Chapter Text
“Are you done yet?” Joe asked Nile, after a full minute had passed and she showed no signs of overcoming her laughter. They were in the staff club and starting to attract some looks. Joe could handle that, but really, he didn’t think what he’d said had been that funny.
“Okay, okay,” Nile said, wiping her eyes. “Sorry. But, come on, Joe. You’re a textbook romantic. You couldn’t have a one-night stand if you tried.”
“I could if I wanted,” Joe shot back, aware that it sounded unconvincing.
Nile had been, very kindly, letting him work through the fact that he still wasn’t over the end of his last relationship. It had ended for the right reasons. When your partner got a fellowship offer at a university in another country and your first thought was that you’d finally be able to leave your painting supplies out without fear of an argument about it…well, that was a sign. But Nile had a fraction of a point. Joe was a romantic; he loved being in love, even if it didn’t last. He’d never had a true one-night stand in his life. They’d all turned into relationships that went beyond sex, even if short ones.
“Look,” Nile said, leaning forward on the tall, round bar table. “I get that you need a distraction. I’m just worried that it won’t be the right kind of distraction.”
“You’re worried that you’re going to end up consoling me next week over a broken heart because I took it too seriously.”
“Kinda, yeah,” Nile said, radiating sympathy. Joe appreciated it; he appreciated Nile; he didn’t want sympathy, not tonight.
“So I’ll go out and find someone I’m never going to see again,” he suggested. “Or someone who’s hot but that I don’t like.” He looked around at the room full of their colleagues. “Though probably best not to start here.”
A curious expression came over Nile’s face. “Someone you don’t like, huh?”
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Joe said, immediately suspicious.
“Nothing,” she said too quickly, and then “I saw Nicky diGenova from Philosophy somewhere here tonight.”
“I said someone I don’t like, not someone I occasionally visualize spontaneously bursting into flames.”
Nile looked like she wanted to argue, but what she said was “Well, he’s hot, you can’t argue with that.”
“True,” Joe conceded. Nicky diGenova was hot. Joe had also first met him in a tense committee discussion about what humanities modules they were going to cut for the next academic year, and he’d specifically singled out one of Joe’s – Joe’s personal favourite, in fact – as something that “I can’t imagine we have that many students interested in”. Joe had expressed his firm disagreement. Nicky had lost, but he hadn’t backed down – let alone apologised. They’d avoided directly interacting with each other ever since.
Which, now Joe thought about it some more…made him a perfect candidate.
“You know what?” he said, downing the rest of his drink. “You’re right. I’ll do it.”
“Uh –” Nile said, like she was thinking better of it, but Joe was already moving.
He found Nicky on the other side of the room, with a book in front of him and a mostly empty glass of wine. Who came to the staff club to read a book? Joe disliked him all over again, and then reminded himself that that was the point.
“Hey,” he said. “Mind if I interrupt?”
Nicky opened his mouth without looking up, then did a double-take when he did.
“What do you want?” he said, sounding baffled.
“Seems like a shame to come to the staff club and not talk to anybody,” Joe said, taking a seat.
Nicky still looked confused.
“It’s relaxing,” he said, cautiously. “For me.” Then his eyes narrowed. “Just tell me what you want, alright? There’s no need to drag it out.”
Joe, who had been fully prepared to pull out his best (worst?) flirtation lines, found himself wrong-footed. He gave it a go anyway. “Really? I don’t have to tell you what a good shirt that is for you?”
It wasn’t a lie; Nicky’s shirt was pale blue, fitting his broad shoulders and catching the colour of his eyes. Joe let himself look, and let Nicky see him looking.
For a second, their eyes met, and maybe Joe could be good at this after all; there was an instant crackle of attraction down his spine, and he didn’t actually like Nicky one bit more.
“Again,” Nicky said, more softly. Joe had to lean in. “I would appreciate it if you just told me why you are here.”
“I have a break-up I really need to distract myself from,” Joe said. He considered adding and you’re the most attractive person I know who I would be comfortable never speaking to again afterwards, but decided that was an unnecessary level of truth.
