Immortal Husbands

"You're a child. An infant. Your mocking is thus infantile. That man is not my "boyfriend." That man is more to me than you can dream. That man is the stars in my sky, and the sun that lights my days. That man is the moon when I'm lost in darkness and warmth when I shiver in cold. I love that man beyond measure and reason. His kiss still thrills me even after a millennium since I first tasted him. His body, to this day, awakens a passion you will never know.  His heart overflows with the kindness of which this world is not worthy of. His very thoughts make music of the mundane. He is not my "boyfriend." He is not my "lover." He is not my "partner." He is all and he is more. He is my everything."

- Joe's speech about Nicky (graphic novel's version).

Immortal Husbands is the slash ship between Yusuf al-Kaysani and Nicolò di Genova from the The Old Guard fandom.

Movies
Joe and Nicky are such an item that the first time they are mentioned in the movie, Andy asks for the two of them together. The both of them were already waiting for Andy and Booker in their hotel room when the two of them arrived. And their incredible work as a team is also showcased when the two of them assist Andy when she goes to talk to Copley, with Nicky protecting her as a sniper and Joe hearing their conversation. Also, during their whole mission in South Sudan, Nicky and Joe protect each other, while performing each of their tasks perfectly. When the mission turns out to be a trap set up to film their immortal abilities, and they get heavily shot, as soon as Joe recovers, he turns to check on Nicky, to see if he's alright, always with the fear of losing him as there is a chance their immortality can end without notice. Nicky does the same, nodding as to let Joe know he's fine. Then, they get up and bravely fight the guards who shot them and their team, as they keep protecting each other.

After they dream about Nile and retrieve her, when she arrives at the safehouse, she is a little bit confused and shocked to see all these immortals who have lived for centuries. So she asks why they were all in her dreams. Joe answers that they have all dreamed about each other, and that it stops once they meet. So when Nile asks why, Nicky says that it's like they're meant to find each other, staring at Joe from across the table, who winks at him in return. Then, the conversation continues, with more questions from Nile, and when she realizes Nicky and Joe are even older than Booker, who was found in 1812, Joe says he and Nicky met in the Crusades. Nile is shocked to hear this, and Nicky tells her that the love of his life was of the people he has been taught to hate. Staring lovingly at Nicky, Joe laughs saying that they killed each other, to which Nicky adds "many times." And then the atmosphere becomes a bit more tense when Nile starts asking Andy questions about her own immortality. Andy tells her that they can die. That one day the wounds won't heal, and they just don't know when or why it happens. Nicky tenses up and he and Joe share a look, both terrified of the mere thought of losing each other.

Later in the night, when they all go to sleep, Joe cuddles with Nicky as they always do, with his legs in between Nicky's, holding him with his arms engulfing him. When Nile wakes up from a nightmare where it seems like she saw another immortal, Nicky is quick to grab the gun he has under his pillow, from his protective instinct. While Joe grabs Nicky's hip gently, checking to see if his Nicky is safe. After he and Nicky tell Nile about Quynh and Andy's history together, Nicky mentions that that's why they dread capture. Unfortunately, the worst nightmare comes true when Copley's team arrive at the safehouse and capture Joe and Nicky and take them in a van, filled with heavily armed guards.

Joe is on the floor of the van, with his ankles chained and hands zip-tied. And Nicky lays unconscious beside him, bound similarly. Joe, deeply distraught, grazes Nicky's shoulder softly, to check if he's alive, calling out for him with his real name, Nicolò. After one of the guards kicks Joe harshly, he starts talking to Nicky in medieval Italian. The guard insists, so Joe asks him ironically, "What are you gonna do? Kill me?" After softly and desperately calling for Nicky, he stirs and replies back to Joe in Italian that he's there with him, wherever they are. Joe lets him know they are in an armored car and that they used gas on them. The guard gets visibly irritated by them and yells at Joe to shut up again. Joe insists that he needs to know Nicky is ok.

