Chapter Text
The thing is, Nicky doesn’t have time for distractions.
He is doing mostly night shifts for his placement practice, he has his usual course work to worry about, he is doing volunteer work at the nursing home a few streets over to get more experience, he has a social life he is sort of trying to breathe some new life into and he has his family nagging him about maybe, finally, getting a boyfriend.
He doesn’t have the time, he has said it to them countless times before, but every single week when his mama calls, it is the same question that she leads the conversation with: “When are we going to meet him?”
Well, if Nicky keeps ingesting coffee like this, his heart might be stopping soon enough for his usual exasperated “I’m not dating anyone, mama” to turn into a definite “Never”.
He doesn’t see his flatmates very often, to the point that most of them know he exists because someone must be cooking pasta at 2am, and burning through a ridiculous amount of coffee to boot, and most of his interactions with them are of the awkward kind when one of them is shimmying out of the tiny, mouldy bathroom dripping wet because apparently remembering to bring a towel when going out to shower is really fucking difficult for some people.
It’s fine, Nicky doesn’t care. He hasn’t spent the past two years transforming his room into a barren space that screams productivity just to spend his time at home socialising with guys he doesn’t know. If he wants emotional support or, god forbid, small talk, of any kind, then there’s the campus and the library and some people from his coursethat are sort of his friends, that he sees outside of lectures once every two weeks to go to the pub.
So, he has read somewhere in the WhatsApp group chat he shares with his flatmates, usually filled with complaints about the state of the bathroom or the dishwasher or the kinky sex that Alex likes to have at 5am, that Sam was moving out and they had already found a replacement, everyone meet random-guy-number-five that Nicky is probably never going to meet outside of the aforementioned awkward bathroom shimmy.
It’s 4am and he is nearly nodding off while he waits for the percolator to finish brewing, as the door opposite the kitchen opens and a guy comes walking out. He has the adorable sort of bed head that one can only get from quality sleep (what even is sleep, if not a myth?) and he is in nothing but his boxer briefs as he shuffles out of the room, eyes so squinted they’re nearly closed against the bright light of the kitchen.
And just like that, Nicky is completely and utterly awake.
He doesn’t recognise the guy, which means he must be the new one, because if that body was still damp with water from a shower and those hands were clutching clothes in front of his naked parts while he tried to awkwardly shuffle pass Nicky after a towel-less shower? Well, Nicky would have fucking remembered.
He has a defined torso with nicely sculpted abs and strong shoulders, his skin is the kind that makes Nicky wonder how soft it would feel if he were to brush his fingertips over it, how nicely it would bruise if he were to dig his teeth into the junction between shoulder and neck. He has amazing hair, curly and springy and all over the place, and a fluffy beard that shines delightfully under the bright artificial light.
Has Nicky mentioned that he also hasn’t gotten properly laid in a long, long ass time?
Because his body certainly remembers.
His mouth is dry and hanging open, his heart racing in his throat without even the added energy surge of caffeine, and he follows the guy’s shape as he shuffles blindly toward the bathroom. He doesn’t look any more awake when he returns a few minutes later, his underwear hanging sinfully low on his hips and barely clinging onto the bulge of his dick, some dark curls escaping over the waistband, and Nicky is left speechless as he shuffles back into his bedroom to go back to sleep.
He pulls the percolator off the stove with more force than advisable while he browses through the group chat and tries manically to find the announcement about their new flatmate.
It’s there, buried under two months’ worth of complaints and memes that Nicky doesn’t think are funny.
His name is Joe, Nicky learns, and he is in his master’s of an art history degree, and he uses an excessive amount of exclamation marks and smiling emojis when he announces that he’s really glad to have found a place, and that he’s excited to be living with them all.
“What’s gotten into you this morning?” Andy asks when he arrives at the base, wearing sunglasses even though it’s 5am and she really has no pretences left to uphold, an amused smirk curling around her mouth.
Nicky can only wallow in misery as the thought that follows that statement is a horrible, starved thing: the real problem, after all, is what hasn’t gotten into him this morning (a dick belonging to the most beautiful guy he has ever seen, that’s what).
–
It takes both entirely too long and too short for him to run into Joe again.
He has just forced himself out of bed after an entirely too short to be satisfying nap about a week after the morning spectacle, when he’s just gotten to the tail end of three consecutive night shifts and he has the delightful task in his hands to try to correct his sleep rhythm as he has early morning classes tomorrow, and he is stumbling into the kitchen to the delicious smell of home-cooked food.
