that).

They ate and Ava slowly began talking and wasn’t as shy as she had when they first arrived. She giggled and ate enough food for a horse. Nicky’s heart hurt, that was just how adorable she was.

“Now”, Joe said, when they had all finished their seconds and thirds. “Ava has to open her gifts!”

Ava turned to him with big, bright eyes.

“I get gifts?” She asked. “Daddy, do I get gifts?”

Nicky laughed softly and nodded as a reply. Joe snuck up behind Ava and picked her up from the chair. She cheered, and they all joined Joe as he walked to the living room.

If there had been a tree and some more lights, it would have looked a lot like Christmas did when they celebrated together. Wrapped gifts littered the room and a banner spelled the words “welcome home!” Just above the television. Ava already sat in the middle of the gifts.

Nile pulled out her phone and snapped a picture and Andy didn’t even tell her off.

“Andy…” Nicky gently touched her shoulder. “We said a few. You’ll spoil her.”

Joe laughed and Nile sat next to Ava on the floor. Ava looked around the room in disbelief.

“Don’t worry, there’s one for you and Joe.”

When Nile gave Ava one of the presents, she quickly ripped the paper and held up a colouring book and pencils Nile had gotten. Nicky and Joe ended up together on the couch and Andy sat in the other corner. She watched Ava with an adoration Nicky hadn’t seen in the woman for decades.

Ava unwrapped another gift. She picked up the plastic sword in both hands and swung it around, as she let out a roar. Nile laughed softly violently she fell to the floor.

“Andy!” Joe complained, but he was quick to join his daughter on the floor. Ava hit Joe with the sword and he immediately dropped to the ground, moaning in pretend pain.

“I’m the princess!” Ava announced, even though the paper crown had slipped from her head. When she had hit both Nicky, Nile and Andy, too (and they had all “died”) Ava returned to the pile of gifts for her.

She unwrapped gift after gift. Ballet shoes. More colouring books. Dolls. Stuffed animals. A tutu (which she quickly pulled on and then hit everyone with the sword again). Enough dresses to dress an army of Girl Scouts.

When there was only one gift left, Ava curled up on the couch with Andy and held it out for her, as if to ask Andy to unwrap it for her. Nicky’s heart melted and he could see just how much it touched Andy. She unwrapped it, slowly, as if she was sure Ava would tear it from her hands again, but she didn’t. Andy pulled a plastic dinosaur from the paper. She held it out to Ava, who shook her head.

“You need a toy, too! We have to play together!”

Andy’s eyes got teary and she quickly pulled one last gift from behind her back. She held out it for Ava.

“It’s for papa and daddy. Would you give it to them?”

Ava nodded and turned to her parents and held out the gift as if it was the most valuable thing she had ever held in her little hands.

“You unwrap it, love”, Nicky said, as he wrapped both arms around Joe. Joe took the gift and unwrapped it. When Nicky saw it, he actually began crying.

Joe held a camera in his hands.

“Don’t cry, daddy!” Ava jumped down from the couch and hugged Nicky and he picked her up from the floor and hugged her right back. Her small body felt perfect against his, as if she was meant to be there. And Nicky knew that she was. She was supposed to be theirs. It was destiny, just like it had been destiny that Joe and Nicky had met.

“Andromache”, Joe’s voice was muffled and broke towards the end of her name. “Thank you.”

Nile flopped down between Joe and Andy, pouting.

“Don’t leave me out. I wanna be mushy and cry, too.”

There was an album, too. Even though there were only two pictures in it, so far, it was beautiful. The first picture was of Ava when she was born (Andy wouldn’t tell how she had gotten it) and the second was Ava’s picture from the adoption site. Nile took a few pictures of the room and then way too many pictures of them all together.

Ava became their little gemstone. She was awfully spoiled and got her first, real sword when she turned thirteen. She wasn’t allowed anywhere near missions, but she trained with her aunties as often as she was allowed.

