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Joe wakes up to darkness and the taste of blood in his mouth and his first thought is for Nicky.
He drags himself up, eyes scanning his surroundings whilst his ears still ring from... The bomb? Grenade? He’d been watching the football with Booker- Where are they?
It’s unimportant now, because Nicky is lying beside him. Unresponsive. Joe can’t see the blue of his eyes and it’s beginning to tear him apart.
“Nicolò.” He reaches out to touch Nicky’s shoulder ignoring the way that the zip tie handcuffs tighten around his wrists. Open your eyes.
“Quiet.” Someone’s metal tipped boot makes hard contact with Joe’s leg but he barely feels it. Doesn’t give a fuck because Nicky isn’t waking up, Nicky's eyes are shut, Nicky-
A sob builds in his throat so quickly that he nearly chokes on it.
“Nicolò, destati, destati-“
The same voice snaps at him again, louder this time- a harsh growl cutting clearly through Joe’s panic.
“I said-"
“I know what you said, what are you gonna do? Kill me?” Joe looks up at the mercenaries surrounding him, daring them to stop him, before he moves forward, curling himself over Nicky’s body.
“Nicolò. Destati, destati-“
Wake up, wake up.
And Joe knows he doesn’t deserve clemency or favours or miracles, but right now he begs- if not for him, then for Nicky. There, in the dark of the van, surrounded by mercenaries clad in black, Joe begins to bargain.
Please, please, please. Let him live.
Take me instead.
His ears start to ring. He shuts his eyes.
When he opens them, his surroundings have changed. They're in Merrick's building. Nicky is lying face up; dead, body peppered with gunshots.
Blood leaks from his head. Joe's hands are covered in it.
“Amore- svegliati, please, Nicky-“
Invisible hands are pulling at his shoulder, something is pulling him away. Joe wrenches away, a gasp - a sob - cleaving its way through his chest, jagged and pained against his rib cage.
“You're not- Why are you not - come back to me-”
Joe can hardly get the words out. His body caves inwards by Nicky’s form, and by then, he’s heaving so hard that half of him is sure his lungs are about to explode out of his chest.
“Please, please- come back.”
Nicky is in pieces, and Joe is too. His tears are blurring his vision, but he leans in closer - head finding its place on Nicky’s bloody, mangled chest.
"Dai, Nico. Svegliati."
(A foolish part of him thinks that maybe, just maybe, speaking in Nicky’s native language will rouse him).
It feels like he's there for hours- feels like forever. And Joe already knows forever like the back of his hand.
He has felt himself die many times in the past millennia, but not like this - never like this.
Of the thousands of deaths Joe has had to experience, Nicky's is always the wort of all.
Joe wakes up gasping for breath, mouth dry and coarse and empty. Wrists aching in the places where he was tied down, the smell of antiseptic reaching the back of his throat.
Waking up, extracting himself from memories of this kind, is never an easy feat for Joe. He has to do it slowly, bit by bit- reminding himself as he goes that they’re just that. Memories. Nothing that can hurt him or his family anymore. He takes staggered breaths, winces, rubs at his eyes until he can no longer see the images burnt into his eyelids.
On some days, this is harder to do than others. Merrick and Keane are still fresh in his mind, and Kozak is there too, greedy eyes, cruel hands. She’s an open, weeping gash on his dreams and in his heart, and whenever Joe tries to staunch the memories, more seep out through his fingers.
Today, he shuffles up into a sitting position, and looks for Nicky on instinct.
But the other man isn't in the bed next to him, nor is he in the adjoining bathroom. Before he even realises what he’s doing, Joe is up and out of bed, bare feet meeting cold tiles of the London safe-house as he stumbles out of their room and into the corridor.
His heart is in his throat. Threatening to spill out of him if he doesn’t find Nicky.
What if they’ve taken him? What if someone else has betrayed them? What if-
But when Joe reaches the kitchen, Nicky is there - and Joe leans back against the doorframe, feels his muscles loosen inside of him.
Nicky is safe.
Not lying on the cold floor of a van. Not soaked in blood like the Nicky in his nightmares. Not strapped to a table, body peppered with wounds that have been forced upon him.
Safe. Clearly trying to find a shred of normalcy or routine as he rummages through their fridge for ingredients.
In that moment, Joe thinks that if he tries hard enough, he can pretend like everything is okay.
He just needs a distraction.
And watching Nicky cook has always been one of Joe’s favourite pastimes.
Whether it’s late at night when the world goes to sleep and Joe feels like they’re the only two people existing, or it’s a rainy afternoon and Nicky is shuffling around wrapped in a sweater too big for him, murmuring to himself in dialects that history doesn’t remember anymore as he scours the fridge.
Whether it’s a hot lunchtime in Malta, and Joe is sat under the fig tree, half reading and half stealing glances at Nicky through the open back doors, or its a cold evening in Berlin and Joe is throwing some blankets into the dryer for a few minutes just to warm them up whilst Nicky prepares the soup he’s known how to make forever.
Joe knows that he will never tire of it. Never.
Because the smile on his lover’s face is nothing short of an utter blessing, and the way the morning sunlight brushes against Nicky’s cheekbones before pooling against his jawline is enough to bring Joe to his knees.
Both he and the sun are in love with Nicolò di Genova.
Joe is falling. He is always falling in Nicky’s presence.
Yusuf falls for Nicolò, Josef falls for Nico, Joe falls for Nicky- on and on and on.
Today, Joe falls a little further, a little harder, the same way he has been doing for almost a millennia. Attempts to shrug off the nightmare and steps into the kitchen, body moving almost of its own accord.
