theoddguard

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BTS Of ‘The Old Guard’

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shit, let’s start a band

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look at andromache and quynh’s costumes in the old guard. because we should totally talk about it and how these characters aren’t sexualized one bit during the entire film. no breast plates. no thigh high slits. no bare midriffs. just warriors wearing clothes designed to protect them in a fight. clothes that represents their character, their origin, not designed to please the male gaze. this is why we need more women in the industry. the old guard is directed by a black woman, produced by women, and has strong lead female characters. support.

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new dumb head canon based on this interview where Luca can’t understand wtf a British person is saying

(source: carielisefletcher)

so during the Merrick scene when Joe says: 

(source: buckeybarns)

that’s just him translating for Nicky who can’t understand wtf Merrick is saying because he doesn’t speak British

(source: buckeybarns)

“you brought us here to talk about mice????”

so yeah new headcanon that Nicky can’t understand British people, which is extremely valid of him

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The Old Guard + text posts (5/?)

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Please watch The Old Guard

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Protective!Nicky

I have to say, in the old guard, I am absolutely living for Protective!Nicky! 

Out of Nicky and Joe, Joe is the more visibly obvious protective of the two. His grand, intimate declaration of love in the convey, and how he deliberately goes to kill Keane after he shoots Nicky are undeniable, very visible representations of Joe’s love and protectiveness towards a Nicky. 

But I think that that very visible, passionate protectiveness can mislead the eye into camouflaging Nicky. Because if you look a little bit closer? Nicky is just as protective of Joe as Joe is of him. Nicky is just a bit quieter about it. 

For the most part, throughout the movie, Nicky is a calming, moralising influence. You never see him get really, outwardly angry- that is, until Joe is hurt.

You can see this at the first ambush, when they’re going to rescue the kidnapped girls, but instead are set up and killed. After they wake up, immediately both Nicky and Joe instinctively look for the other. (Can anybody say soulmates?) You can see the complete and utter relief both feel when they see the other- awake and alive. Together. 

(Credit to @strangehighs for capturing those heart eyes. #soblessed)

But if you look closer at Nicky, at first, all you can see on Nicky’s face is that overwhelming relief. But then as the details of what happened start to register, as he sees the multiple, fresh bullet wounds on Joe’s face… When he sees that Joe was deliberately, maliciously hurt… You can see that relief give way to reveal the holy wrath and insurmountable rage of the angry, righteous crusader he use to be. Sword and all.  

That expression of rage? That’s the face of a man ready to kill a bitch for killing the love of his life. 

I think it’s an interesting commentary on their personalities that before this, Nicky had been the sniper whilst Joe used his scimitar. To be a sniper embodies cool patience, calm breathing and calculating distance. Nicky is very much like that; more laid back, calmer, and more likely to have a cool head. But as you can see here… in this beautiful gif by @wordsofwarning​ …

…after he sees the aftermath of the ambush, when he attacks… He uses his handgun to incapacitate, but his sword for the close up kill. 

It maybe be that he instinctively goes for the weapon that’s been at his side for so many hundreds of years, but I think there’s something poetic in forgoing the distance of a gun for he close up kill of his sword. Because his soulmate had just been killed in front of him, and he wants to protect Joe by exacting retribution, and he’s angry. 

You can see this again when Dudley Dursley Merrick attacks Joe in an infantile, sadistic temper tantrum. Before that, Nicky had been outwardly calm and collected, watching and observing (like a sniper). But the second Joe is hurt? Boom. He loses his composure and flips into angry and protective desperation. 

He gets stabbed for his troubles, but he doesn’t stop desperately fighting and trying to get between the threat and Joe until he sees Joe is okay. 

(This gorgeous gif belongs and one below belong to @beanabouttown )

Nicky might be more cautious, but he’s just as down as Joe is to fight for and with to protect each other. They both protect each other. 

You can see this in Joe and Nicky’s sleeping arrangements. I think I’ve seen this discussed in a post by @sockich But if I can expand on that… In all the times we see them sleeping next to each other, Joe is the big spoon. 

(And can I just say how much I love the parallel between Joe covering Nicky’s back whilst they sleep with how when they’re in fighting formation, Joe is almost always protecting and covering Nicky’s six? *chefs kisses*) At first, it appears that Joe is protecting Nicky, which he is. But if you look a bit closer… Nicky is protecting Joe too. (Equal and reciprocal, together. A partnership.) 

Nicky might be the little spoon but he’s also always putting himself in front of Joe; he’s between Joe and the enemy at the door. Everytime… 

You can see more clearly on this wider shot… 

Nicky is using his body to shield a sleeping Joe, putting his body between Joe and the world outside their sanctuary. (Credit to @malex-yes for these two beautiful gifs!)

And here… (in this beautiful gif by @dinasbracelet !) 

