There is one very simple reason Booker prefers not to go to games with just Joe: he’s a talker. Joe knows this, knows Booker wants at least one of their friends between them so he can pretend he doesn’t know Joe when he starts chatting with everyone around them, but he can’t help it. They’re all fans of the same team in this section of bleachers, all wearing the same colors, and they’re sharing the same experience. It’s practically a recipe for friendship. He gets excited.

They get beer and snacks first, finding their seats during warm-ups. Joe settles into his in the middle of arguing with Booker about the team’s chances at making playoffs this year but stops talking abruptly as his knee knocks into somebody else’s. He’s been trying to stop sitting this way, spreading his legs wider than necessary, but embarrassingly it’s still the way he tends to sprawl out if a chair is either very comfortable or very uncomfortable. These plastic bleacher seats are, of course, the latter.

“I’m so sorry.” Joe says to the guy beside him. Then his mouth snaps closed, because the guy is… is…

“No worries.” The stranger says, smiling minutely. He’s handsome, eyes reflecting the color of the slightly overcast sky as they take in Joe’s backwards hat. This is Joe’s favorite hat, it has the team logo in rainbow.

Joe smiles back and they stop staring at each other in a mutually flustered hurry. Booker, when Joe turns back to him, is smirking.

“Not going to start introducing yourself to the whole section yet, Joe?” Booker says, definitely loud enough for the handsome stranger to overhear.

Joe glares at him. “Why bother if you’ll do it for me, Sébastien?”

Booker rolls his eyes, taking a long drink from his plastic cup of beer.

This minor argument is quickly forgotten as the game starts, Joe eggs Booker into joining every single chant and each time the wave goes around their hands are in the air. So are his handsome neighbor’s. Every time their hands brush together they exchange shy smiles. It happens a lot. Joe’s definitely doing it on purpose and he suspects his neighbor is too.

When Booker gets up to use the bathroom during a stop in play, Joe turns to the man and says, “I’m Joe.”

“I heard.” He says, laughing, “Nicky.”

“Nice to meet you, Nicky. Big fan?”

“Can you keep a secret?” Nicky asks, tone deadly serious but Joe thinks he can pick up the joke lingering at the corner of his mouth. He quickly stops looking.

“If you tell me you’re rooting for the other team…”

“I am.” Nicky admits, that little smile growing. He’s so gorgeous Joe’s really about to forgive him for infiltrating this section of the stands.

“No wonder you’re so quiet.” Joe laughs, “You don’t know the songs.”

“I don’t.” Nicky admits, “I just moved here, a friend from work gave me her tickets.”

He says tickets plural, but the seat next to him has been empty the entire game. Joe’s noticed because it means if Nicky really didn’t like their little flirtations he definitely could have moved over towards the mom wrangling three kids on his other side.

“I could teach you?” Joe offers.

That’s how Booker finds them when he comes back, Joe loudly leading everyone around them in a slightly-off key but enthusiastic rendition of the team’s fight song, complete with bleacher stomping and clapping, Nicky laughing his ass off and doing his best to correctly answer every call-and-response bit. His voice is gorgeous too. This is all starting to be a little unfair.

Things get more tense in the middle of the game because it’s all tied up. Nicky and Booker start arguing around Joe, which he finds a little overwhelming, both of them leaning against him to gesture and make their points. They slip into French at one point, Booker to say something a little more rude and Nicky to one-up him and reveal his own fluency.

That’s what gets Joe uncharacteristically tongue tied, listening to Nicky curse in French and then glance worriedly over his shoulder to make sure the kids behind him don’t also speak it. They don’t. He keeps cursing. Joe realizes how Booker must have felt at previous games, amused but embarrassed by the attention they’re getting, awkward that he has nothing to say. Eventually this heckling dies down as the home team scores a couple times.

“Would you mind watching my bag for a minute, Joe?” Nicky asks, setting it down in his chair as he stands.

“Sure, run away.” Booker teases, but they both ignore him. Joe really likes hearing Nicky say his name.

“No problem.”

“Thank you, I’ll be right back.”