After this, the guards think is funny that one of them makes a homophobic remark, asking Joe "what is he, your boyfriend?" Nicky sits up, sighting loudly, tired of centuries of homophobia. Joe glares at the guard with the weight of every one of his ten centuries and starts replying to him.

"You're a child. An infant. Your mocking is thus infantile. He's not my boyfriend. This man is more to me than you can dream. He's the moon when I'm lost in darkness and warmth when I shiver in cold. And his kiss still thrills me, even after a millennia. His heart overflows with the kindness of which this world is not worthy of. I love this man beyond measure and reason. He's not my boyfriend. He's all and he's more."

- Joe's speech about Nicky.

The guards stay silent, mesmerized by Joe's intensity. Joe looks at Nicky, and as he smiles at him, Nicky says "you incurable romantic," leaning closer to him, to kiss him passionately. The two of them kiss each other, as if alone, as if not bound. Suddenly, all the guards pull them away from each other, as the both of them still stare at each other's eyes. Later, when the van pulls into the private airfield where Copley was waiting for them to board a private jet, when the van's doors open, Joe and Nicky are sitting next to each other, as all of the guards surround them, dead on the floor. As they are yanked off the vehicle and taken up the steps to the private jet, Nicky sarcastically tells Joe they have a TV on the plane, and Joe follows his joke by asking "champagne?"

Once they arrive at Merrick's house in London, he greets them with a Shakespeare quote, to appear more intellectual, but Joe and Nicky just stare at each other, not amused in the slightest. When Merrick gets close to Joe, talking about the profit he'll make with them, Joe headbutts him, making Merrick fall back in pain. Upset, Merrick says he'll like to prove their "unique talent" himself, stabbing Joe repeatedly with a letter opener he found nearby. Nicky immediately lunges, but one of Merrick's guards hits him with his gun in the stomach. Nicky falls to his knees next to Joe. And while everyone in the room is astonished by all the wounds in Joe's body suddenly healing, all Joe and Nicky can think about is in the other. Nicky scans Joe's body to see if he's safe, and the two of them look into each other's eyes, touching their foreheads against one another. Then, without their consent and all of the sudden, Dr. Kozak takes samples from them, tasing them and taking them to a lab to run tests on them.

In the lab, as Dr. Kozak ran excruciatingly painful experiments on Nicky, taking "samples" from him, when she left, Joe coughs awake. As his eyes widens, he searches for Nicky and his eyes go directly to him. Nicky tells him that as much as he likes watching him sleep, he's glad he's awake now. So Joe makes a joke to make Nicky laugh, talking about his bed head, which successfully gets a big laugh from him. There's a moment of silence between them as Joe readjusts himself in the cold lab stretcher. And then Nicky says he's been thinking about "that time in Malta." When Joe asks him which time in Malta is he referring to, all Nicky has to do is give him a suggestive look for Joe to exclaim "oh, that time in Malta." So seeing the state they're in, Nicky says in a serious tone "we should go back there," in Italian, to which Joe immediately agrees.

When Booker and Andy get captured and sent to Merrick's lab and Nile goes to rescue the four of them, Joe and Nicky show just what a great team they are, once again, having fought for centuries alongside one another. Nicky immediately knows when to let Joe take the lead, and vice versa. And the two of them take turns protecting Andy from any possible harm, perfectly. However, at one point, as they were making their way to the exit, Keane, an ex-Special Forces guard who commanded all of Merrick's security, detonates an explosion that seriously harms the immortals, and that emanates a dangerous smoke, hurting the immortals' eyes and lungs.

As the group recovers and quickly leaves, Joe and Nicky take a bit longer. Nicky wakes up first, but Keane doesn't even wait for him to stand, kicking him twice on his face and stomach. As Nicky keeps fighting against Keane, Joe wakes up and takes the mask off of Keane's face, making it harder for him to breathe. Since Keane was going to use his gun on Joe, Nicky immediately pulls on Keane's arm to stop him from doing so, getting shot in the mouth instead, before Keane runs away due to the smoke not letting him breathe.