…at every turn, Nicky is protectively shielding Joe from any outside hostiles. Nicky instinctively reaches for his readied loaded gun to protect Joe before they even know what’s going on. 

You want to get to a sleeping, vulnerable Joe? Sorry. You’re going to have to get past a protective Nicky with a loaded gun pointed at you first. 

I think it’s reflective of their partnership that their protectiveness follows the same pattern of their personalities. Joe is more outwardly, visibly passionate, like a wildfire ready to spark into life at any minute. Nicky is calmer, quieter, with steady ground to stand on… until Joe is hurt, and then he erupts outwards, like a volcano. 

So, td:lr; Joe and Nicky are both as protective of each other, equally reciprocal. Nicky is just quieter about it. 

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When Joe said 'we killed each other' and Nicky said 'many times' with that smirk...was I the only one who thought he was referring to la petite mort...

Like, I know they literally killed each other repeatedly but...

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Now knowing Nicky was a former priest, I think his romantic and sexual experience would be limited. The first time they kiss, have sex - is it Joe who guides Nicky, patiently teaching and showing him. Bit by bit because he doesn't want to overwhelm Nicky. Sometimes Nicky wonders how Joe know what he knows, curious and almost certainly a little jealous.

Anonymous said: I have a headcanon that with Nicky having been a priest, that he was a virgin when he met Joe (I don't know enough about Islam to know their ways about virginity and their warriors, etc.)... so how's about Joe's being careful and loving for Nicky's first time?

Combining two prompts into one because they’re both in the same vein (in my brain at least lol) 💕 Thanks for prompting me Nonnies! Hope you lovelies enjoy this one. To everyone else, yes my ask box is still open for prompts x

Many thanks to @janiedean 😘

-

Yusuf runs his lips up the side of his neck and oh, Nicolo just about flies into a thousand shards of light. So this was it. They were doing it tonight.

A steadying hand holds him by the hip, snaking down until he parts his thighs. He tries, and fails much to the delight of his lover, to keep the soft keening sound rattling around in his chest from escaping into the twilight summer air. Nicolo reaches up to curl his fingers on Yusuf’s cheek. Heartbeat stuttering when the man leans into his touch.

“We can take it slow,” Yusuf whispers in a tender brush of mouth to his pulse point. “We do not have to do anything you do not want to, habibi.”

Nicolo smiles. Because of course, Yusuf would want to take it slow. Yusuf has been the one to set the pace; to pull away when he thinks Nicolo needs time to work through the first time they’d shared a kiss, to bank the fires of arousal into something more tempered, turn a moment into an embrace. 

He teaches and guides and Nicolo thinks he would gladly proclaim to the world that he would follow the man to the gates of Hell itself if it meant that Yusuf would finally do something far more wicked to him than leaving him hard and wanting in his arms.

“No, we do not,” Nicolo says. “I will not lose to the skills of...” He pauses to recall. “Your second wife? Which was the one who made you write a hundred poems to woo her?”

Yusuf laughs, the sound a bark in the dying light of day. He leans in, kissing the corners of his lips until the can no longer hold himself still and has to join him in the happy music singing in the air.

He lifts his hips, manoeuvring so that he has enough room to kick off his trousers, baring himself and the evidence of just how much he wants to have more, to have everything and all of it with this man.

Nicolo’s mind races and before he could doubt himself, he arches up, licking back into the seam of Yusuf’s lips, marvelling in the fresh rush of adoration rushing through his veins at the instantaneous way he is kissed back. “Tonight. I want you to take me tonight.”

Whatever Yusuf seeks in his eyes, he finds. Because he nods once, moving to light the lone candle they keep by the bed. “Then, I will see you.”

He is held close, tenderly. Delicately touched and worshipped from his toes to his ears and he surrenders himself to it. Surrenders himself to being loved. 

Eventually, he feels the searching press of fingers move down the line of his belly, glancing against his arousal, dipping down and downwards. Nicolo hisses, hips bucking. “Yusuf, per favore,” He sighs, completely unsure what he was begging for.

“One day,” Yusuf says, “One day I will take you in your ass, your mouth. I will have all of you. And you will have all of me. I promise you.” Nicolo can’t help the disappointment from seizing his heart. The catch of his breath does not go unnoticed because Yusuf demands his attention with a touch to his hip. “Nicolo, I promise you. We have all the time to know each other.”

Turning his face away, closing his eyes, he tries to understand. Yusuf has told him enough about what to expect the first time they make love. He knows they’ll need more preparation than what they have now, but the knowledge is not the same as the feeling, and he can’t help the burn of jealousy at the thought of all the lovers Yusuf has had before him and how it seems like they will never get to that moment he has been told about.

The words falter on his lips but tumble forth with a rushed exhale. “Is it because I am not good enough?”

Yusuf shakes his head, eyes soft in the candlelight. “No. Never not enough. And I will tell you every day until you believe it.” Leaning back on his haunches, he reaches to the box of vials on his side of the bed. Uncorking one to pour a palmful of oil.

