Chapter Text
Words had never been encouraged in Nicolo’s early life.
Silence was a virtue for him as a child, and when he took his vows, he only spoke to deliver the Mass and the various sacraments.
Certainly no one cared about his opinion when he was sent to die outside Jerusalem. And, when Nicolo saw what they had done to the city, when he died and rose again and died and rose again in an absolute mockery of the Resurrection, he realized that there were no praises to be sung of what they had done to this city, to this people. He abandoned any hymns, rejected any apologism - there was only shame, bitter and deep to the core of him, stealing away what was left of his voice.
Then there was Yusuf.
Yosef, Nicolo tried the first night after they ran away, earning him a smile and a quick flicker of words from the man, words he couldn’t follow yet.
He did understand that he hadn’t quite said it right.
“Yusef,” he tried again on the second day, and that earned him an even brighter smile and a flowing of words with a clear meaning:
That was better.
Nicolo blushed as he adjusted his pack, and they continued walking down the dirt road.
“Shajara,” Yusuf said, pointing to a tree at the side of the road.
“Sh-shager-a?” Nicolo repeated awkwardly, and Yusuf laughed.
His mind wandered, and long-familiar words that were not his, but suddenly held new meaning, sprung to the front of his thoughts: And God said let there be Light … and God saw that it was Good.
“Shajara,” he said, more clearly this time, pointing at the next tree they passed. He had practiced it, over and over again in his head, hoping to see another of the scrubby, little pines.
“ʾAnā faḫūrun ǧiddan bik!” Yusuf said, and it was clearly praise this time -- Nicolo let himself think that it was praise, and he smiled at the hard-packed dirt they walked over.
It was like that, always.
Even before they learned to fully speak to one another - usually a mixture of Genoese and Arabic so convoluted and personal that passerbys would struggle to comprehend - Yusuf was effusive, generous, constant in his praise.
It made Nicolo hot all over, worried that he did not deserve such kindness heaped upon him. It made Nicolo cold in his stomach, that he was not sure how to return it. His life before had been so austere - any gifts were accredited to God, and he had given up all earthly things including recognition when he took the cloth.
But that life was gone, and now there was only Yusuf, Yusuf al-Kaysani, who had come from the north of Africa, who had defended a holy city against an unholy war ( forgive me, Nicolo thinks, forgive me, if there is a phrase he will learn and unlearn and learn again in every language for the rest of his time on this earth it will be forgive me, and it will still be not enough).
They built a home, and lost it to bandits. They built a home, and lost it to fire. They built a home, and moved on and on and on, afraid to put roots down in a world that was so determined to change when they could no longer change.
One day at the start of the twelfth century, Yusuf returned to their little hut at the edge of Aleppo, his curls dusty from travel; Nicolo watched him from across the room, lust and something so-much-more-than-lust ( which is worse , he thought with that lingering guilt that he’d had when he was a man who could die, it is so much worse to love him because I will never stop; there is no satisfaction in a love like this ) clawing up his throat and blocking him from forming any words with any sense.
Yusuf smiled at him kindly and opened the sack he had carried down the long and dusty road from the city center; he had brought a goat to market, one of their healthiest, seeking out trades for items that could not be created with what they had. He removed textiles, a small collection of figs, some hard cheeses that made Nicolo’s stomach growl to think of -
And then, a little parcel wrapped in paper, pressed into his hands. Yusuf crossed the room quickly, so that he was not watching as Nicolo unwrapped it. He pulled out a chunk of soap which had been rounded into a round, pretty thing. Just last week, he had been complaining that their soap was too coarse (which had made Yusuf tease him with any excuse to skip a bath, you filthy Frank ). He brought it to his nose and smelled, humming as he recognized the scent of lavender.
“Thank you,” Nicolo murmured, looking up to see Yusuf smiling at him. His eyes crinkled so perfectly when he smiled like that. Nicolo couldn’t breathe. “You - you are too good to me, Yusuf.”
He spoke in Arabic, which had, in the past, gave him the added cover of a mistaken word or a lost meaning to hide how little words he had - but now he wanted Yusuf to hear him, and to hear how he meant it.
“It was nothing,” Yusuf was already saying, but Nicolo continued, determined.
“You are too good,” he insisted, holding the soap like Holy Communion as he crossed to be near the other man. He tucked the soap back into Yusuf’s palm and looked him in the eyes, forcing himself to keep speaking. “You are a good man.” He swallowed. “The best I have ever known.”
