Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"The stranger that dwells with you . . . thou shalt love him as thyself.”

— Leviticus 19:34

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7 MINUTES BEFORE.

“I can’t believe your stupid fucking boyfriend broke up with you less than a week before your sister’s wedding.”

It's been three days since his break up with Ben occurred and Charlie has cried about 40 times in the last 71 hours. He may be counting the hours, but he very much does not want to do the maths on the crying faction. Needless to say, Elle is really, really mad. Of course she is. But no one’s wrath is more dangerous than Tao Xu’s, even in a Frankie & Benny's where any random passerby could potentially hear him scream. 

And he is. He is screaming. Loudly enough that people have begun to turn and look. Watch.

“And Charlie’s the best man!” Tao cuts in, repeating himself for the thousandth time since it happened, as loud and as furious as he’s been since the moment he found out about it. Charlie would know—he’s been sleeping on their couch, too distraught at the ghosts of Ben he sees around every corner. “How could he do this?” Charlie flinches and shushes Tao halfheartedly as an attempt to get the watchers to stop watching, but he doesn’t really care if it sticks. He doesn’t really care about much of anything right now.

Elle and Tao are enraged, but Charlie’s just sad. He really did love Ben. He was mean at times, sure; a little controlling; a bit manipulative every now and then; and he'd laugh at Charlie for little things. He yelled at Charlie for things Charlie couldn’t control. He postured in front of Charlie's friends only to chat shit about them behind their backs. But still, Ben was Charlie’s boyfriend for 16 months and he really did love him. They had their issues just like any couple did, but Charlie really thought they’d make it. Or, so he’s been saying to Tao and Elle. Along with: "It's okay, guys."

"It's not okay, Charlie," Elle stresses, "I know you loved him, but he jus“I guess he just wasn’t your soulmate or whatever, y’know?” She emphasises this with a casual flick of her hand. He had purported the opposite to everyone who would listen when he and Ben were dating, despite not wholly believe it himself; it's sobering that Elle saw right through him. There's a sympathetic tilt to her mouth that gives Charlie hives. He loves his friends. He loves Elle more than he's loved any woman in his life aside from his sister. But something he cannot deal with is pity. If he even senses pity, he gets angry and defensive: hair on the back of his neck standing on end, teeth bared like he’s being hunted for sport, and backed into a corner with blood in his mouth. Ben would do that a lot—that pitying tilt to his head, the condescending oh, babe when Charlie would do something Ben didn't approve of. It made Charlie so, so upset, but he didn't say anything because he loved Ben and he didn't want him to leave him.

So much for that shit.

Charlie's been skirting around his feelings, not wanting to worry anyone, but he's bordering on being real-deal depressed. He doesn't want to have a full-blown episode two goddamn days before Tori's wedding, but fuck, he doesn't know how else to function with this pain aside from the tried and true method of—

He hasn't. He's in a loose, white t-shirt, his jumper shucked off in the heat and folded on his left side, and out to lunch with Elle and Tao for shit's sake. But the urges to harm himself and restrict are there, and that's not good either. He had a session with Geoff this morning and they talked through the maladaptive behaviours niggling in the back of Charlie’s mind. They talked contingency plans—how to tell his parents and beloved grandparents about the breakup; how to be kind to well-meaning, invasive family members and less-well-meaning casual acquaintances when they ask where Charlie's (ex-)boyfriend of 16 months is; and eventually, how to deal with being alone. 

It's gonna hurt like a bitch, especially after not having any time to come up with a date in a pinch. A real pinch. A six day pinch, of which they are down to a three day pinch now. To his sister’s wedding. One that Charlie has to execute. All of the confusing Jewish traditions and all of their insane, borderline-weird Jewish family members to juggle. It’s going to be a lot. And he could’ve done it with Ben by his side, helping out where he could, however taxing that might’ve been too. But he can’t now. Ben’s the one who blocked Charlie. Depressing.

It would’ve been easier, though. He knows his family will have questions—ones Charlie has no wherewithal to answer. He supposes James could go as his date so Charlie can at least have some help, but Charlie thinks it would be cruel to ask a person who's had a crush on Charlie for years to be his platonic date to his sister's wedding. He doesn’t want to ask his friends, either—Isaac shouldn’t have to, and Tao and Elle are going together. Tao offered to be his fake-date, but Charlie wouldn't do that to him. Charlie’s family have already assumed them to be dating in the past, and explaining his situation to every person at the goddamn wedding would be just as little fun as explaining where the fuck Ben is.

Tao just wants to help, and so do Isaac and Elle. But then Elle tilts her head the same way Ben always did, and suddenly, Charlie feels his blood go hot—not at Elle, but at Ben who hurt him. He didn’t care to wait to break things off a month before the wedding—even two weeks before. Instead, this man who made Charlie wary of people’s affection, who made him accept some really unacceptable behaviours. He hates that this breakup has made his obsessive neuroticism act up to the point where the fixation of counting the hours and actions has returned. He’s so hurt. Five days before the rehearsal dinner is not fair. They dated for 16 fucking months and suddenly Ben decides—

“I can’t believe he fuckin’ left me,” Charlie seethes, unsure of how he got here from just like any couple, “now. What a piece of absolute shit.” 

The shift in attitude makes Elle clap and bounce in her seat excitedly. Tao throws his hands up and yells, “Finally. Thank you!”

“Okay,” Elle says, splaying both neatly-manicured hands on the table. “Good. To echo: fucking finally. Now: game plan. We’ve got to get Charlie a date.”

“Oh. Oh, no,” Charlie says, shaking his head from where he’s seated across from them. “No. That’s not necessary, even a little bit. God. I’ll just come up with an explanation, it’ll be fine. No. No.”

Elle grins mischievously at him. “Yes.”

“Guys, I’m not even over Ben yet,” Charlie whines, shaking his head even more dramatically now, feeling like Tao with the flamboyant action. He hunches his shoulders and tries hiding behind his cup of water the bus boy left brought over to them. “It’s been like 71 hours.”

“71? That seems specific. Too specific,” mumbles Tao, still mad, like Charlie doesn’t deserve to have to count them. Charlie glares at him for that, despite how he knows he’s only biting back to mask so he doesn’t have to be earnest at a Frankie & Benny's, and says nothing.

“And?” Elle asks like nothing got said, cutting Tao off so nothing gets out of hand.

“There’s no one to even take,” Charlie says, whining a little now.

“Again: and?” Elle smiles, placid and neutral and utterly terrifying. “You’re gonna nab the first fit guy that walks by. You need a date. We have about two days to get you one.” Elle looks at Charlie from beneath her eyelashes. “And we will.” 

Charlie swallows, vexed.

And then (world-shiftingly, life-alteringly):

“Hi.”

The bright smile on his face is the first thing Charlie notices. Charlie has not seen a service worker with a smile that genuine since, God, he doesn’t even know when. 

Then Charlie looks, really looks, and finds that this man is also cute. Like, really, really fucking cute. Thick, strawberry blond hair. Pretty, full, pink lips. Freckles splattered across his nose and cheeks like Jackson Pollock crawled out of the earth just to paint them onto his skin. Charlie wants to look at his face for the rest of his natural life. As he towers above them, Charlie scans his body up and down out on the corner of his eye while the guy focuses on Tao and Elle—damn. Arse like heaven. Charlie scolds himself for ogling a stranger, but then he inexplicably feels a little proud; he forced himself to not even casually look at other men while he was dating Ben, because Ben would get jealous and demand Charlie prove he loved him. He didn’t know how to do that, but he tried. It never really worked.

But now he has full rein to look at men who are cute. And good goddamn, this man is cute.

“Have you finished looking over your menus?” Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse Server asks, still smiling genuinely. It's service work. At a chain restaurant. Charlie wouldn't be insulted if this guy spit in their food in front of them.

Tao glances over at Charlie for confirmation and when he smiles stiltedly and nods, Tao says, “Sure, yeah.” Elle and Tao order, and then it’s, upsettingly, Charlie’s turn to speak. He clears his throat and stutters a bit when he says he'd like a Margherita pizza.

“Hi,” Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse Server says more emphatically in response to Charlie's order.

Charlie hasn’t made eye-contact with their waiter yet but he finally gains enough confidence to look up at him. It’s just a glance out of the corner of his vision—no proper meeting of their eyes — but he can see the Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse Server's smile has turned into a full-blown grin, brows raised as he writes down Charlie’s order without looking at the pad. 

Charlie swallows. “Hi,” he whispers. It’s more reverential than it ought to be for the welcoming of a stranger passing through his life.

“I’ll be sure to get that pizza for you,” Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse Server says, then waits. He does not move. Charlie gulps, probably audibly, and finally fully faces him. Fuck, he’s even hotter when Charlie looks at him head-on. Hot isn’t even the word for it. Handsome. Gorgeous. Beautiful.

He feels his cheeks redden immediately. He’s smiling down at Charlie, roguish, and Charlie says weakly, “Thanks.”

“Of course,” Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse Server says, and then raises an eyebrow coquettishly and grins. His smile is utterly arresting. 

Charlie cannot move. It's as if the world has stopped spinning on its axis. Like this, right here, is the reason the world was spinning at all, and now that he’s made it to this place, there is nothing left to be done. The world may rest. Dear God, he suddenly wants to know everything about this man from one smile, wants to see him in every light and love him in each one. He feels like he’s falling into pieces. He wants this man to put them all back together.

God, Charlie doesn’t even know him.

Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse Server (name, name, I need to know your fucking name) finally walks away. And, yep, there it is at a better angle: an arse that is, in fact, nice. When he’s out of sight, Charlie, very concerned about their reactions, finally turns back to Tao and Elle.

They look elated.

Shit.

He bangs his head on the table four times in a row to avoid looking at his friends.

“Well, well, well,” Tao says sagely. Charlie can see him put his elbows on the table in his peripheral and Charlie just knows he’s steepling his fucking fingers like an absolute lunatic. Dick. Cunt. Sick fuck. Wanker. Arsehole. “How the tables have turned.” There’s so much unnecessary drama in his voice that Charlie rolls his eyes. “How they’ve turned, indeed.”

“Yeah, you’re sooooo not over Ben,” Elle smirks sarcastically. “Because we just saw some very, very Charlie Spring-esque flirting over there just now.”

“Flirting?” Charlie scoffs, shaking his head as he lifts it to look at them—yep, Tao’s fingers are in fact steepled. Dick and cunt and sick fuck and wanker and arsehole indeed. It felt like more than flirting. He doesn’t know what kind of more, but: “Did you see him? Way hotter than I can pull as a recently-broken-hearted man and a patron in a chain restaurant, so the flirting I may or may not have been doing doesn’t even matter.”

“But you’re just as hot,” Elle says, eyes soft now as she reaches over and cups Charlie's jaw for a few moments, then pulls away before Charlie can start squirming. “You can pull any guy you want, Charlie.”

“Thanks, Bubbe,” Charlie spits. “Ugh, what an antisemite, not listening to a Jew.”

Tao sputters out a laugh.

“Charlie, you’re mostly secular. You can’t keep pulling the Jewish Card every time you want to get out of something,” Elle smirks, rolling her eyes dramatically. “I can just as easily pull the Black Card. Or the Trans Card. Or even the Both Card.”

Charlie raises his brows and twitches his neck to shrug once. “True. Doesn’t mean you’re not going to. And I’m not gonna stop pulling mine, especially in my time of need." He pouts dramatically, trying desperately to get them off the scent of his obvious infatuation with Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse Server. "You can’t be mean to me right now, I’m hurting.”

“You seemed just fine when you had your eyes glued to that waiter’s arse,” Elle says, leaning back to observe Charlie with her arms crossed. Ugh—who was he to think he could get one over on Elle Argent? "And he was flirting back. Obviously. Like, so obviously."

"Elle," Tao says gently, more gentle than he can usually handle without cringing. He puts a hand on her arm. "Don't get his hopes up."

"Thank you!" Charlie cries, gesturing a little violently to Tao. Elle is frowning. "Elle, helping me fall for a probably-straight guy is just cruel at this point. Kickin' a man while he's down."

"Charlie," Elle drawls, tucking a braid behind her ear and tilting her head down. A little too loudly for comfort, "If that man wasn't flirting with you, I will unhappily resign as your resident Defense Club founder. For the love of God, Charlie, he was looking at you like you're the face of the moon. He likes you. If he doesn't, I don't have eyes."

Charlie looks around worriedly. “C’mon, he could be listening!”

“And?” Elle smirks, eyes lighting up behind the glint of her glasses—well, that doesn’t look good. “Well, guys—”

“What guys? You’re just speaking to Tao!”

“—I think we’ve found Charlie’s date to the wedding.” She's smirking in a way that Charlie doesn't know if she's kidding or not. Hopefully kidding.

“Oh, shit, guys, no,” Charlie moans. “Guys, no, no, no—”

“Here’s your starters,” Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse Server interrupts with manic glee, putting a plate of tortilla crisps—like, a lot of them, how do they have a basket this big—and guac down on the table. He’s smiling. It’s a little sweet, mostly teasing. Charlie feels like he’s going to die of embarrassment and elation to have him back, even though he was just here, and fear of Elle asking him The Question and a million other things. 

Elle shakes her head. “Oh, there must be some sort of slip — we didn’t order a starter.”

“Oh, my mistake,” Nick says, grin not shifting, like he expected this response. He shrugs. “Well, they’re here now. You may as well have them.”

Charlie is not paying attention. He is just staring at Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse Server (he really needs a name tag). Charlie just barely does not say, Oh, my God, hot, hot, hot, hot.

Charlie looks to Elle for help, but she’s smiling at Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse Server, tipping her head kindly at him, the same way she’d looked at Charlie earlier. Charlie relaxes a bit—he’d just forgotten that’s just how Elle is. It’d been longer since he’d seen them than he realised. There’s no pity or malice there. His friends are nothing like Ben. 

He smiles a little at her, grateful to have her as his friend, have her back in his life, but then remembers where he is and the looming threat of The Question. Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse Server is still here, being cute and having a nice arse and everything. He turns his deer-in-headlights look to Tao who looks positively gleeful. Bad sign when Tao’s the one looking excited for something potential-suitor-related. He’s grateful for Tao too, but he can be even more of a little shit than even Charlie is when he wants to be.