“Oh.” Nicky sounded genuinely surprised, and for a second Joe thought he’d absolutely blown it. Then he dragged his eyes all the way down Joe’s body and back up, and by the time he made it back to Joe’s face, Joe knew for a fact he hadn’t. He smiled, a small crooked thing Joe was instantly enchanted by, and picked up his wine glass. Joe watched the way his throat worked as he drank the last few sips, and the way he swiped his tongue across his lower lip, and hold on, he was meant to be doing the picking up here –
Oh, well, if it worked, it worked.
“My flat’s walking distance from here,” Joe offered, voice low and eyes fixed on Nicky’s face. He had never before considered it could be possible to be turned on in the staff club. It was a night for new experiences, apparently.
“Convenient,” Nicky said, putting down the glass so his hand, resting on the table, was almost touching Joe’s. “Can I presume you have some etchings you would like to show me?”
“More like paintings,” Joe said, letting his fingers nudge up against Nicky’s and oh, yeah. This was a great idea.
On the way out he winked at Nile, who was deep in conversation with some of their other friends; she ignored him in favour of whatever Booker was saying, his finger stabbing the table emphatically.
*
The night continued being a good idea. However much Joe disliked Nicky’s attitude, they turned out to have the sort of fantastic, immediately synchronous chemistry that Joe had previously assumed was only possible in fiction. Nothing was awkward, or not so that it couldn’t immediately be moved on from; they wanted the same things the same way; Joe loved the taste of Nicky’s mouth and the way those shoulders felt under his hands. It was so good that Joe fell asleep before he could (politely) kick Nicky out, which had been his firm intention. He was woken up sometime in the early hours by the noise of Nicky fossicking around on the floor (and the hall floor, and the living room floor) for his clothes.
Joe said “Mhhgrhghgm,” and “Wait until it’s actually morning, you already fell asleep.”
“I think that would be a bad idea,” Nicky said, sounding genuinely regretful – at least to Joe’s sleep-fogged mind. Joe wasn’t awake enough to argue.
He thought he felt Nicky’s hand on his cheek before he heard the front door shut, but that was probably part of a dream.
*
Joe woke up the next morning feeling great about his life, and his life choices. He didn’t even think about his ex until the early afternoon, after his two Wednesday lectures, and then it was only triggered by needing to water the office pot plants he’d taken custody of when she’d moved. He’d been right and he was going to tell Nile so. After her office hours; he did not need students accidentally overhearing this conversation.
“You were right,” he said, poking his head into her office. “Nicky diGenova was exactly the right person. And I was right about the other bit.”
“Wait, really?” Nile scrutinised him. “You actually…really?”
“We had fun, he went home, I can get on with my life and stop moping at you and everybody else.”
“So you’re definitely not, you know…” Nile twirled a pen in one hand. “Going to pine?”
“Over Nicky diGenova? Hah. No.”
“Well…good for you!” Nile said brightly. Joe left shaking his head. She apparently didn’t know him as well as she thought she did.
She also didn’t keep her mouth shut within their mutual friend circle, because Booker and Andy and Quỳnh all asked him about it. Booker was weirdly taken aback, like he’d had some notion of Joe as a fairy-tale prince who would never even think about casual sex. Andy just asked if it had been any good, and offered him a fist bump when he said yes. Quỳnh said “You know, he’s really quite sweet when you get to know him,” and shook her head when Joe pointed out Nicky’s many, many personality flaws. Most of them were by inference, but half of Joe’s field was inference, historical artists being sadly difficult to interview about their intentions, so that counted.
As far as Joe was concerned that was that, and if he thought about that night when he was alone in his own shower, well, that was his business. He and Nicky were in different departments and rarely saw each other around campus. Joe wasn’t expecting to see him again for months.
Then he was voluntold onto the Humanities diversity committee. Joe let himself be thrown onto this particular grenade for Nile’s sake; she was a first-year lecturer and did not have the time. He hadn’t looked up who else was serving on it and was genuinely surprised when he walked into the first meeting to see Nicky already sitting at the table. He looked up, and Joe’s stomach did a weird little flip.
