Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tap tap.

His eyes flew open, and his gun was drawn even before his brain registered what he was doing. At least he stilled his finger before he could put a hole in their tent. Again. He had gone three years and two months without another incident, not that anyone was counting (Joe was), and he would like to keep it that way. Also, fixing bullet holes in tents, shirts, and dresses was fiddly.

Tap.

There was no one else in their tent, and a single glance upwards confirmed the source of the noise. A tiny droplet rolled down the left side of their tent. And another. Then another. He put down his gun as he cursed in his mother language. He tried to move, to get up, but the oversized koala attached to his back tightened his limbs around his neck, abdomen, and legs, effectively immobilizing him.

“Five more minutes,” Joe mumbled into the back of his neck.

Nicky rolled his eyes and pinched the arm around his stomach. “It’s raining, Joe. I need to get our stuff.”

His husband huffed, gifted him with an almost bruising bite to his right shoulder, but then mercifully released him from his clutches. Nicky grabbed his boots that had been placed just outside of their little tent and pulled them on. They were already slightly wet inside, and he grimaced at the uncomfortable feeling. With one quick movement, he threw Joe’s boots at the figure still curled up in their bedroll, then crawled outside. The sky was covered with dark grey clouds, and they promised a very uncomfortable day ahead.

“It’s raining? It shouldn’t be raining! They said we’ll have nice weather!” It seemed like Joe’s neurons were finally catching up with the situation.

“Actually,” Nicky started as he leaned down to grab his hoodie from a tree trunk, “They said the weather here is unpredictable. You said that it will be sunny.”

The Universe seemed like it tried to prove a point because a big, fat droplet fell onto Nicky’s nose. He grimaced and whipped it away with the hoodie and leaned down to grab the empty tin can he had left there the previous night.

His fingers brushed dirt. No tin can. He stood up straight, frowning. He ran through his memories from the night before. He was sure he had left it there. It was such a small thing, a tin can, but the mere idea that he misplaced it felt wrong. An icky feeling under his skin. He did not misplace things. Joe did.

Come to think of it.

“Joe? Where is your jacket?”

“I left it next to the fire,” his husband replied absent-mindedly. He was sitting at the door of their tent, just under the tiny canopy, typing on his phone.

No, not next to the fire. Yusuf had slipped yesterday, and they had to wash one of the sleeves. He had hung it onto a branch close to the fire. Nicky blinked. The branch was empty.

He scratched his arm. It didn’t get rid of the icky.

“Maybe it’s clearing up? Look, it’s brighter there!” Joe pointed at a certain spot in the sky. Almost immediately a lightning brightened the sky, followed by thunder. “I think we should pack,” he mumbled sheepishly.

“You think?” Nicky huffed.

Their tent was high quality, but it wouldn’t stand a chance against a whole thunderstorm. Not with the strength of that wind that started picking up. Moreover, they were in a low-lying area; in case of a flood, they were doomed.

By the time they packed up their stuff, both of them were drenched by the cold rain.

They didn’t find Joe’s jacket.

They had no hope of getting back to their rented car. They were at least one day of hiking away from it. Their original plan was to do a loop on a trail, five days of hiking and enjoying nature. This was their second day.  

They had seen a quite big overhang not far from them, so they made their way towards that as fast as they could. The rain was relentless, and the ground turned into a muddy river at their feet. They had more than enough experience with slippery terrain, but still, by the time they reached the overhang, they were muddy, wet, and miserable. At least the space under the rock formation was big enough for them both. It was almost a cave. The rocky walls gave protection from the relentless wind and rain from three sides. They were high enough that if a flood happened, they would have been protected.  

“A fire would be nice,” Joe muttered through chattering teeth. Without his jacket, his sweatshirt had no chance of keeping him dry and warm.

“Get out of that!” Nicky ordered as he unzipped his jacket. Joe raised an eyebrow and grinned suggestively.

“I like that train of thought!”

Nicky snorted as he took off his miraculously almost dry hoodie and handed it to his husband. Joe gratefully slipped into the body-warm garment. He pulled the fabric up to his nose and inhaled deeply.

