Malta

[peace_inthe_violence]

This is a fairy tale of blood and bullets
It is the story of three men and three women and a small island between Italy and Africa.
This is a story about tragedy and pain, about healing and hope, but mostly it is about
love.

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[peace_inthe_violence]

He rolled onto his side as Joe finished his work, blue eyes watching the long strokes of his husband's fingers. He loved watching Joe work, be it painting or sketching or any other media that Joe decided to try.

Reaching out a finger, he trailed it along her skin, careful not to touch anywhere near the still setting design. "It is beautiful, cuore. You make us beautiful." He smiled up at the man, letting his fingers trail off Andy's skin. "I want to kiss you, but you are very far away and I am very full of pizza."

[orgilotes]

"Joe makes everyone beautiful," Andy agreed softly, only turning enough to be able to see Nicky and smile.

"It's his talent." The sword, the skill with weapons, that was only a byproduct of their life. Joe had always had a way with art, written or drawn or whatever other kind. She chuckled at the comment about being full of pizza: he'd eaten all of his despite them trying to help, and had poked his fork into the back of he hand to make sure she didn't take any slices. It did make her slowly, carefully lever herself up, careful not to jar or crease the artwork as she settled on her knees between Nicky's shins, head tilted up. Expectant.

[peace_inthe_violence]

Never come between an Italian and their pizza.

He grinned as she sat up, shifting himself upright so that when she settled between his knees all he had to do was lean forward and touch their lips together.

It was quick and chaste, but there was a flash of teeth nipping at her lower lip as he pulled away.

"You are very kind to me."

[orgilotes]

"And you to me, Nicky," she murmured softly, settling her weight back on her heels as she tugged him back. It wasn't for another kiss, just to rest their heads against each other. It was calming, grounding having them so close, and Nicky was by far the most physically demonstrative of them, though Joe was a close second.

"Thank you for bringing us all here."

[transfuge]

Booker groaned with annoyance when his pillow moved. Why Nicky was moving was a mystery to him. He had been dozing, half asleep listening to the familiar murmur of voices and the general noise of the television without much care.

His stomach was full of dough and wine which meant a pre-bedtime nap in his mind. It wasn't like they were talking about anything important.

It was more important that he no longer had a nice warm pillow to rest against. He grumbled as he opened one eye to find out where Nicky had gone. "Damn it. Stop stealing him."

He turned and curled up as much as he could to reclaim a piece of Nicky for himself.

[peace_inthe_violence]

He smiled, his eyes soft and sincere and he opened his mouth to say something that was no doubt sappy...and then Booker realized that he'd moved and what came out instead was a laugh.

"I'm so very sorry, Booker. I did not mean to disturb your nap." He grinned, threading the fingers of one hand through Booker's hair. He gave it a few gentle tugs, then just settled into a rhythm of running his fingers through it.

"This place belongs to all of us, Andy. I built it for us, not me. And certainly not for my husband, who mumbled under his breath the entire project." His grin turned a little wicked as he reached out with a toe to poke at the sensitive place just above Joe's hip bone.

[nicely_tousled]

"Only because then, as now, you refused to use a ladder." It was said with a laugh, and was wholly, unmistakably fond because he had done a fair amount of grumbling about it, but he'd still helped when needed, mostly by making sure Nicky actually slept at regular intervals during the construction.

He shifted himself a little closer with the pigment kit, leaving room for Andy on his other side when she returned to the couch, "Here, give me your hand, I decided what I'm doing." Mostly because he knew Nicky trusted him -as Andy did- to just ink something and know that it would turn out fitting. He did, of course, tap his fingers against the hand not being used to pet Booker like an over-sized, well-contented housecat, because he wasn't going to interrupt that when the other man was finally starting to settle in with them again.