Charlie comes back online enough to understand it when Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse looks directly at him and says without sweeping his eyes over to Elle and Tao, “Have you guys been here before?” He looks serious now. There is no trace of the teasing from before. He means it, voice dripping with affection and confusion. Charlie can fucking relate.

“Oh!” Charlie squeaks, then cringes. He needs to be more alluring than this. He mentally shakes himself, then looks back with a small smile and coyly says, “Not to this one. I’d remember.”

Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse’s eyebrows raise at the flirtation, smile wide and gummy, looking more sure-footed now. “Well, good. You should come back more often—I’d love to see you…” He clears his throat, sheepishly looking over at Tao and Elle, “…guys.”

Tao narrows his eyes in suspicion but has the hint of a smile on his face. It’s imperceptible to most, but Charlie’s known Tao for a long time. Tao’s charmed by Nick’s drop in bravado, showing some dimensions to the hot, hot exterior into something even hotter: bashfulness. He knows Tao certainly doesn’t think it’s hot (a terrifying breed of cis and straight—the horror), but he clearly thinks it’s somewhere in the realm of sweet. 

Charlie looks at Elle briefly and she’s flitting her eyes back and forth between he and Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse, positively chuffed. Charlie glances back to Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse and he hasn’t looked away from Charlie, still grinning.

Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse turns his head to narrow his eyes at Elle, says, “I know I’m sounding crazy here, but do you guys know Isaac Henderson?”

“Yeah!” Elle says, bouncing a little excitedly. “Oh my God, we’re all close with him. He was actually supposed to be here today, but he’s recovering from the tail-end of a cold. How do you know him?”

“Oh, that’s great! He’s a wonderful lad,” Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse smiles. “He was in my art class in third year at uni. We were both absolutely dreadful and bonded over it. He read almost the entire time and just swiped his paintbrush on the paper once or twice. We barely passed. It was awful.”  

“Oh, Elle went to a great art college for sixth form! She’s such a talent,” Tao says, a little moony-eyed, but then notices Nick smiling at them and goes back to being stony-faced. “I did Art GCSEs but it went so, so, so poorly.” He gives Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse a dark look who laughs at the intentional dramatics. 

“I didn’t,” Charlie says nonsensically, unsure of what he was even going to continuing talking about because Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse whips his head back to smile at Charlie, gleeful that he’s speaking again. It feels like staring into the sun in a way Charlie doubts he’ll ever experience again, unless he goes to this specific Frankie & Benny's every single day for the rest of his pathetic little life. 

Which, at this point, he doesn’t think he’d mind doing, and is looking like a prescient possibility. He doesn’t even register the smell of food or his queasy stomach at the scent with this guy’s eyes on him. It’s been 10 minutes but he feels like he’d do anything to keep them on him.

“I thought so. I’ve, uh, I’ve seen you around with him,” Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse says, a little nervous now, running a hand through his hair—Charlie notices his hands, how big they are, how strong and adept. He's speaking to the group, but when his eyes aren't downcast, he's cutting them to Charlie. He's noticed him? Charlie doesn't entirely know what to do with that.

He wishes this beautiful man had said something earlier than this, because then Charlie could've felt this—whatever this is—for so much longer. He doesn't want to live without this feeling now that it's here, and the idea that he could've had it before this and missed out makes him grief-stricken. It’s been 11 minutes. It feels like it’s been longer. It feels like it’s been his whole life.

He wants to say, you did? or why didn’t you say anything? or God, if I had seen you too, I would’ve sprinted across the green just to hang all over you like a goddamn limpet or I graduated last semester — there was a large chance we would've never met or I'm so glad we did or I’m glad you didn’t say something back then because that means you’re not sick of me yet or I’m glad you didn’t say something back then because that means you didn’t know me with Ben’s claws still dug deep beneath my skin. He says none of those things; he says nothing at all.

Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse drags his eyes away from the table and looks to Tao and Elle. “What are your names?”

Elle turns from where she's giving Charlie a look with both brows raised and looks to Nick with a sweeter, less expectant expression. “That’s Tao, I’m Elle, obviously, and this is Charlie,” she says, pointing to all of them. Charlie glares. He doesn’t know why. He feels his hackles rise at the idea of this guy knowing his name—not because he’s a bad bloke, but because he’s the opposite of one. Or so it seems—Charlie’s been wrong about these things. As recently as 12 minutes ago. He hates his sometimes-prickly nature though—lovely aftershocks of his disastrous relationship with Ben—so he shoves the spikes down and reaches for the velvet softness on the insides of his heart.

His eyes soften as he looks back up at Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse and feels brave enough to ask, “You?”

Charlie swallows; here it is: “Nick,” he says, putting a limp wrist on his chest. He looks directly at Charlie and makes eye contact with him as he drops his hand. It’s a little intense. Charlie feels himself flush again. Nick. “It’s great to meet you.”

“Um,” Charlie responds, a little higher-pitched at the fervent look in Nick's eyes. Charlie is looking for any excuse to flirt with him. He spots the tortilla crisps, and smirks, shoulders relaxing again. “Thanks for the guacamole." He's teasing a little as he points to them, maintaining eye contact. “I’ll be sure to give you a 1-30 Zagat rating on how it tastes.”

“Yuh-oh!” Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse says, startled. Charlie feels himself swoon at this adorable, clearly weird, sexy— okay, Charles, take it down a notch, he thinks, you met this man 13 minutes ago. “Well, I’m hoping it’s at least a 25, considering I actually made this batch myself.”

“Did you?” Elle says, smiling playfully as she rests her chin on her hand, elbow digging into the table. “When did you have time to make it?”

Nick’s eyes widen. He looks around, frenzied, and says, “Oop, looks like another table needs me. I’ll be back with your meals in a mo’!” He literally scampers away. Charlie watches him duck into the kitchen and not to a table. Charlie can’t help but chuckle, wondering if Nick's just a little awkward. For a man as fit as he is, it makes him even hotter somehow. Charlie didn't know that was even possible at this point.

He looks back at Tao and Elle. They both have twin smirks on their faces. “You two are getting way too similar. It’s uncanny.”

They ignore his comment, and Elle tries to tamper down her scream; she expresses it with her mouth closed, the sound trapped high in her throat. With eyes wild, she stresses with the most hoarse voice Charlie’s ever heard come out of her mouth, “You must marry this man.”

“Oh, my God, Elle,” Charlie laughs, covering his face. It’d be under a sycamore tree, a chuppah reaching up towards the eyes of God above them. Suddenly, he hates this Frankie & Benny’s. He's starting to sweat. “He's most definitely straight." Elle makes a face at that. And then, strangely, so does Tao. "And we’ve known him for less than fifteen minutes.”

“Perfect amount of time,” she says, waving a hand dismissively. Charlie hates himself for agreeing. Halfway through the wave, Elle’s eyes brighten and her jaw literally drops as she stares at Charlie, hand still floating in the air. Charlie is petrified. That expression cannot lead to anything good.

And it sure doesn’t: “I think we just confirmed it: you like him, he noticed you, and he likes you, which means he’s your date to Tori’s wedding. I was joking before, but now, I'm serious beyond belief. We’re going to ask.”

Tao cuts in, “I don’t even know him, but he seems brave enough to be able to deal with the craziness of the de Costa-Spring clan.”

Charlie’s been shaking his head the entire time they’ve been speaking. “No. No. No. No. I’ll just call James if you’re so dedicated to this idea, it’s really fine.”

“James?” Tao frowns with a mildly-dirty look on his face. “The kid who carried your books every day in Year 12? That would be cruelty to the nth degree. Plus, I think Isaac's already bringing him for autistic-moral-support. He said there’d be multiple pairs of Loops involved.”

Charlie winces, agreeing about it being cruel to do so and wracking his brain for any other substitutes. “There’s that guy! From my last year at uni! From that God-awful Geometry class! He was gay! I can text him.”

“The one you said approximately four words to all year and who smelled like burnt rubber every single day?” Tao asks, rolling his eyes. “Unless you want to go stag, Nick's your guy. Which, you can go stag, that’s your prerogative, and I’ll support you regardless if you do, but I will tell you that you will receive way more questions and Ben-questions as opposed to bringing a different guy.” Charlie sighs; Tao is very right. “A weirder guy. A decidedly more fit guy.”

“Guys, I must repeat myself: he's probably straight. And a complete stranger whose name we just learned six minutes ago and who’s going to stand me up if we invite him, and then I’ll have no choice but to go by myself. And that will be an utter and complete embarrassment. Do they have Witness Protection in England? If not, I’m making them. I’m writing to the Queen as we speak.” He groans, dropping his head into his hands. 

“Who cares if he’s straight? He seems nice enough to do you a favour like this! And he’s cute,” Elle adds, practically vibrating with excitement. “You can’t deny Nick’s cute.”

“Of course Nick’s cute!”  

He realises belatedly that he’s yelled this. He was frustrated and nervous and overwhelmed by how cute New-Nick is and how nice his arse is and, God, Charlie wants to crawl in a hole and die there when everyone in the entire room turns to stare at him—including some servers. The building falls silent aside from the clinking of dishes and the sizzling of food in the back. Elle and Tao are both staring at him, wide-eyed. Charlie sweeps his eyes over the room with the reddest cheeks he’s ever felt on his face, and finds no trace of Nick. Other servers, but not him. Charlie lets out a breath of relief, but is still massively uncomfortable under the weight of everyone in the building’s stares. He ducks his head and winds his fingers into the curls at the back of his head and tries not to rip his hair out.

Then, Tao yells to the room en masse, flapping his hands about in angry deference, “What, you lot don’t have anything better to do? Your pizzas aren't intriguing enough for you?”

Everyone turns away, someone starts talking and the ambient conversations begins again. Charlie’s relieved for a moment, but then one of the female servers makes eye contact with him again and smiles with an eyebrow raised. Oh, Charlie’s going to have to do some begging to make sure that woman does not bring this information anywhere near Nick and his nice, nice arse. 

Charlie then watches Nick walk out of the swinging kitchen doors with three plates on his arm. He walks towards them, and Charlie looks away just as Nick makes it to the table—can’t have him knowing Charlie was watching.

“I’m back!” Nick chirps. “Obviously.” 

He clearly didn’t hear Charlie, or he would be sweating awkward bullets. He puts the plates down with a dramatic flourish; Tao seems to appreciate this, nodding at him in approval. Charlie doesn’t remember the last time Tao approved of a man Charlie so much as looked at. Actually, he doesn’t think that’s ever happened. Oddly, the realisation sends butterflies through his stomach. 

Nick beams at them. “Do you guys need anything else?”

“Actually, yes,” Elle says, matching Nick’s wide and inviting smile. Charlie can see it in her eyes: The Question. Charlie glares at her so hard he feels like he’s going to start shooting fire out of his eyes like a goddamn fucking Ninja Turtle. “So, we’re going to a wedding this weekend—Sunday, two days from now. Charlie’s sister Tori’s wedding, actually. A non-traditional Jewish wedding. Charlie’s the best man. It’s all very cute.” 

Nick smiles softly, nodding at her, a little misty-eyed. Adorable. Maybe he just likes weddings. Very sweet. Charlie did not stop glaring, but then he looks up at Nick and feels the expression soften at the sight, and suddenly, he can’t tear his eyes away. “And unfortunately, Charlie’s boyfriend broke up with him a few days ago.”

“The very nerve of that twat,” Tao mutters, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Oh,” Nick frowns, appropriately upset by this, and turns to Charlie. “That’s awful of him.” Nick has one corner of his mouth pulled down, but no trace of pity in his expression. He didn’t even apologise and is clearly not bothered that Charlie’s gay. The bar is on the floor for Charlie at this point, but he can’t help but think, that’s so hot. It’s so kind that he didn't treat Charlie as a man of fragility because of this information. It's exactly what Charlie’s always wanted in a friend, in a lover, in a person, the kindness extended when he's treated like everybody else and not broken china. Nick doesn't even know him, but he gave him that. Charlie feels dizzy. 

“It was,” Elle continues, “and feel free to say no, but we were wondering if you could be Charlie’s date.” She gestures to Charlie with a graceful hand, more poised than Charlie ever has been, and now, after this mortifying experience, will ever have the chance of being again. “You know, so he doesn’t go stag and to distract his family from asking where his ex-boyfriend is." Charlie squawks and shakes his head violently, glaring so hard, the entire upper-half of his face hurts. Elle simply rolls her eyes as she continues, "He basically knows you, through Isaac of course, whom we trust with our lives and who will also be there.” 

“You don’t have to go,” Charlie stresses. Say yes. Say yes. “Like, obviously this is all last minute and it's not that big a deal anyway, you don't have to, you really, totally, definitely don't have to if you have plans or if you just don’t want to or…" Charlie runs out of steam continuing to defend his friends. Say yes. Say no. Say yes.

Nick looks shy with a little smile on his face that Charlie’s watched grow. Charlie has not taken his eyes away from Nick once while they were speaking, watching for flicker of emotion on his beautiful face, tiny hints of discomfort. Charlie found none, but he still thinks Nick might say no due to him cutting his eyes to Charlie out of the corners of them a few times, but never making full contact. Nervous, Charlie realised. Nick is nervous. He prays it's not out of disgust or disdain.

“So we thought," say yes, "it’d be a nice idea," say yes, "but feel free to say—”

“Yes.”

All of their eyes bulge, even Nick’s, like he’s shocked he was able to form a coherent word at all. “Yes?” Charlie asks, voice strangled.

Nick turns to him, making eye contact now, nothing like the suave, cheeky man he was 24 minutes ago when he first came over. He looks sweet. A little nervous, but sweet. Excited, even. Nick smiles at him gently and Charlie smiles back on impulse. “Yes. Yeah. Okay.”

“That’s great,” Elle says, grinning wider than either Nick or Charlie combined. Nick and Charlie are pulled out of their reverie and Charlie shyly looks down at his now-cold Margherita pizza. He doesn’t even care that it’s cold; he’d gladly eat a trillion mid-range, ice-cold Margherita pizzas if this man were holding them. Charlie’s still extremely embarrassed but he’s so, so happy. He is actually thrilled.  