“Hmmm. Nice!” he purred.

Nicky rolled his eyes at him. “That smells!”

“Of you, caro!”

“You are hopeless.”

They huddled close to each other, sharing as much body heat as they could. Joe offered up his hand, palm up, and Nicky placed his own onto it, fingers intertwined. It was the most natural thing in the world after all.

“So,” Joe started, “whose idea was this?”

“Yours,” Nicky replied without missing a beat.

“No way! That’s a lie!”

To be truthful, it had been both of theirs. After spending 900 years together, most of their ideas were shared. This had been simple. Merrick’s lab had been sterile, artificial, and claustrophobic. They had been holed up in a cottage in a small village at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. It had been self-evident. However, when the two of them casually had mentioned their plan to Andy during a dinner, they had met with total resistance. That “No!” stood stronger than the Great Wall of China. They both spoke the language of Andy perfectly, and the translation had been easy.

You two are not getting out of my sight any time soon.

It had taken lots of coaxing, calm reasoning from Nicky, shameless puppy dog eyes from Joe, but they had won. They had gotten the green light for their trip.

“It’s just a hike in the woods, what could go wrong?” Joe had asked Andy right before he had gotten into the rented car with Nicky.

Actually, a lot could, Nicky thought with a grimace, and Joe jinxed them. He had said that much despite his husband’s protests. The forest that had been so quiet last night was alive with sound. There were the relentless, constant patters of the raindrops, the frequent thunders that either came after a sudden lightning or with an unpleasant, earthshaking surprise. He was certain that he had heard a tree fall over at least once.

Nicky didn’t like the loud noises. Silent rain? Perfect. Thunder in the distance? It could be pleasant in the safety of a house. Sitting right in the middle of a thunderstorm under a rock formation? Really not okay.  

He leaned his head onto Joe’s shoulder. At least one ear is protected. He resisted the urge to cover the other one with his hand. Joe did it for him, though. His palm was still chilled, but a familiar weight against the side of Nicky’s head as he pushed him more firmly against his own shoulder. He started into a story about a poem, written by a genius, stolen and presented by a fraud. It sounded familiar. Oh, yeah. Four nights ago, Nicky had heard it mumbled against the back of his neck at three in the morning by his very sleep-talking husband. He settled against Yusuf and felt the words wash over him while the world raged around them. He tried not to think about missing tin cans and jackets and the icky. He succeeded more or less.

The storm lasted three hours and twenty-three minutes, not that anyone was counting. (Nicky was). They emerged from their small sanctuary when it had quietened down to a light rain.

“Well, that’s a sight,” Joe commented as they took in their surroundings. They were both good with details, they had both eyes for them. They just processed the information differently. While Joe looked with awe at the destruction around them, probably thinking about the power of nature, Nicky himself thought they were effectively fucked. Mudslides, fallen trees, actually, barely anything looked the same as he had remembered from before the storm. Navigation would be almost impossible.

Yusuf was already on his phone, but the frown that appeared on his face wasn’t promising.

“I can’t get the GPS working,” He huffed with annoyance and started moving around, trying to catch a signal. It wasn’t anything new. They had experienced a loss of signal several times, even before they had set out for their hike. It was one of the reasons they had kept a safehouse here. No electronics meant safety sometimes.

“There is a map in your backpack.”

Being the stubborn idiot that he is, Yusuf tried to get his phone to work a few more times, then gave up and moved to his backpack. A few seconds later, he blinked up at Nicky in confusion.

“There isn’t.”

“There is!”

“Nope!”

“Yes!”

They had that very mature conversation in four different languages, then Nicky grabbed the backpack and reached into the pocket he personally put the paper map, folded four times, in.

It wasn’t there.

He wanted to scratch his arm bloody. He didn’t. He just stared, dumbfounded.

“I’m going through our stuff,” he declared.

Joe held up his phone, indicating that he’d try to get a signal again, and stepped out of the protection of the overhang. Nicky stayed and, one by one, laid out their possessions onto the ground, neatly, systematically. In the end, he came up with five missing items in total. There was the tin can, Joe’s jacket, the map, Nicky’s deodorant (which was scentless and hard to come by, damn it!), and a pocket knife Yusuf had thrown into Nicky’s backpack just because, or in case.