Okay, okay; he could deal with this; this was a normal part of the idea of one-night stands, surely. He sat down not too close and not too far away. Other people showed up. The meeting opened, and dragged agonizingly on for the full hour, and finished. He didn’t not look at Nicky and he didn’t not engage with things Nicky said, and every time their eyes met his stomach flipped over again. Half-way through, he found himself doodling Nicky’s hands onto a corner of his notepad, and had to force himself to stop.
Nicky pulled him aside afterwards. His hand did not linger on Joe’s arm. Joe didn’t feel its imprint. “I wanted to say…” He ran a hand through his hair. “I did not realise you were joining this committee. I’m sure we can both be adults about this.”
“What? Oh. Yeah.” Joe’s eye had caught on the way a tuft of Nicky’s hair was now out of place; his hand itched to put it right. “Yeah, of course.”
“Well…good,” Nicky said, and offered Joe his hand to shake. Joe shook it. It reminded him, shockingly vivid for the dull meeting room they were standing in, of Nicky’s hands on his skin – on other parts of his skin.
He forced himself to let go. Nicky didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. He smiled hesitantly, and took off. It was the most civil workplace interaction Joe had ever had with him.
Joe got back to his office and stared at the doodle of Nicky’s hands. He couldn’t help picking up his pen and finishing the last few lines.
Well, shit.
*
“You were right and I was wrong,” Joe said. This time he and Nile weren’t at the staff club; they were at Booker and his wife Adèle’s house, sitting on the paved area out back. It was an unseasonably warm autumn afternoon. Their kids were running around the garden, doing something that involved two cricket balls and a lot of yelling.
“I’m sorry, say that again?” Nile put a hand to her ear.
“You were right and I was wrong,” Joe said again, sighing. “About me and…” He glanced at the kids; he couldn’t get too specific. “Going out one time with people.”
“Oh – ohhhhhh,” Nile said. “Oh, no.” She didn’t sound totally sympathetic.
“Oh no is right,” Joe said glumly.
“What’s wrong?” Andy said, sitting down next to them. She and Quỳnh were here as well. “Spill.”
“He’s in love,” Nile said.
“I didn’t say that!”
“Yes, you did.”
“I did not.” Joe laced his fingers together. “We’re just on this committee together and I was – surprised. I wasn’t expecting to see him again.”
Andy’s expression cleared; she’d obviously got the thread of the conversation. “Well, see if he wants to do it again.”
Joe felt his face screw up. “We don’t get on, remember?”
“Apparently you do, remember?” Andy said, pointedly.
“That was just – that doesn’t mean anything…else.”
“Uh-huh.” Andy and Nile exchanged glances.
“I’ll get over it,” Joe said, shrugging. “Give it a week or two. He’ll say something annoying and that’ll be it.”
“Have you ever considered that you got off on the wrong foot?” Nile suggested.
“We got off on the right foot. It was the foot of me realizing immediately that he’s an asshole and I want to keep my distance from him. Which I would have, if you hadn’t had a bright idea.”
“Food’s almost ready,” Booker said, appearing in the doorway. “What are we workshopping out here?”
“Joe’s love life,” said Andy, laughing.
“Nope,” said Joe, standing up. “Book, can I help with anything?”
“Sure, you can carry…” Booker said, already going back in, and Joe escaped to the sound of affectionate giggles behind him.
*
Joe’s intentions were noble, and they were sincere, and they were approximately as effective as lecturing without slides at a class of three hundred hungover eighteen-year-olds at eight am. He told himself he didn’t like Nicky. He told himself he didn’t want to spend time with Nicky. He left their committee meetings as soon as business was concluded.
And yet every page of notes he took home from those meetings was filled with little sketches of Nicky’s hands or eyebrows or once – Joe had been in a reverie because the chair had been talking for half an hour without pause – his lips. Joe’s sketchbook was even worse. He’d given himself permission to exorcise these feelings through it. Instead of exorcism, he found himself enspelled, lingering on the shape of Nicky’s cheekbones, the way his trousers clung to his thighs.