He should know that it’s not one of his other flatmates, whose cooking repertoire doesn’t expand much farther than frozen pizzas and instant noodles, and the spices that linger in the air are entirely too exotic for their blond arses anyway. So he’s not sure why he is so terribly surprised he nearly physically recoils when it’s him who is whistling along to a merry tune as he dances around the kitchen.
Joe is wearing a dark red shirt that hugs his torso in all the right places, and trousers that are absolutely criminal in the way they cling to his ass. The apron he wears has the tacky phrase “Kiss the cook, but don’t touch the buns!” written across it, red lips surrounding the first words and bread rolls the last few. It takes an awful lot of Nicky’s self-restraint to keep himself from fantasising too hard about doing both those things, but he manages. Somewhat.
He is painfully aware that he himself is wearing an old shirt that was once white but is now a dusty grey due to too many washings with his dark laundry, and soft fleece flannel pyjama pants. Combined with his bed hair and the dark bags underneath his eyes, he knows he doesn’t exactly look his best this afternoon. As a matter of fact, he doubts he even looks like a living human at this point.
Still, he forces himself to cross the tiny space from doorway to kitchen counter, only to realise with a feeling of sinking dread that Joe, beautiful, gorgeous Joe who is so invested in the herbs he is chopping and the tune he is whistling to not have noticed Nicky’s arrival, has completely hogged all the burners on the stove and there is no place for his percolator.
“Oh hey, good afternoon!” Joe greets, his voice warm and smooth and lovely and with a chuckle that makes Nicky grab the handle of the percolator tightly.
“Hi,” he says, his voice croaking as the remnants of sleep are still clinging desperately to his exhausted body.
“I don’t think we have met yet, I’m Joe,” Joe says, putting down his knife to extend his hand to shake Nicky’s.
And Nicky, who has apparently lost all common sense along with his ability to function, takes his hand to shake it and says, like the total and utter creep he is, “I know.”
It’s humiliation at its very finest. Like Nicky needs anything else to keep him awake at night when he should really be sleeping, like the constant stress he’s in isn’t enough reason for him to struggle to relax, he’s made an absolute socially-incompetent dick out of himself in their very first conversation.
But Joe doesn’t look put out, if anything, his smile just turns more sympathetic. “You probably need the stove for that, right? Let me just take a pan off, one second.” As Joe continues to do exactly that, Nicky is still mentally beating himself with a shoe and thinking if now is as good a time as any to flee and die a very deserved social-awkwardness-induced death. He shouldn’t have gotten up when his alarm went off, he should have just slept, morning classes be damned. It’s just not safe for him to being amongst people.
“Here you go,” Joe says sweetly, gesturing at the spot on the stove he’s cleared for Nicky.
“Thanks.” Nicky blinks himself back into the present and starts to heap coffee grounds into the percolator, standing entirely too close to Joe for comfort as they share the tiny kitchen space.
“You’re Nicky, right?”
Had he not even introduced himself? “Yes, I’m Nicky,” he breathes, trying not to choke on the wave of self-hatred that goes through him, “and I swear I’m a lot more coherent once I’ve had coffee.”
“It’s okay, don’t worry about it. Seems like you have a pretty tough schedule. And believe me, you don’t want to see me in the mornings before I’ve had my coffee. I think there’s zombies that are more coherent.” He pulls a face and Nicky would have laughed, really, if his mind isn’t stuck on remembering exactly what Joe looks like when he stumbles out of bed in the morning.
Very hot, very sexy, and very much too sleepy to remember Nicky staring at him from the kitchen while he stumbles over to the bathroom, apparently. Which is good; apparently there’s still something out there that’s watching over Nicky and being somewhat merciful.
Nicky adds water and puts the percolator over heat, turning around and slumping against the counter. “It’s been a week, yes,” he says as he runs his hand through his hair. Joe has gone back to chopping his herbs and makes a sympathetic noise when he does so, because Joe is apparently like that. Considerate and not half-dead on a Sunday afternoon.
Nicky stares at the flaking plaster in front of him while Joe cooks. When his coffee has finally finished brewing and he’s taken the first few sips, he feels considerably more alive and human than before.
“What are you making?” he asks, gazing curiously at the many pots that are bubbling away on the stove.
“Shakshouka,” Joe says, munching on a piece of carrot. “I’m having a potluck with some friends.”
“It smells amazing,” Nicky praises, and Joe smiles warmly.
“I’ll make it for a Thursday evening dinner sometime, if you promise to come.”