It would be fun to explain to Andy how the two of them managed to lose those specific objects between them.

Joe came back a few minutes later, and there was a change in his posture. Nicky recognized it immediately, after all, he had seen it many times. He was on guard, guarding him.

The two of them stared at each other, communicating without words. After 900 years, you don’t really need words. They are nice, but you don’t need them.

“We do not have a map,” Nicky said after a while.

“Or signal.”

“Okay,” Nicky sighed. He repacked their backpacks, checked their bedrolls, and the wrapping of their folded tent. He engraved everything in his memory again. The two of them distributed their stuff among themselves, then stopped just under the overhang.

After 900 years, their decisions were shared too. They picked the same used to be path (maybe?) together and set out south. There should be a creek down there, which could lead them back to the parking lot where they had left their car.

Probably.

They walked together, trying to put as much distance into their legs as they could before nightfall, when they’d eventually need to stop. Yusuf spoke almost nonstop. It was comforting, that was why he was doing it, Nicky knew. He didn’t miss how his husband was walking half a step behind him, even when the path would allow them to walk side by side. On guard. It allowed Nicky to keep his sharp eyes on their surroundings, looking close, looking into the distance, analyzing everything.

“… and she actually ate that! Can you imag---” Joe stopped in mid-sentence, and Nicky immediately froze. He had been reenacting a certain kitchen endeavor of his and Nile’s, during which Andy and Nicky had gone for a walk in hopes of calming down the former’s nerves.

“Yes?” Nicky had no idea what had caught his husband’s attention, but his hand was already moving towards the gun he had kept at his waistband.

“One second,” Joe sounded distracted, then he stepped over a fallen log and disappeared out of sight. That did not go well with Nicky’s nerves, but he waited, senses alert, eyes scanning their surroundings. He picked up nothing, unlike Joe…

“Look what I found!” Yusuf declared proudly as he stepped over the log again and presented a very pathetic-looking ball of fur. Nicky stared first at the animal, then at his husband. He recognized that fur. He had seen something very familiar in Italy, too, although they are endangered now.

He had a very well-polished and established response to these situations, which Yusuf loved to put him into. His hands ended up on his hips without his brain registering his muscles' move.

“Huh!”

Joe must have caught on, or maybe hadn’t, because the next words that came out of his mouth were, “It’s such a cute puppy!”

Two things ran through Nicky’s mind. One, he loved that idiot of a husband of his. Second, he was ready to murder him again.

“Joe, that’s a grey wolf.”

“It’s a puppy---”

“Cub.”

“---and it’s lost!”

“Its mother will murder us in cold blood if it finds us with it!” Nicky hissed. The cub was small. No mother leaves such a small cub alone for a long period of time. Yusuf regarded the small animal with awe, cuddled it close to his chest while rubbing its small body with his hands in the hope of warming it up.

They looked adorable.

Nicky wanted to throttle him.

“I don’t think so!” Joe protested the idea of a vengeful mother wolf. “It probably got caught up in the rain, the mud. They must have gotten separated and ---”

The sun was almost down by that time. The clouds that were still covering the sky and the setting sun pushed their surrounding into an eerie darkness.

The silence of the forest was broken by the angry howl of a wolf.

Nicky raised an eyebrow at Joe as if asking, Come again?

His husband blinked once, twice, and the furball stirred in his hand.

“Okay, I may see a pattern here,” Joe admitted.

To be continued…

Chapter Text

Joe resisted the urge to grin at his husband. Nicky still had his hands on his hips, while his soul-searching eyes were glaring at him. That “Huh!” was one of his favorite sounds of Nicky’s, pity it only appeared in certain situations (mostly when he was trying to give Joe another chance to rethink his life choices). He remembered the first time he had seen that stance, and heard that “Huh!”. It had been during the Crusades, Jusuf had woken up after who knows how many deaths (Nicky probably knows the exact number), to see the Crusader stand above him, hands on his hips, head cocked to the side, and “Huh!”. Even then, Joe had found that sound cute. Although right after that he had thrown a knife at the man and had managed to kill him in turn, but that’s history.

