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As much as Nicky likes to think he’s open-minded to the marvels of modernity, some vestiges of the Middle Ages still cling to him. Namely, that he finds short-cropped hair strange. He and Joe spent much time in Constantinople, which for centuries was dominated by richly-clad emperors parading around with long dark curls and all the people who imitated them. They also lived in Isfahan, where everyone’s hair was gloriously flowy underneath the sarbands . It was much the same in the Almoravid Maghreb. Some men in Western Christendom cut their hair short in Nicky’s day, but most were knights who had simply grown tired of getting their hair caught in their helmets.
In the nineteenth century, he and Joe experimented with relatively shorter hairstyles, but neither of them could ever bring themselves to go shorter than at least a few inches. They’ve left their hair shoulder-length for the last thirty or so years, and Nicky has been happy as a clam. He loves Joe’s hair long. For one, it is unspeakably beautiful. It also reminds him of history, of the churning mess of time behind them, a mythical age when they had only known each other for a few months and he sank his hands into those curls for the first time.
All that is to say, he cannot help but notice in 1996 when they find themselves on Crete that the long Byzantine curls have been replaced by clipper cuts. As he strolls side-by-side with Joe along the old harbor of Chania, the other people they pass (especially the elderly ones) give them both disdainful looks, as if they are unkempt hooligans. Perhaps the looks are being directed at Joe because he looks vaguely Ottoman, but Nicky also knows that conservative Greek towns probably don’t appreciate young men with long hair who look like they frequent Guns N’ Roses concerts. Nicky remembers a time, a few centuries ago, when this very harbor was filled with nothing but brown-skinned men with long curly hair tied back in dashing ponytails. But Greeks like to forget the past just as much as they love to remember it.
They don’t stay in Chania for long. They rent a motorcycle and high-tail it through the mountainous core of the island to the opposite side, where things are quieter. It is late summer, and the hiking trails and beaches are reeling in tourists like magnets, but there are still some sacred spots where the tourists won’t go because there isn’t a cushy hotel. They go where they always go when they have time off and decide to spend it on Crete—a secluded little cave in the bluffs around Sougia that has remained untouched by everyone but them since the 1500s. Their love affair began in the inhospitable desert between the Crusader States and Egypt; roughing it out in the wilderness is an act of romance for them. They don’t need hotels with whirlpool bathtubs and continental breakfasts and toilets that shoot water into your ass.
The cave is exactly as they left it eighty or so years ago. He smiles when he sees the Y & N they carved into the wall with a stone.
“Are we swimming?” Nicky asks, turning to his beloved, whose hair is long and beautiful and curly and so sexy the Greek γιαγιάδες can’t even comprehend it. The sun is already starting to set, and he wants to hurry up and start relaxing now . The only reason they are on vacation at all is because there was an unusual lull in jobs and Andy begrudgingly set them free until she could find the next suitable catastrophe for the team to intervene in. Nicky will admit it, he and Joe are notoriously difficult to get ahold of once they have been turned loose. They tend to get completely lost in each other and forget about everything else. This time, they agreed to bring a cell phone. Joe has already tossed it into the far corner of the cave as if it’s a venomous snake.
“Yeah. Let’s swim.” he says with a smile.
By the time they have reached the beach, the sun is gone and only ambient blue and peach twilight remains. It doesn’t matter; the Mediterranean is warm, and the breeze sweeping down from the cliffs is mild. Nicky has all of his clothes off in the time it takes Joe to undo half the buttons on his shirt, and he runs into the water. He has loved this sea for longer than some empires have lasted.
He wades out until he is submerged to his waist, and briefly ducks under to wet his hair. When he re-emerges, he wipes the salty water off his face and slicks his hair back. As his palms slide over it, he looks back at Joe. His beloved has stopped moving entirely, shirt half off, and is staring shamelessly at Nicky. Nicky smirks; he knows that look too well. He gives Joe a come hither stare, perfected over centuries. He once pulled him away from a conversation with Monet with it. Not bad for a former priest.
Joe strips with great urgency and crashes through the shallows to get to Nicky’s side. At the last moment, he dives under, and then Nicky feels hands on his legs, drifting up his inner thighs, a beard softened by water rubbing one asscheek. He grins.
They swim quite chastely for a while, except for a few sneaky gropes. Nicky commends himself as a man of great self-restraint; Joe’s hair is even more gorgeous when wet, when the ringlets of his curls are sleek and defined, black as ink, pouring over his muscular shoulders. The sight of them hasn’t grown old even after all this time. If anything, he’s weaker for them now. Perhaps now that they are a little more culturally unorthodox, he appreciates them more; he isn’t sure. All he knows is that he’s just as inexplicably aroused by Joe as he was when they first met and such feelings horrified him.
They eventually return to the shore, sharing warm looks without words on the way. Joe’s longer legs carry him ahead of Nicky to their clothes in the sand, and the figure he cuts… When they are naked in nature, it is easy to forget what age they are living in; time ceases to exist at all. He admires Joe, thinks him the ideal picture of human beauty in any age. He stares too long, slows down too much, because Joe looks over his shoulder, catches him, and smirks.
“What?” he says smugly. He already knows what .
