#inkphoenix

A routine done thousands upon thousands of times before and there is no ease in the adjustment of it. Even if firing a gun, or holding his scimitar is done with the same physical memories no more complex at times than holding a fork at dinner, there’s an endless calling of ‘why’ and ‘maybe this time, do not.’ Something to trip him up, something to spark that brief second of hesitation.

There’s smudges and streaks in the small oval shaped bathroom mirror, and Joe stares himself dead in the eye, exhausted and tense, with each piece of clothing he removes while Nicky works to bring the stubborn old pipes to temperature.

Being fast healing, his muscles look little different than they did so many centuries ago, but having more continual nutrition allows a glow to his skin, a shine of health that had never truly been present the first five hundred years of his life.

His hair, though sodden and sticky from dirt and smoke, retains a healthily robust shine that Nicky comments on whenever he has an opportunity. There’s a spark of clarity in his eyes, and blood that flakes from his cheeks and leaves nothing but fresh, perfect skin beneath.

He’d not lived long enough as a mortal to develop the firm, obvious wrinkles he can barely remember his father or grandfathers having had. But there’s a definite crinkle to his forehead and the corners of his eyes where such things had slowly been starting to develop.

Until it was determined he’d be eternally 33.

Nicky would tell him, running his hands over the fuzz of hair against his chest, the looseness of a stomach well fed and unstrained, that nobody who looked to them could possibly guess what they’d been through. How they appeared so often in perfect health, still young and new to the world.

“Are you finished college?” Nicky had heard, more than once. “Have you kids?” Joe had heard to them both. “What do you do for a living? Where are you from? Have you got any plans for the future?”

“They cannot help it.” Nicky told him, curled up together later, “We look just like them. They can’t possibly comprehend.”

But they were just like them. The man Joe stared at in the mirror was him. A human. A human that just happened to heal really fast and could not retain death.

Was that not like them?

He held no super strength, no mystic abilities brought about by some fantasy element. He did not contain secrets. He was human. He just didn’t die.

Nicky didn’t die either. Nicky, who now once again was slowly trying to pull Joe from his thoughts. Nicky, with his careful, penetrating gaze of pure green concern, the vaguely hard, semi-chapped lips Joe so loved to kiss and new so well he could trace their shape in his sleep.

There’s dark black dirt on his cheeks, and ash on his nose. There’s the smell of weakening gunpowder on his fingertips when they run down Joe’s beard. His lips taste like soot when they come to Joe’s, his mouth pliant and willing when Joe pushes for more.

The shower water is hot and won’t be for long, the burning makes Joe yelp when he’s guided inside, slow, sluggish pressure not enough to soothe but good enough for cleaning. Nicky’s strong, sure hands finding soap and massaging into Joe’s hair.

Water turns grey beneath their feet, Joe tries to breathe through exhausted, small tears.

Nicky lets him cry, thumb pads gently pushing them away, encouraging Joe to breathe with him when there’s too many, when he can’t see and his eyelashes cling.

Hummed songs in Italian, gentle whispers in Joe’s ear.

The hands Joe fists into Nicky’s hips that clutch and burn, that bring him closer to himself in the need to know that there is something that stays the same. That there is something in this ever-turbulent world that feels identical. 

The towels are scratchy, the fabric loose, Joe cannot be bothered to find anything more exciting than faded blue boxers, sitting on the bed with Nicky only after he’s dried his own hair of the worst dampness, ancient black sweats loose on his hips.

He’s heavy in Joe’s lap and blissful in his patience.

“Rest,” Nicky says, kind, sweet, nose brushing Joe’s. 

If sleep came now Joe’d only be subjected to terror. Nicky knows and puts a finger to his lips. “Only rest, not sleep. Not until you’re ready.”

Under the blankets, Nicky’s chest is a comforting pillow, Joe’s eyes watching the muted colours of the TV without registering a single thing that happens in the program. 

Joe must fall asleep, for he’s sure he notes the room darkening, the distant television sound ceasing, and Nicky’s sleep-heavy voice in his ear, “Good Night, my love.”

They make camp in silence. By the time the tent is braced and the fire is stoked, Nicolò ’s anxiety has started to overpower his sensibilities, and the continual, almost dismissive attitude from Yusuf is threatening to spin it to anger.

Trading blows was supposed to have left them behind.

“Yusuf, please talk to me.”  Nicolò thought his tone came out more bitter, but it’s only pleading, desperate. “I do not understand what you say.”

Yusuf sighed, sitting at the fire, hunched over himself, hands and elbows braced on bent knees. “ Nicolò , in Genova, do they say liking and loving are the same?”

Nicolò  thought a long moment. “I know not. You like your friends, you like your family. You marry and maybe you like your spouse if you know them well enough. Or if the marriage was your choosing. But you cannot love someone and not like them.”

“I do not believe that to be true.” Yusuf says, reverent. “I think that you do see it. In parents and relatives who are only unified by blood, and love each other in that sense. But they do not like one another, and were they not bound by that blood, that fate, would never spend a moment with the other. Would never think to associate with them. Would never even cross a path where they considered them with any fondness. Or half of a mind at all.”