“Joe! Put the cub down!” Nicky tapped with his foot, his fingers flexed on his hips. The setting sun gave his eyes a golden glow, almost angelic. So nostalgic. Only his hair had been longer during the Crusades. Joe liked it when it was longer.

“You should grow your hair out,” He commented. He pulled the fabric of Nicky’s hoodie away from his neck and carefully maneuvered the small puppy between the garment and his chest. There, it would warm up sooner.

Nicky didn’t miss a beat, he was used to Joe’s wandering thoughts after all. He threw up his hands in exasperation, and Joe wished that Nile’d been there to witness this.

“Nicky is so calm and collected! I’m so envious!” She had said not long ago. Yeah, sure! Everyone thinks that until the Italian comes out to play.

“After you have been mauled to death, prepare for an unlimited number of Told you so’s!” his husband warned and set out on the used-to-be path they had been walking on. Joe fell half a step behind him and grinned. He was so winning!

“It’s not like we didn’t have a dog before!” he stated.

Nicky spun around so fast that it almost disoriented his husband. His pointed finger came close to stabbing Joe in his right eye.

“We didn’t have a dog! You had a Siberian husky! I almost suffocated in her fur!”

Oh, Nanook had been an extraordinary creature. The three of them, Nicky, Andy, and Joe, had been searching for an informant whom they believed had been hiding in Siberia in the 1950s. Joe had been trying to get information on him from another man, and he had struck a deal with him. For the required information, Joe had to take his dog. 

Joe had agreed immediately. Nicky had gaped at him when he had presented the happily panting dog to him.

“That’s not a good thing!” he had exclaimed after hearing the story.

Well, Nanook had sung, that Joe admitted. According to Nicky, she had been screaming at the top of her lungs all the time. For some mysterious reason, Andy had taken Nicky’s side in that argument.

Life hadn’t been boring with Nanook. There were incidents, yes. They had been in a very cold environment, which neither Nicky nor Joe had been made for. More often than not, they had woken (meaning Nicky had woken), to Nanook trying to climb up on the top of them during the night. Joe had thought that she had been trying to keep them warm. Nicky had been sure that she had been trying to murder him.

Of course, Nanook had been Joe’s dog. Nicky just had been spending hours treating the poor animal when she had gotten an ear infection. Yusuf remembered watching the love of his life, with Nanook’s head in his lap, leaning over her with several herbs, medications, and lotions placed around him with a cloth in his hand, and calmly explaining to the dog that cleaning her ears regularly should have been a priority. Like Nanook had anything to do with how they managed her ears.

Ear inflammation had been cured. It had turned out that their informant had died during the Hungarian revolution. Nanook had been part of their lives for sixteen years.

“You are the one to talk,” Joe spoke with mock outrage. “Your cat tried to crawl my eyes out!”

Nicky rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Joe,” he started with exasperated calmness. “Malik had been a fennec fox, and you acquired him in the wild, too.”

“That, I’m good at!” He grinned. “Did I ever tell you about the time I acquired a Crusader?”

Nick snorted and shook his head with fake exasperation. For a nostalgic second, Joe thought about their first years after their peace treaty. By that time, his mother had been gone, but he was sure that she wouldn’t have been surprised a bit if he had gone home with that lost-looking Frank following behind.  

They found the creek half an hour later. Only, it had grown at least four times bigger thanks to the rain.

“That’s not a creek! That’s a river!” Joe complained. At least one of them would end up in that, he was sure.

“It did rain a lot,” Nicky sighed.

They could see the water from their location, but to reach it, they would have to descend a very steep slope. They decided to leave that for tomorrow and instead searched for a campsite. They found a rock wall, and at the foot of it, a thick and old pine tree stood. They chose this tiny nook as the base of their camp, something to protect their backs. Joe stayed behind to set up the tent, while Nicky moved around to try to gather some dry wood for a fire. Joe kept his senses on him and the forest around them. He hadn’t said anything yet, but truthfully, he didn’t have to. After all, Nicky had been on edge because of some missing items of theirs. However, after the storm, when Yusuf had tried to get a signal, he had felt eyes on him. He couldn’t pinpoint their location, but it had been there. He couldn’t shake that feeling ever since.

