#yes I wrote a domestic one-shot that's just projecting my bad driving skills onto nicky

[libraryleopard]

jesus take the wheel

Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, 1.3k, no archive warnings apply, read on ao3

“Maybe I’d be a better driver in America,” Nicky muses. “Everything is opposite, over there. Switching things up might help.”

“I don’t think we need to test that hypothesis out,” Joe says. “Nothing is better in America.”

Or: A domestic one-shot in which I project my terrible driving skills onto Nicky.

The thing is, Nicky is fine driving when it's life or death. (Well, not death, he supposes. But there’s certain phrases you can’t drop from your vocabulary, no matter the language or century, and hyperbole has its place in every dialect.)

The point is, he’s great behind the wheel of a car when careening and explosions are involved. When the goal is to get away as fast as possible with a minimal amount of limb regeneration, consequences be damned.

But anything more mundane? Well. There’s a reason Joe is the designated driver. Nicky tends to drive like an army is on his heels, no matter the circumstances.

“I miss horses,” Nicky grumbles. “You never had to care about stop lights when there were horses.”

“Horses didn’t have air conditioning,” Joe points out, drumming his fingers aimlessly on the steering wheel. “And they smelled a hell of a lot worse.”

Nicky can’t exactly argue with that—the twenty-first century may have its horrors, but the torrent of cool air pouring from the car vents is certainly not one of them. He props his feet on the dashboard, eyeing the red light ahead. “There’s no one here, anyway, can’t you just go?” The tiny eastern European town they’ve settled in for the time being–just until the dust settles, Andy claims–is small enough that even on a weekday, the main intersection at the center of town remains empty.

“That, my darling Niccolò, is exactly why you have not been entrusted with the leadership on this most delicate mission,” Joe replies.

“Yusuf,” Nicky sighs. “I think I could manage a grocery run.”

“Nicky,” Joe sighs back. “Your lack of respect for the great traffic laws of Croatia says otherwise. I will compromise Andy’s baklava for no one. Else we might find ourselves testing the limit of our immortality rather sooner than we expected.”

“What about Malta?” Nicky retorts. “I was a superb driver in Malta.”

“You were superb in many ways in Malta, my love,” Joe concedes, a smile tugging at his lips. Nicky knows exactly what Joe’s remembering when he side-eyes him, gaze catching on his lips. “But as the car still ended up a flaming wreck, I’m not taking that as proof of your everyday driving skills.”

“Those were unique circumstances,” Nicky protests.

“And these are not.” Joe eyes the stoplight, which remains stubbornly red.

“Maybe I’d be a better driver in America,” Nicky muses. “Everything is opposite, over there. Switching things up might help.”

“I don’t think we need to test that hypothesis out,” Joe says. “Nothing is better in America.”

Technically, Nicky can drive. He has the license to prove it—several dozen, actually, though since the names and birthdates are far from accurate, they don’t exactly prove much. He’s just not…particularly up to date. They all have blind spots in this modern world–Andy’s attitude towards smartphones is a reluctant reliance above some mixture of confusion and paranoia and Joe occasionally finds himself less than clear on the ever-shifting borders of countries (when, exactly, did the Soviet Union stop regularly appearing on the news?). Nicky’s blindspot just happens to involve four-way intersections and general bemusement at yield signs.

“It’s barely been a century,” Nicky protests. “Give a man some adjustment time.”

Stoplights are not really the problem, if he’s being honest. It’s more the sudden vehicular evolution that really threw him–how a few automobiles cruising at thirty kilometers an hour exploded into a world-wide industry of speed that always catches him off guard when he looks away for a few years. Now they talk? And drive themselves? It almost seems a waste to stay on top of such an ever-evolving invention. By the time he’d gotten comfortable with a stick shift, they were practically obsolete.

The light finally flickers green and Joe eases the car into acceleration with a whiff of exhaust and a rumble of tires against concrete.

The thing about cars, Nicky supposes, is that they truly remind him of how far he’s come. There’s always a moment—a pure, unavoidable split second—when his foot hits the accelerator and he realizes just how unrecognizable this world would be to the man he once was. This great hulking beast of metal and glass at his command, roaring through smooth stone streets with a belly full of gas and sparks.

Never in his wildest dreams could he have dreamt such a thing. Not in his days as a priest with his rosary smooth beneath his fingers, not once he’d traded worn beads for a knight’s sword, heavy with purpose and intended glory. Not even once he’d seen his flesh improbably knit itself together, once he’d met the eyes of a man once placed as his enemy and felt a spark that was anything but animosity. That mankind could forge metal and distill substances from the depths of the earth into something he could tame with a single press of his foot, with the turn of a key, is still remarkable to him.

He likes to remind himself, still, of the everyday miracle of living so long. There’s always heartache, always the wounds that fade from flesh but never soul, but there is also this moment here in a creation his civilization never lived to see, alongside a man he would have died hating if not for a turn of fate.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Joe asks as they slow to another stop. He’s always testing out new idioms, letting his tongue trip across the fresh inventions of language, as fleeting as sugar between the teeth.

Nicky shakes his head. “I don’t like that one as much. Are you supposed to be paying me to speak my mind? And pennies are so transient, I’m sure they’ll be gone in a few decades and the whole phrase rendered useless.”

“Better make use of it while it lasts,” Joe says. He reaches out for Nicky’s hand without even looking, easy as breath, and smoothes a thumb across the back of Nicky’s hand.

Nicky traces his own finger across his husband’s hands, the contours almost as familiar as his own. They wear rings for now, having deemed this place and time safe enough to indulge. They’ve been married almost more times than Nicky can count—in Arabic, in Italian, in English, in Dutch, in silence, in a dozen more languages than he can count, alone beneath the sky or in grand churches or mosques—yet they’ve always had to be cautious about it. Perhaps the world is finally beginning to catch up, in fits and starts, to what they and so many others have always known to be true in their hearts, even if only witnessed by the shadows.

“We should get married again,” he says, suddenly. “It’s been long enough since the last time.”

Joe tilts his head, the evening light pouring through the windshield sparking gold from his brown eyes. “You think? Perhaps we should spice things up and get a divorce for once.”

Nicky scoffs. “That involves more paperwork than either of us is willing to cough up. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

Joe laughs. “Fair. Another marriage, then.”

“Yes.” Nicky laces fingers tight with Joe’s, feels how perfectly they weave together as if some long-ago creator molded them to fit. “Now that Nile’s here. It’d be nice, I think, to celebrate with someone new.”

The unsaid between them: that this will be the first wedding in centuries without Booker, where he can’t get wine drunk and quote rambling sections from classic literature on love and commitment and they’ll all pretend his tipsiness isn’t to hide an edge of bitter jealousy. That Andy may not live to see the next time they exchange vows.

But at least they have Andy for now, and Nile, and each other.

“It would be nice.” Joe’s free hand is still splayed on the steering wheel and for a moment, Nicky is possessed by the urge to take it, to take all of him, and hold him tight, Croatian traffic safety laws be damned. Nicky at least knows enough to check in the mirrors that the road behind him is clear before he leans in and reminds Joe that there’s one language their mouths will always be fluent in, no matter the century.

#yes I wrote a domestic one-shot that's just projecting my bad driving skills onto nicky #the old guard #movies #lulu watches the old guard #niccolo di genova #yusuf al kaysani #nicky x joe