[munsonsduchess]

So, I re-watched The Old Guard, again. Just like my Mag 7 re-watch I made some notes, six pages of them to be exact which is why I’m gonna drop them under the cut so I don’t clutter up anyone’s dash with my mildest of observations and all my feelings for a sad alcoholic Frenchman. 

I love how we’re introduced to everyone, Andy walking alone through Marrakesh and Booker speeding through the narrow streets on his bike. Are we supposed to think they’re strangers or do they know each other

Bookers little smile when he catches up to Andy like he’s so happy to see her again and Andy’s face lighting up to see him again too

Andy spent a fortune on a book because she knew Booker would like it. “First edition Don Quixote, that wouldn’t come cheap” “it didn’t”

“What brings you to Marrakech?” // “Family'' leave me alone I’m already sobbing

Andy honey they’ll still be able to see that picture in deleted photos but you tried and that’s what matters

Nicky and Joe!

Nicky is so happy to see Andy. That little smile. It’s adorable

“You look good” “you look ok” gentle family teasing is the best ok

“Boss”

It’s been a year since they saw one and other and they just love each other so much. No one touch me.

Nicky and Booker betting on the baklava and Joe just sitting there like “let him lose his money it’s fine, he won’t learn and it’s funny”

Everyone teasing Nicky for loosing and he’s just stood there like “no it’s fine ”

These are the best people for the job and Copley knows it and doesn’t care how much it will cost him. He has faith

Copley knowing Nicky is there and the little wave

Andy taking her axe with her. I love that axe

Just a group of immortals walking through the desert with swords and guns nothing to see here

“Peace be with you” those catholic teachings never quite leave

“It’s a trap!”

That has got to hurt. Those guys emptied full clips into them. Like I get the need to do a job and do it well but come on guys that’s overkill

This is what women want. Andy and her axe

Nicky still having faith there are girls

The picture on Copley’s desk. Like if you knew why did you have to go through this bullshit?

Andy has lived too long and seen too much

Like I know now that Booker knew what was happening or maybe he didn’t know the extent of it but him saying sorry did feel genuine

Andy is just all kinds of done. She didn’t want to do the job in the first place

Nile proving that yes you can be in a strange place and you can serve your country but you don’t have to be a dick about it

“Keep it respectful”

She made an effort to learn the language and learn the customs which goes a long way to establish trust

How traumatic must this have been for Nile? She always knew there was a possibility of being injured in combat or worse never coming home but to be injured so fatally and have your friend hold your life in their hands only to come back and be rejected because you’re an anomaly. A freak

Goes a long way to explain Booker’s feelings too

Nicky and Joe sleeping in the train car is something that is obviously so normal for couples and goes such a long way to show people how ‘normal’ queer people are

“What did you see?” “Part of a name tag” thanks Booker that’s helpful

“I felt her die”

“Everything happens for a reason boss”

Booker didn’t want to go after Nile. He didn’t want her involved

Nicky pushing for them to go after Nile. The emotional centre of the group, appealing to their own experiences and feelings from their first times

Andy is not happy and I can understand how she feels. Given their current situation bringing an unknown element into the mix is only going to complicate everything

“I know I saw her die”

No scarring. Nothing to suggest that anything happened to Nile

The seeds of doubt already growing amongst Nike’s friends and allies

Merrick looks like he should have been a doctor who villain who got his shit kicked in by Donna

Copley you asshole what did you think was gonna happen? They were just gonna get clips emptied into their bodies and let the mercs walk away? Use your big boy brain

Nile trying to come to terms with what happened to her. Everyone around her looking at her with suspicion. Even her Sargent who’s sending her away from more tests

The hostility in the barracks. The fact that her things are already packed.

Everyone knows what happened. Nile has never been more alone just like Nicky said

Trying to drown out the noise of the world and decompress and understand what happened“

But you can call me Andy”

Just casually steals a military transport. Nbd

MA’AM PLEASE I AM ALREADY GAY. Riding around in a tank top and shades like that is not helping

“These damn kids” 

Zero hesitation in shooting Nile. This is a woman who has run out of every kind of fuck

“Why does it always have to be so goddamn slow the first couple of times?”