“Well, that's pretty pathetic,” Nick declared as he dropped an armful of broken branches onto the ground. He looked up at Joe and narrowed his eyes. “Why is that wolf in our bedroll?”

The key is playing innocent and turning up the intensity of the puppy dog eyes.

“He is cold!” The cub looked happy as it was snuggled up in the fabric. Nicky stared, the index finger of his right hand tapped against his muddy jeans, then abruptly turned and started to clear some space for a campfire.

Translation: There would be consequences. With Nicky, that could come at any time and in any form. Damn…

“So,” Joe tried, when a weak, tiny flame appeared between the semi-dried branches. “What’s for dinner?”

Nicky hummed and shot a thoughtful look at the cub in their bedroll.

“Don’t you dare!” Joe gasped and hovered protective hands above the cub. The small wolf looked up with barely open eyes, then with a huge yawn, it went back to sleep.

“I was just thinking about what we can feed it,” Nicky said with the innocence of an angel, but Joe had known that man like he had known himself, and he could see the mischievous glint in his light eyes. “But now that you mention it…”

“You are not good for my nerves, Nicolò!”

“Tough.”

In the end, they made a modest dinner out of tinned food. It was the part of camping that Joe knew Nicky didn’t like. He was wholeheartedly against processed food, but between the two of them, they were already carrying so much stuff necessary for their hiking that they had no other choice. (Yes, Nicky, we do need four knives in a backpack! Do not even start on spare bullets. You are the one who is trigger-happy in the morning!) Also, Joe loved the way Nicky scrunched up his nose whenever he had to open a tin can.

Joe didn’t comment on the way Nicky was taking in their whole camp, visibly memorizing the whole layout as they were settling down for the night.

They climbed into their bedrolls, taking up their usual position, the only difference being that Joe had a wolf cub at his back, sleeping peacefully, this time wrapped in Nicky’s hoodie. They were all muddy. It didn’t matter anymore what was clean or not, Yusuf reasoned. He attached himself to the back of his lover with a happy sigh.  

“You know, grey wolves’ sense of smell is estimated to be 100 times greater than humans',” Nicky commented as soon as Joe closed his eyes.

“Good to know.”

“Just saying, that if she comes to maul you to death, I will let her.”

“Of course, you will!” he nuzzled into the dark strands in front of his face. Ever since Merrick, they had been more or less on the run, so Nicky’s and, to be honest, everybody’s hair started to grow, but Yusuf was only interested in his husband’s strands.

“You really should grow out your hair,” he nuzzled the strands again.

“I wouldn’t be able to see a thing.”

“I would cut it for you! It would be so pretty! Even---”

“Joe, please go to sleep!” Nicky huffed. Joe could hear the laughter in his voice. Still, he remained tense despite Joe’s best efforts. Well, tense wasn’t the right word for it. His muscles were relaxed, ready. He was sure that those light, intense eyes were staring unblinkingly at the zipper that held the door of their tent closed. His long fingers were wrapped around that gun he kept under his bedroll.

“We should find a name for him. Something strong and majestic!”

“Joe, we are not keeping the wolf!”

“Want to bet?”

He was sure that Nicky tried to kick him by the flexing of the muscles in his legs, but Joe had all his limbs around him, so he was effectively powerless against him. He heard the muttered words, “Damn koala”, and he chuckled.

They settled after that, though even if they slept, their sleep was light.

Hours passed, then Joe woke to something breathing in his right ear. It was the wolf cub. It was doing that silent, almost mute keening that small animals do when they are in distress or afraid.