His arms find their place around Nicky’s waist, his head moving onto Nicky’s shoulder in a way that is more muscle memory than planned action. He burrows closer and for a while they just stand there, Nicky’s back against Joe’s chest. Joe’s nose buried in the crook of Nicky’s neck. A tangle of limbs and quietly thudding hearts.
“Va tutto bene?” Nicky’s voice is warm and low and soft when he asks.
Joe nods slightly, reluctant to even move an inch.
“Everything’s okay.”
"Nile and Andy went out sightseeing, they left early."
"Mhm."
“You are still half asleep,” Nicky teases, as his fingers weave between Joe’s with remarkable tenderness.
“Maybe just a little bit.”
Joe feels Nicky huff a breath of laughter and when he lifts Joe’s hands in his own and begins to press his lips gently to them, Joe just about melts.
He leans further into Nicky before speaking.
“Come to bed?” It's Joe's last ditch attempt at quelling the fear inside him.
Nicky tries to turn fully to face him, smile lessening ever so slightly. His posture remains calm, collected, but the concern nestled in his eyes is unmistakable- unthinkable when Joe realises that he is the cause of it. The panic in his chest is awakening whether he likes it or not, and a part of him hates himself for causing the love of his life to worry.
“What happened?”
And Joe finds himself not wanting to say. Not wanting to talk about his dream and ruin their day when it's barely started. But this is Nicky. And Nicky knows Joe better than Joe knows himself.
“You had a nightmare?” He asks quietly.
Nigthmares, memories. Lately it all feels the same.
Joe clears his throat, “A nightmare of- of when they took us. You wouldn’t wake up.”
Nicky breathes deeply, “In the van?”
“Yeah. The labs too.”
“Would you like to talk about it?”
Suddenly, a thousand and one thoughts are rushing through him making it hard to think straight. Joe’s head is still slightly heavy with sleep and emotion but he makes an effort to look up at Nicky when he next speaks.
“I thought I’d lost you."
Nicky’s hands come up to cup Joe’s face, he brings their foreheads closer so they’re touching.
“Sono qui.”
I’m here.
Nicky says it over and over, in what sounds like a thousand different languages, and feels like a thousand different ways, and all of a sudden Joe is crying, awful, wet sobs falling from his lips, and this has been coming for days.
His hands fist Nicky’s shirt, as his head falls on his shoulder and then his breaths begin to shorten into short, choppy shards and Joe can't breathe properly.
He can't breathe.
Maybe it's the exhaustion, or a sick combination of the panic and the fear, but his legs give way underneath him. One minute he’s upright, and the next, he’s crumpling to the floor.
Nicky moves down with him, his hand shifting to hold the back of Joe’s neck. Gently, but with enough pressure to let him know that he’s there.
"Joe, Joe hey. Hey, you're okay. Look at me, you're okay," he soothes.
But Joe shakes his head, because he's not okay. He feels like he's dying, and can't even find the words to tell Nicky. When he blinks, all he can see is Nicky on the floor of that godforsaken van. All he can see is Nicky dead, and Andy tied up and Nile so, so afraid. All because Booker- Booker betrayed them.
“Yusuf, amore, I’m right here. You’ve got me. You have to breathe, okay?”
In all its iterations, Joe’s name has always sounded like a prayer on Nicky’s lips.
"Breath with me, Joe," Nicky takes big, exaggerated breaths, blue eyes never letting go of Joe's brown ones. "You're doing so well."
Joe tries, for Nicky more than himself, and slowly he feels his airways begin to open back up.
Nicky nods gently, "There you go, that's good. We're okay, deep breaths."
“I love you,” he says it choked, but he knows that Nicky catches it regardless. “I love you.”
And somehow, those three words don’t come even close to conveying the extent of what Joe feels for the man holding him, they are never, never enough. But Joe is exhausted as he clings on to Nicky, and Nicky seems to realise this too.
“I know.”
They stay there, on the kitchen floor, for a while longer. Nicky rocks them back and forth gently. Holding him tight as if he fears losing him, and Joe does not mind in the slightest. They're impossibly close; heads touching, wrapped so tightly that Joe doesn't even know where he begins or where Nicky ends.
Nicky is there. Nicky is always there. Like the ocean, Warm, and gentle, and ready to catch Joe with open arms and a soft smile every single time.
And if Nicky is the ocean, then it means that Joe is Icarus. And not only Icarus, but also the amalgam of wax and feathers which held him in the sky before he began to hurtle down towards something inescapable, colliding with something wholly and completely unplanned.
Joe falls for Nicky - with wax melted, he meets the sea.
Later, Nicky leads him back to the bedroom, and guilt begins to make the air thick and heavy to move through.
"I know you were cooking," Joe whispers as they curl up against each other on the bed. "I didn't mean to take you away from that."
"Joe. My love. My sun. You come first. " Nicky's voice does not tremble or falter when he speaks. He is kind, tender - words falling carefully against Joe's messy curls.
He takes Joe's hands in his own once more, "You always come first."
When he speaks again, his quiet voice is hoarse and heavy with sorrow.
"Sometimes I consider all that the past weeks have lead to. I think of you and Andromache and Nile... And I think that that one hundred years was not enough."
Joe just tucks himself into the crook of Nicky's neck. Away from the world. He doesn't want to think about Booker or his punishment right now. Just wants to lie in bed with Nicky for a while.
"Can we stay here for the rest of the day?"
Nicky's reply is instant, "Whatever you want, my love. Whatever you want."
No more nightmares come.