“You shot me” “yes honey now back in the car

”Andy might think she’s cold and heartless and only here to do a job but you can see how much she already cares about what happens to Nile

Soldiers. Fighters. Family

You know what I’m really glad they didn’t make Andy’s tank top skin tight or moulded to show off her body. That isn’t how she rolls

Andy is so proud that Nile stabbed her. Look at that smile

!Nile already having the makings of a plan within minutes of stepping onto the plane

Andy just like “god isn’t real, I’m real though and people thought I was god”

I wonder how many nights the group sat up until the wee hours discussing things like theology. Andy who was worshiped as a god. Nicky and Joe who fought in a holy war for their beliefs and Booker who probably had his own feelings on the subject 

Andy being so chill about the crash. The best poker face

It was a good try Nile and look Andy is proud of you!

The smile on Andy’s face when she’s fighting with Nile gives me so much serotonin

Soft Andy. Who had to be tough to teach a lesson

Poor Nile. Coming to terms with what she is and the fact that she might never see her family again

Family dinner time!

Awkward family dinner time

Nicky and Joe staring at each each other with their puppy dog eyes “we’re meant to find each other”

Then Booker and Andy like “misery loves company”

Everyone’s just like “awh Nicky and Joe are so cute”

Andy reliving the people she’s fought with and lost

Booker knows just how much ‘help’ talking to ones family about the situation is

Booker do not put your finger on the trigger of your gun when it’s still in your trousers! You might be immortal but that’s gonna hurt a lot more

Oh no. Quynh.

Andy’s face. I can’t

Joe in tears telling the story“

Before me and Nicky it was just the two of them”

Booker knowing exactly how it feels to hang there for hours and not die or dying and coming back time and time again. Knowing how Quynh and Andy must have felt

I cannot imagine what it must have been like for Andy. To be with someone for so long. The only other person who understands you. To be ripped apart like that

“Why do you blame yourself” that’s not a nice question to ask people

The big emotional talk with Andy and Nile in the churchyard being interrupted by the gunfire

Andy being so afraid Booker wouldn’t come back and delegating to Nile who just accepts her orders

“Welcome back asshole” / “it feels like someone was dancing on my chest”

The banter

Nicky being banished to the table in the corner after 2006 is my favourite headcanon

“Wait for my signal” Andy is more pissed than ever at the people coming after her family

“Big wounds take longer to heal” Nile as a millennial presses x to doubt

The sheer emotion in Andy’s eyes as she fights. The tears. She’s doing this for her family.

Will I ever stop harping on about found family in this show? No I will not“

How can you even tell what the signal is?” One explosion later “oh wait nvm”

The wound on Andy’s shoulder probably doesn’t even feel like anything with the amount of adrenaline

The van. These two“

What is he your boyfriend?” Stanzas of Arabic poetry later, “he’s not my boyfriend he’s all and he’s more”

Nicky and Joe Horny on Main all day every day

These cocky little shits “can you remove the chains? no? ok”“

There’s a TV Joe!” “Champagne?” it’s not a field trip boys

“I used to keep my stuff here” in an abandoned mine she found in the 1150s or that’s when she thinks she found it

Nile being amazed by Andy’s ‘stuff’

Booker meanwhile makes a joke at the expense of his sister

Merrick really should have been a doctor who villain honestly. The grand gesturing the weird mood swings. He could have been great in a two part episode and then had to reckon with Donna

Donna Noble is my favourite companion don’t @ me

Copley beginning to have second thoughts on everything

Andy realising only now that she hasn’t healed from the fight in the church“

Just because we keep living doesn’t mean we stop hurting” I have a lot of Booker feelings ok“

I thought you were the brains of this outfit” oh honey no

Bookers family. Oh no.

No but really how hard must it have been for Booker. To know that his son, his baby was suffering from cancer such an awful disease all the whole cursing his father for being selfish, uncaring, cursing Booker and Booker can’t do anything about it. He’s immortal, he heals, disease will never ravage his body, but he can’t share it with his son. He can only sit and watch as death claims everyone he’s ever loved. Living with the fact that his family despised him at the end of their lives because they didn’t understand that his immortality is a curse.