The thing is, Nicky knows that shared Thursday dinners are a thing in this flat, but aside from his very first week after he’d just moved in and was too tired to cook, he’s never attended one. He likes cooking, he likes doing it for people too, but he is just not okay with spending a day in the kitchen to be served fish and chips from the snack bar around the corner when it’s someone else’s turn.
“Okay,” he hears himself agreeing. And then, before he can embarrass himself further or make any more stupid decisions: “But I really have to, uh, shower. So I will see you later, Joe. Have a good time with your friends.” And he flees.
Later that day, after he’s showered and avoided the kitchen until he is absolutely certain that Joe had gone to his potluck dinner, he goes to get groceries and then starts cooking the meal he will probably be eating for the rest of the week, with the crazy amount of pasta he’s accidentally toppled into the water after his mind started supplying him with memories about what Joe looked like this afternoon while he was prancing around the kitchen.
So, he does what any sensible man would do: he grabs his phone and calls his sister.
She is delighted to sit through a ten minute tirade of him complaining and drooling over Joe in equal parts, and while he’s not entirely convinced she is going to uphold her promise to not tell their mother about it, it feels good to have someone to vent to.
–
Joe seems to be on a one man mission to kill Nicky by merely existing, he’s sure of it.
Considering the little time Nicky spends at home and that Joe clearly has a life of his own as well, they don’t run into each other very often.
And, of course, their next meeting is one that was inevitable considering the particularly unpragmatic layout of the flat: Joe has to do the infamous after-shower shimmy.
To Joe’s credit, he hasn’t forgotten his towel, but that still doesn’t mean that he’s spent any time at all using it while in the dark cave they call a bathroom; his hair is still damp, the curls even curlier than usual somehow, and there’s droplets still clinging to his skin, rolling down those delicious pecs in a way that can only be described as truly, utterly irresistible.
Joe looks sheepish when he sees Nicky, now half-sandwiched between Joe’s almost naked body (that low slung towel that appears to be clinging to Joe’s hips through force of will only is doing so, so little to keep Nicky’s imagination from wandering) and the door. There’s really almost no way for him to go, so Nicky presses himself into the corner and hopes for the best as Joe excuses himself and shimmies past, Nicky staring stubbornly at a mouldy spot on the ceiling so he doesn’t have to look at Joe when he’s so excruciatingly close.
“Sorry again!” Joe calls out before he disappears into his room, and Nicky finally allows himself to breathe.
The air smells heavily like coconut.
He wonders if it’s a body wash or perhaps a particular shampoo or even a beard oil – Joe’s beard does look particularly well-groomed, after all; he would totally be the kind of guy to use something like that – that smells like that, and both the thought and the smell linger as he continues on his way to his own bedroom.
He sits down behind his desk and pulls the stack of textbooks and notes he’s been ploughing through closer to him. He opens the physiology textbook and stares at the text in front of him. It’s hard to concentrate in the aftermath of seeing so much of Joe. His mind is mush.
He decides that maybe a shower will help clear his mind.
Really, Nicky isn’t proud of it, will deny it with every fibre of his being even, but with the scent of Joe in his nostrils and the memory of his amazing body so very fresh in his mind, he leans against the wall of the shower shortly after turning the water on and as his hand wraps around his cock, which is painfully hard already, he comes in an embarrassingly short time.
He feels ashamed as he watches the evidence wash away with the streaming water, disappearing down the drain.
And when he returns to his physiology coursework? He still can’t focus.
Later that day, he’s cooking and complaining to his sister in rapid-fire Italian, hissing into the phone in a way so utterly pathetic he’s got his sister’s hysterical laughter in his ear almost the entire time.
“Oh Nico,” Chiara says through her tears of laughter, “only you.”
–
Nicky’s life is a fucking disaster.
He sees Joe around the flat every now and again, but they never really talk. Most of their interactions can be summarised by them greeting each other, or short inquiries about how long they will still be using the kitchen for. Joe starts looking more and more tired as the semester drags on, deadlines catching up with him as much as they are with Nicky.
Still, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t call Chiara at least once a week to complain about Joe.
She is always willing to listen, even if his ramblings sometimes have to be put on hold when she goes to feed the baby or to help a customer, depending on what time he’s calling her at, and she gives him the absolute worst advice.
“If I didn’t know better I would say he’s just pulling your leg,” she says after she’s recovered from a heavy bout of laughter at Nicky’s expense. Today’s story is about Joe waltzing into the kitchen in only a towel, once again low slung around his hips and barely holding on, excusing himself sweetly as he stepped up way too close to Nicky and stretched out to reach the top shelf of one of the cupboards, his towel slipping even lower as he did so.
