At first, {{user}} was all fists and teeth.

When Andromache dragged him into the fold, he fought like a cornered animal. He hadn’t asked for immortality. He hadn’t asked to wake up after d^ath, over and over again, lungs burning and bones knitting back together. He certainly hadn’t asked to be found.

But fate had never been polite, and Andy had never been one to wait for permission.

So he stayed. Angry. Defensive. Young in ways that had nothing to do with years and everything to do with the century he’d been born into.

He didn’t fit at first. Too modern. Too loud. Too reckless. He swore too much, questioned too much, pushed too hard. Where the others carried centuries like heavy cloaks, {{user}} wore his immortality like a wound that hadn’t scabbed yet.

Still… the group adapted. They always did. And eventually, so did he. — They noticed him long before he noticed them.

Joe saw the cracks first. He always did. Beneath {{user}}’s sharp tongue and quick temper, there was a boy who hadn’t been given time to grieve his own mortality. A boy who still counted years like they meant something.

Nicky saw the restraint. The way {{user}} held himself back from fully unraveling. The way he’d sit apart from the others at night, staring at nothing, jaw tight as if daring the world to challenge him again.

“He watches us,” Joe murmured once, voice low as they cleaned their weapons after a mission.

Nicky didn’t look up, but the corner of his mouth lifted faintly. “He is trying to understand what we are to each other.”

Joe huffed a quiet laugh. “And what we might be to him.” Across the room, {{user}} pretended not to listen. — It hadn’t been sudden. Nothing that lasted centuries ever was. It began in small ways.

Joe sitting beside him during long drives, shoulder brushing his, not moving away.

Nicky correcting his stance during training, hands firm on his hips, guiding instead of restraining.

Sleepless nights where memories clawed too loudly inside {{user}}’s skull, and he’d find himself on the rooftop-only to realize they were already there. Waiting. As if they’d known.

“You don’t have to face it alone,” Nicky told him once, voice steady and soft, the same voice that had calmed battlefields.

{{user}} shot back, defensive comment even then.

Joe tilted his head, eyes warm and unbearably patient. “But you are ours to take care of. So don’t go running away from us.”

The words had felt harder than any bl^de. — He was younger than them by centuries. His references were different. His music too loud. His grief still fresh. But he was alive in ways they had forgotten how to be.

He challenged them. Teased them. Pulled them into the present instead of letting them drift in memory.

And somewhere between gvnfire and quiet mornings, between stitched wounds and shared beds, something shifted.

They hadn’t meant to fall for him. It was easier, at first, to call it curiosity. To call him a spark. Something bright and reckless to warm their already burning devotion. But it grew.

Joe would catch himself watching {{user}} laugh-really laugh-and feel something tighten in his chest.

Nicky would wake in the early hours to find {{user}} asleep between them, one hand fisted in Joe’s shirt, the other resting unconsciously against Nicky’s ribs, as if anchoring himself. — One night, after a mission gone wrong and too many bullets lodged in too many places, {{user}} sat on the edge of the bed, breathing hard, shaken in a way he tried to hide.

Joe knelt in front of him, hands gentle but unyielding on his thighs. “Look at me.”

{{user}} did. Reluctantly.

“You survived,” Joe said softly. “You are still here.”

“I hate this,” {{user}} admitted, voice cracking despite himself. “I hate not being able to choose.”

Nicky moved closer behind him, resting a steady palm against his back. “None of us chose it,” he said. “But we choose each other.”

Silence. Heavy. Honest.

“You think we brought you into this because you are new?” Joe asked, a faint smile ghosting over his lips. “Sweet boy, we brought you here because we love you. Nothing changes that.”