Yusuf’s eyes fluttered, and he looked down. It was the first Nicolo had ever seen Yusuf look bashful, and he found that he liked it.
So, he tried again. “I am thankful for you. God gave me a great gift when he gave you eternal life.”
“Is that so?” Yusuf asked, lifting his chin again to look him in the eye.
Nicolo nodded, taking a step closer. He wasn’t sure what to say; he was running out of words. How could Yusuf make entire speeches when he struggled so much to form a sentence?
“I would not want to be on this earth without you,” he said, watching how Yusuf inhaled, his chest rising and falling, eyes searching Nicolo’s face.
And then they were kissing, a messy tangle due to its novelty. But they had time, Nicolo thought, they had time and time and time to make this perfect, and he would learn how to tell Yusuf in a thousand ways how much he cared for him.
For now, he had this, and he pretended it was a speech as he pressed his tongue inside Yusuf’s mouth, and he pretended he could deserve Yusuf’s kindness as he licked behind his teeth, and he pretended that these were hymns he sang once more as he moaned Yusuf’s name to whoever was still listening to them.
The poetry he composed in his head as he brought Yusuf to ecstasy that first time had words beyond human comprehension, and the poetry that flowed from Yusuf’s lips as he tangled fingers in Nicolo’s hair to hold him close was beyond comparison.
This is our scripture, Nicolo thought victoriously as he clung to Yusuf in their bed, this will be our catechism.
And he had eternity to figure out the words to capture it.
Nicolas was a quiet man.
Sebastien - Booker now - had noticed this from the start.
Joseph could speak for hours on end, and Andrea could wield her wit like a rapier, only her grief holding her back from making pretty speeches. Booker knew not the shape nor the size of Andrea’s grief, but as he sat at his wife’s grave and tilted his head back against rain-slicked sandstone, he thought at last he knew the shadow of it.
But still, she spoke and shared her wisdom. Joseph spoke and shared his passion.
Nicolas would speak when addressed directly, and only then.
This was not to say that he was an ass; no, not at all. He was kind in his actions, gentle in his tone when inspired to speech, and his eyes were bright and shared his meaning quite well enough on their own.
But whatever mysteries were in Nicolas’s head remained there, and he was often found lost in thought in between battles and death and the shitholes they stumbled into often.
Conversely, Joseph was effusive in his encouragement to Booker as they went through the century; decades slipped past, and Joseph was unwavering in his kind words, in his praise in French and Arabic and all the languages in between. He could draw a smile from Andy like poison from a wound; he could charm extra meat off any butcher in the city; he could get Booker to talk about his children long after they were in the grave.
Silent and loquacious; friendly and distant. Two strange halves of a coin that Booker understood in a vague sense to be of the same forge as destiny. They loved each other deeply, but they also loved Andrea and Booker, so he tried not to be jealous of the bond that existed between the men, even if he rarely saw them converse, much less embrace as a couple would.
Then, one night in 1896, outside Kiev, he stumbled into the kitchen of their safehouse, pale with shock and sweating under the collar.
Andrea was there, already drinking from a bottle of vodka.
“You look like you saw a ghost.” She handed him the bottle when he sat down across from her, but he waved it off and pulled out his flask.
“Not a ghost,” he said hoarsely. “Something else.”
“Oh?” She lifted an eyebrow and took another pull of liquor.
Three times he tried and failed to say what he had witnessed, and at last, with a kick from Andrea under the table, he managed to say:
“I did not know … Nicolas knew that many words.”
“Hm?” Andrea was intrigued now, and leaned forward.
“I saw,” Booker wetted his lip and sought the words. “They were in their … marriage bed,” he finally landed on the phrase as his explanation. His ears burned from the memory, and if he were being honest, his pants were tighter than normal.
“Ah.” Andrea laughed and knocked back another sip. “Surprised it’s taken you that long to see it. It’s been fairly constant the last half dozen centuries. It doesn’t bother you, I hope?”
She said it casually, but her hand had also gone to her axe which so rarely left her side; Booker eyed it before answering honestly.
“Not at all.”
“So?” Andrea released her axe and gave him a strange look. “Why are you so upset?”
“Because.” Booker drank from his own flask. “Like I said, I have never heard Nicolas string together that many words at once. I don’t think I’ve heard him say that many words, total, in the last three decades.”