Nicolò  bristles, slightly. He tries not to be so prone to being fiery, but at times that surge finds another pathway and is rising to life before he can stop it. “Is that what you are thinking of me as? As someone you love because of this accursed fate, but not someone you like?”

“Do still yourself.” Yusuf retorts, short, curt, giving  Nicolò no quarter. “You know I was only providing an understanding, not of you specifically.”

“But it is related.”  Nicolò presses, with some earnest. “Otherwise the association you speak of would not have been made.”

“Sure, it is related. But do you truly believe our situation so simple?”

“Obviously not.”  Nicolò bites out, miserable. “But I still fail to understand your meaning and would have plenty enough of your mind games.”

“Mind games?” Yusuf laughs, something dry to the tone that infuriates Nicolò . “I play mind games. he says.”

A low growl sets  Nicolò up on his feet before he’s thinking, yanking Yusuf by the sleeve and hoisting him up. Though it is only a half effort on his part, Yusuf shoving at him before he is fully standing. Knocking  Nicolò to the ground.  Nicolò snarls and grapples with him, they struggle together on the earthen floor, the fire a looming warning at their sides, until finally Yusuf ends up pinning  Nicolò flat, arms above his head in one hand, the other arm solid against Nicolò’s chest.

Both of them are heaving, staring at each other in their common daze.  Nicolò can never not get lost in those brown depths he appreciates more by the day, and Yusuf’s expression is going glassy where it settles on his own green one.

“I..am sorry.”  Nicolò mumbles. “I know you are not playing mind games, that this is no more in your control than it is mine. It is just that I know so little of the world now. I have no goal, no direction, no understanding.”

“What makes you think I am any better suited to it?” Yusuf asks, sounding a little hurt.

“Nothing.”  Nicolò groans, exasperated. “I only said as much a moment ago.”

“I do love you.” Yusuf says, cutting off further rising, riling arguments. “I love you in those ways that seem both impossible and unfathomable. I know I love you in the way that love filters through this earth and is only sometimes grasped in the truest of forms by those who understand it.”

Nicolò  swallows, relaxing in Yusuf’s grip, which no longer feels punishing. “Then why do you say not to like me.”

“I mean it not in the way you interpret.” Yusuf seems to be struggling for words.  Nicolò leans up and kisses him impulsively, as though to ground them both. “I mean it only that, to me. Like is in a different field. It is to complicated for me to just say I like you. I do like you. Not implying I do not. But you-”

Nicolò  stays there, but tries, gently. “Is it possible, Yusuf, you simply do not realize?”

“Could be” Providing no argument. “I do not know everything, after all.”

“Well.”  Nicolò tries to keep his tone light, “Nor do I. Nor does anyone.”

Yusuf huffs, “Some would argue.”

Nicolò  stares straight up at him, confirming and reassuring. “Not I.”

Silence pushes through, both of them weighing their thoughts. Those that they share, and those that exist individually. 

Neither of them pretend like their situation is free of complexities. Or that the balance they have achieved and found is perfect. There’s too much weight, too much confusion. At times reminders neither of them can escape. Questions that have no guide. Situations that have no outlook. Places, people, scenarios that throw them and confuse them. 

Tempers and dismay. Misery and melancholy.

But with those tensions, those driving uncertainties, there is that blossoming, arching love.

The love that has Yusuf murmuring sleepily into Nicolò ’s neck when they wake.

The love that has  Nicolò laughing louder and more openly than he ever did in his mortal years. Nearly shaking from it when Yusuf makes a comment, a joke.

The love that happens when they hunt together. Sharing their food. Teasing each other as they bathe in the stream.

Yusuf’s enthusiasm when  Nicolò helps him with archery. Sometimes flirting, sometimes not. Nicolò ’s patience and endless study when Yusuf helps him with identification of herbs and other textiles.

Love in their joined hands and flesh. Love in  Nicolò trying not to nod off on his horse. Yusuf carefully taking the reigns even while still on his own and guiding them both.

Nicolò  holding Yusuf when he cries, shaking, confused and disoriented after waking from a nightmare.

Love in their breaths, their wandering hands, loving and gripping, exploring and knowing.

Love now, in this moment. suspended animation from their cooling argument, furiously attracted and hopeless mad for each other. Embracing in their spiral.

Yusuf’s teeth bite into Nicolò ’s lip,  Nicolò surging to meet him, both seeking the calmness that only comes in each others arms. Whether they’d been at odds or not.

It doesn’t cure it.

It doesn’t change what happened.

Quynh had so much she wanted to say. She wanted to scream, to shout. To shake Andromache, to shake all of them until the icy tears ran hot. She wanted to make demands, she wanted to throw them all overboard so they’d know. So that they’d feel the same pain, the same fear. The same terrible constant revival before it happened again and again.

The pain she’d suffered. All the horror she’d endured for five hundred years. Locked. Sealed.

But when she saw Andromache stepping from that car, near running when she spilled from the passenger side, and she felt her in her arms and that body sagging into her like she’d never left, every word, every horrible, awful thing died on Quynh’s tongue.