I have a lot of Booker feels don’t @ me

The pharmacy girl though. Helping just because she could

Reaffirming the reason why Andy started to help people in the first place

A selfless act. A purely good deed. Nothing expected in return. An unselfish act

Andy’s wound and Lykon’s death causing Andy to come to terms with her own mortality

Merrick “prosperity data” and Copley “I’m sorry those are people not objects”

Nicky is not here for your bullshit

Malta Sex Vacation ™

HORNY JAIL

Family bonding time with Nile and Andy

Andy “whatever it takes” and Nile “not on my watch”

So what I want to know is obviously Booker was in on it from the beginning but did actively derail Andy looking into Copley after Joe and Nicky were taken or was he just genuinely having a hard time

Nile prioritising her flesh and blood family and Andy totally understanding because she’s doing this for family too“

You and me Book. Now and always” my heart can’t cope

Nile finding the empty clip. Realising what’s about to happen and going back for her new family because as much as she loves her flesh and blood family this one matters to her as well

Meanwhile Copley I guess got a tip off from Booker (?) and knew this was all going down

The conspiracy wall

Booker you bastard why did you shoot her in the back?

I love this man but god damn

Booker wanting to be ‘normal’ because the memory of being rejected is still so raw

Suicidal tendencies in a 200 year old man

They’re both so upset by the whole thing. The betrayal

Book loves this woman with all his heart and soul. This is the woman who saved him and now she isn’t healing. She’s dying

Booker putting up so much of a fight so they wouldn’t take Andy

“I’m sorry Andy I’m sorry”

You might disagree with me but in my mind Booker never meant to hurt anyone. He didn’t want to be a lab rat. Didn’t want anyone else to be a lab rat. He just wanted to be ‘normal’“

All things die”

“Your time is coming” // “As is yours” Nicky is gonna fuck someone up

“I’m new” says Nile after shooting herself in the foot to make a point

Copley’s conspiracy wall or his fanboy wall for all the good Andy, Booker, Joe and Nicky have done

Copley’s grief at losing his wife being the driving factor for handing the group over to Merrick is tragic and heart breaking and just goes to show how much of a human story this really is

Nile said no guns Copley

Nile is here to save her family

“Those three men in there and I we’ll keep you safe” // Nile coming in guns blazing for them instead

Joe is going to kill Booker himself

“You and Nicky always had each other. All we had was our grief”

Everyone being so surprised to see Nile like “what the fuck?”“

Just leave me here” // “No man left behind”

Meanwhile Joe is fine with just leaving Booker right there to be the last lab rat

The groups concern for Andy who’s always been so strong

The concern. The subtle little head nods Andy does to let them know she’s ok

Andy spies an axe

Joe being so concerned for Nicky and making sure he comes back ok

Nicky immediately scrambling to his feet to go and help Andy

“What happened in 1934?” // “1834”

“Wait for the signal” “like the last one?” “Go big or go home!”

Arguing over who goes first and Andy just “if it doesn’t work our next time you can go first”

And there’s your signal

“You shot Nicky” Joe is not messing around when it comes to his other half“

You ok?” // “Everything hurts”

Andy has been immortal for so long she’s lost all sense of feeling human. Then Nile shows up to do just that. Remind her

Merrick calling Nile selfish like I’m sorry you entitled little shit what did you say“

Do you think he speaks Russian?”

YEET!