He’s been so nervous about this wedding—his part in it as best man; all the traditions he’s trying to keep track of; the way he's going to have to set up the rehearsal dinner by himself day after tomorrow because no one else can make it and Charlie said that was okay, despite how utterly not okay it's going to be; the ceremony, then the party afterwards; Ben being on his arm, then Ben not being on his arm. It’s all been so overwhelming. He loves his sister and will do absolutely anything to see that rare, tiny smile of hers. But he hasn’t been excited.

But now. Now.

“I mean, I have plans with my friends this weekend, so I’d have to make sure they’re okay at the pub without me and instead asking if they can watch my dog. Which I’m sure Darcy would be fine with, at least—they’re always saying how they prefer Lucy to me… Sorry, you don’t know them.” Nick shakes his head, laughing ruefully at the floor, and Charlie finds himself smiling despite the fact that Nick can’t see him. But then he looks up from where he’s been toeing at the linoleum below them and smiles back at Charlie. “But if they can…”

“Okay,” Charlie says, smile forced now. “It’s okay if you can’t. Really.”

“I know,” Nick says, his smile softening a little. “But I want to.” 

Charlie feels his nerves settle a little at that wonderful expression, at those four sweet words. He wants to. God, this fucker’s good at this.

“Well,” Nick says, addressing all of them now, “my boss will kill me if I stay here any longer. She’s been silently eye-murdering me for the last three minutes.” He gives someone an awkward smile and waves. A woman at the front counter rolls her eyes and continues counting money. “But I’ll come back later with your cheques. Do you actually need anything, like, food-or-drink- wise?”

They all laugh, the spell and nervous tension broken, Charlie’s laugh a little more fond than the others’. He’s grateful the softness of the laugh is drowned out by Tao and Elle's. “I think we’re good. Thanks, Nick.”

“O’course,” Nick says, waving and walking backwards. Nick shoots them a smile far too affectionate for having met them 26 minutes ago, then finally goes up to another table. Charlie can take a breath as he does. It’s a huge, relieved sigh. He might not have to go stag. Bloody hell, thank God.

He looks at Tao and Elle. Tao looks a little proud of Charlie, and Elle has the sweetest, soppiest, wettest expression on her face. She sighs, “I’m absolutely being in the wedding party when you two get married.”

“Ugh. Dick. Dick. Dick.” Charlie sputters in agony. He might not have to go stag, but the guy going as his ‘date’ is not only straight as hell, but so, so hot. He doesn't know if he's going to make it. At least he has the rehearsal dinner tomorrow to get used to the idea—that is, if Nick does come. “Ugh. This is actually going to suck I’ve decided.” It's not. He's still insurmountably relieved. But his friends don't need to know that.

Elle smiles, and Tao responds sullenly, “It’s really, really not,” like he’s already dreading it.

They eat — Charlie is unfortunately too nervous to do more than pick, even though this specific pizza is a safe food. Tao and Elle pick up on this, understanding the minutiae of Charlie’s eating disorder, so they say nothing publicly. It's too commonplace for Charlie to find himself grateful for it anymore, which he's grateful for in of itself. Elle gets up at one point and is gone for a few minutes too long to simply be the loo, but Charlie doesn’t care, staring down at his food like it’s going to kill him. Nick comes by after Elle sits back down and gives them the cheque. All he does is ask Charlie with a smile, “Would you like a takeaway box?”

Charlie lets out a secret, silent, grateful sigh at New-and-Also-Cute Nick for not making a comment about it, as some servers have had in Charlie’s time going to restaurants and finding himself to be unable to eat once he gets there. He nods with a small, private smile. Nick gives him one back, toying with the string tying his apron round his waist, a little shy.

Nick leaves the cheque along with Charlie's takeaway box. They consider staying a little longer after the plates are cleared to spend more time with Nick, but Nick's boss at the front counter keeps shooting daggers at them the longer they hold up a table, so the three of them go to settle the cheque at the counter. And then Charlie sees it: the female co-worker who smiled at Charlie with her fucking eyebrow is talking to Nick. Charlie isn't a fan on wishing violence upon anybody, let alone a stranger, but he feels as if this woman is about to test that. He watches in abject horror as Nick’s eyes widen and his face redden. It keeps getting redder and redder while the co-worker talks with a smirk. She’s absolutely, positively, most definitely telling Nick about the thing Charlie yelled ten minutes ago. Screamed, even. She tilts her head to Charlie. Charlie is stuck in place, turned to stone; this female co-worker must be fucking Medusa or some shit.

And then, as Nick turns to Charlie, about to see him, Charlie, for some reason, dives under the counter. 

Everyone can see him do this. It’s very obvious. Tao, Elle, Nick's boss splitting their cheques, most of the patrons, the female server. Probably Nick. Okay, definitely Nick. He doesn’t peek up over the counter to check, but he can feel it in his fucking bones. It’s the most mortifying thing that’s ever happened to him. 

He looks up at Tao and Elle in fear, and they’re looking back down at him, not even trying to hide the fact that they are, and trying so hard not to laugh. Tao is barely succeeding, snorting out of his nose, shoulders shaking. Charlie is planning homicide. “Well,” Elle says, smiling. “How do you want to get out of this one, babes?”

“I wish I knew,” Charlie moans, glaring at them like they should know. Then, deciding he should be quieter for some reason, whispers, “I guess, uh, just, hide me as we walk out the door."

“You still have to pay,” the owner says, a 60-year-old Greek woman bored out of her mind, uncaring of the situation at hand, like Charlie could going to die here in this restaurant and so long as he paid, she’d simply have a server mop up the blood.

“I’m transferring you money for my part of the cheque or you die,” Charlie hisses to Tao and Elle harshly. Elle shakes her head with an amused smile and pulls out her wallet again. 

“It better be for the whole cheque,” Tao mutters.

Ignoring him, Charlie harshly whispers, “What’s Nick doing?”

“What’s he doing?” Tao asks, louder now, arms out in the air. “Likely wondering if he should let you go stag to this wedding or not.”

Charlie whimpers and says in a small, sad voice, “I hate you.”

Tao looks at him pitifully—Charlie almost actually hisses like a feral cat at him for it—and then actually looks up at Nick. He looks back down at Charlie and frowns disgustedly, rolling his eyes. “He looks charmed. You win this round, Charlie Spring. Not straight.”

“Charmed?” Charlie scoffs, bouncing on his toes where he’s still hunched down. He doesn't believe it; not straight, his arse.

Whilst Elle pays, Charlie tries to peek out from behind the counter to see for himself, still attempting to avoid Nick’s gaze. He fails, and sees Nick with his hands interlaced behind his back, his muscular, bulging, come-to-Jesus-moment shoulders pulled tight as he rocks back and forth like a kid in a candy store. He’s grinning when he spots Charlie. He brings one hand back around and waves with a small wiggle of his fingers and winks at him when they make eye contact.

Charlie shrieks loudly, which he realises belatedly does not help his hiding-case, and immediately pulls back sharply to where he was hiding, taking several deep, quick breaths as he backs up against the counter, attempting to stay as hidden as possible. Even though Nick obviously saw him.

Elle and Tao look down at him, laughing in earnest now. “You ready, Evel Knievel?”

“Shut up,” Charlie moans, drawing out the ‘u’.

God, I swear, I’m going to kill you for bringing this stupidly handsome waiter into my life, Charlie prays, eyes squeezed closed in embarrassment. If you saw me in your vision, your vision must’ve been super, super gay, I fucking guess, and also really fucking stupid. And now I have to go stag to my sister’s wedding, because you made me gay or whatever, and then you invented Ben or whatever, and then and then created Nick and it’s like you made him for me. This is your fault. I hate you. I mean, I don’t. But I am gonna blame you for this for the rest of my life. Put me on a watchlist, dude—I’m coming for you.

“Hide me,” Charlie begs.

Tao snorts, shaking his head, “Charlie, everyone’s seen you already. Including the lad you’re hiding from. But if you insist, we will.”

“God,” Charlie chokes out, standing up and facing his back to the rest of the patrons and the servers, especially Nick. “Walk me out, but someone casually look at Nick first.”

“Are we in Year 7?” Elle laughs, high like a bell. It’s usually a comforting noise. Usually. “He looks happy. He’s staring. He’s watching us as we walk out with a smarmy grin. You okay? Or should I go and ask him if he wants to bring you into the loo and get down on his kn—”

“Elle, you betta’ fuckin’ don’t.”  

“Not Drag Race references as we’re escorting you out of a gay hostage situation. Please, I’m not strong enough,” Tao bemoans. Charlie chances a quick look behind him, and once he is (hopefully) no longer in view of the windows, of Nick’s imploring, likely horrified expression that Elle and Tao misread, he straightens up and books it towards the car. He tells himself not to look back, but he can’t resist, and as he’s sprinting full-tilt across the carpark, and there Nick is, closer to the window now.

Charlie wants to remember the smile on Nick's beautiful face until he’s old and grey, and old and grey again, and old and grey over and over for the rest of his many, endless lives.

They make it to the car without bloodshed, though with Tao and Elle slowing down their walking to a crawl just to torture Charlie. He has no idea how he doesn’t murder them when they make it with serene smiles, like they’ve done nothing wrong. He repeats, “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,” as Tao gets in the car and pulls out of the carpark. 

He belatedly realises then that he left his takeaway box on the table, but there’s no way in hell he’s asking Tao to go back for it.

About 10 minutes into the drive, a few minutes away from their flat, Elle lets out a sharp, surprised laugh at her phone, then swears, “Knew it!” It’s loud enough for Charlie to make an inquiring noise from where his head is buried in his hands. “Nothing,” she smirks from where she’s beside Charlie in the backseat (she felt bad and wanted Charlie to feel comforted after a very rough visit to Frankie & Benny's. Kind, but brutal knowing it was bad enough that they knew he needed comfort). 

“It’s clearly not nothing.” Silence. Elle is still smirking as she tap tap taps on her phone, her nails click-clacking against the glass screen. Charlie huffs dramatically and looks out the window like he's in a music video because he needs that right now, and if Elle says anything about it, Charlie's going to start throwing punches.

They park the car in front of Charlie’s flat and Elle reaches over the console to show Tao whatever it is that’s got her laughing. His brows raise, clearly impressed. “Well. I can’t say I’m surprised at this point.”

Charlie groans long and loud. “I’m way too embarrassed to deal with whatever it is you two are gossipping about.” He gets out of the car, sans takeaway box. He knows these two people so well after so long—he knows they won’t tell him their drama and he’s not self-flagellating enough after all the wound-licking he needs to be doing to wheedle. 

He’s so tired from therapy and then the social exhaustion of meeting a fit guy who is apparently going to be his date (though he definitely doesn’t believe it is such a thing; it’s not really a date, due to Nick probably being straight and everything) to his older sister’s wedding. Maybe. Possibly. Unlikely. If he can get out of his plans and decides to waste a full day on Charlie’s arm.

God, Charlie secretly covets the hope that he does. Still, he isn’t holding his breath. “You two are the worst.”

He realises, belatedly but gratefully, that he hasn’t thought about Ben once in the last 40 minutes. 

It’s a start.

🍃

Tori is having a Jewish ceremony. She chose this despite being secular as well.

Well, there’s no sort-of-Jewish, well-enough-but-not-super-religious, mostly-culturally-appropriate ceremony that their family would understand. But she’s having one anyway, because it’s her and Michael’s wedding, not the de Costa-Spring family’s. Charlie’s proud of her for pushing back against their mother for that one. There are parts of the Jewish marriage ceremony and traditions that Tori finds outdated, sexist and homophobic, but there are some she begrudgingly admits are very nice. She and Michael are making their own type of Jewish wedding. 

Which is great for them, and Charlie is very happy—for them. For Charlie, it is a living, waking, fucking nightmare. Even if Tao asks, he will never be the best man at another wedding ever again.

There’s a dress rehearsal involved at the wedding, and unfortunately, it is the wife’s best man/maid of honour’s duty to set it up. He’s been running around for hours before anyone even gets there. And then, blessedly, someone shows up to help him out. Likely either Tao, Elle, or the other various groomsmen and bridesmaids, even though they all bailed on him. It’s not a car he recognizes, but it doesn’t matter — another body is another body at this point, if it is in fact another person from the wedding party.

He’s running on fumes, fairy dust and coffee grounds after being up and at ‘em since half 5 (and well enough knowing he’s going to be doing the exact same thing tomorrow), so he doesn’t care about the car, setting up chintzy folding chairs in a frenzy. It’s probably a groundskeeper, someone he doesn’t and can’t be fucked to worry about at the time. He has just finished setting up the 35-ish chairs when the car is put in park; he prays that’s enough—he did count the amount of people showing up seven times over, but God knows there’s going to be extras that show up, so he added an extra five.

And extras there are, because apparently, the sole person who showed up to help is Nick goddamn fucking Nelson. He guesses.

“Oh,” Charlie says, eyes wide as Nick walks from his car to stand in front of Charlie. He is rooted to the earth, which is very bad—there is so much left to do and so little time to do it. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Nick smiles, arms wide, like he’s expecting a hug that Charlie is too shocked to give him. Nick drops his arms, but his smile doesn’t abate or alter in any way. “Elle texted. I figured you might need a hand setting up, so I came a little early.”

“Did she.” Charlie frowns, rolling his eyes, not knowing Elle had contact with Nick. He supposes it makes sense considering Nick is here, in the right location, at relatively the right time, as Charlie’s not-date, seeing as they never told him where and when any of what he was invited to was happening at Frankie & Benny's. Still, Charlie and Elle will certainly have words whenever she shows up. He hadn’t even known Nick was coming to the wedding, let alone the rehearsal dinner. He hopes there’s an extra one of those chintzy white chairs the property has provided to smack Elle over the head with. “Well. That’s nice. But you didn’t have to come.”

“Of course I did.” Nick tilts his head, brows screwing in confusion, looking a little wounded. Confoundingly. “You asked me to, so I took off work the moment you guys left yesterday.”

Christ. That’s— “Oh. Well, that’s. Nice,” Charlie repeats, unsure of what else there is to say. Ever. In the history of human language. He rubs his elbow awkwardly, unsure of how to proceed with this kindness, that it’s happening at all. He really, really thought Nick wouldn’t come. He doesn’t know what to do now that he has. “Thank you.”

Nick’s smile is back. He starts moving towards the set-up Charlie’s gotten on. “What’s next? I see you have tables that need setting up.”

