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100 days of enemy recs: 31. The Old Guard
I will confess: I almost didn't include this in the list, because I haven't really read very much of the fic compared to other fandoms I've covered. I also haven't seen the canon but that at least is par for the course! The main enemies to lovers pairing is Joe/Nicky, the two immortal soldiers who met across a battlefield, and killed each other over and over until they realized killing wasn't working and they should try something else.
This should be my thing? But by the time Joe and Nicky are in the present, they've been an established relationship for almost a thousand years. So the fandom seems to come in basically three forms: Established relationship that barely touches on enemies to lovers; historical settings that people in the fandom constantly argue about the historical/canonical accuracy of; and setting-swap AUs; and while I enjoyed a lot of it none of them dragged me in super hard? And when I do try to look into the fandom beyond just reading fic that I see rec'd, I find myself way more interested in Andy and Nile and Quynh and Booker and Copley than Joe and Nicky, idk. (This is a problem I have a lot with popular slash pairings but it doesn't usually come into play until I actually watch canon.) (But also I was very much on a psych downswing when this fandom was at its height last year, I'm sure that's part of it.)
But I decided I had to keep it on the list. First, because it did make such a mark on fandom when the movie came out, and because so many authors I recognized from other enemies-to-lovers fandoms write a lot of good fic for it. (Unfortunately that means most of what I would have rec'd is authors I want to save for other fandoms.)
Also though I am including this because it occurred to me that this would be an excuse for me to talk about how much I now want a fic where Joe and Nicky cross over with my other North African/Italian pair who met across a battlefield. Perhaps Nile starts noticing things in their stories about how they met that don't quite line up and they finally admit that they were using the Crusade as their history when they met Andy because it was the culturally available story at the time, and after she assumed they were newbies it just seemed awkward to confess they were actually over a thousand years old. Perhaps they just ran into a pair of very old soldiers who were very in love who happened to share homelands with them a thousand years apart, and got mentored for awhile! I am not picky. You all know my weakness for crossovers. This is the kind of alignment that begs for one. (Also I just want Hannibal and Scipio to run away together and be immortal and in love for a thousand years completely separate from the Old Guard, obvs., it's just a convenient excuse.)
Unfortunately that story does not exist, so here is a Booker/Copley rec instead. Booker/Copley is enough of a rarepair that I feel *slightly* more able to rec for it. They have a complicated enemies-but-allies-but-enemies-but-allies thing that I'm not sure I can explain with any accuracy but I definitely enjoy!
This should be my thing? But by the time Joe and Nicky are in the present, they've been an established relationship for almost a thousand years. So the fandom seems to come in basically three forms: Established relationship that barely touches on enemies to lovers; historical settings that people in the fandom constantly argue about the historical/canonical accuracy of; and setting-swap AUs; and while I enjoyed a lot of it none of them dragged me in super hard? And when I do try to look into the fandom beyond just reading fic that I see rec'd, I find myself way more interested in Andy and Nile and Quynh and Booker and Copley than Joe and Nicky, idk. (This is a problem I have a lot with popular slash pairings but it doesn't usually come into play until I actually watch canon.) (But also I was very much on a psych downswing when this fandom was at its height last year, I'm sure that's part of it.)
But I decided I had to keep it on the list. First, because it did make such a mark on fandom when the movie came out, and because so many authors I recognized from other enemies-to-lovers fandoms write a lot of good fic for it. (Unfortunately that means most of what I would have rec'd is authors I want to save for other fandoms.)
Also though I am including this because it occurred to me that this would be an excuse for me to talk about how much I now want a fic where Joe and Nicky cross over with my other North African/Italian pair who met across a battlefield. Perhaps Nile starts noticing things in their stories about how they met that don't quite line up and they finally admit that they were using the Crusade as their history when they met Andy because it was the culturally available story at the time, and after she assumed they were newbies it just seemed awkward to confess they were actually over a thousand years old. Perhaps they just ran into a pair of very old soldiers who were very in love who happened to share homelands with them a thousand years apart, and got mentored for awhile! I am not picky. You all know my weakness for crossovers. This is the kind of alignment that begs for one. (Also I just want Hannibal and Scipio to run away together and be immortal and in love for a thousand years completely separate from the Old Guard, obvs., it's just a convenient excuse.)
Unfortunately that story does not exist, so here is a Booker/Copley rec instead. Booker/Copley is enough of a rarepair that I feel *slightly* more able to rec for it. They have a complicated enemies-but-allies-but-enemies-but-allies thing that I'm not sure I can explain with any accuracy but I definitely enjoy!
- with our lives our love restore (8413 words) by Siria
Fandom: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/James Copley
Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence
Summary:Copley didn't worry, exactly, but he did draw up a couple of contingency plans, just in case. None of those plans involved Booker showing up on his doorstep one Tuesday morning.