That one must have hurt

Nicky and Joe just like “wow the new girl is hardcore”

“Faster than the elevator”

Gotta save Andy’s axe

Nicky sits in the middle which is the actual worst place to sit in a car

Do you think they al rocked up to a hotel covered in blood like “don’t ask just give us a room and a shower”

Joe still seething at Booker through the pub window

Nile having to live with the fact that her family will never know what really happened to her. That they’ll all think she was KIA and whatever body they send back won’t be hers

The 100 year naughty step

I love that Nile was gonna let Booker off with an apology like “he didn’t mean it he’s just a sad alcoholic”

Nobody look at me. Ok. Andy and Booker saying goodbye on the shore. I can’t. This is it. This is the scene that breaks me

“I won’t see you again” // “Have a little faith Book”

Joe really wants to hit Booker. Probably did in the interim

The big picture“

Maybe this is the why Andy”

Andy laying down the law and Joe in the background like “yeah this isn’t a request”

Meanwhile in Paris. Booker is tired and just wants a drink

I am a fan of the scruff though

If that’s water Quynh definitely brought it in herself for The Drama ™

QUYNH THOUGH

[liliaeth]

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!) See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line. Then tag 10 of your favourite authors!

Well the one pattern I can see is that I have way too many wips, damn my flighty muse

I’m tagging anyone willing to do this one

1. The Weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh (Nicolò di Genova/Yusuf al Kaysani, The Old Guard

Yusuf wasn’t even sure what he was doing, taking the invader with him. He should have left the man behind after the Franks took the city, but when he’d seen the look on the Christian’s face, that thousand mile stare in the other’s eyes, he’d been unable to do so. There had been a plea in the way he knelt there, not even reaching for a weapon, though he and Yusuf had killed each other dozens of times by now. Almost as if he wanted Yusuf to kill him. That might have been why he stayed his blade at first, that notion that he couldn’t give the other what he wanted, not after what the Franks had done. But then he’d seen the man’s eyes and he hadn’t been able to stop himself from feeling pity for him.

2. The Body Remembers (Scott McCall/Theo Raeken, Teen Wolf

He had flinched.

3. We come from Warriors (gen fic, with some Nicky/Joe , The Old Guard)

Solomon hesitated as he reached the door. He didn't want to go in. Not now, not when Mom would have prettied up the room, trying to achieve holiday cheer, desperate to pretend things were normal, that there wasn't another empty chair at the table. He was about ready to just turn around, to take his gifts back to the car and leave, go to a bar, and drink soda after soda, until he got on too much of a high and had to head out in his car, driving till the carbohydrate high was out of his system.

4.Artefacts of history (Nicky/Joe, Andy/Quynh, Nile, The Old Guard)

His first thought was ‘another one’. 

5. Sinking Down (Gen, Andy and Booker, The Old Guard)

Booker wasn’t even sure why he was in this damn room, with these people, none of whom had a clue who he was, or what he’d done. They all had their issues of course, and he wasn’t stupid enough to assume that anything he went through was worse than what they went through.

6. Tomatoes, lettuce and a burger (Gen, Dean and Sam Winchester, Supernatural)

Dean wasn’t sure what it was that made it feel like his heart was torn to pieces. Sam was sitting right there, mere inches away from him. Reading, writing, Dean wasn’t sure what his brother was doing as Dean himself was cooking. 

7. A Soldier goes marching on (gen, Nile Freeman, and Jay, The Old Guard) 

Jay stared at he empty bunk. Dizzy wouldn’t even look at her. Jay would have screamed at her, but she knew it wasn’t fair, since her anger was aimed as much at herself as it was at Dizzy. And neither would do any good.

8. New Wolf in the Old Guard (Teen Wolf/The Old Guard crossover, Scott centric)

Scott woke up gasping for air. It was the third time this week that he had the dream of drowning. The other dreams were weird, and scary, but he’d have any of them over the ones where he drowned. 

9. Good Little Milker (Dean Winchester, Supernatural a/b/o au)

Dean was still sulking. Sam could see it in the poor Omega cow's eyes, the way he glared at the both of them, when he thought Sam or Dad weren't looking. Oh sure, he was playing nice after the rough spanking Dad had given him. Dad had had no choice after Dean's initial tantrum when John had mentioned what was going to happen. It hadn't really been a surprise to anyone but Dean himself, when Sam's younger brother had presented as an Omega. Even during the first signs of his first heat, the boy had still been hoping to present at least as a beta if not an Alpha. But both Sam and John had known better. Dean was a brat, but he'd always been at his happiest when Dad or Sam told him what to do.

