Chapter Text
The funny, stupid thing about it all, Nicky knows, is that he and Joe had been planning to blow up the building anyway. It's just their luck that this group of infantile, hateful idiots who call themselves white nationalists had done the whole thing themselves before Joe had all the information they needed.
Nicky doesn't know exactly what happened. As a prisoner, he's been left alone for most of their time on the base while Joe goes about the process of gathering information. Idiots and small time players this group may be, but they do have connections to a wider network, their hateful, reckless actions drawing the attention—and at times admiration—of much bigger players in the field.
Nothing in the lead up to the explosion suggested that they were under attack. It is far more likely that one of the incompetent infants dropped a cigarette near their sloppy munitions storage. Perhaps Joe will know more. It is only luck that they were here together when the back half of the base blew in.
Nicky picks his way through the rubble, hands still cuffed but limbs mostly intact. He can see the hulking, pale form of the body Joe currently wears slumped off to his left, the remnants of a metal cabinet he had been leaning against blown open and twisted by the blast. Joe is covered in blood, jagged metal pieces of the cabinet embedded in his shoulder and the side of his head, and Nicky shoves down the instinctive panic that rises in him every time Joe is injured and forces himself to breathe.
He crawls to Joe, briefly considers scraping his hands out of their plastic ziptie cuffs, then decides against it. He cradles Joe's big head in his lap, pets over the soft curve of his ear with gentle fingers. Nicky knows he should avoid getting blood on his clothes, but he can't bring himself not to touch, not when Joe is dead in his arms and there is no one to see.
The shrapnel pushes out of Joe's skull, and Nicky wipes the blood from his shaved head and waits for Joe to wake. It takes less than a minute, seconds that feel like an eternity.
When Joe's eyes blink open, it is with the foggy confusion that sometimes accompanies a head wound. Nicky is grateful that for the moment, they are alone.
Joe shifts, looking down at his own pale hands, and frowns. There is a question in his gaze when it meets Nicky's again.
Nicky sits up, pulling Joe with him, and he takes Joe's hands in his own. Like this, Joe's fingers are as long and thick as Nicky's, and Nicky laces their hands together, folding Joe's fingers between his. It's a snugger fit than usual, but Nicky ignores it. Joe frowns at the cuffs on Nicky's wrists.
"You are Yusuf Al-Kaysani of the Maghreb, an artist and a trader, and a warrior." Nicky speaks in the old Arabic dialect of Yusuf's childhood, as best as either of them can recall it. "You are a poet, one of the greatest this world has ever known. You are my Joe, and you have been the beating heart in my chest for nearly a millennium. This shape you wear is not your own, but I will love it just the same because it is you."
He traces a hand up Joe's bare arm, gently squeezing.
"Do you remember who you are, cuore mio?"
He watches Joe's eyes, a paler blue than his own, sees the weight of Yusuf's years settle in them and the crinkles at the corners when his love finally shines through.
"Yes."
Nicky carefully turns the forearm in his grasp, revealing the tattoos on the underside of the sleeve. Joe doesn't recoil at the confederate flag, the swastika, the botched portrait of Hitler. Nicky knows what it had cost his love, the artist, to design such hateful patterns, to paint them on his own skin, borrowed as this shape might look.
"And you know now what you must pretend to be?"
Joe draws in a shuddering breath, then slowly lets it out. "Yes."
Nicky nods and leans forward to press a gentle kiss to the corner of Joe's mouth.
"It will not be long now, ya hayati," he promises. "They have done us a favor. This accident, whatever caused it, will surely attract attention. They will be forced to make contact with the others, to explain themselves, perhaps to ask for help. We will have the answers we seek soon."
"I love you," Joe tells him in Arabic, and then again in Ligurian. "I will return to you soon." And Nicky knows that Joe is talking about more than a physical return.
Like this, foreheads pressed together, held in each other's arms, they could hardly be closer, and yet a part of Joe is still missing, locked away, held safe, until this ordeal is through.
"Come on," Joe says roughly after a moment, pushing to his feet and seizing Nicky's upper arm with a touch that feels so perfunctory, so impersonal, that it would be impossible to mistake this man for the love of Nicolò's life.
"Time to see about the survivors."