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The smell of damp dirt hangs thick in the air as moonlight peeks through the thick yet patchy cloud cover; making it, at times, impossible for Joe to see anything beyond the tip of his nose.
Word had come through nearly three days ago—Nicky's last location had been found by Nile; somewhere in the United States of all places, a small town in the Midwest where people rarely ask questions unless they’re really looking for answers.
He'd been gone for nearly six months now, disappearing after their last mission in Europe—one day he’d been there by Joe, sharing little antecedents about nothing and everything, sharing meals with Nile, Andy, Booker, and then suddenly, he was just gone .
Try a he might, all of the leads Copley had managed to find ended up a dead end, an informant had spotted him here, one had spotted someone that looked like him there, but every time they went out to follow up on it, the trail turned cold and they were back to square one.
Until Nile found the photo.
It was Nicky, it was obviously him, the strong jaw and proud nose, the slight downturn of his lips at whatever he was looking at, everything about the photo was Nicky.
“It was on someone’s Instagram,” Nile had said, somewhat dumbfounded, “He’s in a crowd at some sort of event but...I don’t know why?”
It’d taken a bit of time then, to narrow down a location, but eventually they had—and Joe had immediately volunteered to go and Andy hadn’t argued, just nodded and told him to bring Nicky back home.
That had been five months into his disappearance, and even with the lead, the location; trying to find Nicky was nearly impossible. It was almost as if Joe was just following the trail of a ghost—he'd found what seemed to be a safehouse of some sorts halfway through his time there.
“There’s medical equipment here,” Joe had said into the phone as he paced the length of the room, “A lot of broken test tubes and what looks to be...blood,” he’d paused then, stopping as he stared at a large blood stain in the concrete floor, “Do you think...”
“We don’t know for sure,” Andy had said, keeping her voice as even as possible, “All we know for sure is that someone’s taken Nicky and we need to get him back.”
“We’ll let you know if we hear anything else,” Nile had murmured into the phone shortly after, “Don’t dwell too long on the blood. He’s immortal, remember?” she’d said it lightly, though they were both thinking about Andy’s new mortality and what that could possibly mean for Joe and Nicky.
The leads had stopped there though, but Joe pushed on, traveling through town after town, looking for anything that could point him in Nicky’s direction.
It was nearing the six-month mark when Nile sent him a text, a short and simple we found him before following up with an address—and when Joe had looked the address up, fear and panic gripped at him tightly.
A cemetery.
A fucking cemetery.
Joe barely remembered arriving there, barely remembered that he needed to not tear through the cemetery in broad daylight, looking for his buried lover—but he’d managed, he’d managed to carefully skirt his way around a cluster of people around a grave mourning, a family with three small children all sitting by another set of graves, with his hands in his pockets and his head down low he searched and searched until he finally came across something .
In the back of the cemetery, hidden behind a cluster of trees had been a poorly dug grave, no stone in sight, but fresh, so fresh that the smell of dirt had been strong enough to make Joe’s eyes water with the richness of it.
I found him . Was all he’d texted back, and then, he’d left, waiting for the right moment.
The right moment ended up being three days later after a particularly heavy rain in the dark of the night; he’d jumped the fence of the cemetery, after making sure the people of this small and sleepy town had seen his car leave.
No one here ever talked, but he didn’t want anything getting back to whoever had done this, just in case.
And that’s where he is now, the dirt is wet and dense under his feet; the moonlight only casting just enough light as the clouds pass over and he digs and digs and digs until he hits something, the shovel connecting with a loud thunk that echoes around him.
He digs faster then, until his arms ache and he uncovers what seems to be a wooden box, plain and unfinished, as if it’d been hastily built and with tired arms he raises the lid of it with a huff, shoving it back until it hits the wet dirt beside it.
“ Nicolò ,” Joe whispers, dropping to his knees by the grave, the shovel dropping down beside him as he reaches out to pull Nicky from the box—his body heavy and cold.
Cradling him in his lap, he cups his cheek, brushing his thumb over the deep, dark indention under his eye; his skin cold, oh so cold and Joe leans closer, resting their foreheads together, “ Nicky,” he murmurs, “Please come back to me, my heart. I need you. Our time isn’t yet finished.”
He’s not sure how long he stays like that, Nicky’s body half in his lap, Joe bent uncomfortably over him casting a shadow over him as he tells Nicky how everyone had been looking for him, how they’re supposed to go home together .
It’s sometime later, when Joe’s knees ache and he no longer has feeling in his arms that Nicky’s body convulses and he suddenly sucks in a deep breath of air—only to cough, the sound dry and cracked in the quiet of the night.
“Nicolò,” Joe says, rushed, as he sits up, as he helps Nicky sit up, rubbing his back through the thin t-shirt he’s wearing, ignoring the blood staining it. “Oh Nicky, you’re alive.”
Nicky’s eyes dart around nervously, sunken deep as if he’d spent days without sleep, “ Yusuf ,” he says, voice low and scratchy from disuse.
Joe rubs his back more, encouraging Nicky to speak, and when he does, it’s in a language that Joe hasn’t heard for nearly 900 years.
“ Where are we, Yusuf?”