10. Clean (JDM/Jensen Ackles, spn rps, non-con)

Jeff couldn't believe his luck. The notion that this perfect piece of slave flesh had never once been fucked was probably the biggest waste of a slave's body he'd ever seen in his life.

11. Light in the Basement (Jensen Ackles/Jared Padalecki, spn rps, non-con)

Jensen wasn't even sure what had happened as he slowly woke up face down on a dusty floor. He stared up at the room he was in. It was dark, stuffy, like there was something in his throat making it hard to breathe. There was a pervading smell of shit and mold hanging around the place, like he was in a badly cleaned toilet in one of the factories he'd been working at over the past few months. He crawled up into the dark

12. The Treaty (Jensen Ackles/Jared Padalecki, spn rps, a/b/o, dub-con)

Peace. After ten years of war, it was long awaited, and even from the throne room, Jared could hear the celebrations spreading across the capitol city. Jared wished he could join the people, spend time with his loved ones and hold his mother, but all he could think of was his father's face as he'd died in Jared's arms.

13. the Wolf who Ran with Hunters (gen Teen Wolf/Supernatural, Scott-centric)

Scott shivered as he woke up. He didn’t want to open his eyes, because once he did, he’d have to accept that he was all alone in some crappy motel room.  Outside the window, he could see the dusty town in Oklahoma which he didn’t even know the name of.

14. Covered in Bandaids (Scott McCall/Isaac Lahey, Teen Wolf)

Isaac wasn’t quite sure what he was doing at the field. He shouldn’t even care about lacrosse any more. He was strong now, and lacrosse had been something he’d done because his father wanted him to be more like Camden. 

15. Breaking Point (Scott McCall/Theo Raeken, Teen Wolf)

The place was cold. Even with the increased body heat of a werewolf Scott shivered in the corner of the cell. He wished he’d been wearing more than a tank top and his jeans when the cops had burst into his room. They hadn’t told him what he was being arrested for, or what they wanted, which as far as he knew, was not the norm.

16. Kindness for the Devil (Lucifer Morningstar/Scott McCall, Lucifer/Teen Wolf)

It was a night like any other. Things were a bit too quiet over at Lux, but then it was early, and it seemed to make Linda happy, making her more likely to stay instead of having her take Charlie and leaving. 

17.Can’t Always hold him back (Stiles Stilinski/Derek Hale, Teen Wolf)

Scott looked down at Stiles, carefully listening to his friend’s heartbeat, pushing out the distraction of outside noise. Nurses and visitors talking in the hall outside, the beeping of the machine monitoring Stiles. He desperately tried to follow the pattern. It scared him, how hard his friend’s heart was working just to keep going, how difficult Stiles’ breathing went even with the oxygen mask covering his mouth and nose. Scott had finally managed to get the sheriff to go downstairs to have something to eat, maybe even take a shower if Mom could slip him into the staff showers. They all knew that their stay here could end up being a marathon that might last days more than it already had. 

18. Beloved (Btvs/Angel, co written with @spikesheart)

Sitting at one end of a fully laden table, Buffy looked at the appetizers piled on the finest bone china sitting atop platinum charger plates, studied her matching platinum silverware, and wrangled with the finely woven silver linen napkin in her lap – patently avoiding her lover’s gaze as he sat at the other end. Only the best of everything life had to offer was laid out before her. A wide variety of catered pasta, meat and vegetable dishes filled every square inch of space in between them, yet nothing caught her fancy.

19. Parent Wolf (Teen Wolf, the parents)

She woke up in an endless white room, found her head leaning against the bark of an old tree trunk, staring up and noticing several other men and women waking up alongside her. 

20. Missed Shot (gen, teen wolf, Scott-centric)

Scott stared up at the men coming closer and at the man who had just shot him with an arrow. Derek Hale, the creepy guy who’d lured him here in the first place, tried to grab him and pull him loose, but seconds later he was down on the ground as well with arrows in his leg and back.  Scott stared around in fear, pulling at the arrow, too scared to think of breaking it free.