Worse, he found himself thinking that maybe Nicky wasn’t so bad; that whenever he said anything in their meetings, it was to the point, and always kind. That he didn’t let some of the other people on the committee get away with the usual crap about pipelines and school visits, instead of working on making the university better for the people who were here, right now. That Joe could rely on him to back him up.
That was when he knew he had it as bad as he’d ever had it. The one night they’d spent together was assuming mythic proportions in his mind. He found himself regretting that he’d let Nicky leave, that he hadn’t insisted he stay for, for…
Forever, his mind supplied treacherously. Joe ignored it.
Nicky, for his part, wasn’t doing anything to keep Joe dangling. He never noticed Joe looking at him, or not more than normal. He left the meetings as soon as they finished, too. He never wandered into Joe’s part of the building, the same as Joe didn’t wander into his. He certainly never, as in one elaborate fantasy Joe constructed after a particularly trying day, dragged Joe into a storage closet and did very sexy and non-work-related things with him. He didn’t do anything except sit there and be stupidly beautiful and nice and not an asshole. Joe was aware of how ridiculous he was being and didn’t know how to stop.
They hadn’t even had any personal conversations, not really; only fragments of exchanges about their work, or their fields of study. There was that one time most of the committee had gone out for a drink – not the staff club this time – with Celeste, from Biomedical Sciences, who was new to the university and to London. She had deftly drawn all of them out in turn on who they were and where they were from and why they were here now. So Joe hadn’t asked Nicky those questions directly, but he’d listened to every word Nicky had said to Celeste, about Genoa and his older siblings and having gone into philosophy after realising the Catholic Church was not for him. He’d caught Joe’s eye right at the end. Coincidence, almost certainly. Joe had no idea whether Nicky had been listening when he’d talked; he hadn’t wanted to look, in case Nicky was quietly in conversation with someone else.
He resolutely didn’t tell Nile or the others about any of this, even though they prodded. He didn’t need to add to his problems.
He thought he had it under control until they ended up organising a panel together, for a talk to humanities students. It got decent attendance for an evening event, and the speakers they chose were good. Joe moderated the panel and Nicky handled questions.
Because academic life was much less glamorous than it sounded (or Joe’s family thought it was), they ended up putting away chairs together afterwards.
“That went well,” Nicky said amiably. “Don’t you think?”
“It went great,” Joe said, stacking one last chair. “Your technique with more-of-a-comment-than-a-questions was excellent, by the way.”
“Thank you,” Nicky said, looking very pleased. Two months ago, Joe would have interpreted that as smug. Now he just saw it as pleased and touched.
He needed another one-night stand to get over the effects of his last; but even he could acknowledge that the evidence suggested that would be a losing game.
“Joe?” Nicky said. Joe realised he’d been staring.
“Uh, just remembered I recognised that shirt,” Joe said, which was the last thing he should have said but it was true – Nicky was wearing the same shirt he’d been wearing that night.
“Someone told me it’s a very good shirt for me,” Nicky said with faux innocence. Joe laughed, and thought I think I love him.
“They were right,” he said instead, winking.
Nicky tilted his head. “Off home now?”
“Uh, yeah.” Joe licked his lips. He saw Nicky tracking the motion. Oh; oh.
“I have coffee,” Nicky said. “At my flat. It’s not so far away, either.”
“That sounds…tempting.”
“It doesn’t have to, it’s not, I’m…” Nicky was uncharacteristically out of words. “Same terms as last time?”
“Of course,” Joe said at once, because he was suddenly sure this would slip out of his grasp if he didn’t. The way Nicky smiled made it worth it.
Joe had been ninety percent sure – okay, fifty percent sure – that having sex with Nicky again would make him realise it hadn’t been that good the first time. It did. The second time, it was better.
