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Joe sees him across the room. Through the flickering lights and beyond the haze of the fog machine. Past the swaying, sweaty bodies on the dance floor.
Tall and thin, with wide shoulders. He’s sitting in a corner booth, elbow on the table beside an open book. Chin in his hand, he’s looking down - reading.
He’s at a dance club. It’s crowded, near midnight, and he’s reading.
Joe is half in love with him already.
So Joe crosses the room, weaving through dancers. He holds his glass of water high, not wanting to spill it.
A few dancers try to stop him, a touch to his shoulder here, or a tap to his hip there, but he just smiles, shrugs off their hands and keeps walking. He likes to dance, doesn’t mind the attention, but tonight, he’d much rather talk to the most interesting man in the room.
The most beautiful, too, Joe realizes, as he draws closer. Joe takes a drink of his water, to quench some of that rising thirst.
When he reaches the booth, he throws on his most confident smile, leans against the back of the bench, and says, “Do you come here often?”
The guy doesn’t even look up.
It’s only a slight gut punch. After all, it is loud, and maybe the book is good. Joe glances, and notices the words are in Italian.
He has to take another drink of water.
New plan, he decides, and leans on the table instead. He places his hand very near the edge of the book.
The guy sees it. He traces the arm up to Joe’s face.
Even with the shadows in the booth and the flashing lights of the club, those eyes are pale, and so expressive, as he looks at Joe with a mix of curiosity and irritation.
Joe supposes a guy who brings a book to a club probably doesn’t want to be interrupted. But he’s already come this far. Might as well strike out fully.
Clearing his throat, Joe tries again, louder. “Vieni qui spesso?” He tries to keep the confident smile, but it gets harder to hold the longer the guy keeps looking at him. Joe hasn’t spoken Italian in a while but he’s sure that he -
The guy narrows his gaze. He shakes his head. He opens his mouth and says something that is entirely swallowed in the music.
“What?” Joe says.
“No!” the guy says, louder. Joe can just barely hear it, if he concentrates. It’s easier when he leans over the table, closer. “I don’t.” The guy is still watching him, though Joe doesn’t miss the way that gaze dips down the length of Joe’s neck to his shoulders to his arms, where Joe is maybe or maybe not flexing a little more than he needs to hold himself over the table.
Whatever irritation that was in those bright eyes entirely vanishes now, and they seem a shade or two darker. A trick of the light, most likely.
“D-do you?” the guy asks. His gaze darts to Joe’s face again. His cheeks are turning pink. “Come here often?”
“Not really.” Joe places his water glass on the table, a safe distance from the book. “I came with friends.”
“Me too,” the man dips his head toward the dance floor. Joe glances but he can’t discern which of the wall of dancing bodies are this guy’s friends. He lost his own half-hour ago, though he suspects he’d find Booker at the bar if he looked.
Joe motions to space across the table from the guy. “May I join you?”
The guy nods, yet before Joe can slip into the spot he indicated, the guy shuffles inward so that Joe can sit beside him. Joe’s not about to turn that down and slides into the offered spot.
The guy smiles, a tiny, fragile thing, and says, “It’s easier to hear you from here.”
Joe’s brain screeches to a halt. That smile is the most precious thing he has ever been given. He’s ready to write sonnets. “I’m Joe,” he says, before he can say anything else and embarrass himself.
“Nicky.”
“Nicky,” Joe says, smiling wide, wider when it makes Nicky blush. “Tell me what you’re reading.”
Nicky does. It’s homework, he explains, for his theology class. He’s a student at the nearby university. He talks with his hands, slipping from English to Italian the more animated he gets.
Joe’s more than half in love, now. He’s a full three-quarters.
“Spiacente,” Nicky says as he winds down. A new song has started. Nicky looks around like he only now remembers where they are. “I’m sure you didn’t approach me for a lesson.”
Joe laughs at how wrong he is. “Are you kidding? Keep talking.”
Nicky presses his lips into a hard line. He glances at the dance floor then back at Joe. “Wouldn’t you rather be dancing?” It doesn’t sound like he’s offering.
So Joe says, “No.” When Nicky keeps waiting, like he’s expecting something else, Joe adds, “I would rather be wherever you are.”
Nicky lifts one brow, but his jaw isn’t so clenched anymore. “Even if that is reading a theology book in a corner of the club at one in the morning.”
Nicky’s hand rests on the booth seat between them. It’s nothing for Joe to take it in his own.
“Especially then,” Joe says.
Nicky looks at their hands, fingers curling around each other, and smiles.
“I had not expected you tonight,” Nicky says.
“That makes two of us,” Joe says. He squeezes Nicky’s hand. “Regrets?”
Nicky gives him a flat look. “I would have brought a sexier book.”
Joe laughs. Nicky does too, Joe thinks, but it’s soft and gets swallowed by the music.
“Next time, perhaps,” Joe says.
“Next time?”
Humming, Joe leans closer, brushing his nose to Nicky’s ear, and tells him, “You could read the phone book and I’d find it sexy.”
Red dusts Nicky’s cheeks. Joe can see it for sure, from this close.
“I can do better than that,” Nicky says, turning into Joe, and kisses him.