topino | For Ahn

Each week after the farmer's market, Nicky feels much more confident about cooking for his friends in Darrow. While Rowan has a standing invitation to wander over, the others are more of a challenge that brings Nicky back to cooking in different countries, learning about the local cuisine, and then trying to impress. Tonight, he's brought Ahn over to show off his bibimbap, which he's been working on perfecting for over seventy years.

Yes, it's been a while, but he thinks it will do the trick.

Before Ahn comes over, Nicky makes sure that anything private (or, rather, concerning) is hidden away. That means the sword, Joe's journal, but also the sniper rifle he's building all go in a locked dresser in the bedroom. With that no longer needing to be worried about, Nicky returns to the kitchen, with the door unlocked, eager to have the house smelling of a homecooked meal by the time Ahn arrives.

He knows there's plenty to learn and improve on, and he's hoping that Ahn won't be stingy with any of his feedback when it comes to the meal.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Yusuf is three years older than me," Nicky says, as if this is a great and vast difference, "but we died at the same time, in the same moment," he says, even though it might have been seconds apart. For all that he cares, it had been the same time.

"We have been together nine hundred and twenty-one years," he says proudly, always wishing for more. "I will love him another nine centuries, another nine hundred, he is the love of my life," he says simply. "I thought he was my enemy, but we were given a gift, not of immortality, but of one another. He is my destiny and my gift."

Ahn watches with wide eyes as Nicky speaks, trying to imagine it; being with someone for so long and still loving them all along. That's what he thinks love should be, likes to think that's how his parents were, maybe hoped he'd have that with someone.

"Hyung," he says, voice wobbling as he tries not to tear up, "I didn't know you were so romantic."

Nicky gives a soft huff of laughter. "No," he says, and it's kind. "I am not a romantic. My husband, Yusuf, he is the romantic. I've just been exposed to it for so long that I've picked it up." That and he truly does think it was destiny that brought them together, and that this gift of immortality is only a gift because of him.

He misses him so much, more than he can say, but he doesn't want to show it. "I think you are distracting us from talking about your abilities," he points out.

"No I'm not," Ahn pouts, but only because Nicky isn't wrong. It's still strange to talk about his power openly, and not only because he's kept it to himself for so long. Some days Ahn feels like he doesn't know anything at all about the power he's lived with for fifteen years, and it makes him feel small and stupid.

"I truly don't know much about it," he admits. "I wanted to help people with it, but that's hard when I can't control it at all. My hyung always wanted me to practice more, and I've been trying it here. Just a little."

Nicky raises a brow like he might think about challenging him on it, but he doesn't. After all, he's much kinder than that. Or so he wants people to think, who haven't known him for most of his life and know how dry his humour can be.

"Then you have to practice," he says matter of factly. It's different than his ability, because there's no skill in it, but there is skill in the multitude of talents and skills he's picked up over the centuries. "It's like cooking, yes? If you want to get better, you have to practice."

"I know, I know," Ahn grumbles, but it's good-natured. Nicky sounds like Sungmo, always going on about how he had to keep practicing and figuring out his power, though Sungmo had no more idea of what to do or what they were dealing with than Ahn had.

He holds a hand out to Nicky, palm up and fingers steady despite the anxious energy starting to race through him. "Just a little bit. Maybe I can try to see something good...but you have to be okay if I see other bad things, hyung. About you."

Nicky focuses very hard on something simple. He thinks about Malta and the smell of the citrus trees wafting with the seabreeze. "If you see bad things, I will understand," he promises, "but I don't want to hurt you intentionally. If you see a bad thing, let go or tell me to pull away," he says very seriously.

Malta, he thinks. The villa, the trees, the sunset, the food.

And then he rests his palm on top of Ahn's and waits.

Nicky is so calm, and Ahn wishes he could be the same; as much as he learns from Lan Wangji about meditation and calm, it's hard to remember when faced with touching someone and knowing it's coming. It has gotten better and Ahn thinks he's learning, but the way the anxiety burns through his limbs is a feeling he's all too used.

Then Nicky touches him, and there's no more thinking. There's just blood and sweat and a flash of warm sky completely at odds with the heat and pain of battle and Ahn rips his hand away from Nicky's when a bright, searing flash of pain slips rips through him.

Ahn curls his hands against his chest and drops his head to the table, the surface cool against his cheek as he breathes through the memory of the adrenaline and the pain. He breathes the way Lan Wangji has taught him, yet still is impatient because he'd seen something.

"Hyung," Ahn gasps, "it was a battle, with swords. And I think...I think someone killed you. It hurt. But I saw something else for a moment. I saw a sky, and it was peaceful."

Nicky narrows his eyes in thought. He doesn't react poorly to the thought of being murdered, because he's been murdered many times before. "I think you have to be more specific," he confesses, seeing as it's not like he's been killed under a sky just once.

It's been peaceful a few times, honestly, but there, of course, are three times he was killed that mean more than the others. "Did you see another man?" he coaxes. "Feel it? Warm eyes, soft smile, the most handsome thing in the world?"

"Did you feel love?" he coaxes.

"The most handsome man in the world? You're greasy," Ahn says with a soft laugh, and he lifts his head again to rub at his face, digging his thumbs into his temples to relieve some of the lingering pain.

He hasn't felt pain like this before, though he wonders if that's because Nicky is much different from others he's touched before. Dead bodies in the morgue, those have almost always been accidents of sorts, a rush of adrenaline and an image to impart on Ahn when he reads them. Nicky has felt a lot of pain, and Ahn wonders if that is part of it. Maybe the more pain, the stronger the memory, and the stronger he will feel it.

"It felt nice," he says after a moment, not sure how to put it into words. Ahn isn't entirely sure he knows what love even feels like. "It was peaceful, and felt safe compared to...everything else."

Nicky feels terrible that he's caused Ahn any pain, but the smile on his face is one of longing and peace. "That would be my experience with Yusuf, then." He cannot imagine any other time he has died and then followed it up with such emotions.

"We killed each other. Many times," he says, taking a deep breath as he sighs and thinks of what Joe is doing now, at home. "I'm sorry you had to feel my death. I imagine they were my first deaths, in Jerusalem, at the wall. The time I found out I was immortal."

Ahn is silent for a moment. He wonders how Nicky can stand to have been alive for so long and survived so many deaths - yet still be himself. As far as Ahn can tell, Nicky is still very much sane, which is amazing. Especially if he's been through so much more than the very small sample of pain Ahn has felt so far.

He'd rather not focus on that though, but instead on that other feeling. It's the first time he's felt something maybe on purpose, and something that isn't a terrible memory seared into someone's psyche. He clings to the feeling.

"Is that what love really feels like?" he asks, leaning down to fold his arms on the table and rest his chin on them. Maybe he'd felt that way with Jaein, but Ahn isn't sure. He feels comfort when he thinks of Sungmo and Jisoo, but only in the same way he feels in the few memories he has left of his parents. Love, familial or romantic, still feels strange and Ahn isn't sure he has a complete idea of what it truly is.

Nicky is not truly sure who he is or what love is, anymore. He doesn't know if what he feels is love, only that he feels more for Joe than he's ever felt for anyone, and he wakes up each day knowing that it is something that grows with every year, every decade, and every perfect moment together.

"I wish I could say," he admits. "I know it is what love feels like to me. I love Joe, but I have loved Joe for nearly a thousand years. I don't know if this is what it would feel to you," he confesses, but also knows that this is okay.

For Ahn

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject