Work Text:
———
It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. Andrew is without a car and a place to be, and Joseph is side-eyeing him whilst he fumbles with some engine parts. He’s trying to abstain from looking at Andrew too much, finding the man’s casual clothes to be of great curiosity. They imply that Andrew definitely has time to waste, unlike his typical business casual getup that he usually dons. And, if Andrew is good at anything, it’s definitely wasting people’s time.
Joseph sighs, knowing it’s pointless to ask if Andrew plans on going anywhere anytime soon. First of all, the man’s clearly got a day off and has already stayed at the mechanic’s for longer than your average errand would take. Secondly, he always sticks around. Always. Even when he does have places to be.
(And it bothers Joseph a little less than he’d like.)
“Your car isn’t getting fixed anytime soon, y’know.” Joseph points out as Andrew picks up a magazine and begins idly flipping through it. With a little luck and Joseph’s previous advice, maybe he’d actually understand some of the terminology inside of it. Andrew’s not a mechanic, though, working more in sales and so Joseph doesn’t get his hopes too high.
“Mm, I know,” Andrew says, pretending to be fully immersed in the pages. But his head picks up suddenly, lighting up falsely with a “new” idea that has rather clearly been weighing on his mind this entire time. “You’re closing up soon, so I was wondering if you wanted to hang out?”
It comes out less confident than Andrew would’ve liked. It’s his week off and he’s spending the first day of it chatting up the town’s mechanic with a cocky smirk and two wavering eyes that reveal the true nature of Andrew’s intentions. Fragile. Hopeful.
It’s not like this is their first rodeo. Joseph’s a reliable source of information for Andrew’s work, teaches him the hands-on technical parts of cars that he never bothered to learn before. They’d hung out before, long “business dates” with ever-wandering topics, and then Joseph had mentioned something about an ex-boyfriend and that’s when Andrew’s eyes lit up- when the impossible became possible. And Joseph himself, despite being more difficult to get to know than your average person (certainly a lot more difficult than Andrew, even if neither of them bothered to wear their truest feelings on their faces), seems to enjoy the other man’s company. Andrew couldn’t tell if he was being polite or not, but last week he sent a picture of his dog totally unprompted and Andrew supposed that was a good sign.
“Sure,” Replies Joseph. “Where do you want to go?”
“Let’s think, too early for dinner...” Andrew muses.
“Too late for lunch.” Joseph interjects.
“... there’s a fair in town.”
And the casual, “Sounds good” comes out of Joseph’s mouth before he can stop it.
It takes just fifteen more minutes to close up shop for the day. Once everything’s done, they walk out to Joseph’s car and get in.
Andrew’s mockingly careful, and Joseph chuckles a bit. He’s used to this, the jab that the one thing he truly loves is his car. Though, he frowns a little upon processing this and his eyes drift to Andrew across in the passenger seat.
Andrew takes the cue to start spouting out the directions for him to follow, unknowing of he fact that that’s not why Joseph was looking at him.
———
Joseph feels like a teenager.
He’s still in his work clothes. Kids that only come up to his knees race by him with dizzying speed. They’ve got wads of cotton candy in their hands and they’re shrieking out the names of their siblings.
There are some older people- teen couples and men and women in their early twenties walking hand in hand.
There’s nobody quite like them. Two guys hanging out.
Andrew seems less inclined to observe all this, only having tunnel vision for the rides he wants to go on.
“- that one’s closest, though,” Andrew deduces, eyes flickering between two brightly coloured rides, both adorned with a plethora of lights. They compete for attention. “What do you think, Jos?”
“The closest one.” Joseph responds.
And soon enough he’s following Andrew towards it, slipping the bandana over his head quickly into his pocket lest it fall off during the ride. It’s not long before he’s squeezed besides Andrew and the edge of the seat. When it begins to spin, Joseph feels as though his inner adrenaline junkie- the one that was always prevalent throughout childhood and his teen years- has been nailed to the ground. The sensation of being pressed up against Andrew’s warm body is all that registers.
———
The rides that follow were all the same in terms of what Joseph chose to focus on. Andrew’s jokes are funnier than usual. Joseph finds himself laughing at every single of them, no calm snark to reply to them with. He goes along with them a bit more. He pushes a boundary or two and Andrew takes it all in stride. When Joseph’s hand grips onto Andrew’s shoulder in order to steady themselves after a ride, Andrew puts his own hand right on Joseph.
It’s dizzying. Andrew seems to come alive with the sensations around them and Joseph wonders for a moment if he’s suddenly become the dense one. Andrew may be awful at taking hints, but when it comes to people he’s generally not awful at taking initiative. Joseph’s made so many of these casual observations about Andrew before, but now, in the time where it counts the most to deduce what Andrew actually wants from him, that ability has fizzled out. Joseph doesn’t want to analyse things anymore, though, as involuntary as that habit may be. He wants to enjoy himself with Andrew.
That’s the strange floating sensation that Joseph finds himself in as he wanders the park. Andrew’s warm, friendly touches are like sparks of electricity against Joseph’s skin, and all the while Joseph is desperately trying to recall if he’s ever seen Andrew act like this with anyone else.
Nothing comes to mind, but Joseph’s memory can be unreliable at best. So he’ll be patient and wait this one out. If that’s what it takes. It feels awkward asking for an answer anytime soon. He doesn’t want to ruin the perfectly good evening they’re having.
Because after all, they’re spraying things with water guns and splashing each other in the process and Joseph has never quite felt this level of friendship with Andrew before. They’re two grown men standing next to two small kids at the same stand, making the same amount of noise as their smaller counterparts.
When Andrew offers to buy them both takeout, it feels as if Joseph’s had dinner with him a hundred times before. It comes naturally to say yes and neither of them seem particularly irked that their first dinner together consists of Chinese food that’s eaten with wooden forks, on a wall that’s just a short distance from the fair itself. Joseph has, after all, suffered through a little too many afternoon black coffees and evening whiskies with Andrew as they attempted to nail down a concept together. This feels far better. Even with the open air and the casual clothes, Joseph finds it hard to ignore how his heart thumps when Andrew budges up a little closer to him, apologising comically about how their first dinner couldn’t be at a fancy restaurant or somewhere a little more, well “cultured”, as Andrew put it. To Joseph, what they have now is romantic in its own perfect way.
“I don’t mind,” Joseph says, admiring the strips of lights in the distance. It’s hard to keep his eyes off Andrew- and he doesn’t quite know why he’s doing it either. “I like Chinese food. I liked this.”
I liked hanging out with you is barely held on Joseph’s tongue. He doesn’t want to admit that it was merely hanging out. This feels like so much more. This feels like when Andrew so easily took the fact that Joseph liked men, barely even commenting on it, times one thousand. This feels like possibilities and unspoken implications.
“Y’wanna call it a date?” Andrew says bluntly. Joseph picks up on the meaning right away, and doesn’t even bother masking the fact that it’s all he’s been thinking about.
“Yeah. I do. Our first date, huh?”
It now seems like they’ve been on dates many times before. All of those little meetings, even if they were under the mask of discussing car mechanics and getting to know each other better. The tiny tokens of Andrew’s appreciation for the help, how he always insisted on paying for things. How behind that sharp tongue and solid wit, he held a selfless nature that had Joseph falling from the start.
Joseph wonders briefly if they were even friends, or if they had both been expecting this to happen eventually.
So like everything else that came before, when Andrew presses his lips to Joseph’s, it feels natural. Like it’s happened so many times before, and it’s going to happen so many times again.
So much so, in fact, that when their lips part briefly they both dive back in for the second kiss of many more to come.