Andrea stared at him and then burst out laughing, a sound all the more delightful for its rarity.
Inside the small bedroom, Yusuf lifted his head from the pillow and looked towards the door.
“Is that Andy?” He asked, but a hot hand at his balls had him moaning and losing the train of thought completely.
“We can find out later,” Nicolo assured him, rolling his hips and grinding down, impaling himself further on Yusuf’s cock. “Fuck, caro mio, your cock - I swear to God, your cock is the most perfect thing in all creation.”
“You feel good too,” Yusuf said, arching his back, fingers scrabbling at Nicolo’s hips as they continued to shift deliciously above him.
“You feel so good inside me,” Nicolo echoed, placing Yusuf’s hand on his flushed chest; he clenched around Yusuf demonstratively, rendering the normally effusive man temporarily mute besides a drawn out moan. “Fuck, if I ever have to die and remain dead, I should want your cock inside me, fucking me into oblivion, Jesus Christ, Yusuf, Yusuf, I want you to come inside me-”
Yusuf laughed weakly and thrust up into Nicolo more forcefully, watching dazedly as Nicolo’s slender cock bounced with the movement. “I am more than fine with that-”
Nicolo reached behind himself to hold Yusuf’s balls lightly, a gentle touch that he’d learned Yusuf loved years ago, rolling the delicate skin between his fingers - his other hand stretched out to scrape the back of one nail against Yusuf’s dark brown nipple, and then with a higher-pitched moan, Yusuf came. And Nicolo spoke to him throughout all of it:
“The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, the most perfect, most incredible, fuck, yes, give it to me, give me all of it, I want it, I want you so badly-”
With Yusuf utterly spent and panting underneath him, Nicolo grinned at him in victory.
“Who taught you how to talk like that?” Yusuf half-groaned, half-laughed, wiping a hand down his sweaty face.
“Oh, Monsieur Joseph, my husband did,” Nicolo answered cheekily in French, “mon mari m'a appris,” smiling without reservation as he gazed down upon Yusuf.
Still laughing, Yusuf wrapped a hand around Nicolo’s cock and stroked it until Nicolo was once again out of words to share.
Nile watches her family intently after she sweeps the back of the room; they always put her in the back, her and Joe, and she wonders about it until Yusuf points out two facts:
First, Andy always goes through first. Second, Nicky would make quite the ruckus throwing himself in front of Nile or Joe to catch a bullet (“so it is more expedient to just let him be next to Andy to begin with”).
Nile asks Nicky, once, about why he feels the need to stand between them and a hail of bullets, and Nicky’s response is soft and brief, the only way she thinks he knows how to speak.
“I acted as the sword of God when I was young, and I caused great evil. Now I am a shield.”
Here in the present, Andy signals that the next hallway branches into two directions. They’re eighteen floors below ground, and the claustrophobia of it all is starting to weigh even on Nile, who’s never been held captive the way the others have.
They quickly communicate that they’ll split in two groups: Andy with Joe; Nicky with Nile. Nile nods, but she can tell from the look Nicky and Joe exchange that this idea brings them both pain. This building is sterile, cold, dark -- far too similar to Merrick.
“Nicolo,” Joe murmurs, almost too softly to hear, as they stand in their two groups, looking in opposite directions.
Wordlessly, Nicky holds up his left hand, ring and middle finger down to his palm, pinkie, thumb, and index all extended. I love you, he signs, leaving his hand in the air as Joe stares at Nicky for a long moment.
Andy hisses to catch his attention, so Nile watches Joe turn and walk swiftly towards Andy; she watches how Nicky’s eyes linger on Joe’s form before he turns and walks in the opposite direction, towards their end of the corridor. Nile files in behind him, gun ready, stomach churning uneasily.
There is no promise the two could make, Nile realizes, not when they both know and felt and have been marked by the scars of separation - not when the ghosts in Andy’s eyes live on, resuscitated nightly by the dreams Nile still gasps awake from, clawing at her throat which is no longer full of water.
There were no words, no oaths to swear that could soften the distance that grows between them, here under the earth where one might be swallowed whole and the other might be spat back out.
Now there is only a silence heavier than words that stretches with every step they take away from each other, growing thick where distance should spread it thin; there is only this oppressive silence that guarantees neither will so much as breathe again until they see their beloved once more. A centuries-old conversation that for now must pause, a conversation that must, for now, occur between hearts, a sacrament made in silence.
No. There are no words for this.