Creature from the Black Lagoon + Peregrine + Old Guard!

Title: Will the Real Joe Please Stand Up Fandom: The Old Guard Author: Dolphelecat Summary: How everyone in the team became Joe. AO3 Link: x

It's all Nicky's fault, really.

People saw his sensitivity and kindness and never realized until too late that he was a secret troll. Joe knew this, of course, but he was an enabler.

Andy pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Nicky, why did you tell them your name was Joe?”

“Are you having an identity crisis, love?” Joe asked with visible delight.

“I needed a false name. This is an undercover assignment, and Joe is a nice, unassuming name,” Nicky replied, looking like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

“You look like a Joe,” Joe encouraged.

Andy let go of her nose and sighed in exasperation. “Well, it's too late now.”

“This is going to get really old really quickly,” Booker grumbled.

He had no idea how right he was.

This particular mission involved more undercover work than usual, and all the team members had to be careful to always call Nicky “Joe.” Booker said, “Fucking finally!” when the mission was finally over.

The problem was, the nickname stuck.

All of them, including Joe, found themselves saying, “Joe –- sorry, Nicky -- ”

It got to the point where they also had to say, “Joe -- Real Joe -- ”

They finally just quietly accepted that “Joe” was now one of Nicky's nicknames and that Joe's newest nickname was “Real Joe.”

Maybe it would have faded into a funny memory, but Andy was more of a troll than she'd ever admit, and the next time she had to come up with a fake name, she chose Josephine, Jo for short.

The team was quick to call her “Boss Jo.”

The way Booker groaned about it, they thought he'd stay out of it, but he surprised them all by dubbing himself “Jojo” one fateful mission.

It wasn't all the time. They still called each other by their real names. It became just one of hundreds of inside jokes.

Nile didn't learn about it until a couple months after she'd joined the group and Joe called Andy “Boss Jo.” She didn't quite get the joke, because she hadn't been there, but the team delighted in going back to calling each other Joe, Real Joe, and Boss Jo constantly. They even began the process of forgiving Booker more quickly than they would have because they had to go out of their way to mention “Jojo.”