Nicky sidles closer and slides his hands up Joe’s arms, pressing their bare stomachs together. He gives him one soft, lingering kiss.
“You are so handsome. Just the sight of you, I fall to pieces.” Nicky murmurs, running his fingers over Joe’s long curls, worshipful. “ Shahanshah , king of kings, you are Zoroaster.”
Joe grins, preening. “And you say you aren’t a poet.”
“If you weren’t mine, I would do anything.” Nicky brushes their noses together, running his hands over Joe’s glorious beard. “Anything. For a look, a touch. Whatever you asked of me, I would be your slave.”
“Anything, hm?” Joe says, voice quiet and deep. He leans in close, brushes their lips together as he says: “Lie down, then, and spread your legs.”
A rush of heat sweeps over Nicky so powerful that his knees buckle and he would be obeying even if he didn’t want to. He sinks to the ground and lies back, opening his thighs for Joe’s viewing pleasure. Offering it all to the sculpted marble statue towering over him, with the flowing curls like an ancient god, like Zeus come down to the mortal world to seduce another unworthy creature. Nicky wants nothing more than to be his Europa, ferried away to Crete for him to have his way with. Joe kneels between his legs and when he leans forward to kiss him, his hair falls around them like a curtain. Nicky whines and clings to his arms.
Joe always knows what Nicky wants without needing to be told, and so he fucks him like a Cordoba caliph would a girl in his harem. He is pure yang , forceful and assertive while yin Nicky yields. He holds Nicky down, pins his thighs back, pushes inside. Takes what’s his, doesn’t hesitate to make sure he’s okay. Nicky is strong, he takes him. Grips his forearms where they are braced on the ground and moans loudly, appreciatively, so that his shahanshah knows how much he loves it, has no cause whatsoever to doubt the depth of Nicky’s loyalty. So that Nicky will be his favorite. To entice him more, he wraps his arms around Joe’s shoulders and pulls him down into a ferocious kiss, twisting his hands in his curls and pulling. He squeezes around his cock, shifting his hips so that the head drags in and out of the wet vice. Joe groans into his mouth and then shoves Nicky away, pins him back onto the ground with two hands on his chest and pounds him hard like an animal. Nicky is happy to be dominated. He cries for the beautiful Yusuf al-Kaysani until he comes, gasping, thighs shaking, there in the sand.
When they eventually return to the cave, they are softer with each other, the first tsunami of lust abated. They get into the bedroll in order to sleep, but they can’t seem to stop kissing and hugging and touching each other. Nicky might die it feels so good. He clings to Joe, biting his lip, as his beloved runs fingertips up and down his spine and kisses his throat like he is the most precious thing in all the universe. He buries his face in Joe’s hair when he starts murmuring painfully tender endearments in a form of Maghrebi Arabic that no one but them speaks anymore.
“Yusuf, if you persist in that—” Nicky isn’t even really sure where he’s going with that sentence. That feeling that always starts consuming them when they’re alone together, that feeling that makes everything else in the mortal plane fall away, that makes them feel like two nebulae colliding in the wheel of time and space, is filling him, making it impossible for him to string two words together. It’s okay, because Joe gets it. He’s right there with him, like always.
“Yeah.”
Joe’s hard cock is suddenly nudging his hip, leaving a smear of wetness. Nicky gasps, digs his nails into Joe’s back. This time is them holding each other close with hands on the backs of necks, Nicky staring down between their bodies at Joe entering him when he can manage to keep his eyes open against the pleasure, Joe kissing his forehead.
They fall asleep on their sides facing each other, Nicky twining one of Joe’s curls around his finger.
An incessant ringing is what wakes them, sometime long after the sun has risen. Nicky blinks awake, frowning as he struggles to sit up under the weight of Joe’s arm and half his body. He looks around, eyes still blurry, trying to find the source of the horrible cacophony. And then he remembers the cell phone. After a panicked scramble out of bed in which he might have accidentally kicked Joe in the side, he fishes it out from behind a rock.
“ Pronto. ” he says breathlessly, answering.
“Nicky, man, we’ve been calling since last night. I’ve called at least fifteen times. What’s the point of bringing a cell phone if you’re never gonna answer it?” It’s Booker.
“Sorry, sorry.” Nicky is embarrassed now that he isn’t drowning in the soup of insane passion for Joe and his gorgeous hair. “Do we need to come back to Roma?”
“Yeah, Andy wants you guys back as soon as possible. ‘Yesterday,’ she says. America just bombed southern Iraq.”
The last century would have been much more peaceful for the team if not for America sticking its nose (and its guns) in everyone else’s business. Nicky sighs and tells Booker they’ll be on the first flight they can catch, then hangs up.
“We gotta go?” Joe mumbles, still half-asleep. He leans up on one elbow, rubbing his eyes with his other hand. The thin blanket falls to pool immodestly in his lap, and Nicky is treated to the sight of his chest hair and happy trail. He is reminded again of Zeus. He inhales, holds the air in his lungs, tries valiantly to keep the lust-soup at bay.
A moment later, he’s yanking the blanket away and straddling Joe’s lap. Joe grins sleepily and grabs his hips.
“Neither of them ever come to Crete. They don’t know how long it takes to get from one coast to the other. If we leave a little late, who will be the wiser?” Nicky murmurs.