They manage to get everything done in half the time, thanks to Nick’s thick fucking arms, biceps straining against his nice fucking button-down, and his adept fucking hands creating all of the fucking bouquets for the fucking tables that Charlie has been fucking dreading making. They look incredible. Who knew this hot-as-all-hell waiter Charlie met 47 hours ago—who, had Charlie met on a dating app, would’ve been in his bed within 20 minutes of their first date—would be good with flowers?

But this is not a date. This is his sister’s wedding and Nick is being nice (okay, maybe this is all more than ‘nice’; Charlie will allow him ‘kind’), but there are things to be done. Charlie refuses to let himself look at Nick and his hands and his arms because he would be completely unstable—quite possibly rendered entirely unusable—if he did. 

At one point, Charlie starts climbing the ladder he pulled out of the venue’s crawl space, and Nick says with a smile and a shake of his head as he steps away from the table settings and walks over where Charlie has one foot on the first rung of the ladder, “Please, let me get that.”

“No,” Charlie responds petulantly, getting a firmer grip on the one hand he had on the ladder so he can get the Edison lights and tinsel around the netting behind Michael and Tori’s spot at the head of the table. “I’ve got it.”

“I’m taller,” Nick points out, nice (ugh, kind) smile never wavering. “And you can spot me, if it makes you feel better.”

The idea of being faced with the arse he’d been ogling every time this stupid man is around made Charlie want to fucking die, so he shakes his head and says, “I can do it myself. You spot me.”

Nick chuckles and says, “My pleasure,” so Charlie turns away from Nick’s stupidly handsome face and back to the task at hand. But then Charlie feels Nick’s wide, warm palm against the middle of his back. It's their first physical contact, and Charlie shivers, probably not only to be felt by Nick, but seen—he wants to fucking die.

Still, he keeps going. Anything for Tori, he keeps repeating through gritted teeth as he feels Nick’s steady hand through the thin cotton of his button-down, gripping the rung of the ladder he’s stabilising himself with so tightly, it’s bound to leave marks. Anything for fucking Tori.  

Many, many small moments like that keep racking up—shoulders brushing as they float by one another, completing their various tasks; fingers tangling while adjusting the same floral arrangement. All the small touches have built up in Charlie’s body like a reserve of frustration. He has no idea what kind, but he does know he feels ready to snap in half.

He and Nick are putting the finishing touches on the fake vines they’re carefully weaving around the posts surrounding the seating area (Nick is very good at it, at being careful, which makes Charlie want to cry—there's a hell of a lot of a difference between treating someone with fragility and treating someone carefully. He's never felt the latter. It makes Charlie want to be the vines in Nick's hands, crawling up his arms and down into his soul). Right as they finish, people begin showing up. Nick goes inside to get the chafing dishes and food while Charlie greets his aunties and uncles. When Charlie’s bubbe and zayde arrive, he rushes to help them out of the car, just as his mother taught him to do with them by the time Charlie had turned 10.

“Hi, Bubbe,” Charlie smiles, hand clutching hers, the other at her upper back. “It’s wonderful to see you.”

“Thank you, hertzele.” Charlie smiles a little at the nickname he’s had by her all his life: ‘little heart’. It used to be commonplace, something he knew by heart but didn’t know the definition of, or even how to spell it out to put into Google. He asked his mum what it meant one day — on a good day between the two of them—at age 19, and she answered him, saying you’ve been her heart since the day you were born. Since then, Charlie finds that he stop smiling when he’s around her. He loves his rude little bubbe desperately.

“How was the drive? Not too bad, right?”

“Well, it would’ve been had this stupid schlemiel not almost drove us into a river. Luckily, your zayde is a wonderful driver in a pinch,” Bubbe grins, tipping her head to her husband of 45 years, then begins gesturing to the wet driver again—Charlie isn't sure if he's wet from an actual river or just drenched in sweat. “I mean it, this man has no real respect for—”

“Hi, love.” Love. Who calls him—

Nick apparently does, saving Charlie from hearing Bubbe brutalize this poor, defenseless man. Nick is smiling kindly, mouth closed as he comes up to the three of them and knocks his hip lightly against Charlie’s—friendly, cheeky and romantic. Which is odd. It’s like he knew exactly what to do to make sure Charlie didn’t feel uncomfortable physically, but show to Charlie’s grandparents that they’re not-really-but-sort-of together, at least where the rest of the wedding outside of Tao and Elle. 

They’re not together. They’re not 'love' to each other. But it’s nice to pretend he can shoot high enough to be with a kind, sweet, giving, fit guy like Nick Nelson. 

More than fit, though. He knows Nick is much more than fit. He’s seen so many different sides of Nick already and he’s been in his presence for 3 hours total, 47 since they met; God, he wishes he could stop fucking counting. It's more than just neuroses, though. There’s a part of him that wants to hold onto the meaning of meeting Nick, that it feels fated somehow, that he’s here and he’s willing to help and be kind and be on Charlie’s arm for no discernible reason. Maybe Nick just likes Charlie as a person. Perish the thought. 

But Charlie can’t look a gift horse in the mouth—Nick likes Charlie. Charlie likes Nick. Who cares if they like each other in vastly different ways? It’s still fated. It still feels like a fixed event in Charlie’s life that Nick saw him and then months later, he saw Nick. 

So he knocks their hips together in return, shuddering slightly at the shock that rolls through him at the contact. It feels good, to touch Nick like that. He knows why. It’s beyond simply Nick being fit. He devoutly ignores it—there’s things to be done and he can’t get distracted by the affection he feels swelling in his heart. He shoots Nick a smile and Charlie finds him already smiling back. He tips his head, keen on this whole situation, and with blushing cheeks, Charlie tells his grandparents, “Bubbe, Zayde: this is Nick.”

“Ah,” Bubbe says, eyeing Nick up and down, assessing him with narrowed eyes. Tori always says she learned everything she knows from Bubbe’s apprehension to strangers. “Not Ben, then.”

“No,” Charlie responds, wincing. “Not Ben. Sorry.”

Bubbe cuts her eyes to Charlie, still stern, but softer now. She clicks her tongue disapprovingly and quietly chides, “Keyn nebekhdik, bubbeleh.”

Charlie doesn’t speak a whole lot of Yiddish—though more than he does Spanish and Ladino due to how much time he spent with his maternal grandparents from such a young age and hardly ever seeing his father’s family—but he can understand most of what Bubbe says in the language. Even Nick can surely feel the displeasure rolling off of her in waves. He doesn’t know why he knows that, but he does. He doesn’t understand a lot of things about the state of his situation with his Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse Server.

“Oh!” Zayde says, brightening as he gleans what’s going on. Zayde’s not exactly losing cognitive processing; he’s just slow. He always has been. They all find it very endearing. “You must be Charlie’s, um, lover. I’m Richard.”

“Hi, Richard,” Nick smiles, reaching out to shake his hand. Charlie’s blush during this interaction has begun to deepen to extraordinary lengths. Lover? he wishes he could demand without disrespecting Zayde. At least they’re trying at all, the rational little Elle that lives in his head whispers. “I’m Nicholas Nelson. You can call me Nick if you’d like.”

“It’s great to meet you, Nicholas,” Zayde responds, nodding with a wrinkled smile. Charlie almost snorts—did Zayde even hear Nick say what to call him? Is his hearing starting to go? He's going to have to talk to Bubbe about a possible hearing aid later. “Charlie has told me so much about you.”

“Has he?” Nick laughs, looking down at Charlie with raised brows.

“Don’t let it go to your head,” Charlie responds with a wink. Nick looks like he could fly away with the wind at the mere idea, even though he knows it's factually untrue. He's probably uncomfortable. When Nick looks sharply back at Charlie’s grandparents, smile inviting, Charlie winces; he shouldn't flirt that brazenly with this straight virtual-stranger who is doing nothing but supporting him.

“Mishpokhe, may I take your coats? I’ll get you some water, it’s a little hot out. We couldn’t manage to get God to make it any cooler, but I’ve still got some prayers in that He’ll turn the heating down for tomorrow. Though we all know that man can be a little slow on the up-take.” 

Nick tips his head at Bubbe and Zayde knowingly. But he only saw that; he hardly heard a word after Nick called his grandparents family. His own family. Dear God, Charlie wants that. He wants Nick to be mishpokhe. If Nick wants to be, then he is, all defences be damned. It doesn't help that hearing a Yiddish pronunciation on Nick’s tongue made him go a little hot under the collar. How the fuck does Nick know how to pronounce Yiddish words—and perfectly at that? Is he secretly Jewish? Did he study for this? Like there was a fucking class on this wedding and he’s trying to get an A*? Charlie hardly fucking knows Yiddish.

So how the hell does Nick?

He must either a) be secretly a Jew and know enough Yiddish to get by like Charlie does (possibly even speaks it fluently? God), or b) has studied Youtube videos deep into the night for the past 48 hours to get a gold star at this wedding. Either option makes Charlie want to fan himself like a Victorian maiden. 

After laughing up a storm, Zayde hands over his suit jacket, a size too big as he shrinks with age, and says, “Water would be great, thank you, son. And get your bubbe a coke—she’s pre-diabetic but she loves a treat every now and then. It's a party, after all.”

Zayde shakes Nick’s hand again, hard and firm, like a symbol of some sort of ratification, then reaches out his other hand and claps the back of Nick’s. Damn, they must like him more than I do, Charlie marvels. It’s like he knows a good joke about God will get any Jew laughing.

The words your bubbe ring loudly in his head, his own grandfather’s voice taunting him. The man might not be able to understand the minutiae of gay living, or, like, relationships that aren’t his in general — okay, barely his own either—but he is welcoming as all hell. When somebody is appreciated by his eldest grandson, he will fold like a house of cards and bring them into the family like it’s nothing. 

It’s Bubbe’s opinions that Charlie needs to be worried about. He refuses to cut his eyes to her, afraid of what he’ll find; for some strange reason, he finds the need for Bubbe to like Nick to be so strong inside him, it’s nearly suffocating. He needs his family to like Nick as he does. He feels protective over this sunny man with a magnetic pull Charlie can't help but give into. Nick grins as he shakes Zayde’s hand back, then folds Zayde’s coat over his arm, reaching out to take Bubbe’s, not touching it until Bubbe gives the okay. He’s giving her a charming, bright smile, not forced or awkward in any way despite talking to two old Austrian Jews he doesn’t know, calling them family with ease, like they are, like they always have been. Charlie is stunned. 

This could go one of two ways: either Bubbe is put off by this blatant term of affection by Charlie’s seemingly-boyfriend, or she falls in love with him on the spot. Charlie’s a little frightened about the outcome. If Bubbe doesn’t like Charlie’s—in Zayde’s words—'lover', this event will go very, very badly. A faux pas that could have dire consequences for Charlie’s mental health and the state of his functionality at this wedding. God, this was a weird time to meet Nick. But really, what was a better time? Any time earlier and earlier, something deep inside Charlie says. From birth and before, til death and after, rinse, repeat, repeat.

Charlie finally looks down at Bubbe, heart in his throat. Bubbe is smiling—the one she gives to all her grandkids—and Charlie tears up a little in relief. 

“Yes, menschkeit, you may take this. That dummkopf of a driver must’ve had the aircon on at 18 degrees.” She’s smiling approvingly now as she hands over her coat, perhaps because of her husband’s reaction to Nick, perhaps because of Charlie’s moony-eyed look that never wavers from Nick. He can’t even find it within himself to be embarrassed by it. Nick called Charlie’s grandmother fucking family and Bubbe liked it. 

What is Charlie meant to do? Be normal?  

As they walk towards the rest of Charlie’s friends and family (Nick’s now? Mishpokhe. Mishpokhe), waiting for Tori and Michael to finally fucking show up, Charlie says, “It was a good move to take the piss out of our favourite old weirdo in the sky.” He’s distracting himself with Nick at the frustration of his stupid fucking sister being late as per usual. Nick is a good distraction. A hot distraction. A more-than-just-hot distraction. 

Nick chokes out a laugh, clearly trying to keep it quiet, and sharply looks over at Charlie, eyes bulging. “What?”

“What, you don’t call God a weirdo?” Charlie muses, rolling his neck to peer upwards. “God, you don’t mind, do you?”

“Let me know if He answers, will you?” Nick laughs quietly, a little choked still.

“Are you…” Charlie swallows. “Are you Jewish?”

“I’m not,” Nick cringes, smiling embarrassedly. Oh. Okay. So, that means. Well, it means a lot of things. “As you can probably tell. What, is it too much? The Yiddishism?”

“‘The Yiddishism’,” Charlie repeats, trying to tamp down his enamoured giggles. He can’t help the besotted expression on his face—he doesn’t know now if it’ll ever go away. Nick did in fact study for this. In one day. Jesus Christ. “No, it’s not too much. It’s just enough, actually.”

“It’s not… appropriative?”

“Nick, languages are for everybody.”

“I know that!” Nick squeaks as Charlie lets out a mean little laugh, but smirks at him with warm eyes to soften the blow when he’s finished. Nick’s cheeks go pink at the sound; Charlie can’t tell if it’s from embarrassment, enjoyment, or both. “I mean, like, calling your family and such these, like—”

“Nick, you’re overthinking this,” Charlie says, laughing more nicely this time, tipping his head as he slows down their walking; he doesn’t want any family members to overhear this. “You’re doing fine. My grandparents already love you.”

“They do?” Nick asks, wide eyes a little wet. Charlie wants to let out another laugh at Nick’s expense, the expression is that pathetic (and, ugh, fucking adorable), but he doesn’t. He genuinely wants this wonderful man to know that he’s liked and wanted. At least, by Charlie’s family (and secretly, very much and also definitely by Charlie himself. Of course. He fucking came, which he very much did not need to, just to save Charlie’s ass. He’s kind of an angel. In many, many ways).

“Yeah, Nick,” Charlie says, unable to hold back a single giggle that comes bubbling out. He knocks their hips together like Nick did when he walked up, returning the comforting favour, and a relieved smile filters across Nick’s expression. A new dawn. Charlie’s felt the same for 48 hours. He hasn't flirted with Nick since yesterday, not on purpose, so he says, “Who wouldn’t?” 