He had successfully retrieved the box of mint tea without losing the towel, but it was a close call.
Nicky had managed to tear his gaze away from Joe’s happy trail just in time to believably pretend he was facing his ragù the entire time and not Joe’s barely-covered dick.
A fucking disaster, alright.
“How could he possibly?” Nicky grumbles, throwing his arm over his face. He’s stretched out on the sofa in the living room, which really is very comfy.
“Well, little brother,” Chiara starts, and Nicky can hear Mano, his little nephew, crying in the background. Chiara takes a moment to soothe him. “Have you considered that maybe you’re not being very subtle about being interested?”
“I am not interested!” he hisses.
“You’re kidding me, right? I haven’t even seen the guy and even I would be interested. He sounds like a catch, Nico.”
“I don’t have time!”
“Of course you have time. You just have to free your schedule a bit, get some quality time in with your man. A lot of students date and make it through university alright.”
“I don’t even know him very well.”
“I really am not hearing any proper reasons, just excuses. Take it from someone who has been listening to you drool about him for over a month now, you are interested.”
“He is fucking handsome,” Nicky agrees. “And very nice.”
“Win-win,” Chiara concludes. “You can’t convince me that you’re not daydreaming about suffocating between his very muscular thighs.”
“You are so not helping,” Nicky groans, grabbing a throw pillow and burying his face in it. Maybe it will be nice enough to help him out of his misery.
“I am, helping. Myself. By thinking about a very handsome guy. I just have to pretend it’s me he’s suffocating, otherwise it would get pretty gross.”
“Please stop, you are married.”
“That I am,” she sighs wistfully. “So tell me again, what exactly did he do last week?”
And that’s really all Nicky needs to fall into another tirade about the impossible hotness that is Joe prancing about shirtless, looking so fucking edible as he hums and dances around the kitchen waiting for the water to finish boiling for his tea. He doesn’t really try to stay quiet as he talks; it’s not like any of his flatmates know Italian, anyway.
–
Even Andy has notices him being off, and where his previous bouts of stress-induced daydreaming were mostly him trying to remember the anatomy of whatever organ system they were covering in classes that period, now he mostly finds himself thinking about Joe’s body glistening as he gets out of the shower and shimmies past Nicky, and his adorable bedhead when he gets out of bed early in the morning to use the bathroom.
Joe is the bane of Nicky’s existence, and he’s half considering simply not drinking any coffee anymore before his morning shifts (not that that is an actual possibility; he would die) when Andy bumps her shoulder hard against his and nearly sends him crashing into the side of the ambulance, his arms full of supplies.
“I want to know,” she says, holding out a mug of coffee in a gesture that could almost be an apology as Nicky still fumbles with his armfuls of material that nearly went crashing down the side of the ambulance. He snorts and throws it all onto the stretcher to sort out after he has finished his coffee. It’s dark and bitter and almost acceptable; he’s learnt to drink the shitty coffee of the base by now, but that doesn’t make him any happier about it. Andy laughs at the face he pulls when he swallows his first mouthful.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You are such a bad liar,” Andy tells him, and the mirth in her voice has just that little edge to it that tells Nicky that she is enjoying this far more than she should. Joe isn’t the bane of Nicky’s existence, he decides. Andy is. He glares at her, and Andy smirks back unperturbed.
“Just. Classes,” he tries, and yes, it’s not very convincing.
“Such bullshit. You’re blushing, Nicky. Blushing. I didn’t even know that skin of yours could colour, with how fucking grey you look. But here we have it, you’re blushing, and you’re not telling Aunt Andy why.”
Nicky nearly chokes on his coffee when Andy makes the aunt joke, and she seems absolutely delighted with herself.
“There is just… a new guy, in my flat.”
“Okay.” Andy looks at him. When it’s clear he isn’t going to elaborate, she makes an impatient gesture. “And?”
“He’s the hottest thing I have ever seen,” Nicky says in a single breath.
“Fucking hell, Nicky, you are thirsting? This look of pure agonised blushing puppy eyes is you thirsting after a flatmate?” Andy roars, and Nicky looks around in panic to see if anyone is overhearing them.
“Can you please just?” he makes a noise in his throat and gestures for Andy to quiet the fuck down.
“Sorry, this is gold. Quynh is going to love this. I might have to call her right now, actually.” But she doesn’t, not yet anyway, and that’s a small mercy Nicky will gladly accept. “So tell me more about your man.”
