Chapter Text
It was 3:25 in the morning when Joe pulled up to the safehouse.
He squinted into the murky darkness, illuminated only by the thin reed of his car headlights. Above, the starry sky was shadowed by Douglas and Cedar trees, their gnarled branches scraping against the black canvas of night.
If Joe hadn’t been born in a time without electricity and cities millions strong, he might have been frightened at the eerie silence and complete darkness. The feeling of being watched by an unseen force.
An owl hooted nearby.
Joe scrabbled around in the glove box with one hand, never taking his eyes off the large house in front of him. True to their info, it looked as if it was still in pretty good shape. His fingers passed over a hard, cold surface.
There was a good chance he wouldn’t get signal out here. He dialed the number and waited with bated breath as the steady drumroll of the dial interrupted the owls.
Copley answered on the fourth ring, sounding as exhausted as Joe felt. “Yes?”
“I made it.”
The relief on the other side was palpable. How strange to think this man –a friend, now- had once betrayed his family to a psycho who wanted to torture them for decades. Now he was ninety-seven, a tiny fraction of Joe’s real age. “How does it look?”
“Well,” Joe tried to imagine the cabin as it had been sixty years earlier, in 2021. Built as a vacation lodge until the water wars killed a quarter of a million people. “It’s definitely been abandoned. There aren’t any signs of people.”
He knew this because of the sheer thickness of the undergrowth and frequent sightings of very large, unafraid wildlife. These things only existed in places where humans had not trespassed for some time. It reminded him of the forests he’d trekked in the early days of his immortality.
“And the inside?”
“Haven’t been inside yet,” he grunted. He didn’t add that he had no intention of standing for another fifteen minutes at most. Joe glanced down at his left leg. It had just finished healing maybe an hour earlier. When he’d woken, the sole survivor in his group, there had been a gaping wound there. It had closed around shrapnel and Joe had been forced to slice open his skin and dig the metal out with his bare hands.
“Where’d Andy say she found this place?”
To his credit, James did not ask him to hurry. He just sighed. “She bought it off the owner when the wars began. He needed quick money to escape the country.”
Sounded like her. Joe wondered briefly where the owner was now. Had he, like thousands of others, been turned away from asylum because of the sudden influx of global refugees? Had he died of dehydration in his own home? Been murdered by ravagers or government sponsored troops tasked with population control?
Joe sighed and wrenched his mind away from the body count. He’d seen it before. He would see it again. “Alright. I’ll check out the inside. Do you know the other’s ETA?” He turned, digging around in the back seat for his Scimitar and revolver. He strapped the latter to his back and stuffed the former into his front pocket holster.
He didn’t dare to turn the car’s headlights off. He suspected all he might find inside was a nest of owls or foxes. Maybe a bear. The light and quick bang from his gun would hopefully scare them away.
But he wasn’t the only one who needed safehouses. Scared and desperate refugees, hardened deserters from the military, ravagers, water hoarders... Anyone else could live in there, and Joe knew that the most dangerous species on Earth remained humans who were desperate and scared.
In his bones, he knew this.
“Once you give the all-clear, then Nicky will be there in seven hours,” Joe lifted himself from the driver’s seat, kept the phone on the dashboard. The former vacationer’s lodge had been modeled after Victorian style plantation houses. As a man who had seen slaves sold across the sea in person, it made his lip curl.
Still, he could easily imagine him and Nicky sipping tea on the large, open front porch. The large windows probably allowed in good, clean light in the mornings. Perfect for watercolor painting. The sharp edges of the roof and dark wood panels blended in perfectly with their surroundings, and even then, would make great sniper’s nests... Just in case.
“Nile will be about twelve hours. She’s dropping off a plane full of refugees before heading out. Quynh and Andy will be on a boat tomorrow morning and arrive by lunchtime. Booker is still guarding The Crow’s Nest but he says they’re moving out in two hours. He’ll probably get to you around the same time as Nicky. My safehouse is too crowded as is. I have to move out anyway. This works, I’ll be there in tomorrow afternoon.”
They had made plans to reunite many, many times already. Joe had learned not to get his hopes up until the dreams became a reality. In the violent and unbearable world in which they lived, the Immortals were often side tracked by someone needing their skills or some emergency throwing them off course.
“Copy that. I’m going in. If I don’t call back in ten minutes, call it off.”
“Got it. Be careful.”