[peace_inthe_violence]

"I did not refuse! I just...found alternative ways down. Those are ceramic shingles, habibi. They get hot. Why walk all the way back across the house to use the ladder when I can get down just as easily at the side I'm on?" It was an old argument, one that wasn't even really an argument anymore. It generally stemmed from the fact that Nicky wasn't really adverse to hurting himself. Most people, healing or no, would avoid a broken ankle. Nicky just accepted it, felt it, and moved on with his life.

It came with the whole '11th century priest' thing.

Shifting around, carefully so as to not disrupt Booker again, he gladly gave over his hand to his husband.

[nicely_tousled]

"Yes, and you could have just asked me to move the ladder, or gotten a second ladder." Definitely not actually an argument anymore, but an old, familiar kind of discussion, and as point of fact there was a second ladder now, though one that rarely saw use.

He had already started drawing even as he spoke, a small tangle of roots down across the back of Nicky's hand, the leaves and stalks came next, working up his forearm just as carefully as he'd picked out the ravens across Andy's shoulders, it would be a Hellebore when it was finished, a Christmas Rose, one of the first stories Nicky had told him once they'd finally stopped trying to kill each other and started trying to figure out what had happened to them.

[transfuge]

"What are you doing?" Booker had resettled but when he first closed his eyes he was pretty sure Andy had a shirt on. Now Joe was drawing on Nicky's hand? What had he missed by almost immediately dropping off to sleep?

Not that he cared too much when Nicky was still petting him. Joe, ever the talented artist, was able to draw on the skin of Nicky's freehand while his husband tended to a temperamental, sleepy Frenchman.

He inched a little closer to Nicky to get a better view and also snuggle some more. Since coming here he was a lot more interested in affection than before.

[orgilotes]

"Tattoos," Andy said lightly, relaxed and content around the others as she draped herself over the arm of the couch where there was room and where the pigment wouldn't be smudged off her skin.

"Won't last forever, but they'll last longer than trying to get a real one." The wounds just closed up--as Booker would have remembered, when she'd made him re-pierce one of her ears with a potato and a safety pin after the ring in it had been torn out, and the whole thing had healed over again. "Think about what you want him to draw on you, Book."

[peace_inthe_violence]

"You bought me a second ladder, hayati, why ever would I need to get myself a third?" But he was grinning, wide and open and so close to laughter. He flexed a clean finger just enough to barely stroke his husband's hand. A world of emotion in barely a centimetre of intentional contact.

Booker wiggled in closer and Nicky's fingers drifted from threading through his hair to tugging at it lightly. He loved it when Booker was this affectionate with them. It hadn't happened in far too long, and even before it had usually only been an option after thoroughly exhausting the man between their bodies. To have him so languid and cuddly now was almost enough to make him not whine when Andy moved out from between his knees.

Almost.

[nicely_tousled]

Joe shifted just slightly as Andy returned, mostly to give her space to tuck her feet between the cushion and his thigh, he didn't know if her feet still got cold like they had when they were still early in the process of getting to know each other, but he hadn't ever minded helping warm them, human furnace that he was.

"Considering that you don't use the second one, caro mia," The only time he used that particular endearment was when they were already teasing because it generally just made Nicky laugh, "A third would probably just be used for shelving." His smile was entirely fond and his expression went as close to actually being cartoon heart-eyed as possible at that touch, but he nodded at Andy's explanation, "You've got a good fifteen minutes to decide on something, probably twenty." He knew what he was doing, but it was careful work so as not to lay the lines down too heavily.

[transfuge]

"Tattoos?" He sat up just a little to see what Joe was drawing now. It looked like a whole bunch of lines at the moment but he knew it would come together fairly quickly under Joe's attention. "I guess I'll think of something."

But he could already feel the idea taking shape in his mind. There wasn't much Booker wanted permanent on his body or as permanent as his body would allow. Four names and a symbol of some sort.

Booker settled back down now that he had a better idea of what was happening. He wouldn't be going back to sleep any time soon though if Joe needed to draw on him in twenty minutes.