“He’s not my man.”
“The object of your unfiltered lust, then,” Andy settles on.
Nicky groans and hides his face in his hand, hating himself for ever choosing this place for his placement practice to begin with. He should have known, when he saw Andy, that it wasn’t just a vat of vast knowledge and experience that she would be sharing with him, but that she is also a horrible tease and the literal worst when it comes to things like this. Nicky hasn’t been the victim of this tunnel vision of hers before, and now he’s here, he finds that he really doesn’t fucking like it.
He also knows his cheeks are about as red as can be, and Andy is not being quiet about that, either. If he had any pride left after acting like a fucking social wreck around Joe for months now, it would surely have evaporated during this conversation.
“His name is Joe,” he groans.
“And?” Andy presses.
“He’s gorgeous, he can cook really well, he’s doing a master’s in art history. He has the most adorable bedhead.” He doesn’t tell Andy about Joe’s amazing body, but from the grin that’s on her face he knows that she knows. She can fill in the blanks just fine. Fucking Andy.
“Is he interested?”
“No,” Nicky says resolutely.
“He rejected you?”
“No.”
“Because you never asked. For fuck’s sake, Nicky, have you ever even talked to this guy?” Andy is enjoying this way too much. Why is she even interested in his pathetic love life? Doesn’t she have anything else to focus on? They had celebrated her fortieth birthday just last week (even though she had sabotaged both the cake and the birthday balloons to turn the offending numbers into thirty: “you must have read my birth date wrong, definitely not a day over thirty, this body”), and Nicky knows Quynh and her have been married since it became legal in 2014. She shouldn’t be this invested in him, and yet.
“Yes,” he sputters. “I have talked to him!” His defence grows louder at the doubtful look she sends him. “Just not very often. Or very well. He’s distracting.”
“And you haven’t gotten laid in forever so you’re a bit thirsty and a lot desperate,” Andy concludes.
“He probably thinks I’m a freak,” Nicky whines.
“Most likely,” Andy agrees, and Nicky fucking hates her.
–
Nicky has just put the lasagna in the oven and plopped down onto the sofa when the door opens. Joe comes in, hair and coat wet from the drizzle, a haunted look on his face that can only come from having spent the entire day studying in the library and feeling like you are so terribly, terribly underprepared for a final that your life might be about to end.
Nicky really feels the pain; he’s just had his final exam for the semester today, and there’s a reason why there’s lasagna cooking in the oven. Something has to soothe the pain in his soul, and nothing screams comfort food like his nonna’s lasagna.
“Have you eaten yet?” he asks Joe, and the guy looks at him like he’s just spoken in a language he doesn’t understand. And then he blinks and gives Nicky a weary smile.
“No, haven’t had time yet.”
“Do you like lasagna?”
“Does it have pork?”
Nicky’s about to ask what heathen would possibly put pork into a lasagna when he realises that Joe isn’t exactly asking it because he’s being a snob about flavouring.
“No, it’s vegetarian.”
“Then yes, I love it. Please. You’re my saviour.” And there’s that blinding smile that makes Nicky’s heart skip a beat.
Joe throws his backpack onto the floor and shrugs out of his jacket. He falls down onto the sofa next to Nicky, grimacing as the springs creak underneath his bouncing weight.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Nicky murmurs, trying his very best to keep his thoughts somewhat in order as he sends Chiara a text message that consists entirely of exclamation marks.
“You have no idea what kind of day I just had,” Joe sighs. “I’m so hungry I could eat a shoe, and it smells fantastic in here. You are my saviour, Nicky. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Nicky turns around, pretending to search for the remote so he can hide the blush that’s warming his cheeks. When Nicky opens his dusty Netflix account he’s surprised to see that his watchlist has expanded considerably since the last time he’s opened the app on the telly, and Joe looks sheepish when he notices Nicky’s confusion.
“They said that you never use it anyway, so I could, if I wanted to,” he explains.
“You’re a parasite, Joe,” Nicky sniffs, looking through the watchlist and seeing to his amusement that most of the movies there are either the kind of romantic that’s definitely on the wrong side of cheesy, or mindless blockbuster action movies. “Eating my food and using my Netflix account.”
“Guilty as charged,” Joe agrees. “Oh, we should watch the Bake-Off. Have you ever watched it?”
“Ah. No,” Nicky admits, and Joe gasps dramatically.
“How do you even survive? Now let this parasite teach you a thing or two about pure wholesomeness.”