Useless advice, really, but Joe appreciated the sentiment. He hung up and stuffed the phone into his other pocket. Hopefully, he didn’t break this one. Booker wouldn’t be happy to learn he had to hack another phone for him.
Then again, Joe would take a peeved Booker over the surreal experience of not hearing him speak at all. Joe crept up the porch steps to the front door. He typed in the code Copley had text him. There was a soft click before the door eased open without sound. Not bad for a sixty-year-old house.
Joe crept inside, glancing around. In the dark, he could make out only vague shapes in the gloom. A chandelier above him. A long couch and end table to his right. A shoe rack to his left. A small sign above that.
When he tried to flick on the lights, there wasn’t so much as a spark of electricity. That was fine. Copley could reroute some power their way if need be. Joe continued, listening with baited breath. There was a skitter to his left. A mouse, judging by the quiet shriek.
He’d have to get rid of that. Nile hated mice. Or... She had last time he’d seen her.
Joe made his way through the house, climbing stairs that creaked and down to a basement so full of wet moss and fungus that he gagged on the heady fumes. The fireplace had old wood embers in it, mixed with twigs from an abandoned bird nest. There was plenty of animal feces, dust and the occasional startled bird or small mammal, but no humans.
Joe returned to the car and sagged against the cool metal. He exhaled a shaky breath.
It had been three years...
Three years since he’d taken Nicolò’s face in his hands and kissed him, deep, with a fervor that had frightened them both as Joe whispered against his lips “see you soon, my heart.”
Three years since he’d tugged Quynh into a tight hug, felt how her lungs expanded, so brave and fragile and realized just how much he would miss her. They’d hugged silently, sharing broken tears that couldn’t leave their chests.
Three years since he’d seen Nile vanish into a crowd of protestors, eyes wide as she was swept into a smog of tear gas and the pop of machine guns. “Go,” she had mouthed, with a small, fearless smile. “Go.”
Three years since he’d left Booker with a rebel group called the Crow's Nest, pressed a kiss to hardened knuckles as his brother’s van pulled away, snatching his hands from Joe’s grip just as his little brother hollered watch your back, Yusuf!
Three years since he’d last gripped Andy’s arm in his own, felt her elegant fingers coil around the base of his elbow in a warrior’s clasp before they split up, Joe taking his band of refugees South while she went North.
Three years since he’d watched, helpless and heart hammering, as Copley was herded into a bus with other resistance fighters, on his way to execution. Copley had escaped, of course, and Joe had known he would, but the image of his friend cuffed and bleeding still haunted his nightmares.
And all of these things had happened in the span of three fucking days.
He had not spent so much time away from his family –not involuntarily- since the Inquisition. He certainly hadn’t spent more than a month away from his Nicolò since... Well, since the Crusades, actually.
“Joe?” Copley asked on the third ring.
“It’s safe,” Joe relayed. In his heart, he sent out a desperate prayer please, please let this time work. “Tell the others to come.”
Copley had the lights working in fifteen minutes. The dim, gold of the lamps still sent a whole flurry of tiny birds scampering out of the open windows. Joe found a cob-webbed broom in one of the closest and despite his own exhaustion, started cleaning.
He scrubbed the oven and sink, knowing Nicky would want to cook. He swept the porch and reinforced the tire swing hanging off a broad Douglass fir in the back. He threw out any blankets or fabrics shredded by mice and washed the rest, hanging them from clothes wires in the back.
He collected a few apples, newly ripe from a nearby orchard and set them inside. Quynh was usually hungry just after any mission, but never allowed herself to eat until she was sure of her safety.
The house was huge. They could each have their own rooms, if they liked, though he assumed that they’d share one for the first few days. He swiped a rag of cool water over the dusty end-tables and tops of frames holding pictures of ocean waves and peaceful lakes. He wondered if either was nearby.
He gently relocated the spiders and rabbits and birds, scrubbed the bathrooms of muck and placed candles in the corners. The television, miraculously, was intact. However, so far into the forest, their only choices were the prerecorded shows and a few DVD’s. He made sure to put the game on for Booker.
Finally, Joe placed motion sensors around the perimeter, connecting them to his phone. By the time he had finished all his chores, his bones felt as if they had been replaced with lead and the sun was starting to peek over the tops of the trees, bathing the forest in emerald and gold.