As soon as Keane leaves, Joe rushes to Nicky's side, fearing for the worst. He goes to cradle Nicky's face, almost hesitant to touch him as his hands shake and he doesn't know where to hold. And then, when he grazes Nicky's cheek, he starts coughing and gasps for air, reviving. Immediately, Joe lets out a huge sigh of relief, because he was terrified of the thought of losing Nicky, and he grabs his arm, softly caressing it. Nicky takes a look at Joe's face, as he also grabs his arm, and then gets to action, remembering they have to protect Andy. Joe, however, it's still holding on to Nicky's arms, tightening his grip, still anxious about losing him. Nicky grabs his gun and gets up and that's when Joe follows suit, gently tapping on his hip, telling him to come, as they run to reunite with the others.

Once the whole team finds out Merrick is in the penthouse at the top of the building, Andy tells Joe to make an entrance like he did in São Paulo in 1834. So he comes through the window, surprising the guards who were expecting for them to enter through the door. There, he finds Keane, and as Andy and Nile take the rest of the guards down, they stare as Joe single handedly fights with Keane. Finally, as he grabs Keane by his bullet-proof vest, he glares at him as he tells him something before snapping his neck and killing him.

"You shot Nicky. You shouldn't have done that."

- Joe.

Once they get out of Merrick's building, and after they say their goodbyes to Booker, when Copley shows the team all of the good they've done for humanity throughout the years, the two of them appear together in many of the historical events shown in Copley's board.

Moments

 * In the helicopter on their way to their mission in South Sudan, Joe and Nicky are holding hands and Joe gives Nicky a reassuring smile to calm him down.
 * Also, while Andy and Booker are sitting on a two-person bench, Joe and Nicky are crammed together on a little single-person bench.
 * In the kill room floor scene, Joe gets ahead of Nicky many times during the fight, to protect him from any possible attack that could harm him.
 * On the train scene, when they all dream of Nile, Joe and Nicky are cuddling, tangled up in each other's arms, with Joe's legs between Nicky's.
 * At the pub, when they have to decide what Booker will do after what happened with Merrick, Joe is still hurt and upset with Booker, making big gestures with his hands. So Nicky calms him down, giving him a firm but soft "basta" (stop), which he does immediately.

Quotes
"We're meant to find each other. It's like destiny."

- Nicky, as he lovingly stares at Joe from across the table.

"What do you know of the weight of all these years alone? [...] You and Nicky always had each other."

- Booker, after Joe confronts him about his betrayal to the team.

Greg Rucka, "The Old Guard" author and screenwriter
"Joe and Nicky are gay. They are not experimenting with each other after a thousand years. And they're unquestionably tied to each other."

- Greg Ruck for Nerdist.

"I wanted a happy queer couple. I felt the audience needed to see, here are two people who, if not for this, probably wouldn’t have found each other. They have what they have because they have this gift. They meet killing each other, and only within that discovery that they can’t do it are they able to put down all this bullshit about religious hatred, about these cultural mandates, and look at each other and be like, ‘You know what? You are magical to me. My blessing isn’t that I get an eternal life. My blessing is I found you.’"

- Greg Rucka on the importance of Nicky & Joe’s relationship in The Old Guard.

"The personal favorite for me was the scene in the armored can. And I was there when they filmed that. And you could have heard a pin drop. Man, every heart skipped a beat. That was just truly incredible."

- Greg Rucka on the scene that best translated to the screen from the comic.

Gina Prince-Bythewood, Movie Director
"One of the things that I absolutely loved in the graphic novel was illustrating how Joe and Nicky met for the first time. The fact that they keep killing each other over and over until everybody around them is dead, and they're the last two standing. And then suddenly you're looking at the love of your life."