[orgilotes]

"More than that if Nicky decides to put his other hand to use," Andy teased lightly, leaning her chin on Joe's shoulder as he worked. She liked seeing the process of Joe creating something, gently working art from nothing with just a pencil--or in this case a bottle of ink with a tiny nozzle.

"Maybe you'll tell me what he drew on me by the time you go under," she said, relaxing even in her scrunched-up position on the arm of the couch, toes burrowing under Joe's thigh. "And then we get to decide what the rest of us are doing on Joe."

[peace_inthe_violence]

That goofy name did not fail. There was a small bark of laughter from the man turned pillow, but he was careful to keep his hand still under his husband's hands. "A ladder as a shelf would make a poor shelf, my love. Perhaps a bookshelf instead?"

Booker sat up and his hand slipped from his hair to his shoulder instead, fingers automatically setting up a little swirling nonsense pattern over Sebastien's shirt. He was mimicking the motions of Joe's skill with his own lack of it, but it gave his fingers something to do and Booker didn't seem to mind it too much.

"Something on your chest perhaps? I think that would be a fine canvas.

"Oh..wait. We get to mark you, my love?" The smirk was back. "I shall give you my best doodle."

Do not let him draw on anyone.

[nicely_tousled]

"There's a mirror in the bathroom, boss, you can always go look. We'll still be here when you get back." He lifted the ink away again so that he could turn to press a kiss to her temple, though he set back to work even as he nodded an agreement both to Nicky's statement about Booker's chest making for a good canvas, and at the question that followed.

"He's right, it would." He replied to the first, adding: "And of course you do, it's only fair, though I think I should at least specify that something decided by committee is fine, but pick a spokesperson to draw it."

[transfuge]

Booker hummed at the suggestion. He supposed his chest was as good as any other part of him. It was a bigger canvas than Nicky's hand. It wouldn't hurt since it was just an ink that stained.

"I see your plan. You're trying to get me shirtless like you did with Andy." He jerked his chin in her direction. It'd be nice to touch her but he would disturb Joe's drawing to do it. It was never a good idea to disturb an artist at work.

"Between the three of us I have the most steady hand and some drawing skill." Those years of forgeries and counterfeiting had been good for more than just occasionally filling their pockets. "Nicky drawing anything makes me think it'll look like a birthmark of some kind and nothing else."

[orgilotes]

Andromache snorted gently at Booker's teasing, flinging her discarded shirt across at his head with a laugh. "If the point was to get me shirtless they didn't even enjoy the nice part," she said dryly, entirely sarcastic: she liked her body well enough, it did what she needed it to and she took care of it. Her breasts were entirely a side-effect, though a nice one.

"Don't look at me, I can write my name but not do art like you all. Unless you can do lip-prints with this stuff."

[nicely_tousled]

"I wouldn't advise it." He replied, shaking his head, "Takes a while to set, sure, but it's not like ink where it would actually take the same way, end up just with smudges." He cocked his head, almost a shrug, still focused on what he was doing, already partway finished with the leaves and fairly certain it was recognizable even without the blossoms yet, "And probably tastes terrible."

He finally glanced up from what he was doing, shooting Booker a crooked smile, "And I think that means you just got volunteered to draw it, once you all decide."

[peace_inthe_violence]

"I can take a picture for you, but you have to wait until I can move." He kept himself from jerking his hand when that wadded up shirt went flying by his head, but it was a close thing and he lightly gripped Booker's hair to give him a little shake.

"I'm supposed to be still, not fending off a battle between you two." But he was smiling and his gentle grip smoothed out to more pets. His gaze returned to his husband's work on his hand...and his expression softened to the point that one could almost call it sappy as he recognized the pattern emerging on his skin.

"Habibi, it's beautiful." He pressed a careful kiss to Joe's shoulder, then laid his cheek against his arm so he could watch him work. "And I don't know what they want to put on you, but I know what I want to do. So, it looks like you'll have two people drawing on you.

"I promise to do my best to not make it look like an ink spill."