Joe collapsed on the couch in the living room, face smooshed to its soft fabric. The last thought he had before he lost consciousness was that he was surprised none of the mice had gotten into the couch’s stuffing yet.
Then he knew nothing.
He startled awake when something – the devil, undoubtedly - began to vibrate against his left ear.
Smacking his lips, Joe tiredly pushed himself up, glaring at the phone. It took another few seconds for him to scrub away the sleep from his eyes enough to see.
There was a message.
ETA ten minutes, Habibi.
Joe scowled and looked around, confused. Last thing he remembered was traveling across the New Mexico desert with a caravan of refugees. Jenna’s plump face, browned in the sun so that one couldn’t even see her freckles, flashed in front of his eyes. How she’d chased scorpions with the fearlessness of youth and set her poor mama’s jaw gnashing with frustration.
Then he saw her skull ripped open by the shrapnel, mouth agape and one eye hanging from her socket. The scorpions had surrounded her like worshippers at an altar, reusing her blood and tissue for their own life. Joe had buried her, and her mama and the others in the desert sun. Passed out and died from dehydration twice before he finished.
The soft green walls and wide tv screen above a stone fireplace certainly didn’t look like the mirage-like desert of New Mexico, or the upbraided soil of a dead world...
Wait a second. Joe gasped and scrambled into a sitting position. He snatched the phone and read the message another four times, breathless with surprise.
Fresh morning sunlight filtered in through the windows. The birds were whistling to each other in the trees, sweet and long harmonies between loved ones. Tears blurred his vision.
He was coming, Nicolò was coming.
It was 10:15 in the morning. Seven hours had passed after all and Joe was still in the same grimy, blood-stained clothes he’d been in when he arrived. He hurried to his feet and splashed cool water on his face from the pitcher by the kitchen sink. Then he sprinted to the front porch to stare at the shallow hill guarding their safehouse.
That’s when he heard it.
“Just the two of us... We can make it if we try, just the two of us, you and I....”
He was laughing even before he’d put a name to the music. Back in the seventies, he and Nicky had danced to this song after a protest left them shaken and blinking away tear gas. The birds fell silent as the echoing song moved closer and closer. Joe’s fingers clenched hard over the porch railing.
Three years.
How many times had he dreamt of his beloved, seen his ironic, tiny smile or felt his wiry arms around his neck? They had communicated daily over text and encrypted emails, of course, but nothing replaced the feel of Nicolò in his arms.
He still had that ugly red Toyota. It revved over the hill like a small lion, and Joe caught Nicky’s reflection in the window. His heart skipped a beat.
“Nicolò!” The sound that ripped out of him was a cross between a strangled scream and a sob. He tried to go forward, to run, but his knees were suddenly weak as a newborn foal.
It didn’t matter. Nicolò, his love, his heart, had caught sight of him. The car screeched to a stop and the door opened even before the engine had completely powered down. Nicky stumbled from his seat into the light, soft blue eyes searching Joe up and down.
His heart was still wearing his bulky body armor. His chin was dark with the fuzzy beginnings of a beard, and his thin hair had grown so long he’d tied it into a ponytail behind his head, just as he done in the sixties. Speckles of sunlight danced in his hair, caressed his chest and calves.
Just the two of us, we can make it if we try.
They wavered in silence, drinking in the sight of each other breathlessly. Joe was terrified to move, dreading the second he stepped forward and woke again in some hell-hole surrounded by miserable people. Alone.
Joe opened his mouth. Poetry and anecdotes were like a second skin to him, he wore them with joy and pride, but now his vocal cords could do nothing except shape the name of his beloved. “Nicolò.”
Nicky’s lips quirked at the sides. To an outsider, it couldn’t even be considered a smile, rather a just-barely-there smirk at most.
To Joe, it was like the sun had risen.
The spell broke.
Joe staggered down the stairs as Nicky raced across the lawn and they met in the middle. Nicky leapt into his arms, arms strangling the air from his throat and legs squeezing his waist until his hips started to ache. Joe didn’t care. He pressed his beloved closer, closer, even as his back hit the porch and he sunk against the chipped wood.
“Tesoro, Yusuf, my love... Sweet Yusuf...” Nicky sniffled into his neck as Joe kissed his forehead and ears and shoulder and neck, all the skin he could reach. Nicky was trembling. “It’s been so long... È stato così difficile...I’d begun to fear...”