Nicky’s gone longer than he expected, probably unaware of how long the lines get for bathrooms at this point in the game. His phone starts ringing, once and then twice and then annoying enough that other people start shooting Joe very pointed glances. He turns the sound off, but whoever it is keeps calling. Worried that this might be an emergency that he should track Nicky down for, Joe looks at Booker who just shrugs unhelpfully. The next time it rings, Joe answers it.

“Hello?”

“Uh, do I have the wrong number? Who is this?”

“This is Joe, Nicky should be right back. Is something wrong?”

“Nicky huh? Sorry Joe, no emergency just worried about him. He usually answers on the first ring. Have him call me back after the game, ok?”

“Will do. Have a good one?”

“You too.” She says, laughing, and hangs up.

Nicky gets back seconds later, when Joe is still holding his phone. He looks pretty concerned about this, which Joe understands.

“Sorry! Your phone kept ringing and I thought it might be an emergency? She just said to call her back after the game though.”

“Oh, okay. Um. Thank you.”

As Joe is handing it back to Nicky the screen lights up with a message from ‘Nile’. It says ‘he sounds cute, you should go for it! 😉’. Joe pretends he doesn’t see, though the pink tips of Nicky’s ears are adorable enough that he almost teases him. He reminds himself they’ve only known each other for an hour or so and lets Nicky sit back down in peace.

That peace is short-lived because up on the big screen the Kiss Cam is going around. It settles on Joe and Nicky fairly early in the rotation around the stands, just after an older couple and a parent kissing their baby who’s fast asleep in enormous noise cancelling headphones. Nicky, when Joe nudges him and gestures at the screen, goes wide eyed and ducks to hide his face behind Joe, mostly succeeding in headbutting Joe’s shoulder as he moves closer unexpectedly. There’s quiet laughter from their neighboring fans, including Booker, but the camera moves away.

Joe nudges Nicky’s leg with his knee and says, “Coast is clear, Mr. Camera Shy.”

“Thank you.” Nicky says, tugging Joe’s sleeve back down in a fretful sort of way that's still casual enough touching that Joe’s heart feels too big for his chest. He knows he’s smiling wide and sappy at Nicky but he can’t make himself stop. “I uh, I cannot let my family see me on TV.”

“Oh, as a traitor you mean?” Joe jokes. Nicky nods very seriously, making him laugh. “It doesn’t usually come back to someone who hides.”

He probably shouldn’t have said that, because a minute or so later, after devoting some time to every single service dog the cameras can spot, the kiss cam turns back on and returns to Joe and Nicky immediately.

Nicky hides his face in his hands this time, Joe grins at the camera, waving hello and then waving it off. He pats Nicky’s shoulder consolingly with his other hand. The screen cuts to two blonde women already kissing, one of them with the same rainbow logo cap on backwards that Joe has. Then there’s some teens, one kisses the other on the cheek. Then it’s back to Joe and Nicky.

Nicky says, “Oh ma seriamente?” in incredulous Italian. Joe bursts into laughter and Nicky turns to him, knocking their shoulders together, and says, “Did you bribe someone?”

“To kiss you? I would have, if I’d known it was an option.” Joe says. Booker makes some kind of choking noise, apparently not expecting Joe to shoot his shot like this. Sometimes Joe isn’t expecting it either, his mouth runs away with him. Nicky gave him an opening and he took it.

They’re turned in their seats, knees knocking together, just staring at each other for what feels like minutes. The camera must move along. Joe licks his lips. Nicky’s eyes darken.

“Yeah?” Nicky asks, still looking at Joe’s mouth.

“Yeah, can I?” Joe checks, lifting a hand to the flannel Nicky has layered over his T-shirt, fiddling with a button.

Nicky’s hand raises up to touch Joe’s forearm gently. It strikes Joe as funny how welcome Nicky’s touch has been this whole time and how welcome his own has seemed for Nicky, when strangers usually have more solid boundaries. Nicky says, “We have to wait for the kiss cam.”

“You’re still on it.” Booker complains. “I think I speak for everyone here when I say: kiss already.”

There’s echoed encouragement from the audience they’ve gained in their section as well as some muffled shouting from the announcers, the kind of tone they usually only slip into when the home team scores. Joe and Nicky meet in the middle.