Miraculously, Nicky didn’t wake up to that. However, he was a light sleeper, a very light sleeper, so Joe kept his muscles relaxed to avoid alerting him. He had many pets in his long life and recognized their behavior immediately. The question was what scared this animal. He had placed the tent so that one side was protected by the rocky wall, which was the side to Joe’s back. The back of the tent was in the nook between the rocky wall and the pine tree. So, only two sides were vulnerable, the opposite side and the door. They both could be covered easily by his trigger-happy husband.

Joe tried to concentrate on their surroundings, outside their tent. The wind had picked up. He could hear the rustlings of leaves, the creaking of branches. The sky had cleared up some, but clouds came and went. They were playing a little peek a boo with the moon. With the light, the shadows moved too. Joe had learned to overserve the shadows early in his long life. So, he observed. He still kept his muscles relaxed, but his eyes and ears were sharp. The pup curled close to his neck, and Joe concentrated on the angle of the small animal’s head. In a manner of speaking, he tried to follow its line of sight. There was a distant tree’s canopy that cast a distorted shadow. The canopy swayed with the wind, and the shadow moved with the rhythm. He watched it for a long few moments and then… He tensed his arms and just like as expected, his husband came up from dreamland with a gun in hand, ready. His aim was excellent too. The barrel of his gun pointed almost where that not-right shadow was.

“Still!” Joe breathed into his ears in Maltese. Nicky didn’t shoot this time. He was getting good at that. He was waiting for instructions. Mission mode.

Joe moved his hand and pointed at the shadow, slightly correcting the aim of Nicky’s gun. He felt the tiniest flexing of his husband’s muscles. There was no light inside their tent, but still they were careful with their movements. They had an unspoken problem. There was only one exit from the tent, through the door. It had the same disadvantage as its advantage. Opening the zipper of the door would create a sound.

The shadow shifted.

They waited a few minutes, then Nicky tapped Joe’s arm. Time for action.

They both had their talents and therefore roles in these kinds of situations. Joe was good with drawing attention, while Nicky was masterful in avoiding it. So, he made a show of opening up the zipper of the tent and made his way outside with as much noise as he could dare without making it obvious. The wonderful thing about having someone around you for 900 years is that you can feel their presence wherever you or they are. Therefore, he knew that Nicky slipped into the darkness right after. He switched on a flashlight and scanned their surroundings lazily with it, while making sure not to reveal his husband's whereabouts.

I’m just a tourist, a camper, he tried to convey with his movements. Come on, I’m bait!

The forest was eerily silent around him. Predators were lurking there after all (Yes, he considered Nicky one too. He had known that man for almost a thousand years, believe him, he was one).

No attack came, but he stayed outside till he heard Nicky's sign from the tent. He was back.

“So?”  he inquired as he settled down next to him. His husband had even more mud on his face and arms, but otherwise no other external signs of his little trip.

“Nothing,” Nicky replied, while he kept his eyes on the top of their tent. “We are not alone, though.”

He didn’t elaborate, but he didn’t need to. They didn’t sleep that night.

When dawn finally came, Nicky was up with the first rays of sunshine. The wolf cub licked Joe’s face, then unceremoniously walked straight over his body.  It waddled after Nicky and let out a series of high-pitched whines, its tiny muzzle nudging the air expectantly. Joe watched with a grin as his husband stood above the small creature and the two glared at each other. Unconsciously, Nicky’s hands ended up on his hips. He was the epitome of a disapproving mother.

“Don’t just stare!” green-grey-blue eyes slipped to him with piercing intensity. “Your dog is hungry.”

“It’s a cub!” Joe grinned as he crawled outside. “Your words!”

Nicky raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “I check the perimeter.”

“I didn’t get my morning kiss!” Joe shouted after him.

“Should have thought about that before running your mouth!” his husband called back as he was rounding their tent.

Joe pouted after him, then turned to the wolf cub that was staring at him with a wide-eyed, hungry stare. Yesterday evening, the cub slept through dinner, probably the stress of the storm still weighed on it. However, it got comfortable enough with them, so there was no postponing that again. Okay, feeding time.

“I hope you had something other than milk already, because, well, we are out…”

He searched through their backpack for food. He couldn’t for the life of him remember who should be carrying what, but he knew that if he messed up the contents of them, Nicky would kick him out of the tent. Considering they hadn’t planned for a canine companion, they didn’t exactly have dog food on them, so, in the end, he decided to open another tin can.  