There’s a long silence in which the two of them smile at each other, and when Charlie can stomach the butterflies no more, he continues walking towards the rest of his family (their family, according to Nick’s wording (and Zayde’s, Jesus, Charlie feels like he’s going to melt into the grass and die there)).

He’s trying not to focus on the fact that Nick didn’t deny the meaning—he called Bubbe and Zayde his family too. Charlie’s trying. He’s failing. What the fuck is this man’s deal? Charlie should be weirded out, right?

Why the fuck isn’t he weirded out? Why is he deeply, intrinsically, brutally charmed?

Charlie has no fucking idea why this man does it for him, but God in Heaven, he really, really does. He scoffs at God once again for making Elle and Tao bring him to that specific Frankie & Benny's. 

“Hey,” Nick cuts in, laughing a little now, “do you think Zayde had any idea I wasn’t Ben?”

“Oh,” Charlie grins, a little feral as he lets their shoulders brush together before walking full-speed back to the group. No, Charlie thinks. Not weird at all. “Not a clue.” 

🍃

Okay, Charlie thinks with a groan when his alarm goes off at half 5 the next morning. It’s game day.

The rehearsal dinner yesterday went off—mostly—without a hitch. Tori and Michael came (eventually), sat, laughed, ate food, were generally merry, which was really all that mattered. The other 27 people were, like, there. They did all of those things too. But they weren’t his sister and future-brother, so their opinions on the event mattered less. Tori came up to him as he and the wedding parties (and Nick, for whatever reason) were cleaning up. She started to attempt to help too, but Charlie shooed her away. She kissed his shoulder quickly in gratitude (all she can reach anymore without going up on her toes, and her wordless code she gives when something is really, truly appreciated). All in a day’s work. 

Though, because it was a de Costa-Spring Attended Event, it wasn’t without its hiccups. Like when Charlie’s dad demanded to see Nick’s identification card to make sure he’s over 18 while Charlie banged his head into the table that he and Nick set up. I just have a baby face—I promise I’m 25! Nick, who's fucking older than Charlie, God, had defended, and Julio had flatly demanded, Proof.  

Or—and this one was mostly on Charlie, but he will go to his grave defending that it wasn’t his fault—when Charlie walked by the family table to speak to Auntie Leah and overheard Bubbe the two of them gossipping. Bubbe said that she wishes she’d seen Nick months ago because she would’ve set Charlie up with him, even though Charlie was already with Ben at the time. Charlie intended to roll his eyes and continue walking, and then Auntie Leah said, Wait, the shegetz? Charlie yelped at that slight insult coming from his usually-mild-mannered aunt. Bubbe said, No, Leahleh, he might as well be a landsman. For some strange reason, his bubbe referring to his fake, goyische boyfriend as a fellow Jew forced Charlie to let out a shocked yell of, beytsim! It was as loud as humanly possible, and he cringed hard in embarrassment as every Yiddish-speaker looked up at him in alarm. Bubbe had words with him about that vulgar slip-up. And in public, hertzele.

Of course, there were non-hot-boy-related hiccups as well. For example, when Abuela saw Michael’s hair (in tight, perpetually unkempt curls (despite how many times Charlie has tried to explain the upkeep involved in curly hair) down to his shoulder blades) and went, Oh, bubbeleh, you’ve got to let me cut that. I’ve got, um, cutters? In my bag. Michael had said, Oh, no thank you, with tears in his eyes. 

Michael’s self-confidence is kind of shot in general, but he is particularly sensitive about his hair. He knew better than to show that to the de Costas, though. He composed himself, went back to Abuela, and said, You know, Mrs de Costa, my sister is a hairdresser, and she’s been kvetching about the same things to me for years. You and her would get along like gangbust— um, cóm... plices? If you want, I can introduce you to her tomorrow. Abuela had given him a self-satisfied smile and said, Maybe. Michael may be a white guy, but more than that, he’s a smart white guy.

Charlie had not expected Nick to be the same, but a goy.

Unlike Nick, Michael had eight months of engagement to Tori to practise. Charlie knows Nick is a goyische white guy, but he clearly either has had someone close to him who came from a similar family structure or did a lot of research in the three days it’s been since Charlie met him (Jesus Christ, how has it only been three days?). The idea that Nick cared enough to do minute research, like small phrases in Spanish and Yiddish, memorised them, and is using them in casual conversation is a lot. 

And then, of course, when Charlie parks, there is Nick’s beat-up Volkswagen Bug absolutely covered in overly-colourful bumper stickers that hail things like PLEASE DON’T HIT ME — I DON’T KNOW HOW INSURANCE WORKS and UNAPOLOGETICALLY MYSELF AND SOMETIMES IT’S A LITTLE SCARY! Charlie hadn’t seen the eyesore of a sticker-situation up close yesterday, too distracted and overworked to notice or care. They’re way more unhinged than he had been expecting. The stickers, though, are in one eye and out the other because right now, he can see Nick through the massive, floor-to-ceiling windows in the front of the building on a ladder, setting up a balloon arch at 8 in the fucking morning. 

Charlie craves death. Who asked him to come and help set up? Again? Because it certainly wasn’t Charlie.

And then, he sees the person he assumes to be the culprit, considering she was yesterday: Elle Argent, at the foot of the ladder, scrolling on her phone distractedly with one hand, stabilising the ladder with the other. Charlie narrows his eyes and begins planning her murder. It will have to be after the wedding, of course, but he will try his best to make it painless. He slams his car door shut (harder than strictly necessary—sue him, he’s a bit miffed), spares one more endeared shake of his head to Nick’s car, and walks up into the venue.

The front door shuts with a loud thunk. Everyone looks up. Someone yells happily, “Oi! Look who it is!” Elle. He glares at her. She only sends him a serene, Cheshire Cat smile.

“Hi,” he says to the room at large. For some reason, Nick is clambering off the ladder at a speed rivalling an Olympic-medalist to get to him. Charlie finds himself smiling by the time Nick jogs over. He didn't realise that had happened until Nick was 30 centimetres in front of him.

“Hi, Charlie!” He waves. He is smiling back, though it is much brighter and more excited than Charlie’s. A morning person? Charlie may want to shag this man to hell and back and marry him under the sycamore tree and all that disgusting shit, but some faults cannot be forgiven. “Elle invited me to come help set up.”

“I can see that,” Charlie grumbles, glaring over Nick’s shoulder once again. Elle has the same expression on her face, but now with one perfectly-manicured eyebrow raised. He looks back to Nick who looks, somehow, hurt? Again? What? How does this keep happening? “You didn’t have to come. I mean, if you didn’t want to.”

The distressed look drops to something quizzical, which Charlie is grateful for—he didn’t know how he misstepped, but the fact that he did at all left him feeling uneasy. “But I did want to. I like to help. Especially at an event I’m going to be attending for free.”

It’s Charlie’s turn to look at Nick with a confused expression. “What? Of course it’s free. It’s an English wedding.”

“Yes, but Tori and Michael paid for it.”

“Actually, Bubbe and Abuela paid for it,” Charlie smiles, tilting his head down and looking up at Nick through his lashes with his brows raised. “And technically, every event anyone attends, someone had to pay for.” Nick frowns petulantly. Charlie straightens back up, but the teasing smile morphs into something else. He doesn't particular want to think about what. “But I understand the intention, and it’s sweet.” 

Nick’s smile is back, and the two of them gleam at each other for a little bit too long until someone else goes by. Charlie doesn’t care much about whom until they say, “Nick! Nick Nelson!”

Nick turns with a startled smile. “Oh! Hi, Isaac!” Charlie is broken out of his Nick-induced reverie and turns to see their mutual friend standing beside them, more than a little shocked. Nick looks embarrassed for whatever reason but still reaches for Isaac. They hug, just a fleeting touch of their shoulders—Isaac isn't big on physical contact with people who aren't the little group he went to school with. Isaac waves to Charlie, rolling up his soft-covered book and putting it in his back pocket, and turns back to Nick. “Alright? How are you since Miss Care’s class?”

“I’ve been well! Enjoying life now, for sure. Art is not for me, it seems.”

“Oh, me neither,” Isaac says, a faux-distressed look on his face. “Save art for the artists, I say. Wait, what on earth are you doing here? Do you work for the venue?”

“Oh!” Nick squeaks, eyes wide. “Well, um, no! In fact, I’m a guest at the wedding. As our Charlie here’s date.”

Isaac raises his brows and turns to Charlie, gleeful. As Nick once eloquently put it: yuh-oh. “Are you now?”

“I am,” Nick says, a little trepidation in his tone now. Charlie begs Isaac with his eyes to please not say anything weird. Please, please like this man as Charlie does. Just the words ‘Charlie’s date’ out of Nick’s mouth again have Charlie wanting to fall down onto the floor and stay there, potentially forever. How is he going to survive the entire night with those words being a nigh constant? They’re not even true. Not really. God. “Is that— I mean, is that okay?”

Aw. “It’s very okay,” Isaac says, still giving that same amused look to Charlie. He does not look away from Charlie as he says, “You’re a good guy, Nick. I'm glad you've found someone. Someone like Charlie.” He looks like he’s about to burst out laughing. Okay, so Charlie has to explain the real situation to Isaac at some point. It’s too likely that family could be listening in right now—they’re all nosy enough, and it would burst the bubble of this rouse almost immediately. Yeah, he tells himself skeptically. That’s the reason. “So long as Ben is—”

“Out of the picture,” Charlie cuts in decidedly. He barely even wants Ben back anymore. He can hardly remember life with Ben anymore, even though it ended less than a week ago. And then Charlie thinks back on their relationship as clear-headedly as he can, and as Ben becomes a fixture and figment of the not-so-distant past, the happier he becomes that Ben ended things when he did. Well, perhaps not the day he did. (Or, perhaps the day after all. Because here Nick is, beside him, looking happy as a clam to so.) But Charlie was considering moving in with the arsehole. He can’t even imagine now, and it’s only been a week. Ben’s cat still hated Charlie’s guts up until the day the music died. “Very, very out of the picture.”

Isaac smirks a little, then nods decisively back. “Well, good. Hated that guy.”

Charlie lets out a single, surprised bark of a laugh. “Isaac!”

“That seems to be the consensus among you all,” Nick frowns. “I fear running into that man among any of you.”

“Amongst,” Isaac corrects with a wink. Nick rolls his eyes, grinning now. This seems to be a familiar pattern too. For some reason, one of Charlie’s oldest friends and his newfound obsession interacting and having old jokes has butterflies going round his stomach. Odd. “Well. It’s nice to see Charlie with someone as nice as you, Nick.” He turns to Charlie and The Look is back. “Good taste.”

Charlie gives him a light glare and flatly says, “Thanks.”

“Well, I’ll be seeing you two around,” Isaac smiles, no longer smirking. “I’m in Michael’s wedding party. Autism buddies.” He smiles over at Michael who is trying as hard as he can to make all 6’3 and 70 kilos of him as small as possible so he can staple streamers to the lip of the stage.

“That’s nice!” Nick smiles. “Michael’s a wonderful guy, we were speaking about his skating! I want to go to one of his… games? Shows? They seem so interesting! My older brother, before we fell out, had an obsession with Michelle Kwan, and one day…”

Charlie smiles at him a little lopsidedly, glad Nick is looking away as he speaks animatedly. Charlie hadn’t even seen Nick speaking to Michael for long enough to constitute a chat consisting of Michael’s rambling nature at the rehearsal dinner—and, as it currently seems, Nick's too. He loves his future-brother, cannot wait to watch him repeat to his sister and best friend, Behold, with this ring, you are made holy to me, in the eyes of God and humankind, but Jesus Christ can that man talk. Most of Charlie’s extended family can—he and Tori are sort of the exceptions to that rule. The de Costa-Spring clan can talk so much. He had approximately four panic attacks about it between meeting Nick and now. What would they say to Nick? Would they accept him? Would it be strained and awkward? Was all of this a huge mistake? Should he have just bitten the bullet and gone stag, said fuck it to his family’s weird, hopefully-well-intended comments? 

Probably. Yeah.

Too fuckin’ late now.

But honestly, as much as he's worried to hell and back over it, he doesn't regret Elle asking. Because here Nick is, standing beside Charlie in his pressed pants and a crisp white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and lace cut-outs on the collar—not enough to draw attention, but just enough to show character. Charlie has not gotten the chance to see him yet. Not really. He’s looked at Nick, sure, and he will continue to all day (and long into the night)—but seeing him, looking at him and taking in every detail, is too much and is honestly idiotic if Charlie wants to continue to function. 

Nick is just sickeningly, arrestingly, brutally, stupidly gorgeous. It’s every strand of hair falling over his forehead that Charlie wants to push back, fingers spasming with the impulse, until Nick disappointingly beats him to it (his hair didn't have a wave to it like this, straight as a pin at Frankie's (and in the pictures he Insta-stalked of Nick late into the night last night); this look is really doing it for him). It’s the left cuff of his sleeve that keeps falling down his freckled arm that Nick has frustratedly attempted to pin back into place three times since Charlie first came in. It's the way his trousers fit and the shine of his shoes and the light bouncing off his sweat-dappled skin and his stupid bloody smile. Charlie’s usually more of an eye-guy, and man, Nick has those too—all warm and dripping honey into tea. Nick makes Charlie an everything-guy. But his smile, the crooked, gentle way he aims it at people, the way it’s always kind and inviting and makes people—makes Charlie—feel seen, it’s. Charlie can’t look at it for too long. Can’t look at him for too long.

Can’t see Nick the way Nick sees everybody else. It’s too much. 

Around his family, around most people except his siblings and his friends of many years, Charlie is used to hiding. He’s used to not being seen. He hasn’t been seen the way Nick sees him in a long, long time.

These people who have known him longer than he’s been alive still don’t really know him, still don’t see him, despite having watched him grow into every stage of himself. These, some mostly-conservative, old, often-rude Jews could’ve easily disowned him but didn’t. They took it well, which Charlie hadn’t been expecting at all, at least from all except his siblings, parents, and grandparents, whom he came out to years prior. Charlie expected bloodshed, pyres, pitchforks from the rest; he did not expect to be this universally, wholly, questionably-deservedly loved by them. There have been—and likely will continue to be—weird, invasive and awkward questions (the funniest was from Grandpa: when you get married, who wears the yarmulke?), but that’s par for the course when it comes to coming out in large swaths. He wasn’t disowned. He’s grateful. 