It doesn’t feel like a first kiss to Joe. He wonders if it looks like one to their very large audience. His hand has come up from Nicky’s shirt to gently hold the side of his face and neck, thumb brushing along his cheekbone. Nicky’s hand has slid upward too, clutching Joe’s bicep. Nicky closes his eyes, lips slanting over Joe’s so sweet, a simple press of mouths. Joe feels simultaneously like he’s never kissed anyone before and like he’s kissed Nicky a hundred thousand times but it’s still somehow thrilling.

Watching Nicky’s eyes blink back open when they separate, seeing the slow way they focus on Joe’s face, and watching him smile like he felt it too is life changing. Then the sound of people clapping breaks into their moment.

Nicky goes pink and leans forward to hide his face against Joe’s shirt again, making Joe laugh in delight and hold him close, both of them leaning awkwardly over the hard metal armrest between their chairs. They don’t pull away from this cuddle until the game starts back up and Booker sighs in a put-upon way about whatever play is going wrong, assured that nobody is still watching.

“Sorry.” Joe says, “If your family sees you kissing the other side, I mean.”

Nicky shrugs and says, so quietly serious it takes Joe's breath away, “Worth it.”

For whatever reason this makes Joe shy, makes him grin down at his shoes and not say anything. He’s so full of anticipation for a future where he gets to kiss Nicky again, imagining a thousand scenarios, he forgets to say them out loud. When he looks up again, Nicky is fussing with his phone, frowning down at it with a little furrow between his brows.

The game is winding down before Nicky looks up again. A bunch of fans are leaving already, trying to beat the traffic that always happens at the end, and it seems Nicky might join them. Joe tries to swallow his overwhelming disappointment, still tongue tied, still feeling strangely off balance, still wanting Nicky to bump into him and take up his space.

“I should go and call my friend back.” Nicky says, not quite looking at Joe.

“Okay.” Joe says, quiet.

“Thank you for um, teaching me the songs. It was nicer on this side than I thought it would be.”

‘Nice?’, Joe thinks. He might be frowning. The kiss was more than nice for him, but maybe Nicky doesn’t agree. “Any time.”

“Hey.” Booker says, popping their awkward bubble, “Nicky, can I get your number? So I can send you the video? Or should I just get it from Joe?”

Nicky looks at Booker, opens his mouth, looks at Joe, and closes it. Joe winces, recognizing that Booker is trying to be his wingman but it cuts unexpectedly deep that Nicky hasn’t offered his number. Only, well, Joe hasn’t asked for it either, has he? Since the kiss he hasn’t even touched Nicky, he’s just been daydreaming about Nicky touching him. He’s really fucked this up.

“I’d like to see you again.” Joe says in a rush, too earnest, too desperate. He winces again afterward, but Nicky takes his hand.

“Yes please.” Nicky says softly, “Can I see your phone?”

“Only fair.” Joe manages to joke, swallowing hard. Having Nicky’s full attention back is almost too much, the gentle way his fingers are curled around Joe’s so much better than his daydream because it’s really happening. Unlocking his phone and opening a new contacts page one-handed, Joe passes it to Nicky who, unfortunately, takes his hand back to type with both thumbs.

He puts his full name in, along with his number, and the notes field says ‘💋📷’. He looks pretty proud of himself when Joe sees that and bursts out laughing.

“Text me so I have yours too?” Nicky asks, then adds, “I really do have to go.”

Quickly, Joe types out, ‘This is Joe’ and hits send, just to make sure Nicky didn’t type his number wrong. If they became a missed connection he might have a hell of an easy time finding Nicky with a video of them kissing, but Joe doesn’t want to risk it. Nicky smiles as his screen lights up and stands slowly, lifting his bag up over his shoulder.

Joe has no idea if the game is over, if they’ve stopped play, or what. It’s bad manners but he stands too. Nicky pauses, watching him, taking in the way they’re just about of a height.

“Kiss goodbye?” Nicky asks, that same breathlessness and immediate embarrassment that Joe just went through.

He can’t wait until they’re at the point where these leaps aren’t so scary. In the meantime, Joe steps closer and says, “For us this time, not the camera.”

They don’t notice Booker taking pictures when they kiss this second time. Joe won’t find out until the next time he sees Andy. He makes her forward him the pictures so he can show Nicky on their first date.

Nicky will smile and glance up at Joe coyly from the phone screen to say, “We still haven’t kissed off camera, huh? Should we try again?”