“Joe?”

There was no alarm in his husband’s voice, but it was serious, and Joe was moving as soon as his brain registered his name. He found Nicky crouching approximately ten feet from their tent next to a thick bush. As soon as he reached him, he pointed at the print in the dirt.

It was human, in combat boots by the look of it.

“It’s not ours,” Joe commented, wholly unnecessarily.

Nicky hummed his agreement. He scanned their surroundings with narrowed eyes. “Someone was here last night, I just couldn’t find him in the dark,” he huffed with frustration evident in his voice.

“Let’s just head back to the others, regroup,” Joe said.

His husband hummed in agreement and started to rise from his crouching position.

“One second,” Joe grinned and grabbed the front of Nicky’s sweatshirt with his hand. His husband let out a surprised sound as he was yanked to his feet, and Joe crushed their lips together.

“My morning kiss!” Joe laughed at Nicky’s stunned expression and took off towards their camp before his soul-mate could recover and come up with any sort of revenge.

The knowledge that someone could sneak up on them during the night weighed on them, though. In the end, they just wrapped up their tent and packed their other stuff without eating a proper breakfast. An energy bar would do, they decided. Joe grabbed the small wolf from the ground and hid it in his hoodie once again.

They approached the slope that led to the creek carefully. The consequences of the previous storm were still evident. The slope was muddy and the water still raged. Joe considered writing a petition to reclassify this body of flowing water as a river.

“So…” Joe scratched the back of his head. “Plan?”

Nicky looked around thoughtfully. Not many trees to hold onto, there was mostly just the slippery mud. A grin appeared on Nicky’s face, then he lowered himself down to the ground, over the edge, and pushed himself away. Slide, grab something, slide, repeat. He barely stopped at the edge of the water, but he was down, and by the look of it, in one piece. Though he was covered in mud and dirt from head to toe. He waved up at Joe cheekily. The latter took off his backpack, other gear, and basically threw them at his husband. Nicky grabbed them easily and placed them onto the ground carefully. Joe then turned and started his descent much more carefully. He kept a hand on the wolf cub during their little journey. If he slipped and fell, there was a good chance he would crush it with his body weight.

“I had a precious cargo!” he explained as soon as he reached his husband.

“It’s mother still going to murder you,” Nicky shrugged and turned towards the flowing water next to them.

The dancing waves of the clear liquid were mesmerizing, and Joe couldn’t resist leaning down and letting his finger dip into it. “Wow, it’s cold!” he gasped, surprised.

“It’s the mountains, dear,” Nicky huffed with a smile. He crouched down next to the water and carefully started washing his face and arms. He had perfect control over his features, almost. Joe still could detect the little winces he tried to suppress.

The wolf cub became restless and tried to escape the hoodie, which resulted in lots of immediately healing gashes on Yusuf’s neck and chest.

“Wait a second, you impetuous little pup!” he scolded the small creature as he stepped away from the water. He carefully peeled the hoodie off the cub and was about to place it onto the ground a few steps away from the water, when he heard his name, said as a warning by his husband. He spun around, eyes searching for Nicky. He was still crouching by the water, but his narrowed gaze was kept on something up on the opposite side of the creek, up on the slope, between the thick foliage.

“That’s a rifle,” Nicky stated calmly.

Time stopped for a few seconds, both of them frozen to the spot, preparing. Then Nicky threw himself into the water, a shot rang out, Joe dived for cover with the cub held securely in his arms, and a rock exploded a few inches where Nicky just had been. Yusuf held his breath, then there, several feet down the bank where he had expected, Nicolò broke out of the water, grabbed onto whatever branch, root, or stone he could, and scrambled out and up the slope.

It meant he needed cover. Joe had his gun out already, and though he personally couldn’t see their attacker, his husband had given him a very exact location to aim at.

“You might want to cover your ears, little one,” he said to the bundle, now perfectly still in his hoodie again, and started firing till his husband disappeared between the trees.      

To be continued…