Bad Luck and The Law of Averages (The Old Guard Fanfic)

Chapter 9 - The Same but Different

When Nicky woke up safe in Joe's arms, for a few seconds he forgot where he was and what had happened. He almost rolled over to give his husband a kiss before he remembered everything was not normal.

"Hello," Joe whispered in his ear as he froze. "You can still do it you know."

It was such a habitual thing and his aborted movement must have telegraphed everything he was thinking. He moved slowly, turning in Joe's arms until they were facing each other. He couldn't help it, he searched those deep eyes and expressive features looking for fear, for repulsion. Joe just looked back at him, gaze brimming over with love like always.

"I will love you until the seas run dry, until the stars fall from heaven. I go to sleep with your face in my mind. I wake up with your visage behind my eyes. Nothing will ever change that."

Nicky didn't know what to say. Joe had always been the one with a way with beautiful words and he had no well-meant jibes in him at the moment. His eyes filled with tears and Joe stroked the side of his face. Before he could actually cry, he moved forward and stole the kiss Joe had invited him to take.

"Thank you," were the only words he could find.

"Do not take this the wrong way, light of my life," Joe said filling the gap where Nicky usually added humour, "but I believe we both need to clean our teeth."

Nicky snorted a small laugh at that and managed to just about stop it becoming a hiccupping sob.

Taking a deep breath, he pushed the fear and strain of the last few days down. Now was not the time.

"They need putting down," he said, letting the anger he felt at what Ruth and her sycophants had tried to do to him, what they had threatened to do to those he loved to bubble towards the surface.

"Agreed," was all Joe said, turning and climbing out of bed, pulling him along by the hand.

He followed Joe into the bathroom and everything felt almost normal as they moved through a usual routine. Then Nicky made the mistake of looking in the mirror.

The face he had known for centuries stared back at him, but he felt like he was looking at a stranger, because of what lurked behind his eyes. He looked human, maybe a little paler than he had been. There was nothing in his features that screamed 'monster', but he could sense the edge of difference. He remembered looking at himself in a pool soon after he had first discovered he could not die, it was a remarkably similar experience.

His eyes drifted lower to the silvery white scar on his chest. He touched it with his fingertips and it just felt like normal skin. That he could see it, but he couldn't feel it underlined the impossibility of everything. Nothing made sense.

A sharp snapping sound shocked him out of his spiralling thoughts.

He stared stupidly at his right hand and the two broken bits of his toothbrush.

"My love," Joe was by his side in a moment, touching, soothing. "Nicky."

When Joe gently possessed the cheap plastic remnants, he let him.

"Are we even human?" he asked as he stared at his now empty fingers.

Joe urged him to turn until he was leaning against the sink and facing his husband.

"Of course we are human," Joe told him, cupping the side of his face with one hand.

"We don't die," Nicky said, "they don't die. They aren't human."

"They were," Joe countered. "Maybe they are like us, something that science cannot yet explain."

Nicky laughed.