This time, Joe was working off two months of dreaming about it, two months of seeing Nicky once a week and wanting. This time he kissed him deeply because he wanted everything he could have. This time when Nicky cupped his face, he was awake and entwined with him, as close as you could be with someone else. This time Joe watched Nicky’s face when he came, and it was beautiful.
This time, Joe didn’t let himself fall asleep. He waited a decorous five minutes after clean-up and started searching around for his clothes.
“You don’t have to,” Nicky said quietly.
“We wouldn’t want this to become a habit,” Joe said, just as lightly, and made himself get dressed. He could feel Nicky watching him the whole time.
“Right,” Nicky agreed. Joe thought he sounded relieved. He hoped he was relieved. Then Joe could remember it, and not linger.
Then it was the winter holidays, and their committee meetings stopped. Joe didn’t see Nicky at all for weeks; they’d never communicated outside of that, or face-to-face. He had his email, of course, and his phone number was in his email signature, so he could –
Joe saved it in his phone in a moment of weakness, but he never dialled it, so really, he was winning. A game he shouldn’t be playing at all, against himself.
“You’ve been moping again,” Andy said the week after Christmas. Joe had spent Christmas Day gloriously horizontal on the couch watching bad movies and was feeling a bit less strung out. “Promise me you’re coming to our New Year’s party.”
“I don’t know,” Joe said. “Maybe a quiet night in –”
Andy took his face in her hands and said very gently, “I will send Nile and Booker to your house to drag you out and they will do it because they’re more afraid of me than you.”
“They’re very smart people, did you know they have doctorates?” Joe said, and promised to come. He was touched by her concern, and implicitly by Quỳnh’s. Right up until he walked into their flat and saw Nicky standing there holding a glass of champagne and laughing with Quỳnh at something. Joe stopped dead.
Nicky’s face went through three very distinct expressions when he saw Joe. First shock. Then something Joe couldn’t interpret, something intense and quickly hidden. Then pleasant social-event neutrality.
“Joe!” Quỳnh said. “Come on in, you know where coats and shoes go.”
“I didn’t know you guys knew each other,” Joe ventured when he’d finished de-winter-layer-ing and re-entered the main room.
“I was at graduate school with Nicky,” Quỳnh said. “We’ve known each other forever. You’ve been working together on the diversity committee, right?”
“Right,” Joe said cautiously. Nicky still hadn’t said anything.
“It’s good to see you,” Nicky said finally. The door was opening again, and Quỳnh went to greet the next set of guests. Something unclenched in Joe’s chest. “I know where the drinks are…can I get you something?”
“Just some sparkling water or something for now, if they’ve got any,” Joe told him, and Nicky practically vanished from sight. Joe went to find Andy.
“Traitor,” he hissed darkly at her.
“Quỳnh gets to invite her friends,” Andy said carelessly. “Relax, it’s going to be a big party.”
“I’ll bodyguard you,” offered Nile, who had been talking to Andy. Joe glared at her reproachfully; he suspected collusion.
Nicky showed up and handed Joe a glass, then vanished again just as quickly. Joe had to work to not look where he went. If he wanted to stay and talk, he would.
Andy was right, though; they’d invited a lot of people, and for most of the evening the flat was full to the brim. Joe didn’t even know where Nicky was. Then it started to thin out as people with kids and people who weren’t committed to seeing in midnight left – Booker and Adèle went about nine – and suddenly Nicky was there all the time. Joe kept meeting his eye by accident and having to look away.
Eventually he found himself looking for somewhere to sit down, and the only spot open was on a couch, next to Nicky. He took it.
“Staying through midnight?” he asked, for lack of anything better to say.
“It is only twenty more minutes,” Nicky said. “It would be silly not to, at this point.”
“You can waste a lot of time doing things because you feel silly not to. Or silly doing them.” Joe wasn’t sure where that had come from.
“This is true,” Nicky agreed.
“I never really…” Joe didn’t know where this was coming from, either. “Why did you say that thing you said about my module, back when? No judgement. I’m just curious.”