But now, he’s at this wedding, and family is going to be showing up in a few hours, a few of whom haven’t been around since Charlie came out at Oliver's bar mitzvah. This is the family he doesn’t feel seen around, feels like he has to hide around, even after all these years, even after all the truth shared, and he doesn’t know what to do.

And then he looks at Nick fucking Nelson, this golden retriever motherfucker who seems to be made of pure sunlight, who is goddamn mishpokhe, and he sees Charlie. It feels like a cognitive dissonance. This guy who looks over at Charlie, sees whatever he sees in Charlie’s expression, and still grins at the sight of it, like whatever he sees is something worth seeing. He sees Charlie’s nervousness and knocks their hips together. He sees Charlie, obstinate on a ladder, and allows him his potential with a gentle hand on his back. He’s family somehow, already. It wasn’t a lie, when Nick said it, though Charlie wouldn’t dare admit that to him for fear of confirming what Charlie knows to be true: he fits—in Charlie's family, in Charlie's life. It flays Charlie open, the truth of all of it. The heat of Nick Nelson’s sunny smile has begun to cook Charlie Spring alive. He doesn’t know if he minds the burn. 

He is reminded, then, of the concept of bashert. The idea of predestination within his faith. Made for a purpose. Created with a plan. Meant to be. A leaf falls from a tree and hits ground: bashert. A child falls to the earth and skins their knee: bashert. A man falls from a pier to his death: bashert. Two people meeting at a chain restaurant: bashert. Soulmates, the leaf and the grass. The knee and the pavement. The man and the ocean below. Meant for one another.

He doesn’t know why, but he feels now as he looks at Nick still talking aimlessly to Isaac but three steps closer to Charlie now—like they revolve round each other, like they have to be nearby or else the world is still spinning, the world is not at rest—that this is what he’s been romanticising in coveted secret all these years. These feet, taking one step towards Nick, drifting closer purposefully now, unsure of who took the paces between them and realising it does not matter. These hands, twitching at his sides, missing Nick’s skin on his. These eyes, unable to be unbroken from Nick’s gorgeous, gut-twisting grin.

He misses Nick and he’s standing right here. He tries not to think about what that means. Not bashert. Not souls. It doesn’t make sense. It hasn’t been long enough. He still wasn’t sure about Ben sixteen months in. How can he want this man after 68 hours who has opened himself up as an offering to Charlie like the flowers that will be wrapped round his sister’s wrists later today? How? Why? He’s always believed in bashert for the world, for others, but never for himself. If Ben wasn't his bashert, which Charlie has always known, then no one was.

The great wonder. The great ideal. The great soulmate. Not for Charlie. Never.

Perhaps not even still, despite the pull, despite the gravitation like magnets finally turned the right way after all their lives spent searching, wondering, wanting. He wonders in every muscle holding up his body and dragging him to Nick if Nick wonders too.

And then Nick glances over at him, smiles softly, takes one step closer so they're side-by-side, on purpose too, and Charlie thinks, maybe.

Nick has been rambling about Michael’s rambling for long enough that Isaac has lost interest and is now staring at Charlie with an identical expression to the one Elle had on. He wonders if Isaac can see the bashert smeared across his skin like a bloodstain. So, Isaac likely knows the truth about their situation after all, that Nick is here because he’s a kindly stranger who Charlie wants to be his kindly anything for forever and a day. Great. He needs out before he truly does combust into flames. Before the bashert consumes him whole.

“Well.” Charlie claps his hands together loudly. Nick startles, cutting off his story about Nathan Chen’s form, the adoring (what?) look in his eyes clearing. He looks over to Charlie with a curious smile, forgetting about the conversation he was just having with himself while Charlie got lost in his very weird, very gay thoughts. He and his thoughts will be having words once this endless, endless day is over. He has no idea when that will be. If that will be, as it’s looking like from the state of the list on his phone burning a hole in his back pocket. 

Nick must see something in his eyes, the worry he feels that Nick does not wonder. He wishes Nick would just touch him, even if it’s an accident, just to chain Charlie to the thought that, yes. Maybe.

And then Nick knocks their hips together once again. Charlie sighs gratefully—he can’t help it. Does Nick know exactly what Charlie needs? It doesn’t make sense. Nick anticipates Charlie’s needs, sees the hurt, the wounds, and gives him the antidote. Becomes the antidote. 

He hasn’t even seen the real wounds yet. Hopefully he never will.

Still, he knows he won’t ever miss another man who is not Nick Nelson again.

Charlie clears his throat. He shakes himself off; there are things to be done. His sister needs him, and if Tori Spring needed anything at all, Charlie would, has been, and will be there with tools in hand, ready to work. “We have many a-task to complete in this room alone, and I am the head chef. So, if you’ll—”

“Is there a list?” Nick asks excitedly, bouncing on his toes and sidling up to Charlie, like he knows Charlie well enough already to know there's a list. “I love lists.”

“You… love? Lists?” Charlie asks. He looks up to confirm with Isaac, who has now abandoned him to sit by the dais housing Tori and Michael’s future-table post-wedding on the stage to read The Song of Achilles for a few minutes after the social interaction. Isaac looks up, finding a (perpetually at this point) slightly blushing Charlie looking back at him. He waves a little, then with a wolfish grin, makes kissing faces at he and Nick, complete with loud smacking sounds that Charlie can make out from across the room. He makes shakes his head as slightly as he can with Nick still watching him, Charlie's expression fearful, but Isaac just laughs. Dick. His friends are total dicks. He looks back at Nick, a put-upon, plastic smile on his face, but Nick looks none the wiser to his silent conversation with Isaac.

“Of course I love lists!” Nick grins. “I love to help, we know this.”

Charlie smiles fondly at him, tipping his head a little. “We do. Well, okay, then.”

And then, “Charlie, there’s a situation,” Elle says, rushing over. She doesn’t even look at Nick. Bad sign—Elle is terribly polite to strangers. “Michael’s freaking out and you’re probably the only person here who can talk him down, since Tori is indisposed with the dress and makeup.”

“Oh, God,” Charlie sighs. “Alright, let me go talk to him. But… fuck, my list. All the shit that needs to get done, the wedding won’t happen if it doesn’t, I-I—”

“I’ve got it,” Nick says, ducking his head so that Charlie can see him through his swimming vision. The panic is rising. He’s going to ruin his sister’s wedding. “Hey. Charlie. It’s okay.” Nick’s calm, stable smile is the only thing keeping him anchored to the earth right now. “You go take care of your brother, and I’ll helm the ship out here, alright?”

“But I can’t ask you to—”

“Charlie,” Nick says, shaking his head and maintaining eye contact so Charlie doesn’t drift away with the waves, float too far from shore, become the man who falls off the bashert-covered pier himself. “You have asked for nothing except for me to come. And here I am. That clearly means I want to be here, right?” Charlie shrugs, looking away. Nick shakes his head, bowing it again so Charlie can see his face once more. It’s so genuine, clear of any worry or nervousness — Nick wants this. He really does want to be here and wants to help. “I do.” The great wonder.

“Nick, it’s a lot of stuff you’re signing up to do,” Charlie sighs, squinting at him dubiously. “Like. A lot of stuff. This list is…”

Nick just smiles. “Send it to me. We’ll get it done.”

Charlie smiles tentatively, the panic ebbing just as it flowed. “Yeah?”

Nick nods decisively, and his smile never wavers once. He knocks their hips together again. He looks so fond when Charlie smiles back and returns the favour that Charlie feels the burns open up once more. And yet, Nick is still the aloe. He is still the antidote. “Yeah.”

🍃

Laughing, Charlie says, “C’mon, Nick, follow my feet. I’m doing it backwards. How is it this hard for you?”

Charlie’s been attempting to show Nick how to grapevine for 13 minutes. The ceremony is over. His sister is married. Charlie has never been happier—and not just because most of his duties are completed and he can simply have a good night now until his best man speech later and clean up the party after. He is happy because his older sister is, the girl who has been the only constant in his life while everything else shifted and came and went away. There, always, was Tori, standing tall in the rubble with a drink in hand, ready to hurt the world if it dared hurt him. And she is happy, so Charlie is happy. What more is there?

Michael ended up being okay—he had another I don’t deserve her moment. Charlie really, really knows what those moments are like. They spoke for a while, and eventually, Michael found himself able to face the day, face the rest of his life. Charlie promised him it’d be a happy one; his sister hates almost everyone, including herself, but she could never really seem to hate Michael. Michael’s face screwed up at that, burst into tears for the fifth time that conversation, and launched himself into Charlie’s arms. Chuckling, Charlie caught him—that’s what you do with mishpokhe. 

Nick got it all done. Everything on Charlie’s list, it all got completed. The whole event space looks amazing, but Nick did something with the aisle outside leading up to the podium where the rabbi wed his sister that looked just incredible. He grabbed tulle and little bits of dust glitter that were not in the boxes marked TORI’S WEDDING from… somewhere. Basement? It didn’t matter, because he wove them between each flower meant to wrap round the posts going down the aisle and Charlie almost cried when he saw it. He has no idea how he’s ever supposed to thank this stupid, incredible man. He’ll have to think of something eventually. He hopes he has the time to.

Tori and Michael haven’t yet emerged from their much-deserved Yichud, so he hasn’t been able to shower them with kisses yet—ones that Michael will revel in and Tori will despise. He misses his sister—he’s barely even fucking seen her today outside of the ceremony itself. It makes sense why, and he’s happy to fix and help and move and make anything she wants or needs. Lord knows she’s done her fair share of helping Charlie whenever he needs. But the reception will surely solve the missing-her issue. He helped make her happy. That's all that matters. He’s on top of the world. 

Especially because Nick’s hands are in his right now and have been for 13 minutes.

It’s really, truly and honestly not that hard of a dance, the grapevine. Charlie can hardly dance himself and even he can do it. He did it round Nick in circles, trying to show it to him slowly, then faster, then in time with the Hava Nagila he could hear in his head after all these years. He’s holding Nick’s hands now, showing him how it’s done as best he can while other guests chat aimlessly around them, a din neither of them can hear, too wrapped up in each other. How he wishes the hands in his were because of a different dance, a slower dance, a sweeter dance.

Not a ‘stupid fucking dance’, as Nick has so lovingly donned it.

This is fine too, though. Charlie's learning very quickly that teasing Nick is in his breath, fills him up to the tops of his lungs. Charlie wonders if Nick can hear that breath and how fast it's coming—and certainly not from the grapevine.

“I thought you said you couldn’t dance!” Nick moans as he squeezes Charlie’s clammy hands, vexed. Charlie sighs a little. He tries to hide the fact that it’s not even close to put-out; he’s certain it wouldn’t work at all, had Nick been paying attention to anything but his and Charlie’s feet. “I felt justified in my untalent!”

“I’m bad at all of the dances I haven’t been doing since I could walk,” Charlie laughs. “It’s just grapevining! You're in your head too much, you can do it!” 

Nick trips again, then looks miserably up from Charlie’s feet to his face, eyes a little misty-eyed in his frustration. Poor kid. “I told you I have two left feet.”

“Nick, you don’t have two left feet. You have two left feet, legs, arms and hands. This is unreal.”

“Mean!” Nick yelps, eyebrows climbing in disbelief. He shouldn’t have assumed—Charlie can be, indeed, a little hard on his teasing when he wants to be. Out of love, of course. Well, not love; staunchly not for Nick. Affection? Weird, obsessive infatuation? Jesus, he needs to get a fucking grip, he hasn't known this guy for nearly long enough to be crushing this hard.

Charlie has to stifle a laugh at Nick. It’s so hard to do so that a muscle twinges in Charlie’s upper back at the movement. He relaxes immediately—if he pulls his back out during the fucking grapevine, Tori will never let him live it down. “How much time until the Yichud is over and they come back?”

“I mean, there’s no exact science, Nick,” Charlie says in an attempt to bring him any solace, trying still in vain to hold back his laughter while he runs his thumb over Nick’s warm, dry palm in a comforting sweep. It seems to work; his shoulders drop a fraction. So, a physical guy then. Noted, Charlie says to himself with a self-satisfied smile. Well, at least with people he likes. Or— well— not—  

He shakes his thoughts away, cheeks flaming, and focuses on the task at hand: taking the piss out of a fit guy. “But it’s usually, like, 8 to 12 minutes. And then there’s the first dance, which you absolutely cannot practise during—"

"I wouldn't! Never!"

"—and then directly after is the hora. So, I won’t lie to you: soon. Very soon.”

“Oh, God,” Nick groans, shoulders tensing once again, head dropping back. Charlie gifts him another sweep of his thumb, now brushing lightly against his wrist—it barely works this time. “I give up. No hora for me. Or at least no grapevine.”

“Nick, if you don’t do the hora, my bubbe will find you and eat you for lunch, and if you don’t do the grapevine, she will revoke your landsman title.”

“Not Bubbe!” Nick yelps in horror. “She still has to tell me what part of Austria her shtetl was in!”

Charlie can’t help it now: he laughs. “You want to hear my bubbe’s stories about Austria? Not even Bubbe wants to hear Bubbe’s stories about Austria.”

“Okay, you and I both know that’s not true,” Nick says, finally letting himself laugh too. The good humour in his expression brings some comfort to Charlie; now that Nick has shaken off his resigned demeanour, he might be able to function. Nick sighs, shaking his head as he drops his eyes back to his feet. He tries again on his own. Fails. Miserably. “It’s the kicking that’s getting me.”

“I know, baby,” Charlie says slowly, voice low and teasing, like he’s a parent speaking to their child. He unlaces one of their hands to reach up and mess with Nick's yarmulke, threatening to undo the clasps, to complete the image.

"Hey, hey, watch the merchandise!" Nick cries, cheeks flaming now—likely at both the ministrations and Charlie's mocking. He cringes to duck away from Charlie's roving hands in his hair who is trying to take off his kippah in earnest now. They laugh as they wrestle, hands fully unclasped now, and flap their arms about each other's heads for a while, slapping and cackling, until Charlie fluffs the front of Nick's hair up and gives up the ghost. Frowning, Nick attempts to fix his own hair blind, but God, it really is a right mess. The roguish waves are now either sticking up like Alfalfa's on the top of his head, haloing the yarmulke, or falling limply in his face.