When the timer goes off roughly twenty minutes after they have started the episode, they have just started on the tactical challenge and Nicky is properly invested. He goes to fetch the lasagna and Joe walks along with him to grab plates and silverware. He also sets the kettle to boil. While they wait for the lasagna to cool to a decent enough temperature that they can cut into it, Joe makes mint tea for them.
“Not sure if you like it, but if not then I’ll happily drink yours too,” Joe tells him as they sit back down, mugs placed on coasters on the scratched surface of the table and plates heaped full with lasagna in their laps.
They watch the episode while eating lasagna in silence, and when the episode is over, they have finished the entire tray between them. The mint tea is nice enough, but when Joe offers to make another cup Nicky declines. He’s really more of a coffee person, and his stomach is about to explode, anyway.
They start the next episode, but before they have even finished the signature bake both of them have dozed off, bodies slanted sideways as they lean against each other.
When Nicky startles awake a few hours later, Netflix is showing its Are you still watching? pop-up, and Joe’s arm is slung over his waist, keeping him in place. His back hurts, his shoulders hurt, and there’s no way he’s going to be able to fall asleep again while sitting up, even if Joe is drooling adorably onto his shoulder. So, he shakes him awake.
“What?” Joe mumbles as he blinks to a state that could be considered wakefulness. He smacks his lips and Nicky’s heart flutters.
“We fell asleep. Come, let’s get you to a bed.”
Joe doesn’t disagree as Nicky pulls him up from the sofa and brings him to his room. Joe collapses atop the duvet, and there’s no question about it; he has immediately gone back to sleep.
Nicky cleans up their dishes and turns off the TV. He also takes the time to brush his teeth and change into his pyjamas. It takes a bit to get comfortable once he’s crawled under the covers. His nostrils are still full of the smell of coconut.
Nicky makes sure to set an alarm for 7 in the morning, even though he has the day off, so he can make sure Joe gets to his exam on time. As it turns out, he needn’t have worried; Joe is already eating breakfast and sitting on the sofa, blinking sleepily into his food. So Nicky turns around without letting his presence be known and goes back to bed.
–
Andy drops him off at home after the most disastrous day in the field he has ever had.
He’s had tough days, plenty of them, he deals with trauma every day he’s on his practical placement, he learns how to make calls and stabilise people in real trauma situations. He has seen people bleed out, he’s seen people die, and they have all stuck with him.
But today? Today was definitely the worst.
“You okay alone?” Andy asks as he drags himself out of the car.
“Yeah, fine. Thanks,” he says, and Andy really doesn’t look like she believes him, but she lets it go.
He unlocks the door to the flat and shoulders it open. The steep staircase to where they live on the first floor seems insurmountable at first, but he manages somehow. He walks into the narrow corridor and barely even notices the amazing smell that wafts through the flat as he walks onward, step by step, to his bedroom and his bed.
He is therefore very surprised when someone grabs his arm when he passes the kitchen, and it takes a couple of seconds for his brain to catch up with his eyes and recognise Joe, who is giving him a concerned look.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“No,” Nicky croaks out, and Joe’s concern intensifies before he leans forward and pulls Nicky into a hug. Nicky must be disgusting after having been in the ambulance the entire day, he’s pretty sure he got puked on a couple hours into the shift, but Joe doesn’t seem to care. He just lets Nicky borrow his face into the crook of his neck, breathe in the strong scent of coconut and mint. He feels so warm, enveloped in Joe’s strong embrace, that it really is only a matter of two shaky inhales before he’s crying into Joe’s sweater.
Joe’s hand runs up and down his back soothingly, and Joe holds onto him until Nicky is retreating from his neck, sniffing miserably in a losing battle against his running nose. He must look absolutely disgusting, and he groans as he buries his face in his hands. He really wouldn’t mind sinking through the floor just about now.
“Hey, look at me, Nicky,” Joe says, his voice so soothing and so sweet. “Do you like curry?”
“What?”
“You shared your food with me when I was feeling bad, and now I’m sharing mine with yours.” When he sees that Nicky still looks miserable, he smiles. “I don’t like keeping things uneven, so if anything, do it for me?”
“Okay.”
“So why don’t you go and get a shower and then we can eat together afterward? Food is almost done.”
Nicky nods. He takes a shower and slips into the biggest hoodie he owns and the softest sweatpants, and he spends the rest of the evening watching Bake-Off with Joe and crying silently into his curry.
Somehow, the world doesn’t seem so bad anymore after they have finished the second episode and Joe has pulled Nicky’s head into his lap, his fingers carding through his hair.