Nicky looked wary, but shrugged and said “To be honest? I was new and nervous about defending my own work and perhaps my position, and I did not know you were in the room. I heard Andy call you ‘Joe’. The list I had said it was taught last by al-Kaysani, first initial Y. Perhaps this should have been obvious.” He spread his hands. “Then you were unhappy, and I was – not gracious about it, and so. I like to think I have learned to be more clever since then. Or more kind, which would be better.”
He was clearly keeping an eye on Joe, to see how he responded. Joe was keeping an eye on himself, and realised that whatever residual grudge he’d been holding against Nicky, it had flowed away sometime between the staff club and now.
“I think you’re very kind,” he said. “I think that’s what matters now.”
“Thank you,” Nicky said. He made as if to continue but was interrupted by Andy and Quỳnh bringing round champagne flutes. Nile crowded onto the sofa as everybody came into the living room, and squashed Nicky up against Joe. Someone turned the television on to show the fireworks. There was laughing and loud wishes for the coming year being exchanged all around them.
The count-down started, and then they were toasting in the New Year all together, raucous and happy. Joe saw Andy kiss her wife. He wanted to kiss Nicky and he couldn’t.
“I’m going to go outside and get some air for a second,” he said once the toasts were done, setting down the champagne flute he’d taken about three sips from. He only made it into the corridor before realizing Nicky was right behind him.
“Fresh air sounded good,” Nicky said when Joe turned around. The colour was very high on his cheeks. Joe stepped in and Nicky didn’t step back – Nicky kissed him, short and sweet and tasting of champagne.
“Happy New Year,” Nicky whispered in Italian, and Joe whispered it back and kissed him again.
*
“Your back is going to hate you for the rest of the week,” was the sentence Joe woke up to the next morning, spoken by Andy. He was lying on the couch he’d been sitting on the night before, which was much too short for his full body length; his legs were dangling off at a weird angle.
“Yes it is,” Joe said, forcing his eyes open. He couldn’t see Nicky anywhere; he was sure Nicky had been there when he’d had gone to sleep. He was reasonably coherent – he’d had maybe two drinks total over the whole evening, and any hangover-y feeling was due to screwing up his sleep, not alcohol. And that was just a sad side-effect of being over thirty. “Ow.”
“It’s your punishment,” Andy said relentlessly, “for having sex in my spare bathroom.”
“I did not have sex in your spare bathroom,” Joe said, coming awake very suddenly. There were a few other people sprawled around the living room, the ones who couldn’t be bothered going home, but they all looked like they were still asleep. “Who told you that?”
“I heard that,” Andy said, folding her arms.
“We had all our clothes on,” Joe said, and tried not to think about the specific caveats to that otherwise true statement.
“That doesn’t sound hygienic.”
Joe flushed. “Uh…that is…”
Andy punched him in the shoulder. “Just try not to do it when I need to use the bathroom, next time. Coffee? I’m going to start waking people up.”
“Please,” Joe said, and went to use the bathroom himself.
He washed his face and hands and felt immensely better, then went to the kitchen, which was where he presumed the coffee would be. He paused in the doorway when he saw Quỳnh with her hand on someone’s shoulder. The other person had their head in their hands. He didn’t immediately recognise – no, it was Nicky.
“I just don’t know how to say it, Quỳnh,” Nicky was saying through his hands. “He’s obviously not interested in anything serious, he said it was a, what do you call it, rebound, and I cannot take it anything except seriously –”
Joe wondered angrily for a second which asshole was toying with Nicky’s affections, and how he could convince Nicky that they weren’t worth it, and then it dawned upon him that, almost certainly, he was plotting righteous vengeance on…himself.
“You don’t want coffee?” Andy called after him as he hauled his coat and shoes on and fled the house.
“I have to water my pot plants!” Joe called back as he ran out the door, which was a very bad excuse, but he thought he couldn’t be blamed: memories of his last relationship ending were on his mind right now.