- Gina Prince-Bythewood interview with GogglerMY video

"It was so dope because it was so natural between these two. You felt it. The fire was already there. It was so beautiful. It was so obvious to everyone. 'This is Joe and Nicky."

- Gina on Marwan and Luca's chemistry in The Old Guard.

"Between him (Luca Marinelli) and Marwan Kenzari is born a great complicity, necessary between two people who have been together for centuries."

- Gina on Marwan and Luca's chemistry in The Old Guard.

Actors
"[Joe and Nicky] met in an absurd and paradoxical situation, during the Crusades, ready to kill themselves. They did it a hundred times and then they looked at each other and fell in love."

- Luca Marinelli for CIAK Magazine

"There's a quote, a beautiful quote, that Nicky says: "The love of my life was of the people I've been taught to hate." After the thought of immortality, to me, immediately after, there was the thought of "HOW is a love story after 900 years?" To me that has been a scene that... I'd say it was actually a very easy one because I was just supposed to be sitting there and losing myself in Marwan's eyes. It made me incredibly emotional. Every single one of us would want our partner to say something like that. To me, THERE you can find the answer to how they still live this love in the present time."

- Luca for the Netflix Italy Promotion Video.

"There's a macho aspect to his (the guard's in the van scene) comment. I think the quality of this specific sequence is that Joe and Nicky are proud of each other, so there's no insecurity on their part. So I think that the strength of someone who, regardless of what's accepted or not accepted, speaks out from a passionate place, it's a strong message, and therefore, people enjoy seeing that moment. (On kissing Luca in the Van Scene) It was a lot of fun. He (Luca Marinelli) is obviously an extremely attractive Italian actor and we had a lot of fun. It was a night shoot and we had a lot of fun. I was pulling on his cuffs to make them tighter. We had a lot of fun. He shaved so it wasn't too painful (laughs)."

- Marwan's interview with Movieplayer.it

"These are pretty big, poetical lines, that don’t sound ordinary and they aren’t. So then you have to watch out that it doesn’t turn into a woolly, histrionic tone, but I’m proud of how the scene eventually turned out. I think Joe and Nicky are laughing about how he words it afterwards as well. These characters are extremely aware of what they are - of both their cynicism as well as their sentimentality. They are extremely experienced people, that was where I found the strength for the romantic tone."

- Marwan Kenzari.

"I’m very proud of the way we are representing this amazing love. The big question in my mind was how to represent this love that is still there after 900 years. We cannot sense or experience it. We can be together for 60-70 years if we are lucky, but 900 is beyond love. It’s just soul. And as you said, this wonderful monologue is an answer to the vulgarity of a soldier: there is everything in it. All the answers that I needed as an actor to understand how deep their connection was were there."

- Luca Marinelli for Philadelphia Gay News.

Fanon
Immortal Husbands is the most popular ship within The Old Guard fandom.

Fandom
FAN FICTION
 * Joe/Nicky on FanFiction.Net
 * Joe/Nicky on FanFiction.Net
 * Joe/Nicky on FanFiction.Net

FORUMS
 * Joe & Nicky (The Old Guard) #1: "The love of my life was of the people I've been taught to hate.

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TIKTOK

TUMBLR

TWITTER

WIKIS

Trivia

 * Marwan Kenzari, Joe's actor, sent Greg Rucka, TOG's author and screenwriter, poems that reminded him of Joe and Nicky, one of them being one of Pablo Neruda's sonnets (Sonnet XVII).
 * Greg Rucka said they shot a deleted scene at a church in Goussainville, where "[Joe] knocks, and its this beautiful wordless scene they did (…) Joe enters, Nicky closes the door, locks it, and they look at each other, and there’s no dialogue– and there’s a forehead touch. 'I’m glad you’re back.' that’s it. And it’s this silent little moment, and then they go off to the rectory.”