Shuffling back between Nicolo’s parted thighs, he smiles, wrapping his hand around Nicolo’s hard cock, he tightens his grip, tugging once, twice, enough to have Nicolo curling his toes, stifling his moans of pleasure with the back of his hand, mind frayed into a numbing silence as Yusuf unravels him. He is dimly aware of Yusuf kissing a pathway back up to his cheek, huffing a burst of laughter that tickles his ear. 

He hears the whispered terms of endearment in a string of Arabic, Latin, French, but what has him arching up into Yusuf’s touch, spilling with a choked out shout, was the quiet, “Amore mio,” said to his temple.

“Teach me how to do that to you too,” Nicolo demands with a grip to Yusuf’s wrist that slips into a tangle of their fingers. Still panting, he blinks up at Yusuf’s amusement. “You must.”

“I will teach you all I know and we will learn everything else together,” Yusuf says. 

“Will I be better than all your lovers then?” Nicolo had meant for that to come out light and teasing, but Yusuf squeezes his hand and he knows he probably missed it by a marked mile.

“You will be my only lover. From now until always.” Yusuf curls himself around Nicolo. The thoughts of a forever as one man’s lover should be daunting. But the apprehension does not come and Nicolo closes his eyes, fantasising about what they will do next.

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hawkeye and black widow: "just like Budapest all over again!"

me: "what happened in Budapest?"

joe and nicky: "i was thinking about Malta" "what time in Malta?" ... "oH, THAT TIME IN MALTA"

mE: "WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED IN MALTA!??!"

EXPLAIN

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a coda to my last post

i don’t think that nicky can draw. at all. so every time joe draws something he is SO impressed. every time. for 900 years.

he has stashes of joe’s art in every safe house. joe is like, please, you do not need to keep them, i have gotten better, you don’t need these five hundred year old warm up sketches. and nicky is like ABSOLUTELY NOT they are perfect you’re getting rid of them over my dEAD body. you’re spectacular. you’re so talented. i love you. joe is like: it’s…. a still life of a fruit bowl but thank you i love you too.

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i’ll see your ‘nicky’s a 10 but they need to tone him down to a passable 7 so he can walk out of the house w/o accidentally starting a new art movement’ and raise you: no, he’s just Like That.

more to the point, anything remotely fashionable he owns joe bought for him. left to his own devices nicky will go to the nearest second hand clothing store and buy an entire rack of size medium t-shirts in a wide variety of exactly 3 neutrals to go with his five identical pairs of black/navy-blue jeans and that one (1) pair of sweatpants. he has Opinions about how much barbers should be allowed to charge for a basic haircut these days. one time joe came home from a stakeout and there was a lidl bag on the bed with 15 pairs of socks and a receipt for 17.99 euros in it and joe was like thats it i’m breaking up with you >:(

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an incomplete, incoherent list of the small ways that joe and nicky are shown to be wonderful and in love:

after they’re all resurrected in south sudan joe immediately runs diagonally ahead to take on the shooters that are in front of nicky, rather than the ones directly in front of himself, so they can work through them together

in the first establishing shot in the train you can see joe and nicky holding hands as they spoon. they’re not holding hands when you get the close up of them sleeping together, so maybe they fall asleep holding hands and their arms just end up wrapped around each other after they drift off

when nile asks how old they are instead of answering with a number or just the era joe frames his answer by when he and nicky met

the way they’re always looking at each other. not just in the heavy glances and winks, but it’s like how you always subconsciously look to the person you’re closest to when you’re in a group when you’re laughing and talking. the way joe was looking at nicky when he was saying the shoes were a particularly grotesque touch, the way they end up looking at each other in the van when the doors open and nicky asks if they can maybe take the chains off them

there’s a tv, joe!/champagne?

nile asks why they stop seeing each other in their dreams after they meet and you see joe draw in a breath like he’s preparing to answer but he stops, and nicky answers like he was finishing joe’s sentence that he never even started

and then nicky looks at joe to prompt him to answer nile’s next question about how old they are

the way nicky doesn’t take his eyes off of joe as he recovers from being stabbed by merrick until joe dips his head for head touch, which is when nicky knows he’s ok

when andy says they can die and nicky looks at joe and joe’s already looking back at him. i won’t even attempt to put words to the expression on their faces.

the way they use italian when they just want it to be just them, it’s a comfort and an intimacy

the shared look after the shakespeare quote. it can be read as them both reacting to definitely knowing that line and also knowing shakespeare, but they also fucking hate this guy immediately

everything that’s not on this list is hereby considered a LOUD way they’re in love

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why was i put on this earth? just to suffer? every single day people assign joe an ethnicity that isn't maghrebi

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Luca Marinelli as Nicolo Di Genova in The Old Guard (2020)