Title: Sharp your blade, and true
Fandom: The Old Guard
Characters: Joe/Nicky
Rating: Teen
Length: 1,290 words
Content notes: Contains reference to previous canonical character death, minor sword injury (self-inflicted), vague descriptions of blood. But largely schmoop :)
Author notes: Builds on movie canon, but may contradict the comics (which I haven't read). These two were just too delightful; I couldn't not :) Also claimed for my 100 fandoms challenge
Summary: Joe's scimitar is much more than a simple blade. For Nicky, at least.

Joe’s scimitar is still as sharp as it was the day that Nicky first died on it, and Nicky isn’t entirely sure what it says about their relationship that it always hangs within arm’s reach of wherever they’re sleeping. It’s not an uncertainty that concerns him. The blade might be a question, but Nicky’s sure of Joe, in ways that he thinks he wouldn’t even be able to understand if he’d lived a normal mortal life. He’s been wrong in the past, of course; certain of things that had looked so bright and righteous only to, over the course of time, be revealed as dark and twisted. He’s immortal, not infallible. His faith in Joe is something else, though; over a millennium, Joe has never once let him down, and that speaks more than a thousand blades by a thousand beds, to Nicky’s mind.

Dusk is creeping in, casting the edges of the room around him into shadow, and the blade in question gleams softly in the fading light – Joe still cares for it as carefully as he had before, back when he was defined by his faith and his swordsmanship and little else. Nicky curls his legs up underneath him and reaches out to run his thumb along the razor-sharp edge. There’s barely any pressure behind his touch, but the sting of the slice across his skin still bites into him, shadowing the memories of deeper, longer, harder cuts. He leaves a bright crimson smear in his wake, a reminder of the injury that lasts, even as the sting fades and he feels his skin knit back together as quickly as it was split.

He doesn’t intend it as a test, but it serves as one anyway. Still immortal, still eternal, in as much as they ever are.

The step behind him is light, but Nicky hears it anyway, just before he feels the bed dip under a not unexpected weight. Warm arms slide around his waist, and he lets his hand drop, relaxing back into an embrace that is as familiar and comfortable to him as his own skin.

“Don’t you think that blade has claimed enough of your blood?” Joe’s voice is a rumble in his ear, but Nicky’s spent a thousand years listening to that low tone and he can hear the genuine curiosity hiding beneath the words. He shrugs a little, feeling his shirt shift enough against Joe’s that he knows Joe will recognise the gesture for what it is.

“It’s been a long time,” he says, quietly. “I think she has lost most of her taste for me by now.”

“Impossible,” Joe says, loud in the hush of the room, and so immediate and so visceral that it startles a laugh out of Nicky before he realises the implication.

“I didn’t mean,” he starts, and then amends himself. “Not us, not like that.” He catches hold of Joe’s hand where it’s curled around his waist and tugs it up, brushing a soft kiss against the knuckle in an unspoken apology.

Joe curls in tighter around him, shuffling forward until his knees are bracketing Nicky’s hips, and Nicky can feel his heat bleeding across everywhere that they’re pressed together. “I will never lose my taste for you,” he says, with that fervour that Nicky loves about him, and Nicky bites down against the stupid smile that threatens to break across his face.

He’s not ashamed of those smiles, but he prefers to save them for when Joe can see them.

His blood has dried a rusty brown against the cutting edge of Joe’s scimitar, a dull smear against the gleam, and he tilts his head to the side, letting his temple knock against Joe’s as he does so. “You need to clean your sword,” he says, mildly but he can hear the weight of unspoken emotion colouring his own words, and Joe’s arm tightens around his waist.

“You dirtied it,” he points out, and Nicky hums agreeably.

“I was reminiscing, a little,” he says. “Sometimes… I don’t always remember which memories are real. Touch helps.”

Joe huffs disbelievingly. “Only when it makes you bleed, it seems. Was that a really necessary part of your process?”

“Pain is an excellent aide memoire,” Nicky explains, and Joe makes an unhappy noise.

“I am… not fond of those type of memories,” he says, and Nicky squeezes his fingers reassuringly where they are still tangled with his own.

“You and me, all of our memories are rooted in pain,” he points out. “And I am very fond of some of those.”

Behind him, Joe stills, and Nicky silently congratulates himself on a successful redirection of their conversation. “Oh?”

“Venice,” Nicky says, and his voice takes on a dreamy edge as he flicks back through memories of heated smiles and hotter touches, of lips and tongues and hips, of hot eyes and whispered promises in crowded rooms. “Singapore, Dublin. Where else? Oh, Amadora, of course.”

Joe laughs, his breath a soft brush against Nicky’s temple. “Of course,” he echoes, although there’s no mocking in it. “Not Malta?”

“Always Malta,” Nicky corrects. “But I think that one goes without saying. It may be the defining moment of our relationship.”

“As much as I like it, I’m not sure our relationship should be defined by my ability to make you scream,” Joe says, warm and low now, and Nicky tips his head back to rest against Joe’s shoulder, tilting just enough to the right that he can meet Joe’s eyes, upside down.

“No,” he says, “But it might be defined by my willingness to let you.”

It’s a rare moment of romanticism from him, he thinks, as Joe’s eyes widen fractionally, and his grip tightens impossibly further in a way that’s more reassuring than restrictive. He’s not given to overt displays; he likes to shuck the stereotype of the flamboyant Italian where he can. Nonetheless, he has his ways of showing how he feels, and by this point he thinks that Joe knows them as well as he does.

That Joe is ever surprised by them is just something that makes Nicky love him that little bit more.

Joe doesn’t say anything, and Nicky’s content to just sit there with him, sharing the space and the air and the silence in the echo of a thousand years of moments just like this one. His eyes drift over to Joe’s scimitar again where it hangs beside them. Nothing has changed; the blade still shines, marred only by the smears Nicky had left behind, and it strikes him that it’s almost a perfect metaphor for them. A thousand-year-old blade, shaped to Joe’s hand, but marked and changed by Nicky’s touch and by Nicky’s blood. He can’t think of a better analogy. Unless, perhaps, it was his sword, and Joe’s blood, but he thinks that’s just semantics.

He reaches out, contemplatively, and runs his finger over the flat of the blade; curving over the smooth metal and tacky bloodstain that offer competing contrasts under the brush of his touch. Different, but so very complementary.

It’s oddly fitting. He likes it.

“I do need to clean that before it rusts,” Joe says, regretfully. “But I don’t want to let you go.”

Nicky leans forward a little further, ignoring Joe’s immediate noise of protest in favour of pulling the blade free of its fastenings. He doesn’t handle it often and it’s lighter than he remembers, perfectly balanced and sitting comfortably in his grip as he leans back into Joe’s, resting the blade easily across his folded legs.

“You don’t have to,” he says, simply, “You can do both.”

“All I ever wanted,” is all Joe says, but the press of his lips against Nicky’s forehead speak volumes.