A muffled sob. Joe gripped the back of Nicky’s head, rocking slowly, trying to shush Nicky past his own hitching sobs. “I would have leveled mountains to reach you again,” he managed, because it was the truest sentence he could utter right then. Also, because Nicky was strangling him.
Joe preferred not to die right now. He gently pushed Nicky back by the shoulders, but only so he could cup his face and bring him into a real kiss.
The moment their lips met, every knot in Joe’s body sighed with bliss. An entity living in his chest and stomach and spine and brain, deeper than the heart, more intimate than a soul, started weeping with joy.
“Thank God,” the former priest breathed when they broke apart. His fingers danced over Yusuf’s arms and chest, eyes searching him. Nicky was crying. It was at once the most painful and most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He thumbed them away. “Thank God, Yusuf... It’s been so long. Are you hurt, mi amore? Is this blood fresh? Are you alright?”
“Nicky!” he laughed. Joe sagged in his husband’s gentle grip, laying his forehead against a warm collarbone. Nicky, still firmly entrenched in his lap, tugged him close. “I’m so glad to see you. I’ve missed you more than breath itself, my heart.”
“You haven’t answered my question about the blood,” Nicky whined, even as his smile tickled Joe’s neck.
Joe inhaled a deep breath of his scent. “It’s two days old. It healed earlier,” he raised his head, ran a hand over the beard. “This is familiar. I’ve not seen it so stubbly since the 1960’s, I think. Growing it out?”
“I thought you might like it.”
“I like you in general, but the thought is appreciated,” they shared another long kiss. Joe snatched the rubber band holding Nicky’s hair in place and ran his fingers through it. “This, this I enjoy, but you know Booker and Andy are going to protest for days.”
Nicky grinned impishly. “That’s half the reason I grew it out.”
“Shit-head,” Joe chuckled with utmost affection. “I was so scared to think I might not actually see you again. We’ve had to call it off so many times. When I saw your message, I thought it was another dream.”
“Believe me, I felt the same when Copley told us you’d given the all clear,” Nicky studied their new hideout. “I can’t say I miss the Victorian era, or the plantation houses, but I did miss you,” he squeezed Joe’s arms. “God himself probably tired of all the prayers I sent on your behalf.”
“Hm,” Joe wriggled, rearranging them so that he could hitch his arms under Nicky’s knees and around his back. “What about you? Are you hurt anywhere, Habibi?” Nicky chuckled lowly as he was lifted bridal style. Joe wobbled for a second, unused to the weight of millennia old warrior muscles, but he would sooner take a bullet to the eye than drop Nicky.
“Nothing that hasn’t healed,” Nicky nuzzled his neck, sighing. “Is it a nice house?”
“I had to scare off a few dozen mice and birds, but it’s remained intact for the most part,” Joe stepped into the foyer. Nicky swiveled his neck to look around.
“Joe!” he gasped. “Tell me you didn’t clean this place up by yourself!”
“I was excited to see you,” Joe scoffed, kissing Nicky’s temple again. “And the others. We can wait for them on the porch with tea. There’s a veranda in the back where Andy and Quynh can do Tai Chi. There’s a tire swing for Nile and a stream for Booker to catch his fish...”
Nile quieted him with another kiss. His eyes were limpid with warmth and fondness that made Joe feel like a little boy again, young and giddy. He blushed. “I am not letting you out of my sight for another three hundred years,” Nicky informed him between kisses.
Joe somehow found the kitchen and set Nicky down on the island counter. With his hands newly freed, he started unbuckling the battle armor. “Likewise, love. Are you tired? The couch is very good for napping. That’s what I was doing when you texted me.”
“I don’t care so long as you are there,” Nicky sniffed, then seemed to think. “On second thought, we both smell like death. Is there a working shower here?”
“Copley couldn’t get the water running. There’s a stream nearby.”
“Then I wish to let the stream clean the filth off me, with you in attendance of course. Then I shall make you a splendid breakfast, we can wait for the others on the porch and kiss until we run out of breath.”
There was not a single part of that plan Joe did not wholeheartedly support. He nodded and pressed his forehead to Nicky’s, breathing out the tension and despair of the past two years without his lover or family. Some days, he’d thought he couldn’t survive, but now, with Nicolò in his arms, he hardly remembered whatever he’d been upset about.
“I love you,” he whispered. Nicky’s fingers entwined with his own.
“Without end,” he agreed.
“Without end,” he agreed.