Charlie chuckles, shakes his head, and says, "C'mere." He takes a step closer and reaches up to adjust each wild strand, taming him until he is looking at Charlie with wide eyes and a slight gape to his mouth, jaw dropped just-so, breathing measuredly, like he's trying to control it. Charlie tucks a curl behind Nick's ear, fingers brushing against the shell of his ear, feather-light, and he watches Nick swallow. The great wonder. Charlie tweaks the kippah a little, not nearly enough to dislodge it again, and says, "You gotta be careful with that."

"Ugh, as if it's my fault!" Nick groans, glaring at him a little, seemingly shaking off whatever mood he slipped into when Charlie was fixing his hair, flapping his hands to wave away Charlie's wandering ones.

"I admit to nothing," Charlie sniffs primly. Nick rolls his eyes and chuckles. "C'mon, you've got to get the kick, that's the last mountain to climb."

Nick bemoans, “Charlie, there’s so many rules involved in being Jewish.”

“I mean, yeah,” Charlie says, laughing again. “That’s the whole thing. Jews and their rules. They have ‘em. They love ‘em. Well… some of them do. I, for one, am not so fond.” 

“I have so much more respect for Jewish people after this. And I had a lot before.” He sighs and joins their hands once more and brings them back up to the correct position. He has a determined expression on, a set to his brows, lips sucked in out of concentration, like if he doesn’t get this right, the whole wedding’s going under. Charlie tries desperately to hold it in, but one chuckle does escape. He likes this man so, so much. “Okay, one more try.”

After finally fucking figuring it out (it did not take one more try), he seemingly has a great time holding up Michael’s chair mostly on his own for a little while (which, of course, makes Charlie swoon), and catches Tori’s with one hand when it starts to slip, the other in Charlie’s. Tao, Isaac and Elle keep weaving around him and giving him The Eyebrow—a thing Charlie is going to avoid discussing at all costs today. He knows it's due to the fact that Nick's arm is hooked over his shoulders, wrist hanging loose, Charlie's slung low on Nick’s waist with his head in the crook of Nick's neck as Charlie cackles at Michael nearly falling off for the third time, taking all the chances he can get to touch this wildly beautiful man. He doesn't even care at the time that they can see, giving them a warm smile that they returned, despite The Eyebrow not abating.

Jesus, he's not even drunk. There's no excuse for this, for giving into the pull of Nick Nelson, for hanging all over him like a primary school girl with a crush. He just can't stop looking up at him and smiling at him like he hung the sun. He makes it so goddamn easy.

After dispensing many hugs and kisses onto his siblings—some unwanted, some not—Charlie is sat down to eat his just-a-little-bit of tzimmes and his just-a-little-bit-less of brisket at Tori's wedding party’s table where he and Nick are seated. He's 3/4 of the way done and he wishes he could give himself an A* for the amount of food in his stomach—he wasn't sure he'd be able to eat today. Everyone is blessedly dancing and socialising, not sitting with him. Charlie wouldn’t have been able to eat if they had been, no matter who they were to him.

Charlie has to eat as inconspicuously as possible around all of his family but Tori. The de Costa-Springs (and many other Jewish families, he’s learned as he’s gotten older) have a certain weirdness about food. He doesn’t quite know where it comes from (and for his mental health, he will not research why), but it’s certainly prevalent in his own family. The de Costas specifically are very food-oriented, as most Jews and Spaniards are. They detest fasts—will loudly complain at every one—and High Holidays are a right mess. They’re dumping food on everyone else’s plates, effectively forcing food down people’s throats. Charlie despises it.

Yes, it’s good food, and yes, food is a staple of importance in his cultures, both of them. It’s hard to avoid. It’s partially why Charlie’s eating disorder got so bad when he was in his teens — he won’t admit it to anyone but his therapist, but it wasn’t just the bullying and his burgeoning depression that was the impetus of his anorexia.

Now, after all the force-feeding and all of the comments like I slaved over a hot stove for hours for you and now you won’t eat what I made? and put some meat on your bones made it so that whenever Charlie eats in front of anyone on the de Costa side of the family (honestly, with anyone whom he doesn't deem safe), he is on his toes, hackles risen, waiting for someone to scold him for doing something bad—the very thing he did to himself every day in his teens. He knows logically that he overcompensated, went so far the other way that he fears he might never come back. He knows they would’ve never wanted to do this to him; they’re mishpokhe. They’d never want hurt for the other. But still, the trauma remains. He did not explain to them why he did not eat their food when they playfully pushed it into his mouth with laughter dripping from their lips, and now, he likely never will.

Charlie looks up to find a friendly face after staring at the rest of the food on his plate for a few minutes too long. He feels a pull somewhere deep in his gut that only lessens when he finds—ah, Nick, still talking to Uncle Jacob. They’re looking at something on Uncle Jacob’s phone now and Nick has a heartrending expression on his face, like he’s never seen something more beautiful than what he’s looking at. Charlie assumes it’s one of the dogs Uncle Jacob takes care of at the pound he works for in Northampton; Nick said he has one of his own, so Charlie is only assuming. Uncle Jacob and his nice, equally as boring wife are usually found chatting entropically about the drive it takes to get to London for all of Bubbe and Zayde’s hosted High Holidays, let alone the sleepy little town they’re in right now, about an hour and a half outside of London. Ah, the drive wasn’t too bad, they sometimes say. Ah, traffic was awful today, they say other times. Most of the time, they say little else aside from the drive it takes to get somewhere and ‘the good old days’. Charlie does not pity Nick right now—he loves Uncle Jacob, but the man is a drip.

Charlie has one of the last bites of glazed carrot poised in front of his open mouth, ready to eat, but he doesn’t even notice he's paused his movement in mid-air, too busy staring at Nick. 

And then Nick looks over, grins as he meets Charlie's, and says something to Uncle Jacob. He starts walking over without breaking eye contact despite Charlie's squirming where he's pinned under Nick’s gaze—he’s still smiling, a little wolfishly now that Uncle Jacob is out of his line of sight. Charlie hurriedly puts the carrot back down on his plate and pushes it away. He’s eaten more than enough—enough that Geoff would be proud, considering the company wandering round. Enough that he's proud.

When Nick arrives, leaning over Charlie, hands splayed on the table, he says, “You did not tell me your first word was 'p’juice'. This is very important information.”

Charlie lets out a sputter of a laugh. “Why would I? When would that have come up? Between the Seven Blessings—which, yeah, I saw you fuck up—and the hora, which you also fucked up?”

“You saw me fuck up the Seven Blessings?” Nick demands, jaw dropped as he miserably crumbles into the empty seat beside Charlie.

“Of course I did,” Charlie laughs, just the tiniest bit mean in his teasing. “I didn’t tell you until now because the hora was also an embarrassment and I’m not that cruel. But yes. It was very, very obvious.”

"Elle didn't tell me there was reading involved!" Nick whines, crossing his arms petulantly. Charlie wants to kiss the pout right off of his beautiful face. "I asked! I would've studied!" 

"Oh, I believe you would’ve," Charlie smirks, and Nick groans. "No, I've gotta thank Elle, actually. That was amazing. Hope the videographer got every second of it in 4.1k surround sound." Nick glares, but Charlie continues on just to torture Nick with a teasing lilt to his voice he couldn't edit out if you paid him. “I was watching from the front, I couldn’t stop laughing throughout the whole thing. Everyone else pronounced it perfectly because there's a literal phonetic pronunciation guide beneath each blessing. You stumbled all over everyone else so loudly, it startled my great auntie. You totally thought you had it without looking at the program. It was adorable—” Charlie’s eyes widen, caught out, but decides correcting himself would be too obvious, so he says nothing.

But Nick thankfully didn’t seem to notice Charlie’s slip-up because he is too busy crying out, “Dick! Dick! I can’t believe you watched me in my time of peril!”

“I should’ve taken pity,” Charlie says, voice dripping with condescension, but even he can still hear the affection laced within each syllable. “It’s not hard. Here, say it with me: Baruch.”

Nick sighs, rolls his eyes, and says, “Baruck.”

“No, no,” Charlie says, swaying closer, looking up at Nick from beneath his lashes. Nick's expression shifts on a dime. “No ‘k’. Let it trail off. Baruch.”

Nick is zeroed in on Charlie’s mouth now, transfixed. Charlie's stomach drops out. He wants everything Nick has to give. "Baruch.”

“Good.” Nick shivers. The great fucking wonder.

Charlie had tried his hardest not to watch Nick and to keep his eyes on his siblings beneath their chuppah that Zayde and Olly had constructed and Elle had carved various flowers into that all meant things Charlie was not privy to. 

The chuppah. The beautiful chuppah. The thing that shields you from all the hurt and pain in the world. The thing that is your home, letting it shelter you as you become each other’s home instead. The thing that shows you that your home is not the things in your house, but the people within it. The person within it. The thing that Nick did beautiful, incredible things to, and Charlie couldn’t have kept his eyes off it of if you paid him—the flowers woven round the posts, the glitter drifting off of the vines in the wind and shining in the sun. He learned after taking one look at it that he would love to share one of his own with a nice boy someday. 

Would love to share one with the man who made it shine with his own light someday, but he suppresses that thought as quickly as it comes.

During the vows, Charlie found his eyes wandering from his siblings to sweep over the crowd instead—to abate tears, of course. Charlie hates a good cry, even a mutual one, and especially  one in front of, like, hundreds of people. Everyone was in various states of emotion, but when his eyes found Nick’s in the back, he was in tears. Tears. Like, fully sobbing. Over a couple he’d known for less than two days. His eyes flicked to Charlie’s and gave him a private, watery smile. Charlie immediately cut his eyes away and surreptitiously wiped an errant tear that had escaped. He hadn’t known when it formed. He tells himself he still doesn’t.

Once he saw Nick there, crying in his seat, he could hardly take his eyes off of him for the rest of the ceremony, which is why he knows Nick fucked up the Seven Blessings. He wasn't that loud, and no great aunties were startled; it was a cover for the fact that they he was looking nowhere but Nick for so long. He prays that doesn't show up on the wedding tape.

He will take the piss out of Nick about it until the stars rain down though because it’s a fantastic distraction from the main embarrassment during the ceremony between the two of them.

Nick gasps, pointing at Charlie with a manic grin. “Wait, you distracted me, you ninny! Uncle Jacob told me about p’juice while he was showing me baby pictures of you!”

“Baby pictures?” Charlie demands, glaring at the room, whipping his head around for Uncle Jacob. He can’t believe he just lost the upper-hand this quickly. Fuck ‘good old times’, and fuck Uncle Jacob, actually. Mishpokhe or not: shit list for life. “Oh, I am going to kill that man. Bloody hell.”

“Noooo, they were so cute, Char,” Nick insists, eyes wide and adoring. Charlie's eyes shoot open wide before tamping them down furiously, but unable to hide his charmed grin. Char? Nick notices, and continues at a little bit of a faster tempo and higher lilt to his voice, cheeks burning, clearly grasping desperately at the advantage in this teasing dance. Charlie really does like this fun they’re having, despite the times where the piss is being taken out of him instead of the other way around. It’s nice to know that the small stuff works with them as much as the big stuff does. At least for Charlie. “You and your chubby little cheeks. I just wanted to pinch them." He reaches up and goes to tug on one of Charlie's, but he bats him away with a glare. Nick's grin is not deterred. "Who was the stuffie you were hugging in almost every shot? Jacob didn’t remember its name.”

Charlie drops his head to the table, banging it several times. Nick laughs and hovers a hand over Charlie’s knee, asking for permission, which is sweet and hot and a million other things that has Charlie feeling in a million other ways. It’s clearly the breach, the question, is it okay if I touch you? Would that be okay with you? Would you like that? Now, and in front of your family? Charlie stares at it. And stares. And then, in anger, he grabs it and shoves it down onto his leg so it makes a slap. The bridge is crossed—Nick can touch him however and whenever he wants now. He watches Nick slouch a little bit in relief as he chuckles. His hand is warm. Charlie feels like he’s going to explode—both from embarrassment, the fact that Nick posed the question at all, and the soft stirrings of arousal at the feeling of his cold skin heating beneath Nick’s touch through the thin layer of his trousers. God, he can’t be this desperate, can he? He hasn't been laid in a few months—Ben would deny Charlie's requests for sex the last few months of their relationship, no matter how hard Charlie had begged, thinking in vain that it would bring them closer together—but it hasn't been so long that he's getting heated over a hand on his clothed knee.

“Her name is— was Kitty,” Charlie says through gritted teeth, glad he caught himself before having to admit Kitty still lives on his bed at his flat. 

“Creative,” Nick says, a smirk in his voice, self-consciousness gone. 

“Dick,” he spits back, uncaring how many times he's repeated himself. He violently misses the leverage in this stupid, stupid situation.

“There seems to be a lot of those being slung around today, huh?”

Charlie turns his head to stick his tongue out at Nick, glaring a little. Nick teasingly does the same thing back. Then, rolling his head back to the table and to get it out of the way now or else he’ll perseverate on it for years to come, Charlie hedges, “I’m assuming you witnessed the thumb-sucking.”

“Yes, I did,” Nick says, tone neutral, though not carefully. “It was very cute.”

Charlie sighs so loudly, he hopes stupid fucking Uncle Jacob can hear it.

Then, kindly, gently, Nick continues, “None of that. Many of us did it, love.” He squeezes Charlie’s knee just a little. Charlie feels his whole body fall impossibly warmer, tip to toe, at the term of endearment, at the touch, at the tone in Nick's voice. It all feels like a soothing weight on Charlie's bones, until Charlie thinks, what the fucking hell any of this could possibly mean?

Jesus, first Char, now love? Did he mean it? Or is someone else around? Charlie stealthily rolls his head to look and finds no one paying attention to them. Oh, my God, he says to himself, staring back at the blurry table inches from his eyes like it’s going to crumble beneath him, wide-eyed, sighing dreamily without his own permission. Love. Oh, my God. I want to hear that forever. I want this to be a real date so fucking badly.

“We were two very cute folks,” Nick says, a smile evident in his voice, probably at Charlie's enamoured little exhale. Mortifying. “We are. Or, at least, I am.”