Andromache’s lips were the only thing that erased the bitter, soiled taste of salt that seemed permanently etched to her healing tongue.

Andromache’s arms dragged away the touches of cold that had never faded.

Even upon coming to land.

She can only speak a hairsbreadth of a second before she falls back into their kiss, Quynh hates how she shakes against her, hates how the moment she felt Andromache in her arms she melted.

You don’t deserve this! You don’t deserve my love again! Her mind screeches.

But oh, feeling her there, seeing her..

Quynh can feel the pain. She can feel it in the hammering of Andromache’s heart, the trembling of her own fingers that sink into Quynh’s long black hair.

I know..I don’t..I never gave up. I never stopped.

You were never just a memory.

You lived and breathed inside me and I hoped and hoped and I tried and-

They’ll have to talk,  they’ll have to. Being back together like this, it doesn’t make it all okay.

She knows, they know they both know.

But Quynh’s cheeks are wet, and so are Andromache’s and she doesn’t know where Andromache’s tears start and hers end. She doesn’t know in that moment how to feel anything but gripping, painful relief.

“Andromache..my..Andromache.”

Quynh just wants to rest. She just wants to feel safe.

Andromache’s arms are safe. They’re strong, her eyes blaze and brighten and soak with fresh tears and there’s no way to say how desperately she wants to just sink and feel loved and warm.

“Quynh, my Quynh..”

Tense, erratic, relieved happy laughter bubbles forth. It surprises Quynh with it’s sound. She cannot believe she could make such a noise again. And maybe she’s dreaming but Andromache’s fingers clutch just that side of too tight to be a subconscious hallucination.

Later, later complications may come. No, will come.

There’s inevitable pain, heartbreak, sorrow, all those to follow.

But they’ll be okay.

And in this moment, these seconds, these arms.

Andy blinks, slowly, eyes long adjusted to the dark, Quynh’s head pillowed against her stomach. “Sorry,’ Her voice barely above a whisper, a kiss to her head. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Thoughts like yours could wake the dead, Andromache.” Quynh huffs, making no move to sit herself up as she laces their fingers together. “What has you so lost?”

“Not lost,” Andy corrects, “Just..”

“Reverent?” Quynh suggests, finally pushing herself into more of a sitting position, choosing Andy’s lap as her chair, Andy’s arms finding her waist with ease. 

“Mm, that could be it. What has clued you in?”

At that, Quynh unlaces their fingers, finding Andy’s wrist instead, where the words seem to glow even in darkness. A band that wraps in mimicry of a bracelet.

“No! You are not real. You are a visage.”

Quynh had lamented in the past that she wished it was a touch more romantic, or at least ‘a little more flavourful, Andromache’. But Andy would only kiss her and remind her that all the heat, the fire of their relationship their love could come later.

“You were starving and dehydrated, wandering a desert” Andy had said, “It’s a miracle you could speak at all.”

“That’s on the universe for doubting me.” Quynh had retorted.

Andy’s is not anymore romantic, in turn, mirroring Quynh’s movements to find Quynh’s own wrist, of black and gold against her skin.

“Oh, if only.”

The words are like a constant reminder, and the two women had stared at each other across the desert as their wrists seemed to glow in unison, Quynh shouting at Andromache in confusion.

When the words appeared, they stood, accusing one another of trickery. But Quynh needed food, water, shelter. And it was hard to keep up any sort of argument so weakened as she was.

“The desert has brought its final tricks at last.” Quynh had exclaimed, wishing she had something sharp nearby. 

Andromache did, but she was not willing such an unfair fight. Even if denial was about the only thing on her mind.

“I have been accustomed to this desert, and it lies at me like this now?”

Bickering got them nowhere, and Andy had food on her-and water. And giving it to Quynh had seemed the better choice of it all. Even if Quynh tested things as thoroughly as she could before taking them.

“Please, as if your brain screaming's can ever be hidden from me.” Quynh said, comfortable on Andy’s lap in their dark room. “I only wonder why now.”

“Doesn’t really have a schedule.” Andy says, letting her fingers graze along Quynh’s wrist, Quynh doing the same with hers. “There are textbooks in schools that don’t go as far back as we do in their timelines.”

“Then such textbooks are missing out.” Quynh said, making Andy laugh as though she’d tickled her. “Come on, my love, it is so late.”

It was-the clock on one of their phones showing them as much, but she knew how Quynh could be, and that it was mostly in jest.

“This cannot be the same woman who has partied at clubs until the sun rises.” Andy said, hands loose where Quynh’s tanktop sits. Cotton, pleasant to the touch.

“It is, but that woman was not peacefully sleeping before hand.” Tugging Andy until they could roll sideways, throwing her leg over Andy’s waist, nose to nose with her. 

“You know..” Andy said, after they’d lain in silence a few moments, carefully testing the waters of Quynh’s sleepiness, “We haven’t been to a club in a while.”

“Go to sleep and you might even get a dance.” Quynh yawned, already falling back into slumber.

“Oohh in the red outfit?” Andy asked, sure she could sense a closed eye-roll of ‘what else’.