Once she had said yes, Tarin moved closer to her, his arm wrapping around her shoulders. And when Tarin said smile, she couldn’t help but to smile.

But he didn’t move back to where he had been sitting right away. Instead, he got out of the camera itself and brought up the picture on his phone to show her.

Lee wouldn’t say she looked good in the hat, but she definitely did not look horrible. The thing that she noticed more than anything, though, was that they looked happy. Both of them. The smiles might not have been the largest, but just everything about their faces, their expressions, screamed happiness.

”But if you delete it, you’ll want to take another picture,” Lee pointed out as she glanced over at Tarin. ”And it’ll probably end up being worse than this one. So I suppose you can keep this one.”

That said, Lee leaned against Tarin as she turned back to the TV, her head coming to rest on his shoulder as the second inning got ready to start.

Lee didn’t seem to hate the picture and she didn’t immediately ask Tarin to delete it either. That was good right?

Lee even begrudgingly agreed that he could keep the picture, but only because if he didn’t he would want another.

Not wanting Lee to change her mind because it really was a good picture, Tarin turned the display on his phone off and set it back on the arm of the couch. He didn’t move his arm from where he’d put it around Lee’s shoulder though and when she leaned her head on his should he smiled.

The second inning was starting and they’d get to see how well the hat’s luck held out on defense.

”Thank you.” he said simply.

Lee had left the hat on after the picture was taken even though Tarin had said that she could take it off. But she didn't say anything about keeping it on. Neither did Tarin, but Lee was pretty sure that he noticed. He tended to notice things like that.

If Tarin had just not been so damn sure of his ability to get her to like baseball to start with, and in front of Robert of all people, Lee wouldn’t have been so vocal about not liking the sport. And she wouldn’t have kept pretending for nearly this long, either.

It would be so much easier to not pretend. To sit here and openly enjoy watching the game with Tarin rather than pretending all she was there even in the room for was to spend time with him.

But admitting that she was so very wrong, even about something as trivial as baseball, was hard.

It really was a great night when they just sat here and watched baseball, though. Talking about random things periodically during the game. But otherwise just spending a relaxed, comfortable, calm night together.

Lee was going to have to do something about his hat, though. The rift had already been closed for six years at this point, and Lee knew that Tarin hadn’t brought much with him. He hadn’t really had much to bring with him.

But that was a job for another day, when Tarin wasn’t around. As Lee turned her attention fully back to the game, she saw that the other team already had someone on second, but the current batter had just struck out. That was good, even if it was helping Tarin prove his point that her wearing his hat was good luck.

Two batters and an out. Not a bad way to start the second inning when the first had resulted in a run. The first batter had managed a double but now, in the middle of their line up there just weren’t many power hitters.

A moment later the batter smacked a line drive down the gap, but the shortstop made an amazing diving catch. A catch so good, in fact that the runner at second had started for third thinking he had room to run. Caught halfway between the bases now, the short stop, the third baseman, and the second baseman worked to gather to run the runner down and complete the double play.

Four batters, three outs, and no runs. Now
The Mets were up again.

Tarin didn’t say anything at first, he just looked over and down at Lee with a little smile on his face that said, I told you so as the players made their way off the field to switch sides.

”Seven more like that and we’re in business.” Tarin said. ”Think they’ve got got four more runs in them this inning?”

Normally they tended to sit in comfortable silence, but maybe it was the conversation from earlier, or the feelings rolling around inside him, but Tarin felt restless. Happy but resltess and the silence wasn’t helping.

Lee was torn as the inning progressed. Tarin might have made her a bit of a fan as she started liking baseball, so she was glad that the Mets were doing so well to start this game. However, the better that they did while she was wearing his hat…

And now the teams were switching places on the field because they’d already gotten three outs.

Damn it, was Tarin going to be right about this, too?

Then Tarin asked her a question, and Lee looked up at him for a moment before answering. ”Four might be pushing it,” she said with a slight shrug against the arm he had around her shoulders still. ”Especially if they’re going to keep the momentum for the whole game and not peter out. Do baseball scores get that high? But they can probably get a couple more this inning.”

”It can.” Tarin said, “I think I read that on this side, the Rangers beat the…..Orioles 30-3, in the early 2000s and that was the highest scoring game in recent history.” Lee seemed to like it when Tarin talked about the rabbit holes he’d gone down. Baseball had been a huge one after he’d gotten settled over here.

As for what the Mets could do this inning, they already had two pop fly outs on about five pitches so it did not look like it was going to be another four run inning.

As Lee said, momentum was important though, and if they were going to actually win, the Mets needed to keep things exiting.

As he finished the thought, Tarin gave Lee a little bit of side eye. She was paying more attention to these games than she let on. Tarin couldn’t help but smile again despite the fact that the Mets had just gone three up, three down.

”Well, hopefully they can keep up the defense.”

Lee looked over at Tarin in shock when he said he’d read about a game that had a score of 30-3. If just about anyone else had told her that little tidbit of trivia, she likely would have thought they were exaggerating. But Tarin, she knew, wouldn’t be mentioning it if he hadn’t read it and wasn’t confident that he was remembering correctly.

”That’s…wow,” Lee said. That score was much higher than Lee had thought possible.

The rest of the game passed easily, and while there was more talking between the two of them than there often was during games, Lee honestly thought it had made the evening more enjoyable.

Though she was pretty sure that Tarin knew she liked baseball at this point. Too many of the conversations they had had went deep enough that there was no way Lee could really deny she’d been paying attention to the games all along.

”You know, I’m still not convinced about how me wearing the hat caused them to win,” Lee told Tarin as she straightened up and looked at him. Still wearing said hat from the start of the game. ”They are the ones playing, and what I wear, or don’t wear, has no effect on that.”

The Mets won. None of the subsequent innings had been as exciting as the first, but they’d managed to scrape together another three runs by the time the game was over.

Lee, who was still wearing his hat was once again questioning how such a simple thing could have caused the team to win and Tarin just smiled a little and shrugged.

”Maybe when you kept that hat on you put just a little bit of positive energy out into the universe and that energy made its way into the bat that smacked that 3 run homer in the first.” he said.

”Or maybe it was one of those ‘When Hell freezes over’ things.”

Tarin’s smile had grown while he spoke, ”Or maybe you’re just really cute in my ballcap and I wanted you to keep it on. Whatever reason, it worked.”

After she spoke, Tarin went on talking about positive energy being put out into the universe, and Lee just shook her head slightly as she listened to him.

Until he made another comment about her looking really cute in his hat. At that point, Lee finally pulled it off and put it unceremoniously back in Tarin's head.

”I guess we'll have to see next game,” she told him. ” because if it was me wearing that hat, you're going to be in for a disappointing rest of the season. Because I won't be wearing that hat again.”

But then Lee's tone softened as she leaned in to give Tarin a quick kiss. ”I am glad that your team won, though.”

Tarin could tell that Lee was not buying his story about positive energy and all that. Well, that was fine. In all honesty he didn’t believe it either. He didn’t wear the hat because he thought it helped the team win, he wore it because it felt right to wear it. Tarin loved that hat and he loved seeing it on Lee.

He was apparently to going to have to savor the memory because as Lee put the cap back on Tarin’s head she said she wasn’t going to wear it again.

Lifting the hat so he could push his hair under it and put it back on properly, Tarin sighed, ”C’est la vie. I guess” he said, then grinned as Lee kissed him again and spoke, ”Me too, and I’m glad it didn’t come to dealing with an otherworldly being. There you go, saving the world again…