“Oh, okay, hot shot,” Charlie snorts, rolling his head back to peer up at Nick with a smirk. “What makes you say that? You got some sort of obsession with yourself?”

“No, but you do.”

“Oh, now you’re fucking full-on,” Charlie scoffs, blushing a little as he picks his head up cautiously, trying desperately not to be caught out. The man's right but God. “I’d never.”

Nick gives Charlie a smirk of his own, leaning back in his seat, hand sliding up Charlie’s thigh a little naturally as he does. Charlie swallows. “Says the man who yelled of course Nick’s cute! in a crowded restaurant.” Charlie lets out an undignified squawk, eyes flying open, cheeks going from pink to fucking vermilion in seconds. He immediately buries his head back into the cradle of his arms still braced on the table, whining a little in utter shame. Fuck that server. Charlie has a vendetta against her now. God, Nick must think he's crazy. He laughs at Charlie, but it’s not a mean sound. Charlie doesn’t know what sound it is with his blood rushing like this, but at least it’s not mean. “Now, I must know: what was the ‘p’ in p’juice?”

Charlie bangs his head on the table again, more than a little grateful he has dropped the line of questioning about what Charlie said at Frankie’s. Still: “I hate my life.”

“C’mon, Char,” Nick begs, leaning forward again so his elbows are on his knees, his chest so close to Charlie’s back, Charlie can feel his body heat in the spaces they are not touching. The hand on Charlie’s knee does not leave; it is a constant. Charlie wants to groan, not ‘Char’ again. He's a monster. “Tell me.”

Charlie moans in defeat. “Apple.”

Nick laughs, delighted, says, "Good choice—it's a good juice," and scratches Charlie’s knee fondly. Charlie feels the fire rage past the treetops inside him.

“Hola,” someone says flatly to their right. Charlie’s head shoots up at the voice.

“Hi, Abuela,” he says, a strained smile on his face. Abuela is an absolute doll—to Charlie. She’s a little rude and brash and mean, but she is so, so loving when she wants to be. However, to strangers? Yikes. Charlie had been hoping she and Nick wouldn’t meet the entire wedding—a pipe dream, it seems.

“Hola, Señora de Costa, yo soy—”

“Who is this.” It’s not a question, it’s a demand. She directs this to Charlie, not looking over at Nick at all, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Ben? Why is he speaking Spanish?”

Charlie gulps. Nick runs a comforting thumb over the inside of Charlie’s knee, and for some reason, that makes him feel a little more able to say, “No, actually, Abuela, Ben and I aren’t— this is my, um, my, well, I guess this is my partner, Nick.” Partner. One day, he’ll be able to say the word boyfriend like Nick has. ‘One day’, as if they aren’t quote-un-quote ‘boyfriends’ for one day and one day only, despite the fact that Charlie would take as many days as Nick would give him.

"You ‘guess’."

"No, he is. He's my— yeah, he's my partner." Charlie breathes out slowly, measuredly, trying to contain every feeling trying to come bursting out of him like rushing water.

Abuela finally looks over at Nick, eyes narrowed as she takes him in. Charlie looks worriedly between the two of them. Nick looks unbothered, though the hand that is still a weight round Charlie’s knee—probably unknowingly to him—is wrapped a little tighter now. “Nick,” she repeats.

“Yes, ma'am, I’m Charlie’s boyfriend, and happy to be so. It’s really wonderful to meet you.” Charlie’s still reeling that this likely-straight man has become so comfortable with calling Charlie, also a man, his boyfriend. Allyship has certainly become a real good time in recent years. He sort of hates it now. Fuck allies—he wants Nick to knit their souls together, just as David and Jonathan did thousands upon thousands of years ago. Charlie would do anything to find a little bit of the magic they had and do the same with Nick.

God, he's so royally fucked.

Abuela’s dour expression still hasn’t let up. “Hm.”

“Charlie has told me so many wonderful things about you, Mrs de Costa,” Nick smiles, tone and expression both genuine, not letting up on his determination to get Abuela to like him. ‘So many wonderful things’, meaning, like, five. Really laying it on thick, there, Nicholas. Charlie gets why though; it’s hard to find an in-road with Abuela. “You’re from all over Spain, right? What’s been your favourite place you’ve lived?”

One of Abuela’s eyebrows raises, curious now. With her glare lightening a little, she says, English a little awkward and stilted as she attempts to translate herself, “Valencia, where my house is now. Smaller city, not flashy like others, but me and Grandpa like it. Cathedrals, eh, nice. Ah... pretty.”

“I’ve never been,” Nick says, eyes alight. He's speaking a little slower than normal so Abuela can catch every word; Charlie wants him underneath a chuppah so goddamn badly. “I love architecture. Are they older?”

“Very,” Abuela says, softening a bit now, more willing than she was when the conversation first drifted here. They chat aimlessly back and forth for a bit, trading stories about the architecture of their home-countries (Nick’s (apparently estranged) father is from France. Charlie tries not to imagine the attraction he’d feel if Nick spoke French to him. Or right now. Or ever). Nick’s hand has migrated from Charlie’s knee to around his shoulders during this discussion, hand cupping Charlie’s upper arm. Charlie’s been blushing the entire time, mostly silent. He prays neither Nick nor Abuela have noticed as they talk over him, though he doesn’t know how they couldn’t—he feels like he’s about to implode, the rushing water rising in his lungs now that it knows there is nowhere to escape to.

Abuela, having had Charlie help her sit down to his left so she could speak over top of Charlie to Nick, turns back to Charlie and gives him a significant look. Charlie isn’t quite sure what it means. “Well. Ben or no.” Abuela turns to size Nick up with a critical, gleeful eye and then says, “Charlie, tu nuevo querido es muy, muy hermosa, mi cielo. Bueno. Te kero muncho bien, hanumika." 

Abuela says the two languages slowly so that Charlie can understand every word, keeping it simple because she knows Charlie isn’t well-versed in Spanish. Charlie understands, though he has to sit with it for a few seconds—even the Ladino sentence at the end he gets as Abuela has spoken this phrase of affection to all three Spring siblings at various points in their lives. He's blushing at Abuela’s words, at your new darling and very, very gorgeous, while Nick has his arm wrapped around Charlie’s shoulders. He’s tall and light and handsome, smelling like Charlie imagines God must. Like oranges and patchouli—something woodsy. Like some of the magic David and Jonathan had dwells in the forest of Nick too. Charlie longs to live within it, be the wildlife that lives in the trees, allow some of Nick Nelson's magic to pulse through him, make him holy. He wants to live nestled in the safety of Nick’s shoulder for the rest of his very long, stupid, arduous life—not just for one day. Tough fucking luck Charlie has.

Excitedly, Nick squeezes Charlie closer to him, Charlie’s shoulder now in the pit of Nick’s arm. Charlie, somehow, goes ruddier. "I know French, obviously, but not much Spanish or Ladino! You're going to have to teach me some, mémé chère.”  

French. Speaking French, Charlie thinks nonsensically. But then he realises through context clues that Nick probably called Charlie’s rarely-seen abuela his fucking grandmother, which makes Charlie feel all sorts of things he hasn’t felt since the first few months of his relationship with Ben. Namely, a bit of apprehension. However, the reticence is curled up in the relief of hearing that Nick considers Charlie’s family his own, even if he’s only laying it on thick like he was before. He can’t tell the difference between these feelings though, because he knows Ben would’ve used these words as a manipulation tactic. Something like, this is my family now. It belongs to me because you belong to me. Charlie doesn't know if Nick is doing the same.

Charlie catches himself before relating Nick to Ben though. 1) He and Nick are not dating because, as he has to keep telling himself: Nick is just playing along. As was suggested. And 2) Nick is virtually nothing like Ben aside from being around the same height and, like, being men. No other similarities exist between them to his knowledge. To be fair, he didn’t have much of a defence around Ben, so who knows. Perhaps he should have a better defence around Nick. He can’t help but feel too close too much too soon. All of this bashert feels like a promise that he isn’t sure Nick can keep—isn't sure he can keep—and that terrifies him. 

Nick is just so sweet though. It’s honestly a bit funny, how much Nick wants to go around, Charlie on his arm or not, making pals with Charlie's extended family and old friends he fell out of touch with after they left for uni.

And, of course, his real friends. Nick was seen twirling a bellchime-laughing Elle round the room at one point. Charlie teased him about it, saying, what, you won't dance with me, but you'll dance with my best friend? I'm your date. He stressed the word, hoping it would read as sarcastic. Nick replied with pink cheeks and a small smile: hey, let me know when you want to do the grapevine, and I'll happily cut a rug. He is consistently asking Tao if he needs more water (Charlie doesn't know how Nick knows Tao is perpetually dehydrated. Does he? Did they speak about it? Or is he just being relentlessly kind, as seems to be his modus operandi?), and sitting with Isaac, chatting aimlessly so Isaac doesn't have to interact with anymore strangers when he's clearly socially-exhausted.

It feels important, somehow, that Nick be integrated into Charlie's world like this. It feels like it had to happen for this day to go smoothly, but more than that, it feels like he has because he was meant to. He even gets along with Tori for God’s sake, something very few people can manage, climbing off his chair to bow at her feet as she walked by and crying out quietly enough that he didn't make a scene, too beautiful! Ah, we're not worthy! It's a display that Tori would usually cringe and roll her eyes at, but for some reason, Nick's earnestness made her find it charming, shaking her head with good humour and affectionate before waving him off.

Tao snorted to Charlie when he saw Nick speaking to an auntie that Charlie didn’t even know the name of that he’s ‘the fucking Welcoming Brigade’. Nick isn’t Ben because mishpokhe implies, we are family. It is not and will never be, I am family.

Charlie will put up some defences because he’s not stupid and he knows he needs to. But he also needs to remember that Nick has shown no signs of wanting to hurt him the way Ben did. Ben broke up with him knowing full-well Tori’s wedding was six days away, and much, much more that Charlie hasn’t yet had time to unpack. Ben didn’t care that he was hurting Charlie, ruining Charlie’s chances at a day free of panic. Nick literally came to his rescue after knowing virtually nothing about him aside from that he knows Isaac. Nick’s a good guy. He is.

Still. Defences. Heterosexual. A farce in and of itself. Etcetera.

Abuela lights up at Nick’s term of endearment, at Nick’s affect, at Nick (Charlie knows how she feels) and reaches for him. “Oh, sí, sí, we will talk to your grandpa, presiado, he will be muy emocionado. Not that tu amor wants to learn.” She sends a fond, exasperated eye roll Charlie’s way. 

Your grandpa. Nick’s grandpa. Tu amor. Calling Nick the Ladino word—their mishpokhe's fucking word—for precious. Charlie feels sick. He tells himself he isn’t sure if it’s in a bad way or not, but the butterflies in his stomach say otherwise. Abuela is right: Nick is precious. He is so, so precious that Charlie feels guilty for wanting him all to himself tonight, jealous that his family gets him too, that he can't spend the rest of the night at least just being around him. At this crossroads moment, the rest of his life would be good too. He thinks if he had that, finding joy in the arms of Nick Nelson, he'd more easily be able to bat away the hateful thoughts when they inevitably come flooding back.

He doesn’t know if Nick has caught up with, or even flat-out understands Abuela’s very thick Spanish accent that even Charlie can hardly catch sometimes. She feels comfortable around Nick, words speeding up to her semi-comfortable rhythm (definitely faster than it was before right now by a large margin—and God only knows, the longer Nick speaks to her, the quicker it will become). The Spanglish is strong with Abuela, but add in the bits of Ladino she remembers from her parents? Impossible. Nick never stood a chance. Ladino is nigh impossible to research online, where Nick has likely learned all his, quote, ‘Yiddishisms’. Charlie only knows presiado because it's what Abuela calls Olly, so Nick definitely has no idea what Abeula is on about. Charlie hardly even knows what Abuela is on about most of the time. Charlie dropped this poor, helpless, Cute-With-a-Nice-Arse Server into a shark tank covered in pig’s blood. He Carrie’d Nick, but with sharks.

Understanding or not, Nick is seemingly going happily with Abuela who is helping her up so she can lead him back to her table. Nick’s arm regretfully slips from around Charlie’s back as he goes to follow Abuela, her arm going through Nick's crooked elbow like it’s second nature, like he really is mishpokhe now. Charlie smiles at him. He has no idea how he got here, how he could’ve been so lucky that someone this wonderful was who Elle demanded be his not-date to this wedding. He doesn’t know how to defend himself against the feeling.

Defences, he tells himself. Defences, he fails at holding onto.

Nick glances back and matches Charlie’s smile, then shoots him a wink. Charlie feels his breath catch in his throat. He immediately feels that rush of something he felt when Nick winked at him at Frankie & Benny's. He feels light and heavy all at once, like the weight of Nick against his heart is both an albatross he’s been carrying for the past 73 hours and a lovely bed he can rest on when this long, long day gets hard.

This man is absolutely fucking nothing like Ben.

For some strange reason, this is the thing, this wink on the heels of the first, that has a little unknown voice in his head whispering, maybe he isn’t as straight as you thought. He doesn’t know what to do with that, with the realization that Nick could actually like Charlie the way Charlie likes him. He honestly hadn't even considered it. Waved it off whenever anyone cruelly tried to convince him any of Nick’s actions were anything more the a golden retriever hoping to play fetch with a stranger. It sends him reeling, the whole story he built up around this night and this man, rumbling like an oncoming rockslide at his feet, knowing it will leave him buried beneath the force of all that he’s feeling. All he’s been feeling.

He has no idea how the wedding would’ve happened today without Nick. He has no idea how he would be surviving the wedding without Nick—practically and, honestly, emotionally. The thought is troubling—too hard too fast—but he shakes it away. Not now. Not while Nick is grinning at him, happy and kind and, fuck, Charlie truly doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. The water is finally leaking out through his heart and into his hands. He's trying to drink it, get it back inside him before Nick can notice, but it's getting harder and harder to swallow all of this the longer Nick sticks around.

He knows what’s happening. He knows what’s coming. He knows how he felt the moment he looked into Nick’s eyes for the first time. He knows what this is. It’s seismic. It’s groundbreaking, earthquaking, seashaking. He knows what this is.

Admitting it, though. Naming it—even to himself—is something very, very different.

Presiado. Presiado.

Char. Char.

Love. 

Love.