*
Joe went home, showered, brushed his teeth, made himself coffee, and then lay on the couch feeling like a giant idiot for most of the morning. His phone kept lighting up. He ignored it. He thought about texting Nicky, but it seemed intrusive, and also he had no idea what he’d say. I’m sorry, and I’m not just using you? I’m sorry, but I thought you wanted to keep it casual? I’m sorry, please marry me?
Eventually hunger drove him off the couch. Nothing in his flat appealed to him, so he decided to go and get something, even if he just ended up at Tesco’s getting something ready-to-eat. He was out the door when he remembered that Nicky’s flat was between Joe and the nearest Tesco’s, and Joe could – he could –
He forced himself not to write a conversation in his head that hadn’t happened yet, and succeeded only in restricting himself to his own side of the dialogue. Fortunately for everybody, his elaborate composition was cut short by the fact that, almost exactly halfway along the shortest route between his place and Nicky’s, he ran into Nicky coming the other way.
“Joe!” Nicky said. “I was –”
“I was coming to find you,” Joe ran over the top of him. “I didn’t mean to –”
“I think you overheard me and –”
They both stopped, waiting for the other. Nicky’s cheeks were pink from the cold, the same way they’d been pink last night.
“You first,” Joe said eventually, his pulse beating in his ears.
“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” Nicky said. “I didn’t mean to – I have enjoyed getting to know you. I know you’re not looking for…anything else right now.”
Joe felt his breath hitch. “Nicky, that’s not –” He tried again. “Nile told me I couldn’t have a one-night stand without falling in love with them, and she was right, and I knew she was right months ago, and I didn’t know how to – Nicky. You are everything I’m looking for right now.”
Nicky touched his face, wonderingly, the same way he had the first night and the second night, and Joe didn’t know whether he was going to start weeping or say something else painfully soul-baring or – he covered all his bases and kissed Nicky instead. Nicky met him halfway, again. It went on for a while.
“So, uh,” Joe said when they pulled apart. “I was going to get something to eat. I didn’t really have breakfast. Join me?”
“Like…a date?” Nicky said, the corners of his mouth curving. Joe loved that smile so much. He always had. “Isn’t it a little late for a first date?”
“Like whatever you would like it to be,” Joe said only a little too sweetly, leaving the you asshole implied. Nicky laughed and took Joe’s arm in his, and they headed for the high street.
*
Joe and Nicky walked into the staff club two weeks later to see Booker counting out pound notes on the table in front of Nile, and Andy and Quỳnh overseeing it, cackling.
“Hey, everybody,” Nicky said as they walked up, and Nile made the cash disappear almost instantly.
“Hi, lovebirds,” Andy said. Joe didn’t bother giving her a look; it only encouraged her.
“What was that about?” Nicky was asking Nile. Apparently, he knew her pretty well, too, from a module they’d co-taught. Joe would feel doubly betrayed, but he’d already figured out that Nile hadn’t dropped Nicky’s name at random.
“Nothing,” Nile said. “Hey, it’s my round. Can I get you anything?”
“Uh-uh,” Joe said. “That was not nothing.” He looked at Booker, instead. Booker was usually much easier to crack.
“Just a little bet between friends,” Booker said, innocently. “That’s all.”
“Tell me,” Nicky said, taking a seat, and pulling the other spare one out for Joe. They were at one of the low rectangular tables, not the high ones where Joe and Nile had been, the night Nicky had been reading his book. “What was the bet on? That we would get together? Or how long it would take?”
Booker looked trapped. “Ah...”
“I know what y’all drink, I’ll be back,” Nile said, springing up and vanishing into the crowd near the bar.
“Retribution is coming!” Joe called after her.
“That’s not far,” said Quỳnh, raising an eyebrow. “The way I understand it, you both owe her for this.”
“Maybe,” Joe conceded. Nicky slung an arm around his shoulders. Booker shook his head, laughing silently.
“So you admit she was right,” Andy said, pointing a finger. “You are an incurable romantic.”
“That’s how I like him,” said Nicky fondly.
“Well...” Joe spread his hands. “Who am I to argue with that?”